The Siege: Part Three

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This time we did not form one single, impenetrable unit, we merely attacked. I gave the order and my sixteen brave friends sprinted behind me through the moist, bloodstained courtyard and hurdled over the many lifeless lumps that littered the ground. I had my eyes on the large wooden gate that protected the houses and homes of the inhabitants of Hungate Castle; however my hopes dropped even lower as I came closer to see that it had been smashed through and ten red dressed soldiers blocked the entrance to perhaps double the amount of green. I transferred all the rage from on top of the wall into my run and my trusty blade and as I was almost upon the men I leaped into the frosty air. Proceeding forward seemed to take longer than it should have, but this was all the more time to get my attack honed. I pulled my sword back in the air and jabbed a random man inbetween the neck and the shoulder. But if he screamed, I would not have realised because I landed on a not-too-happy enemy soldier.

“What the”- he blurted out as I slammed into his back and forced us both to the cold, dirty floor. I pressed my shield to the back of his head and pushed his screaming face into the ground. I broke his feeble neck. Just then my attack team arrived with a thunderous clatter all around me. Green troops that had been caught by surprise succumbed to the power of my soldiers blades and landed either side of me. I stood up, and ran again. Hacked at my right where I slashed open a back and smashed the persons spine in two, no time to stop. Two men had their backs to me; they were fighting two of the defending red soldiers at the base of the demolished gate. My eyes narrowed and I slowed down, I cut the left mans leg off at the knee to which he toppled, and I beheaded the other. Amazed glares came before thankful nods from the two defending soldiers; one patted me on my shield, a symbolic gesture. I turned around to see the ground covered in green soldiers bleeding and some crying, fourteen of my sixteen soldiers were still standing, a minor victory, I thought.

I pushed forward with my men, who had been joined by the ten defending the broken gate, into the civilian district of the castle. We all lowered our heads briefly as we seen houses burning, and children lying dead in the street, slaughtered. I was sure I seen a tear stroll down the dirty cheek of the comrade next to me. We progressed past the houses towards the screams of battle. Before us was a prestigious set of white stairs that went up to the keep. Exactly one-hundred and one steps ascended a small hill and held up a large marble building that displayed a beautiful array of different columns on the outside. A raging battle was taking place on the stairs, and my men were ready for it. I gave them all a brief look and then jogged up the stairs missing out two every time. As I ran, I studied the battle; these were not mere enemy soldiers. These were skilled warriors that Rulf had sent to attack; they must have been from the deep end of his army. They looked powerful by just studying them, however I did not back down, and neither did my men. One of the enemy knights stepped down three steps and squared up to me as I stopped. My eyes were dragged from his helmet to meet a rusty broadsword hanging from his hands. It was almost the length of my body. He raised it up without warning and let it drop towards me, the large chunk of sharpened metal getting ever faster trying to destroy my body. I only just had time to squeeze my shield in front of it, but even then the blow knocked me down and I fell five steps. Bruised, I slowly stood up to see my attacker advancing towards me.

“Go around him!” I shouted to my troops, to which they obeyed, but they were clever about it, one of them strayed too close so the knight took a large sweep at him to which the man ducked. This was my opportunity. Disregarding my sturdy shield, I moved as quick as lightning and jumped onto his back. Using all of my force and weight, I pulled him down to the stairs where we toppled together for an unknown number of steps. I ended up on top of his steel-armoured body with my sword clutched in my right hand and my left on his face. He had misplaced his death-bringing broadsword, but this did not stop him doing damage, he punched my right arm with the force of ten men so it went numb and I toppled to the left, where he tried to take advantage and grab my throat. However I moved my sword in towards my body and it pierced his think armour and ripped through flesh. I heard a loud grunt through the shiny helmet and I felt warm blood flow down my wrist. Are you dead? I mutely questioned him. No, he physically replied, he lifted me up into the air and threw me onto the stairs where I landed on my back. Pain shot through me from the blow. I noticed, as I landed my gaze back upon him, that my sword was still sticking from the right-side of his stomach, he seemed unaware of it. Ignoring the pain as he lunged at me, I kicked out at the pommel of my blade, forcing it to the left, a crunching sound followed by metal hitting metal came from the persons’ torso. I kicked the blade so it tore diagonally upwards through muscle and ribs and it clanged against the inside of the knights’ armour. He fell on his face and stayed motionless. I too stayed still for a few seconds to catch my breath, they better not all be as tough as this one, I thought. Standing up, I pushed the heavy body over and yanked my sword from the armoured man. It was covered in a deep red blood that contained all the memories of that man that I had just slain. I disregarded the thought and turned around to see three gaunt-looking red soldiers remaining, and many bodies entangled on the red-stained stairs. So many. These two words bounced around my mind continuously and I pondered a question. What is the point in all this death? Step by step I took, towards the three remaining troops of my command. But the battle was not over. Inside the keep was King Rulf, leading his powerful attacking group through the halls of our Kings home, and if there was one main thing that stood out from the rest of the nagging emotions that were rebelling against my own conscience; it was that I was going to stop that devil in disguise, even if it took every ounce of my own depleted life. 

