Crusader - novel, chapter 2

Another chapter. This one is short. One to read while doing/meant to be doing something else. Like work! Again, I take no responsibility for any crap bits.

2

I always shock myself with the apparent ease I have at coming to terms with the fact that I just killed twenty-odd men. I can detach myself from my actions afterwards like I was watching at a theatre play and then quite happily float away from that part of me. A series of instants meshed together then pushed aside. I can’t tell whether it is something I struggle to hide away because personally ending someone’s life seems so horrific afterwards, or if the clarity is some sort of divinely granted strength for doing God’s work. And as much as I wish it were the latter, the days and nights of sickly, soul-sapping fog that always follows my deeds in battle tend to suggest the former is the case. But for all the darkness that enters my soul for my actions, I in turn am removing that darkness from the world. Like all saviours of God’s children I am a martyr. And yet despite my faith, in those darkest of nights when the hungry souls of the men I’ve killed rob me of my sleep and haunt my shadows, in creeps my deepest fear – what will become of my blackened soul?

Bohemond shook away the haze that had descended across his thoughts as he passed the threshold between open field and soldier’s camp. As though he had passed some invisible line the men under his command became instantly aware of his company. A jubilant cheer arose as the men gave thanks to their leader for victory. An unbidden grin cracked Bohemond’s face and he raised a fist in salute to his men-at-arms. He truly revelled in leading these men. Men who believed in him, followed him despite what fears and gripes they may hold. For them the killing was a job paid for by their Baron and they need not appreciate him nor respect him. That the fifty men now surrounding him, most of whom his senior, were showing something close to admiration filled Bohemond with an almost fatherly love.

The cheers died off and the soldiers directed their attention to their well-drilled tasks as Bohemond’s sergeant approached him with a grin that rivalled his own.

“We got the bastards Bohemond, every last one!” Robert de Guisard said through his broad smile.

“That we did Robert, that we did,” replied Bohemond as his still settling memories rumbled and groaned at the mention of every last one.

“As I always tell you, your father would be truly proud of you today; the church is that much stronger for what you did today.”

“That’s false praise and you know it Robert, it was you and the men who won us this day for God and the Church.” Bohemond didn’t notice Robert’s grin turn wry at the comment.

“Ah I won’t try to disagree with you, we both know you’re as stubborn as a mule with sword skills that put me to shame, Bohemond, and I would hate to flare your temper when your sword is in such easy reach!” Robert chuckled with feigned fear.

“Yes, and we both know you’re too old and grizzled for wounds to afflict you as your skin is so thick blows bounce right off,” Bohemond quipped to Roberts laughter. “Tell me are their many injuries?” Bohemond asked, instantly reverting to seriousness.

Just as quickly returning from the light-heartedness Robert replied, “No, My Lord. Peter de Guilies and Adam Truthsayer both received slight wounds, nothing incapacitating as the heretics were mostly farmers, sorry Milord – peasantry – and had few battle skills or real weapons. Those that did have weapons barely knew which end to point at us.”

“It was a massacre. Their leaders were fools to believe that they could face us in battle. I pray for their souls. Are Peter and Adam seen to?”

“Yes, Milord.”

“Have the men been assigned the watch?”

“Yes, My Lord.”

“And the evening…”

“Yes. My Lord the broth is already on the boil, after a bit of trouble I might add. And the horses have ample feed. And the surrounding woods scouted as you ordered.”

“And…”

“Yes! For the Almighty Lord’s sake everything has been seen to and is in order you pedantic perfectionist!” Robert growled through his laughter. “Now get along to your tent, the good Lord also knows there is someone frantically awaiting your return. At my last count she had asked for you seven times! Now be off with you!”

“As I always tell you Robert, if my father had no son you would be the commander of these fine men,” smiled Bohemond as he turned and walked away.

“I wouldn’t want it anyway! Too many Baronial ceremonies!” shouted the sergeant to his commander’s back.

“And I bet you would hate it too, you scarred vain veteran,” Bohemond retorted over his shoulder and was received with chuckling laughter.

Charlotte spun around quickly from the table by the centre pole of the large tent as she heard the heavy canvas over the entrance pulled away. The view arrayed before her shocked her to silence. She never believed the stories told to her of Bohemond The Great Warrior, though she was not naïve enough to think they were not true; Charlotte just refused to join the Bohemond who was her husband with the warrior standing at the entrance. Despite all her mental efforts to distance the two facets of the man what she saw now rudely forced each hard up against the other.

