Our hero was drilled in maneuvering in chainmail, caring for and using swords, and changing tactics during battle. He had displayed such ability in all of these that he was often rewarded with longer drills and beatings. As much as he had been looking forward to losing weight, he found himself unable to finish a tenth of each activity, and the soreness from the beatings reduced this to a twentieth. Nevertheless he became popular during training, so much so his fellow soldiers sought him out to effusively praise him for holding them back in every exercise.
The camaraderie and loyalty gained from these days would not last. Not long into the campaign half of the army would resign, by reason of aerial bombardment. Where they were promised medals for honorable conduct and death, they were instead bestowed very large rocks. The distinguished gentleman was surprised his usual strategy of outnumbering the enemy did not work, despite employing it several times during the battle.
However, what distinguishes a fighter from a common man is their persistence. He ordered a retreat through a shallow part of a river, which was not very shallow at all. Horses drowned, the men contracted various diseases, as worm-under-toenail and bloody urination, and the enemy greeted them on the other side with sharp pikes.
The distinguished gentleman reasoned that, as the origin of the diseases came from water, the element opposing was dryness. He therefore moved them to the desert. The army indeed lost all access to water as planned, but they were quickly decimated by the scorching day, the freezing nights, and the giant antlions. They resorted to drinking the dew off the corpses in the morning, and eating the jerky of their fellow comrades in the afternoon.
This paradise did not last long. The enemy waged war on the dunes. The distinguished gentleman deemed this an auspicious battle. The enemy brought forth their artillery, the gentleman his; the enemy brought out their full battalions, the gentleman his; the sun was close to the horizon when the fighting started; by the end of the day thousands of men who surely missed their wives and children and whose names and faces were unknown to their generals lost their lives, for the glory of battle. Best of all, as was honorable, their bodies could not be returned for burial, as battle demanded the most battered, most mangled, most destroyed bodies, each potential temples of human wisdom and knowledge, of its brave soldiers.
When the distinguished gentleman heard that only a hundredth of his army remained, he praised the good news. More death meant more success, and he was happy to touch on the wisdom that he bought them all for cheap. When he found there were only a hundred men left, he cursed his lack of learning in mathematics.
The enemy desired to chase them out of the dunes back into the forests from whence the army came. The distinguished gentleman knew this by the words of every envoy the enemy had sent him whom, because of the rules of war, he systematically tortured and killed, as was common sense. Despite this he had no intention to flee back to the vales and glens he knew so well; he wanted to be rewarded with a bear’s pelt by the king, to impress his new favorite mistress. If his hundred had to face the enemy’s tens of thousands, so be it; in the worst case, he may be refunded their price by the king, though there would be no pelt to gain.
In the darkest hour, he visited our hero, to see his sketches and to evaluate in what way he would sacrifice his life. Our hero drew our distinguished gentleman, dressed in his ancestral emblems and armor, looking grand and ambitious, with the desert winds blowing his cape gallantly. An outcropping of shimmering blue-black banded rock stood in the background, looking like a man.
The two armies stood face to face. The gentleman’s army looked like a beetle surrounded by ants, whose limbs were soon to be wrenched apart by millions of black jaws. Just as the horns of battle were to be blown, massive rocks plummeted upon the enemy army, killing many a man. In the subsequent retreat, the survivors grew very ill, having eaten the diseased bodies of their victims.
The enemy lived on a fertile delta in the desert. The distinguished gentleman’s city enjoyed prosperity by plundering them every season. When they fell into despair, they prayed to the old spirits of the desert for protection.
This same guardian was toppled over by half of the gentleman’s army, those enormous blue-black rocks crushing its devotees. The gentleman did not plan this out of malice; it was merely very big and about to fall. The plan worked admirably, and he congratulated himself. Unfortunately, as a result of overworking these soldiers, all fifty perished from fatigue. His own wrist too was sore from whipping them. He made the decision to camp at the outskirts of the desert waiting for reinforcements to arrive.
© 2025 François-Marie Lee