>G

Goodbye.

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The wheat crop had grown long this year, the heat of summer sun tied with the light rains giving it a perfect welcome as it crept from below the soils. The field seemed larger when the crop had towered so high. The daytime sky was clear and as blue as the Mediterranean oceans, or what I had imagined them to have looked like when having the image read to me. A light cloud hovered over every hour or so but there was little more moisture in the air than what came with that. The trees shone a light emerald around the field and the grasses below a shining darkness by comparison. The heat caressed my bare body, as it always did on these days as I plunged into the pond in the centre of the crop. Why it was there we had never decided with its bulrushes surrounding its edges, a pit only as deep as my forearm was long.
The water flushed over me, clear water, grey rocks on the bed glimmering under the liquid. I feel the water fill my ears, my nose, and with my eyes open I watch the sky. The blue is darker when viewed from within here. The water stings my eyes, but I refrain from blinking and potentially locking it within my sockets until they open again. The pond was perfectly circular, if my frame was twice as large I could touch the sides when completely outstretched, but I rest in the centre. Small fish begin to peck at my skin, but I stare onwards, still.
I imagine I’d like to be a fish; the dense water over my body relaxes me. Of course, the circumstances would differ; air is to me as water would be to a fish. But all the same, I imagine I would like to be a fish. The sun glares on, the water magnifying it, my skin hotter below the surface. I remember the first time I had lay in this pool, hiding, escaping the world as it was. I had felt as if I was invisible to the outside, I was away from everything. And I was, to an extent.
I had been running, hiding, through our families fields, through the tall crop. And I had came to this; A pond. I dived in, skinning my chest as I plunged to the bottom, and there I rested flat against the water until my father had caught me and scalded me. I made a snorkel from hollowed bamboo the second time I’d came, the first my having to surface for air had given my position away. Since then, when I had ran, and hidden, this was where I came to relax, to be relieved of the outside world. I was hidden in a clearing of trees, through a field of long crop and in a pool of water. Today I had left my “snorkel” behind as my brother had come with me. I was to be leaving soon and I wanted him to know the hiding place that I used when father was stressed.
I surface moving the top half of my body until I was at a ninety degree angle upon myself. “And that. That is how I escape it.” I tell my brother, him having stared for a minute at my lifeless body submerged in water. “I will miss you brother.” He replies his tone was stern for him, tense even. “And I you, but I must leave, if you could come with me then you would be free too, but I imagine that we’d both me subject to more pain there than here.”I inform him, my hand now on his shoulder as I’ve steadied myself to standing.
“You don’t have to go though, neither of us do.” He insists now, his stern tone lost.
“I wish that were true, but with mother gone and father as he is, I must.” I look to my feet, avoiding his gaze, knowing this pains him more than it does me.
“Then you shall promise, that you WILL return.” He whispers, a tear falling from his cheek to his worn boot.
“I promise.” I whisper in return knowing that I’ve broken the promise. Knowing that for it he will hate me. For tomorrow I leave, and I do not return, as long as money reaches my brother it will not be in vain, but I will not return.
I pull my brother towards me, stepping backwards as I do. His toes reach the side of the pond and I push him to his knees, myself now by his side. His hand hit the water hard. “Goodbye.” I sigh, fighting away the tears, the pain. And in silence I walk away, hearing him sink into the water, listening to the sound of him hiding from everything he fears.
I was carted to the city the next hour, and from there I was shipped across the sea. I was paid to carry the flag into war. The flag of my country; unarmed and ahead of the first line. And there, as I strode my head high, I would be shot.

~S

J - Jap

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“Kuwabara, kuwabara,” muttered Taro Himura as another white flash split the sullen sky. Across from him, the American lit up a cigarette, staring uninterestedly through the dust-clad window. The American's name was Brian but he preferred to be referred to as Bri.

“D'you want one?” Bri offered a cigarette to Taro, brown-end first.

“No, thank you,” replied Taro in perfect English, even though being offered a cigarette, by an American no less, was a rarity. Bri took a long drag on the cigarette, then removed it from his mouth to ask a question: “How's life?” Taro cast his eyes from the American and laughed quietly.
“Life is as it can be here, although I am grateful for small mercies such as yourself,” Taro smiled. Bri returned it briefly before taking another drag.

“Not meaning in any way to be rude, but why am I here?” Taro asked. His question was initially met with silence.

