Legionnaire

I slowly opened my eyes.

The sky was red and hazy. Rising or setting, I didn’t know.

I smelled smoke first.

Then blood.

I lay there for a few seconds, trying to understand why the ground felt different. Softer. Wetter. Warmer in places.

Mud.

I was lying in mud.

I turned my head and looked around.

I was in some kind of hole. A foxhole, maybe, though not a good one. More like a crater or a fighting pit half-filled with rainwater and churned earth.

I rolled onto my stomach.

My knee lit up immediately.

I sucked air through my teeth and started dragging myself toward the edge. Every pull sent pain up my leg, but I kept going until my fingers hooked into the lip of the hole.

I squeezed my eyes shut, gritted my teeth, and pulled.

Mud slid under my hands. My bad knee screamed. For one stupid second, I thought I was going to slide right back down into the hole and just stay there.

Then I got an elbow over the edge.

Then the other.

I dragged myself onto the soaked ground and lay there, breathing hard.

After a minute, I opened my eyes.

The sky was still red.

I pushed myself up onto one arm.

And froze.

Bodies.

Bodies everywhere.

Not old bones. Not dried-out remains from some long-forgotten battlefield.

Fresh bodies.

Men in armor lay scattered across the field, some half-buried in mud, some twisted in ways that made my stomach tighten. Horses lay among them, huge dark shapes with broken tack and torn harnesses. Farther out, I saw something else. Not horses. Too low. Too long. Lizard-looking things the size of ponies or small horses, with thick tails and clawed feet.

I stared.

My brain tried to make sense of it and failed.

Armor.

Swords.

Banners torn into the mud.

Smoke rising from something burning farther down the field.

You died.

The thought came quiet.

For once, I didn’t argue with it.

I dragged myself toward the closest body.

He was face down in the mud, dressed in black plate armor with dark chainmail showing underneath at the joints. Not shiny tournament armor. This looked military. Heavy. Practical. Scratched to hell. The breastplate was shaped to shed blows, the shoulders layered with overlapping plates, and the forearms were wrapped in blackened steel guards over leather straps.

A soldier.

Or a knight.

Or whatever the fuck people in black plate were called here.

I got both hands under him and pushed.

He barely moved.

“Come on,” I hissed.

I shifted, planted my good leg as best I could, and shoved again. Pain flashed through my knee hard enough to make me gag, but the body rolled onto its side, then onto its back with a wet suck of mud.

I slumped against his armored chest, breathing hard, my back pressed against cold steel.

For a few seconds, that was all I could do.

Breathe.

Then I turned and looked at him.

His helmet covered most of his face, black steel with narrow eye slits and a ridge running down the center like the spine of a blade. Mud clung to the cheek plates. A strip of chainmail hung beneath the helm, tucked into the gorget at his throat.

An arrow shaft stuck out of the right eye slit.

Broken off close.

I stared at it.

Then at the field.

Then back at him.

“What the fuck,” I whispered.

My voice sounded small under that red sky.

I looked around again, slower this time, trying to find the edge of the dream. The place where it would crack and show me the mountain. The overhang. The rain.

Anything that made sense.

But there was only mud.

Blood.

Smoke.

Armor.

Dead men.

“I’m dreaming,” I said.

Nobody answered.

“Or I’m dead.”

The words felt worse out loud.

“What the hell…”

I saw another body, but this one was different.

Red armor.

The helmet looked more like something out of the Crusades, flat-faced and narrow-eyed, with a heavy ridge down the center and small breathing slits cut near the mouth. Not fancy. Not ceremonial. Just brutal and practical.

This text was taken from NovelFire. Help the author by reading the original version there.

He wore a cloak over one shoulder that caught the failing light in a strange way. It shimmered faintly, like oil on water.

I crawled toward him.

I didn’t have much choice but to go over the bodies between us. I dragged myself through mud and blood, over armored corpses and broken weapons. Some had swords or shattered lances punched through them. One had a dagger buried through the eye slit of his helmet. A soldier in red plate lay half on top of him, one hand still wrapped around the dagger’s grip.

I kept moving.

The man with the shimmering cloak was on his back, one arm twisted under him, the other stretched out like he’d been reaching for something.

I couldn’t see his face through the helmet, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

I pulled at one of his gauntlets until it came loose. His hand underneath was stiff and cold.

Dead.

