Some Smog & Mirrors Colour Text

Private Gerhardt Kruger crouched low, scanning ahead for enemy activity. He saw nothing but trees and shrubs. He waved the all-clear back to the rest of the platoon. Lieutenant Schumann whispered the order to advance and the Ostberger riflemen rose from cover to move cautiously forward.

Intelligence had reported at least a company of Brigantian fyrdmen, and possibly some huscarls, in the Angoisse Forest. It made a change from fighting Frankmen anyway. The people of Frankland would die rather than give up an inch of their territory, and it had taken Ostbergenland almost seven years to push just one hundred miles into Frankish territory; the Goethians were only doing slightly better further north. Brigantians, on the other hand, had come because they’d been ordered to, rather than because they wanted to defend anywhere.

Hell, it wasn’t even as if Brigantia and Frankland had never gone to war against one another. It was only circumstance that had put them on the side opposed to Ostbergenland this time around. If the Kaiser hadn’t invaded Frankland at the same time as the Crown Prince had invaded Brigantia’s puppets in Irema, the two countries would have gladly sat back and watched the other get conquered.

Probably, Kruger conceded. He had no idea how the minds of politicians worked. He was a soldier, or that’s what the government kept telling him. They gave him a uniform, a rifle, some bullets and told him to kill anyone not speaking Goethian. Shame they didn’t give him a helmet, some grenades, or enough food to live on, like some countries did. More than one rifleman in the platoon wore a looted Frankish helmet. Kruger had decided some time back not to avail himself of enemy headgear. It was bad enough to have one army shooting at you, but being shot by a dull-witted fellow Ostberger would just be embarrassing. His cap would have to do, even if the only thing it protected him from was the drizzle that filtered down through the forest canopy.

The trees here were old, with twisted, gnarled trunks and branches that meshed together to blot out the sunlight. Long shadows shifted as the wind rustled the leaves above him.

Some distance ahead, where a beam of sunlight penetrated the canopy, something glinted. Kruger squinted momentarily to get a better view, then dropped to his belly.

“Contact!” he yelled, bringing his rifle up to bear.

Machine gun spray whipped overhead, decapitating shrubbery. Someone cried out, someone else grunted before crumpling to the ground just a few metres behind him.

“Take it to ‘em! Take it to ‘em!” Lieutenant Schumann bellowed. He ran forwards through the fire, sabre in hand, before pressing his back against a tree. Bark chips flew from the trunk as the concealed machine gunner turned his attention to him. “Bayonets!” Schumann ordered, flinching as a splinter hit his cheek. “Take it to ‘em!”

Kruger crawled over to his own tree and, in cover, rose to a crouch. He glanced around to see a number of his compatriots running, bayonets extended, towards where he’d seen the enemy. There was no way Kruger was going to brave a machine gun like that, but he fired off a few shots of covering fire in the direction of the enemy lines anyway.

Someone shouted something foreign. Kruger couldn’t tell if it was Frankish or Brigantian, since he spoke neither language, but he guessed its meaning. Sure enough, khaki-clad men rose from the undergrowth, their tin hats identifying them as Brigantian huscarls.

Kruger laughed, despite his situation. They were wearing knee-length skirts and high socks.

Then he stopped laughing. The Brigantian machine gun ceased fire as the enemy soldiers charged. Most of them had shouldered their rifles. Some whirled heavy basket-hilted sabres while others had long, thin daggers. One of them had a massive, two-handed sword and ran forward bellowing an incomprehensible yet terrifying war cry. He was facing Highlanders.

The chieftain decapitated the lead Ostberger with a single stroke. Kruger flinched as the head bounced through the undergrowth. He glanced across at Schumann. The lieutenant’s face was pale; he clearly hadn’t been expecting Highlanders. Certainly, intel had said nothing about a Highland regiment being in the area. Several of the advancing Ostbergers faltered. A few took steps back.

“They’re still men!” Schumann shouted, stepping from cover and firing his revolver. “They still die!” To illustrate his point, a Highlander whirled to the ground with a bullet in him.

And they’ve still got damn big swords, Kruger thought as he took aim at a Brigantian who was hacking at a fallen Ostberger. He was dead on target and took him through the head. The man’s tin helmet leapt up into the air and landed separately from its deceased wearer.

Automatic gunfire – not from the machine gun, but something lighter – stitched a row of holes through the bark of Kruger’s tree, the final bullet hitting about two inches from his head.

He spotted a Highlander crouched in the bushes about twenty metres off to his right, holding a submachine gun. Kruger shot the flanker in the chest and he fell from sight.

Things were getting complex. In the centre, Ostbergers and Brigantians rolled about in melee, bayonets against swords and daggers, while all around the edges, soldiers tried to creep around the enemy’s flanks, only to find themselves in close quarters fire fights with their opposite numbers.

Kruger leaned out to get a better view and rested his rifle against the tree trunk. He was about to fire on the claymore-wielding chieftain when he spied blood running over the hand supporting his rifle barrel.

He swallowed. Had he been hit? He couldn’t feel anything. He ducked down and did a quick check. There was blood on his hand and tunic cuff, and another smear on his shoulder, but that was it. No holes that he could see, and the blood wasn’t spreading.

It was the tree. The bullet holes in the tree were bleeding. Sap shouldn’t be that colour.

“My god,” he croaked from a throat gone dry. He backed away from the tree, uncaring that he was leaving cover. The tree was bleeding.

A grenade came in to land a few metres from his feet. Instinctively, he dived to the ground, which shook as the bomb went off.

The ground kept shaking for at least a second after the bang, and Kruger could have sworn he heard something moaning far below the grass pressing into his face.

“God help us.” The tree had taken the brunt of the blast. Its bark was ripped away and… there was meat where there should have been splintered wood. Guts, stomachs, hearts, lungs, all tumbled from the gaping wound, washed along by a gush of blood.

The wounded tree’s branches trembled. Something inside Kruger’s mind snapped. He rolled over onto his back, eyes wide, and screamed. His rifle fell from his hands and he curled himself into a foetal ball. In time with his screaming, yet far deeper in tone, the forest screamed, and shortly after, so did other men.

When he finally opened his eyes, he was alone. Here and there in the shrubbery lay a helmet, a cap, or a discarded rifle. Bullet casings and discarded clips were liberally scattered across the ground. There was no one else in sight, Ostberger or Brigantian, dead or alive. He wiped panicked tears from his cheeks and stood up.

He called out, “Hello?” No one called back, and no one shot him. He tried again. “Anyone?”

His rifle lay on the ground, its bayonet still attached. He picked it up in shaky hands. “Lieutenant Schumann!” he shouted.

He yelped as a gust of wind rustled through the forest canopy. Birds sang in the branches. A cricket clicked from its burrow.

Kruger wiped his sleeve across his chin. It came away with a long string of thick drool. He’d lost his platoon. Where were the dead?

The grenade’s blast had opened up a shallow crater in the soil, but the tree’s bark was intact. The guts and the blood and the bullet wounds were gone.

Kruger threw his rifle down and started running.


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Kate's not the only one who's had writer's block lately. Thing is, what with being so busy at the moment, I didn't notice until she pointed out that I'd not written any actual fiction in weeks (the superhero backgrounds really don't count).

Then, as I'm about to go to bed, I get a string of words going through my head, about how to describe a tree. If the bark's the skin, the wood within is its meat. Then my brain took a sharp left and started typing.

It's good to be writing again.