Felo surveyed the screaming laughing chaos.
His hands hurt.
His arms hurt.
His shoulders hurt.
His back hurt.
And yet, he felt numb inside.
A hard thump landed between his shoulder blades, making him take a step forward.
"You did well son." Felo turned round to look at his Sergeant. "Now wipe your blade and earn your reward. Quick now."
He watched the Sergeant move on for a moment before reality regained his senses. Kneeling, Felo wiped his short sword against the trousers of the corpse at his feet. One of many. His blade wasn't that dirty, so only a few passes removed the bodily fluids from it. It took him four attempts however, to line up the tip with the open mouth of his scabbard so he could sheath his blade.
His trembling hands fumbled their way through the search, finding the small leather pouch. He didn't look inside. There would be time for that later. Onto the next corpse. Another small pouch.
There was Trian.
Felo had joined up with him. Laughed with him. Struggled with him. Shared punishment duties with him. And there he now lay. In the piss formed mud. One side of his face caved in. Only one eyeball staring up into the mid-morning sun. He knew where Trian had kept his pouch, and how protective he had been of the amulet his mother and sister had bought him. To keep him safe. Not that it had worked out well for him.
He took both.
Not because he had any faith in the amulet, but because he once had feelings for Trian's sister, Tatiana. Not that she had reciprocated. In fact, her dis-interest was one of the main reasons that he was kneeling in this god forsaken field.
Trian's cheek was punctured by the spikes of the morningstar that had killed him. The weapon itself was lying in the mud next to Trian. Felo moved on to the corpse that had wielded the weapon which had ended the life of his childhood friend.
He tried to remember what the veterans had said.
Fingers for rings, necks for purse strings or necklaces. Inside boots for coins.
Two young girls, laughing as they ran past. They couldn't have been a day past nine summers.
Where the fuck had they come from?
For all their youth, they were faster than Felo was. More skilled with their searching. Dressed in just simple shifts with flowers woven into their braids. They could have been sisters. Probably were.
A corpse cried out as one of the girls searched it, feebly trying to push her away. The girl kneeled on his chest as she reached under her shift, pulling out a plain dagger. Probably from a belt around her waist. Taking the hilt in both hands, she plunged it into the fallen soldiers eye. She kept her arms straight, leaning over the dagger so as to use all her undernourished body weight to drive it all the way in.
The corpse became a corpse proper.
The girl stretched out a foot, placing it next to the head that now held her blade. Using her leg muscles and a twist of her wrists, she pulled the dagger out, wiping it on the corpse's sleeve before slipping the dagger back up under the her shift as she carried on searching.
He only managed a few more corpses before the horn blew.
He had a good few pouches, some felt heavy, but that was no indication as to the value of the contents and some rings. His own pouch held just one copper bit and some stones he had liked the look of.
Soldiers were leaving the battlefield, as were the two girls. Some peasants were still loitering. Greed overruling self-preservation. He spotted his Sergeant and some of his unit clustering together. He headed towards them as a second horn blew. Together they started to weave through the prone corpses. The majority of them theirs.
The sound of several crossbows being released and the peasants who hadn't fled at the sound of the second horn, started to fall.
A fist punched his left arm. An arm that once held a shield. A shield he had been proud of. A shield he had spent almost all his money on just a few weeks earlier. A shield which had split on the first blow it had taken. Tumbling onto the ground in pieces on the second. Expensive kindling. And now all he had to show for it were two leather straps around his left forearm.
'Guaranteed to weather any blows aimed at it'. The Fucker! He was going to pay that shopkeeper a return visit and get his money back.
"You survived then, shit for brains."
"Aye." he managed to get out. Though the truth of it, Felo had no idea how. When his shield - and his plan - had crumbled into fragments within those first two blows, he had given in to his terror. It had been too late for second thoughts. Too late to return to the cluster of small huts that made up the hamlet of his birth.
Pretty much all of the recruits – Of which Trian and Felo had counted amongst their number -appeared to be missing. As were some of the older men of the unit.
"Well, that was a shit-show." Someone muttered. It appeared most of the men agreed. Felo was finding out that he appeared to have lost almost all of his voice.
Another comradery thump on his back, as another crossbow was loosed, eliciting a scream of pain and terror.
Turning round, Felo surveyed the wide open field that this morning had held crops. Now it held just corpses and the maimed. Everywhere he looked, corpses. Men. Horses. Dead or dying.
If this was what winning looked like, he didn't want to see a loss. At the edge of the battle, empty wagons were approaching, escorted by more men with crossbows. Crossbows that loosed at anyone still out on the field proper. Men dressed in just loin cloths and sandals jumped off the wagons and started to strip the dead. Metal swords and armour went onto the wagons. What could be repaired was repaired. That which was beyond repair would be sold, melted down and made into either more armour, weapons or ploughshares. The Quartermaster and his men directed the official pillage. The weapons and the armour recycled into the army's stores. Coin and precious stones from the dead filtered back into the pockets of the quartermaster and the officers.
Something was thrust into his chest. Felo looked down. A waterskin. His throat cried out for the contents. He took a swig. It wasn't water, nor was it wine. The whisky burned into his throat and he found that he was too exhausted to cough. He handed it back as they walked clear of the corpses.
"I'll see you all tomorrow afternoon for roll call. Mid-day. At our tents."
The men around Felo grunted their acknowledgement. All he could do was nod his head at his Sergeant.