On one finger was a plain copper-colored ring. Or bronze. Maybe something else. I wasn’t a metal expert, and my brain wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders.

I touched it.

A spark snapped from the ring to my finger.

Pain shot up my hand.

“Ah! Fuck!”

I yanked my hand back, but the ring came with it. It slid off the dead man’s finger and onto mine like it had been waiting for me.

I scrambled backward, bad knee be damned, dragging myself through the mud until I slammed half across another armored body.

I grabbed the ring and tried to pull it off.

It didn’t move.

“What the hell?”

The body under me shifted.

I froze.

For a second, I thought my weight had moved it. Then I heard it again. A weak, wet cough from inside the helmet.

“Holy shit.”

This one was alive.

I rolled off the armored body and leaned close to the gap beneath the visor. Another cough came from inside. Weak. Wet. Wrong.

I tried to pull the helmet free, but it was held fast by a leather chin strap.

“Go figure,” I muttered.

My hands were too slick with mud and blood to work the buckle. I looked back toward the corpse with the dagger through his eye slit.

I dragged myself over to him. It took three tries to pull the dagger loose. Each pull made my knee scream, but finally the blade came free with a wet scrape.

I crawled back to the living knight and carefully cut through the chin strap. Then I eased the helmet off as gently as I could, trying not to move the head any more than I had to.

It was a woman.

She had black hair braided tight against her scalp, the kind of tight, practical braids meant to fit under a helmet. Blood speckled her lips, and a thin line ran from the corner of her mouth down along her cheek.

She coughed again.

Wet.

Weak.

“Shit,” I said.

I knew enough to know that was bad. Movies had people coughing blood every time they got stabbed anywhere more dramatic than a finger. In real life, coughing blood meant chest. Lungs. Airway. Something inside her was bleeding where breathing was supposed to happen.

I couldn’t fix that.

Not here. Not like this.

But I could maybe keep her breathing long enough for somebody else to fix it.

I grabbed the dagger and started cutting at the leather straps along the side of her breastplate. My hands shook, and the blade slipped twice before I got enough of the straps loose to start opening the armor.

“Stay with me,” I said, even though I had no idea if she could understand me. “Come on. Stay with me.”

I finally got the breastplate loose enough to lift it over her head.

There was chainmail underneath.

“Shit,” I growled. “Of course there is.”

She coughed again, and more blood speckled her lips.

“Hold on,” I said. “Just hold on.”

I didn’t have a choice. If I was going to check her wounds, I had to move her. Spinal injury mattered, but not as much as her dying because I was too scared to roll her.

I cut through more leather straps along the chainmail, then moved her arms above her head as carefully as I could. My knee screamed the whole time, bright and hot and mean, but I ignored it and pulled.

The chainmail came loose inch by inch, heavy with mud and blood. When it finally slid free, I shoved it aside and nearly collapsed over her.

She coughed again.

Wet. Weak.

Blood bubbled at the corner of her mouth.

“Fuck.”

I moved back to her chest and saw the red spreading through the padded cloth beneath the mail, high on the right side. Around the breast.

I hesitated for half a second.

Then training took over.

“Sorry,” I muttered, and cut the fabric away.

This wasn’t the time to be embarrassed. She was dying, and modesty didn’t mean shit if she couldn’t breathe.

I pulled the cloth open and found the wound.

Small. Round. About the size of a penny. Right side of the chest, through the breast tissue. Blood welled from it, dark and steady.

Coughing blood meant chest until proven otherwise. Lung. Airway. Something inside bleeding where air was supposed to move.

She was breathing, which meant she had an airway for now, but it sounded wet and wrong.

I needed to know if there was an exit wound.

I slid one hand behind her back, feeling through mud, blood, torn cloth, and armor padding. Every time I pulled my hand out, I checked it as best I could in the red failing light.

Blood.

But everything was bloody out here.

“Come on,” I said through my teeth.

I rolled her just enough to get my hand farther under her shoulder blade. No obvious hole. No sucking wound that I could feel. No arrowhead sticking through. Nothing I could trust.

I looked back at the wound in her chest.

I needed an occlusive dressing.

I had nothing.

No med kit. No chest seal. No plastic wrapper. No tape. No clean anything.

Just mud, blood, dead men, and a dagger.

“Okay,” I breathed. “Think.”

If air was getting into her chest, she could tension. If she wasn’t already. I couldn’t hear breath sounds. I didn’t have a stethoscope. I didn’t have a needle. I didn’t have shit.