Bohemond stood, holding the tent flaps aside, silhouetted against the sunlight shining in around him like an angelic figure – the reality was obscene. His tall, broad frame normally regal and gentle was unforgivingly menacing. His body was covered in blood and dirt – dark curled hair matted with it, sun-tanned skin smeared with it, and cloth surcoat stained with it. His knuckles were smashed raw and finger nails were invisible under a coating of gore. With an implacable dread she looked to his face and met his eyes. Charlotte glimpsed a single moment of The Great Warrior within his blue-grey eyes – cruel, hateful, pained and violent. With an almost instantaneous reversal that veil was drawn deep within him and her Bohemond, The Bohemond, stood again before her. With total relief her body shuddered, fell to the ground and wept.

Crusader - novel, chapter 1

So... I have been lazy haven't I? No, not really I have just been busy and despite having half a dozen things that I would like to write blog posts on there has been no time (or more correctly, I haven't made time). So while I get back on the blog writing saddle I am going to cheat and once more post something that I have already written before.

Below is the first chapter of a novel that I have been writing off and on for...<starts counting> seven years! Ah crap, now that makes the quarter of the story that I have written thus far seem a stupidly slow pace. I think it took Tolstoy less time to write War and Peace. Regardless of that slightly depressing fact, the plot of Crusader is summarised in the blurb below. Please know that this has not been closely edited so I absolve myself of all responsibility for any crap parts in advance (because of course they won't be crap when I actually finish it hahahahaha).

If you like it and/or write me some comments I might even start writing faster, but even if I get distracted from the task I have another eight or nine chapters I can post before having to commit to writing anything new. Huzzah for procrastination/resting on imaginary laurels.


Blurb (or an overly clinical/whimsical plot summary; if this was the blurb on my book I wouldn't buy it as it sounds like a massive wank -- apologies):

Crusader is set during the the years 1186 and 1187 across the lands of modern France, Italy, Israel, Palestine and Lebanon. It is the story of Bohemond of Leisburg. He is a warrior with a strong sense of honour, of duty, and of justice. He is fearful of his God and vengeful against his God's enemies. He loves his wife and hates himself. He revels in killing and is disgusted by his violence. Death offers him release but life holds all his answers.

Chapter 1:

The stench of piss, shit, sweat, and blood goes for a hundred yards in every direction from where I stand. If I could smell the souls of dead men they would be there too. All around my senses show me death. I see the bodies and bits of bodies of men who twenty minutes ago stood, thought and felt. I hear the moans and pleas of people unfortunate enough not to be killed out-right and not fortunate enough to have been spared altogether. I feel my sword loose in my fingers and the fast drying blood, turning that ugly red-brown, on my arms, chest, face, and legs. But worst of all I taste it. The taste of mass death and dying with all its assortment of flavours is the worst sensation. No that’s not true – the worst sensation is the molten leaden burden in my soul, the one that reminds me that all this death was my doing.

Bohemond stood still in the field. The pivotal point of all that lay around. The soil, grass and copses of old tired oaks surrounding the antecedent battle quickly fell into churned earth and dead or dying men. He was the focus of a circle of destruction. As he let the thumping adrenalin induced high slip from his body, images temporarily forgotten reformed in his mind.

The charge he ordered and led with his animal scream. The seventy strides that it took to reach his first heretic. The perceptible ripple through ranks of the enemy as the sprinting charge of his men was absorbed with the usual unnatural abruptness. The feeling of his sword swinging freely through empty space, cutting through leather armour, breaking a man’s flesh, and the final jarring crunch as it lodged in bone.

It was too much. The flashes of battle were too much for his fully conscious mind to take. Bohemond gasped for more air than he could ever take and fell to his knees. He used his sword to hold himself up as bile raced from his stomach and blood drained from his face. More images swarmed into his mind.

The final standing heretic, no longer armed and accepting defeat. The sickly silken feeling that mildly reverberates along the sword as it punctures then cuts through flesh. The rage that surged out through his body as he lifted the last heretic’s head away from his body with a single, two-armed, full-bodied swing. The detachment between mind, body and action as he instructed his men collect their injured, make for the camp and leave the dead and dying heretics to suffer the crows and their pain.

Bohemond heaved mightily at his last thought and dropped to the ground, his sword falling beneath him. With his face flush against the muddy soil, he knew he was the only living man lying in the field who would still be breathing tonight. Bohemond forced his eyes shut tight and willed himself away from the battlefield. He no longer saw the death, nor smelt anything but moist soil. He could hear only the wind rustling the old oaks, feel only his own warmth. The taste was now just an acidic bite. He was free. Even if only for thirty seconds the burden of a human conscience had been soaked up like the ground does the blood and he was free.