Looking thoughtfully up at the ceiling with those blue eyes, the American replied: “The same reason all you Japs are here, I suppose. But even I don't fully understand that reason.” The room had been filled with a light grey haze, but Bri continued regardless, “We just do what we're told to do, no questions asked.”
“Forgive me,” Taro said apologetically. “I mean, why am I here? In this room?”
“You ain't in trouble if that's what you're thinking,” Bri met Taro's eyes for a brief moment, the lightning flashing through the dusty windowpane and illuminating Bri's eyes. “I just wanted to talk. Ain't no harm in that is there? I mean you're just an old man, and you won't be causing trouble, will you?” Taro was taken slightly aback, and he shifted uncomfortably on the wooden chair, adjusting his walking stick. The thunder, following in the wake of the dry, imperfect shaft of light, resounded in the room.

“It may seem that way, but... what is the phrase you use? Do not judge a book by its cover.”
Stubbing out his cigarette on the round table that sat between them, Bri leant forward and asked, “Now why would you say that?” fixing Taro with those cornflower eyes. Taro was not intimidated or not to be intimidated, although the American's demeanour did not seem threatening.
“I used to be a soldier.” No longer than Taro uttered the word 'soldier' Bri had begun to laugh.
“Now that, I did not know old man!” Bri rose from his seat and went to the cabinet behind him. He took out a bottle of Tennessee whisky and two glasses and set them on the table, pouring a copious amount in each glass. Bri pushed one of the glasses to Taro, which slid unaided before him. “Now this is gonna be good,” Bri gestured with the bottleneck, before placing the bottle onto the table. Bri's chuckling ended, and he gestured for Taro to talk.

“Yes, I was a soldier,” a glint of defiance showing in his eyes, “a long time ago. There is a story which was passed down in my family, of the byakkotai warriors, or the 'white tigers'. They fought against the Emperor for a freer Japan. I am descended from one of those warriors, and I am proud to be.”

“But I thought all you Japs loved your Emperor? Your boys are dying out in the Pacific for him as we speak,” Bri cut in, surprised.
“I will tell you the reason soon enough.” Coldness entered Taro's eyes for a moment, then he continued. “I was a young man seeking adventure at the turn of the century. I looked to join the army – believe it or not, I used to be quite fit.”
“I was a member of the Imperial Army in 1904. We were then given orders to mobilise, because the Russians had started moving East towards us. I wasn't shipped out until early 1905, to a place called Mukden. It is now called Shenyang.” Bri downed the whisky, putting the glass forcefully onto the table. He stopped drinking for a moment and leaned forward, apparently interested.

An explosion of light accompanied Bri's words: “What happened at Mukden?” The thunder burst from the sky like an angel's scream. Uncharacteristically of Taro he took the whisky, downed it, and slammed it onto the table.

A sudden harshness accompanied his words: “It was not a battle. It was a massacre. Scores of men died that day, and for what? An incompetent Tsar and a bloodstained Emperor.” Taro shuddered at the thought of the violence – cannons heralding death, vast choirs of soldiers destroying the other, thousands of still-warm dead littering the ground with thousands more marked and yet to be claimed. “No... That is not valiant. That is not honourable. We defeated the Russians by surrounding them.” Taro smiled a bitter smile. “Throughout the campaign my comrades switched the 'o' and 'a' in my name, and called me Tora on account of my battle prowess. But when I saw those same comrades dying, screaming, clutching at bloody stumps and crying for their mothers, the Tiger lost its appetite.”

Bri seemed to be in deep contemplation: “The codeword for the attack on Pearl Harbour...”
“Yes. Tora Tora Tora. Tiger Tiger Tiger.” Taro sighed, resting on his walking stick. “I had no desire to be a soldier anymore. All spirit was knocked out of me at Mukden. I moved to America, and led a quiet life. I told no-one about it, and simply meted out a living by doing honest work. Of course, me and my wife were the first to be hit by the Depression, being a racial minority of course...” His eyebrow furrowed as he spat the words: “A Jap.” At this point, Bri downed his whisky, unstoppered the bottle and poured another pair. Surprisingly for the old man Taro downed the other glass he was given. Taro stared into the table, as if willing answers from the gnarled wood as the lightning illuminated his pained face. “My wife... she simply gave up. She died terribly young for these days, but I guess that cannot be helped.” The thunder growled outside. Hoisting himself up on his walking stick, he said: “I suppose this Jap should be returning to his quarters.” Taro turned and made for the door.
“Taro.” The Japanese man stopped his shuffling. “Stay here tonight. Take my bed. I'll sleep on the floor.” Bri had stood up, pleading Taro with his eyes.

“Sorry. But this old, worn-out soldier does not need your pity.” Tora opened the door and stepped into the inclamence.

>-S->