Felo was hungry now that he could no longer see, or hear, the injured. There was just the shouts of the Quartermasters men as they worked through the field behind, and the shouts and laughter of the camp in front.
Hungry, and for some reason, horny. He wanted the company of a woman. He had one particular girl in mind. He had been dreaming of her for months, but hadn't the coin to pay for her. There was something about her, something that fired his blood in the darkest of nights.
He had the coin now.
The camp quietened as the survivors started to trickle in. The humour evaporating. Armourers and weapon smiths readied small field forges and anvils of their trade. The whores as well.
Felo entered the camp, walking down the main thoroughfare. Many stared at him and he walked with his back straight. He had survived and he had not run. He had not run.
The whores were camped with the seamstresses, for many were both.
He walked amongst the tents, looking for her. The women looking back at him with fear in their eyes. He didn't care. There she was, sitting on a small stool, repairing a gambeson. She looked up at his approach, her expression turning from one of boredom, to one of fear.
He pulled out a pouch, let her see it, nodded to the tent behind her. She paused, shook her head as she stood, carefully putting the gambeson aside. The other women and girls nervously watching him. Taking his hand, she firmly led him between the tents, heading for the edge of the camp.
They passed through the more 'upmarket' part of the camp traders. Felo could not afford anything on sale here.
At least, not until this morning.
A woman, a whore by the cut of the dress she was trying on in front of a mirror. Looked at him in disgust, stepping away from him, and the polished metal she had been looking into. Felo caught sight of his reflection.
He was covered in mud and blood. His hair was caked in it and all he could see in the blackness that was his face, was the white of his eyes and his teeth that he was exposing in a maniacal grin he had not been aware of holding. He scared himself. He closed his mouth, nothing he could do about his eyes.
The girl pulled on his arm, leading him out of the camp and down a shallow bank to the edge of the river. She held out her hand expectantly. Felo pulled out one of the lighter pouches, opened the drawstring neck to peer inside, shaking the pouch to disturb the coppers inside. Almost more money than he had ever owned in a pouch, other than the one he had handed over for his shield, and he was going to get that back. He handed it over.
"I want you to be mine, and only mine, till it runs out." He struggled to get the words out of his tortured throat.
The girl didn't look inside, counting by weight and feel. She nodded and slipped it into a cleverly hidden pocket in her dress.
He watched as she unlaced the bodice of her gown, slipping it off and folding it neatly to place down on a patch of clean grass. Without shame, she slipped her now exposed shift over her head and placed it atop her dress.
She looked every bit as beautiful naked in front of him as she had in his dreams. Felo reckoned she was four or five years younger than his nineteen summers. He unbuckled his sword and placed it next to her clothes. Clad only in her sandals, she took his hand and with a little gasp, led him into the water.
With the water to his waist, her chest, she started to disrobe him. He threw his simple chest armour and the Jerkin with all his new pouches onto the bank. He tried not to think of what lay in his breeks as she unlaced and pulled them down.
He was hard and wanted her, but every time he reached for her, she slipped deftly from his grasp. He was under no illusions that this was not her first time doing this, nor of what he hoped to be doing after.
She took handfuls of river bed sand and scraped his body of the blood and filth that coated him. The sand felt good. It felt cleansing. And her touch felt good as well. Parts of him burned as the sand scraped at cuts he hadn't been aware of receiving. The water running away from him, was of an unpleasant colour. Piss, shit and blood.
She placed a hand on his shoulder as she moved behind him. The pressure indicating that she wanted him to kneel. He knelt. She scrubbed at his face and hair as he kept one eye partly open on his clothes.
His ardour had not subsided by the time she led his red, raw but cleaner body to the bank. She pushed him down onto his back and straddled him. When they had been younger, Trian and Felo had spied on the older boys and girls, watching as they made out in secluded groves, or empty barns, where they had thought that they were alone.
He had seen girls naked, knew what was supposed to go where, how it should be done. He had always thought that it would be with Tatiana. That they would be each other's 'first'. Of the pair of them, Trian had been the first to have claimed to have slept with a girl. Or so he had so often insisted. Felo had his doubts. Especially as he had always become evasive as to who the girl - or woman - had been when pushed. Trian had insisted that it was the best thing ever and could not be explained, only 'experienced'. Which hadn't quell Felo''s doubts as the veracity of Trian's claims.
The girl's lips met his she guided him to, and then into her.
In his dreams, their lovemaking had lasted hours. The reality was considerably shorter and only a few heartbeats after she had slipped him into her, he erupted.
It was humiliating.
He tried to apologise, but only managed an incomprehensible croak before she laid a forefinger across his lips. He took the hint and kept his silence as she rested her head against his chest. If he was being honest with himself, he was happy with that position. He wrapped his arms around her and they just lay on the bank as the water ran by their feet. The girl didn't appear to be in any hurry to move and he loved how her small breasts felt against his stomach. He may have dozed off for a moment, he wasn't sure, but voices made him look to the side where lots of men, and a few women, were frolicking in the water further upstream. Most were washing, a few were blatantly copulating unheeding of those around them.
The girl stirred, sat up, reached for her shift.
She seemed unconcerned with the intensity of his gaze, making no move to hide her personal areas from his gaze as he watched her move and dress. More men moved down the bank to the river. Suddenly self-conscious, Felo reached for his trousers. They were still wet and horrible to put on. So was his tunic and boots.
Squelching with every step, she led him back up the bank.