Slowly, as reality crept past his mind’s filters, Bohemond again acknowledged the day’s atrocities with open eyes. He stood with stiff knees and aching back – always amazed by the exquisite exhaustion battle brought on his body. As he reached down to collect his sword its beautiful craftsmanship held him in awe. It’s expertly fullered blade with the Christ’s Crucifix etched at its base. The plain leather bound grip and perfectly circular pommel. But as always his eyes strayed to and lingered on the inscription on the cross-guard – May This Sword Smite Our Enemies Of God. The single phrase, whose message commanded his life, controlled his actions, pained his heart, and stained his soul.

Bohemond blinked away his stare and retrieved his sword from the earth, sheathing it at his hip. He began to make his way out of the scattered bodies, showing grace to the fallen, walking around the bodies not over them. He cared no longer for their misdoings during life, now their eternal souls were before God and it was only right to respect them, for it was God who judged them now.

He methodically wended his way out of the killing ground back towards where his men-at-arms had disappeared over the crest of the hill heading back to their camp. Reaching the edge of the body-strewn field he felt a feeble grip at his ankle. Bohemond stopped still. This was what he always dreaded. Being stopped by those dying at his feet always made it worse. The days coming he knew would be filled with his usual nightmares of death, shock, pain, and killing; but now, now those he slaughtered in his dreams would have a face.

He looked down to the man at his feet, still trying to get his attention.

“Please, show mercy My Lord… End my suffering, stop my pain,” moaned the man through a pain-induced clenched jaw.

Bohemond felt the bile remaining in his stomach seethe. He knew this man’s agony and he knew he would do nothing to relieve it. “Do you repent before God? Do you renounce your heretical path you took in life along with all those around you?” Bohemond questioned.

“Yes, yes. Anything. Anything! End my life for me. You are a stranger but you do an act more kind than any could ever do,” the man pleaded with desperation.

Bohemond glanced down at the rend in the man’s side that was spilling his entrails onto the blood sodden ground. He again squeezed his eyes shut with a deep longing to be far away from himself. Not opening his eyes he asked again, “Do you repent before God.”

“Yes!” the man screamed.

“Then know that the pain you feel now will be penance for your sins against the church of God, and that our Heavenly Lord may grant your undying soul a boon and forgive you. Know that the pain of your mortal body is nothing compared to the pain of your soul burning for eternity in Hell. May this thought grant you solace in the last moments of your life,” Bohemond stopped reciting the phrase now so engrained within him, opened his eyes looking at the horizon and stepped away from the man.

“No… No! Please! I can’t do it myself! I just can’t kill myself! Please. I’ve renounced my ways, my God is false! Please!”

Bohemond walked away, forcing each step away from the man, refusing against every natural urge to go back and show him a scrap of compassion. His eyes streamed with tears as he attempted to subdue his emotions. He told himself as he always did, that what he did today was right; that he did as his father taught him – that this is truly God’s will.

* * *

Bohemond reached his camp in the mid-afternoon sun, which was thankfully still providing warmth despite the waning summer. The fifty men-at-arms that he had led six miles away and into battle in the morning were celebrating the victory. He slowed his walk as he approached the encampment to give himself time to take in the atmosphere from a distance. Bohemond wanted to settle his thoughts before he had to face several dozen rowdy, most likely still battle-charged men. And there was of course another person in the camp whom he could never face in his current state.

He unbuckled his sword belt and placed it beside him as he lowered himself with a groan onto a lichen covered rock. He slowly unsheathed his sword, the sound of metal drawing across hard leather raising the hair on his neck, and began absent mindedly cleaning the dried blood and mud from it with his surcoat. He looked up from his work and surveyed the scene around him.

The honeyed light entering the shallow valley and casting eleven tent shadows on the valley floor. The slowly snaking brook running by the camp with its borders of pebbles and low rushes. The ash-white smoke column rising from the orange and yellow prongs of the camp fire in the centre clearing. The boisterous, stress releasing sport of men in various armed and armoured states, and the collective cheers that went up when the designated wielder of the enemy's banner was finally caught and wrestled to the ground. The six sleek chestnut and buck-skinned horses browsing along their picket line. The camp was perfectly situated; clear fields surrounding it preventing hidden enemy movements, a clean water source, ample animal fodder, multiple routes of retreat…

Bohemond smirked at himself, he had managed to take in the beautiful vista around him and twist it into thoughts of the strategic placement of the camp site. He grimaced as he recalled that if his logistics teachers were here they would have reprimanded him for not immediately organising the men under his command. Of course! There were still battle debriefings, injuries to be seen to and accounted, night watchmen assigned and meals to be prepared – in that order. How could I be so lax! If only Robert was here, he would be so proud of my sarcasm.

He looked down at his now gleaming sword, checked it over for remaining grime once, sheathed it, sighed deeply and stood up. Feeling better now that the events of earlier in the day had been safely stored in the deep crevices of his mind Bohemond half skipped his way down the hill to the camp knowing that now he could face his men and the one person he longed to be with.