Winning Story For All I Had Wanted!

Thank you to all the entrants of this week’s competition. It was a close call! This week’s winning story is . . . The Field of the Fallen by Gregory Baer! Great job, Gregory!

Gregory Baer

Grade 9

The Field of the Fallen

Rain clouds scudded up from a forbidding horizon, and rain began to fall. Fat drops spattered in the trampled earth, and set to work rusting all the broken weapons and armor lying scattered around.

Bracken stared down from his vantage point at the battlefield. Wind tugged at his cloak, and rain spattered from his face. His dark hair dangled over his forehead and water dripped from the wet ends.

His brown eyes flicked here and there about the field, where men and horses lay dying and dead. His army had been victorious, but at what cost?

He could see that half his army was lost, lying dead out there on the trampled ground. Trampled ground that thousands of armored feet had crushed and killed every green thing that grew there.

Everywhere, arrows stuck up into the air like flowers of death, and here and there a sword was planted like a cross.

Here and there fires burned, and the blackened wagons and tents smoldered beneath the chilling rain.

But Bracken had won. His way to the throne of Laurelia was clear. The last of the royal line was kneeling behind him, bound and helpless.

Bracken remembered what had happened the last time he had met one of the royal line. The man had been caught on a hunt, and had been tied to a tree.

Bracken had stood in front of him, taunting him, holding a narrow-bladed javelin. It had been raining, like it was now, and the irony of the fact smote into Bracken’s heart.

Suddenly, Bracken’s eyes darkened, and he remembered that fateful day…

The night was drawing on, and Bracken knew that he did not have much time. The Laurelian huntsmen would soon be on his trail, and he had to finish this business.

He tested the tip of the javelin with one finger. It was sharp, and would strike deep.

“You can’t win, Bracken.” the man said, and Bracken smiled.

“I have already won, Rormal.” he said. “I have you. I killed your father and mother. Your brother languishes in my dungeons. And your nephew is too young to oppose me.”

Rormal shook his head. “That is not what I mean and you know it, Bracken.”

Bracken snarled and struck Rormal on the side of the jaw. The man bore the blow without flinching, and that had increased Bracken’s rage.

“You little-” Bracken gasped, his mouth opening and closing like a fish’s. His eyes were like marbles with his fury.

Rormal stared at Bracken as the man drew back his arm to thrust with the javelin.

“I mean that the people will not simply give up Bracken.” Rormal said.

“The people.” Bracken scoffed.

“Truly.” Rormal said, “They will hold the kingdom until my nephew can come of age.”

Bracken heard a horn sound in the distance. He had no more time for this.

His arm was already back, so he thrust it forward with a savage jerk. Rormal twitched, such as he had not when Bracken had hit him.

The blood drained from his face, but his lips continued to form the words, “You will never win. Though you may destroy the kingdom, you will never truly win.”

His body went limp and Rormal, second to the last of the Laurelian royal line, was dead.

Bracken laughed as he swung onto his horse, his mission accomplished. Now to deal with that boy.

His laughter still rang in his ears, countered by the words of Rormal.

No! Bracken thought and stared once more at the forbidding clouds. One of them for an instant seemed to take the form of Rormal’s face as it had been that day.

No! Bracken’s mind screamed, trying to block the image from memory.

Bracken brought his mind back under control and looked out over the battlefield once more.

It was a sad sight, worse than it had been. Water was now flowing into little pools wherever some soldier had scooped out a shallow shelter for protection from the relentless arrows.

Many a soldier was wandering the field now, searching for fallen comrades.

Bracken knew that he could not hide away from this forever, and turned around to where the nephew kneeled, trying to ignore the blood dripping from above his eyebrow.

He had meant to deal with the boy for many years, but now that the boy was here, he saw that he was not a boy.

A young man, defiant and a little scared knelt in the beaten dirt, surrounded by guards.

His hands were bound behind him, just the way that his uncles had been.

“You may destroy the kingdom, but you will never truly win.” the voice echoed from his memory.

No!

Bracken stared down at the young man. “Do you know why you are here?” he asked, and the young man simply stared at him.

Bracken felt rage rise in him and his hand clenched on the hilt of his sheathed sword.

But he controlled himself.

“I said,” he said, his voice soft and deadly in its silkiness, “Do you know why you are here?”

The youth nodded. “I am here because you broke your allegiance, because you murdered my father, because my parents were of the royal line, but mainly-”

Bracken’s gauntlet sliced across the youth’s mouth, cutting the lip and sending his head to the side.

“So unlike his uncle.” Bracken mused aloud, one finger on his lips in a put on thinking gesture. “The uncle was rock solid, not flinching an inch.”

The young man regained his composure and then looked back at his tormentor.

Bracken half drew his shining blade from its sheath, and stared down at the blade, wondering aloud.

“I wonder if this shiny trinket would be sharp enough to separate you from your head.”

The young man stared unflinching at the blade.

Bracken felt a loosening inside him, and felt that he would be wrong to kill this young man in cold blood.

His gaze fell once more to the blade, but something startled him.

Where the raindrops fell on the steel, they seemed to be red. Bracken glanced at the rest of the men there, who were all staring at the phenomenon.

Bracken glanced down once more and saw that the drops seemed to be blood.

He drew the blade out, terrified. The beads of water soon ran together over the entire length of the blade.

Drops soon fell from the tip of the sword, and Bracken stared at the red steel.

“It’s blood!” one of his men said, pointing with a shaking hand at the sword. “Blood from all of his killings and murders! It’s magic!”

Bracken dropped the sword and looked with horror as more drops hit the blade.

Inside, he felt a cold claw let go, as though his mind finally let go. The mental walls and dams burst, and guilt, pain, and memory flowed in.

Bracken suddenly felt his mind snap. His hand closed over the blade, and he lifted it high.

His men cried out and leapt forward, but they were too late. The youth, like his uncle, slumped forward.

“You may destroy the kingdom…”

Well I have destroyed it. Bracken thought, staring down at the limp body. He looked down at the blade in his hand.

It was now black. And the drops on it glistened red in the light from the overcast sky.

His way to the throne was now completely unopposed, and no one would be able to stop him.

It was all he had wanted,  wasn’t it?

But now that he thought about it, this was not what he wanted. To be sure, he wanted the throne, and the power, notice, and prestige that came with it.

But at what cost had he taken it?

At the cost of the lives of countless innocents, murdered by him or forced into the armies.

He swung around and looked out over the battlefield as the moon broke through the clouds.

The rain had stopped, and the moon gleamed off of puddles and pools. The white light reflected off of sword blades and newly-washed armor.

The fires were out, failing to send their harsh red light out.

Bracken lowered his sword and then looked at his hand, trembling. The blood of the youth was on it, but the moonlight reflected from the scattered drops on the blade.

These no longer seemed red, but white, the purest diamond color. Washed white by the water of his repentance. He sheathed the sword and stared out above the battlefield to where the moon glistened above the mountains.

As a night breeze blew through his wet hair, Bracken knew that he would indeed take the throne of Laurelia.

Not to destroy it, and rule it like a tyrant, but to fix what he had done. Because he owed a debt to the royal family and to the people of that land.

The End

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