I checked her neck out of habit, but I knew better than to let that make me feel good. Tracheal deviation was late. If it showed up, she’d already be circling the drain.

Her breathing mattered more.

Fast. Shallow. Wet.

Bad.

I pressed the cleanest piece of cloth I could find against the wound, knowing it wasn’t enough. Knowing it was barely better than nothing.

“I can’t fix this,” I said.

Her eyes stayed closed.

“I can maybe keep you alive long enough for somebody else to.”

I was still trying to figure out what the hell that meant when I felt something sharp touch the side of my neck.

I froze.

The point pressed harder.

Slowly, I looked down.

Her eyes were open now.

Dark. Focused. Furious.

Oh shit.

I slowly raised my hands, hoping that was the universal sign for I’m not trying to kill you.

She coughed again.

The dagger pressed deeper into my neck.

I pointed slowly toward her chest, toward the hole. Her eyes flicked down. The moment she saw the wound, her arm dropped limp into the mud.

She said something.

I didn’t understand a word of it. It didn’t sound like any language I’d ever heard. Not German. Not Arabic. Not anything I could even fake a guess at.

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” I said.

I pointed to my ear and shook my head, hoping she’d get the idea.

She said something again. One word stood out. Maybe.

“Ulag.”

Or maybe that wasn’t it at all.

I made the same gesture again.

She rolled her eyes.

That, at least, translated just fine.

With her left arm, she made a weak motion. Searching. Feeling around. Then she pointed past me, toward the body in red armor.

“You want me to search him?” I asked.

I copied the motion she’d made, then pointed at the red-armored corpse.

She gave a weak nod.

I had no idea what I was looking for, but I dragged myself back toward him. I figured if she wanted some idiot who couldn’t understand her to find something, it had to be obvious.

I searched the body as best I could. Belt. Pouches. Chest. Under one arm. Nothing.

Then I moved the shimmering cloak.

A leather strap ran across his upper chest like a satchel strap. I pulled at it and felt something shift under him.

“Of course,” I muttered.

I shoved at the body until it rolled enough for me to get to the strap. When I pulled again, something lifted slightly from the bloody mud beneath him.

I dug around it with one hand, scraping mud away until I pulled up a leather satchel.

I shoved my hand inside.

Something cut me.

“Ah, fuck!”

I jerked my hand back and stared at fresh blood welling from my finger.

“Of course there’s sharp shit in the magic dead guy purse.”

I reached in again, slower this time, feeling around carefully. My fingers brushed glass.

Two vials.

Intact.

I pulled them free.

They were thin bottles, about the size of the ones the VA used for blood draws, but whatever was inside wasn’t blood. It wasn’t Kool-Aid red either.

It looked like liquid garnet.

Thick. Dark. Shimmering. Moving slower than it should have, like syrup with tiny sparks caught inside it.

I crawled back to the woman.

She hadn’t moved.

“Hey,” I said.

Nothing.

I dragged myself closer and patted her cheek gently.

“Come on. Please don’t be dead.”

After a few pats, her eyes fluttered open.

I held the two vials where she could see them.

She nodded weakly, then pointed to the hole in her chest.

“No,” I said. “No, no, no.”

But she kept pointing.

I bit the cork on the first vial and pulled it free with my teeth. The smell hit me immediately, sharp and metallic and sweet, like copper and rain.

I poured it into and around the wound.

For half a second, nothing happened.

Then the flesh moved.

I stared, frozen, as the wound pulled itself closed. Not slowly. Not naturally. Fast. Skin knitting together, blood vanishing, torn tissue sealing like time had decided to run backward over one small piece of her body.

“What the fuck…”

A healing potion.

That was a fucking healing potion.

If I hadn’t been half-dead and lying in mud beside a battlefield full of armored corpses, I might have laughed.

Instead, I collapsed beside her.

She was out again, but when I pressed my ear near her mouth, her breathing sounded clearer. Still weak, but not wet anymore.

I looked at her chest.

If I hadn’t seen the hole myself, I would’ve sworn there had never been a wound there. No bruise. No scar. Nothing.

“What the hell,” I whispered. “What the hell…”

I pulled what was left of her torn shirt back over her and let my head drop into the mud beside hers.

Now what?

The thought sat there, heavy and useless.

What the hell do I do now?

I lay there exhausted, my knee throbbing, until the darkness finally took me.