The clashing of blades, the pounding of hearts pumping more and more blood from pulsing wounds. I am alone. The calling of hate, the screaming of pain, the cheers of small victories. I am isolated. The shaking of the trampled ground, the smell of liquid life, everywhere, soaking the earth. I can't move. Tears falling freely from so many eyes, young and old, new and seasoned. I feel no emotion. 

It's all over. Slowly it ends. Not suddenly. Friends desperately call, voices hoarse, looking for fallen loved ones. Praying that they live-racking shameless sobs when they can’t be found alive. Somber medical men, not making sound. Faces haggard from their gruesome after battle task. Going from body to body, counting dead and finding living. Very few have not yet died. Those that still live are seen to-if they are on the winning side-those that are the enemy are quickly put out of their misery-the medical men have orders to be obeyed. Bodies are everywhere. I am one.

Stench from rotting in the sun. The sky so hot has turned so, so cold. They never found me. From morning when the dying started-and I fell so quickly-to midnight now. Hours passed. Seconds, each a new stab in my heart, killing me over and over again. The medical men have finished, the troop has marched on. My only hope gone. I begin to feel to nothing.

I watch the stars. At peace at last. From how I lie I can see the sky. There’s the North Star, pointing towards home. What a beautiful world I die in-and lived in. Birds whisper in their sleep as if telling each other goodnight, the gibbous moon promises to soon be full to shine brightly on humanity-north and south, and I am ready for death. Almost happily migrating towards it.

A face above me. Squinting in the dark. A young face. A voice, “Bob?” I shake my head in answer-I am not the friend he looks for-not his friend at all. He wears the green of the southern army. I am his born enemy-I know my duty and would kill him if I could and he will kill me now. It is the natural order.  He notches an arrow to his bow and points it at me-not making a sound. I do not close my eyes, I stare into his. I watch the muscles in his hand tense and release the arrow-but I feel nothing. It does not hit me. A warm, dead body falls beside me-that of a wolf.

The young soldier puts his weapons down and kneels beside me. His eyes have the wrong expression they are filled with compassion-looking at me only as a human being. He is wrong! North and south have hated each other too long,-my blue clothes should make him see me only as something to eliminate. I can’t stand it! Hate would have been better to see. I could face death without flinching but this-I close my eyes-it’s too much. He takes my armor off of me until all I am wearing are my cloth clothes, he picks me up, carries me to a small encampment.

I pretend to be unconscious as I feel warm water cleaning my wounds. The fresh pain is welcome-as if he were doing this on purpose to make me feel more hurt. I imagine a look of gleeful spite on that innocent visage as the hot water burns and that small knife and arrow after arrow is pulled-oh so slowly from being embedded in my body-some much deeper than in my flesh. He begins to speak to me-probably just to amuse himself, believing me gone to the world.

“You know, they’re calling it the battle. I think it might be the deciding one. Just think, after all these years and years of fighting. How long has it been? At least fifty years right? Longer than I’ve been alive-you too I’ll bet. What if it really is the deciding one? On my side, they’ve been saying that it was planned that way. Someone’s gonna surrender now. Then again, maybe they’ll just call truce or treaty. We lost this battle after all. I don’t wanna offend or anything but I really don’t want to be subject to the north. Heh, being a soldier, I might not live to be subject.

“What am I doing here? All my life I was taught that blue was bad. They aren’t people but savages who want nothing more than to kill everyone. That they hate anything and are cowards. Blue has to be killed or we’ll all be murdered in our beds-or worse. In school, we learned green is good, blue is bad right along with hate is bad, love is good-ha, unless it was to hate the north that is. But north was never seen as people to hate were they? In storybooks, the bad guys were blue and the good guys were green. I was raised to hate you! To kill you all!

“So I joined the military as does every man when he turns the right age-as if I were man. And I killed-like I was taught to do. But it was like I was led to think it would be. Not glorious at all. Not like warding away evil. They were people! I was killing guys that could have been green! Men who could have been my father or my brother-or my best friend. I’ve had to go through it for months now-the stirring talks of battle commanders and generals, then hitting my face on reality again and again. 

“Bob and I joined together but we go back further than that. Our mothers were neighbors-constantly visiting one another and the two of us-best friends that were made. Did everything together-heck, made mud pies together. And now he’s dead. I saw his body all—“  His voice caught but he quickly coughs it down and continues. “I walked right over his body when I was carrying you back here. You know, I didn’t desert? I’m what’s left of a special team. I had no one to give me orders so naturally I went back to find Bob. I’ll bury him tomorrow-give him the hero’s ceremony he deserves. Too bad I can’t do so for everyone but I have to do it for Bob.

“I was getting so desperate. Actually hating all blues again-it usually takes me days in the company of blood hungry southerners to forget. Stabbing blue body after northern body. Then I saw you. You looked so…not pitiful, not—I don’t know, not like anyone else. And you and I? We’re the only living people within at least a few leagues. I was gonna put you to death but—you looked like you had already died somehow and then the wolf wanted to kill you and I couldn’t let it! Something came over me, what it was I don’t know. But here we are. I’m glad you can’t hear my insane ramblings. Goodnight  ‘BloodyBlueman’”

I try to comprehend what I just listened to, but my brain hurts. For a while I listen to the crackling of the low fire. But, after a while of silence, I drift off to sleep. I guess he might kill me in the morning.