I tried to add a bit of explination, as this was sort of "mid-story". It might not make it flow well, and for that I apologize.
Nat ducked down below a rock and fed bullets into his gun. He skidded across the mud and aimed it true, hiding behind another one of those dark mass structures or rock that stuck out of the muddy field like mundane teeth. The enemies were closing in, and his comrades were falling, but this was what Nat was born for.
For all thirteen years of his life he had been studying weaponry and the skill of battle. He was the top of all of his classes, but still, the war and the draft came upon him before he could finish all his classes. In fact, he was pulled right before his final exam – a sham field assignment. Instead his assignment would be to fight in the actual battle. He had been jabbering on for four days and nights as the pack of young men traveled north to the front. He was one of the few that had the privilege of carrying a gun – only three left in all of existence.
His aim was perfect. The Captain stood behind him, keeping a wary watch on the gun instead of Nat. Nat’s life was free, but the gun was not. If ever that thing was ruined or mistreated or, God forbid, lost, it wouldn’t just be Nat’s neck to pay for it.
“Good, good – your aim is perfect and straight! Steady hand, now! Perfect!”
His voice was soft and muffled in the roar of the battle. The one young man that had given Nat his black eye for “runnin his mouth off” charged at full speed to the wall of bodies, his sword drawn and stuck out like a butcher would wield a knife. Nat shook his head and focused his eyes on one enemy.
Target – Yelisabeta, the first, youngest and most beautiful wife of Emperor Akecheta. She was the lead target in most battles – the first runner and the best in the line. If Nat could shoot her down, he could sway their chances in this war.
And his aim was perfect. He never missed.
“Shoot already!” Nat heard the Captain scream. Nat leveled his gun in response, placed his hand on the trigger….
He saw something of his mother in Yelisabeta’s face – something strong and independent. Yelisabeta’s eyes locked on his – sullen and serious, without a spark of hope or trust. She could only be a year or two older than he. Nat even heard his own mother’s words in his mind: “You come back victorious, or don’t come back at all, child.” She had told him that when he was three and being shipped off to school, before the war had even reawakened. But there was always some war going on or finishing up or coming up.
War. That’s what it was. He had to shoot Yelisabeta.
Nat was about to shoot when a dead body interrupted his vision, falling with an arrow stuck in the middle of his chest. He fell quickly, but still Nat drew his finger away from the trigger. For just one second he saw the face of the man. His facial expression was funny, his face covered with blood and mud, smeared around into the crisp wrinkles of his seemingly laughing eyes. Eyes that were slammed shut in pain. His lips were pursed outward, as if to meet the smooth ones of a fair maiden. But as his body snapped with spasm and laid limp, Nat saw his lifeless eyelids peel back to reveal the whites of eyes that had rolled over as his life left him. Nat’s eyes scanned down to the arrow lodged in his chest, his hand wrapped around the base of it.
Yelisabeta looked back at him through the mess of an almost muddy, brown looking fog. He had to shoot her. He would shoot her.
Nat’s finger pulled tight down on the trigger and he felt the thunder roar from the gun, the beauty of it all as the recoil snapped at his arm and racked his body. The bullet slammed into Yelisabeta’s chest, ripping through the fabric of her uniform and her skin. A small bit of blood leaked from the bullet hole.
The bullet hole?
This bullet should have exploded her chest. Nat was expecting to see ribs and organs gushing out in the mosaic of flying bits of body parts and blood, all instantly buried in the mud with the end of Yelisabeta, Emperor’s best wife.
A small bit of blood?
Nat did a second retake. The blood was an oozing black liquid, like tar or oil that the soldiers put on their lips to keep them from chapping so much that they split. It leaked into her shirt and stayed, leaving only a little stain.
And Yesliabeta laughed. Her fingers dug inside her own chest and dug out the bullet. Her fingers came out coated with that think, clotting black liquid. She licked it away with her filmed lips and thin tongue and flicked it back to Nat.
Nat reached out and snatched it out of the air with one hand. The lead was gray and blended in with his hand, covered with the black mud. The rain fell down heavier than before, and Nat felt the mud being washed away. As it ran down his skin, he looked back up at Yesliabeta.
There was no bullet hole anymore. And she was drawing her sword.
“Retreat! Retreat!” Nat heard the Captain scream over the thunder, now, along with the roar of the battle.
The soldiers complied without question, as did Nat, but Nat continuously kept looking back at Yesliabeta, in all her glory, standing there with sword in hand. She licked the blade and smiled at him as they made eye connect.
Nat shuddered and a single spasm racked his body as he turned around to find a dagger lodged in his back, singular and bloodstained in all its glory. The mud ran off the hilt of the dagger and he reached back and yanked it out with both hands. At first he thought that he had been made immortal, too, and that he had been converted to one with Yelisabeta’s blood. But that was when his vision clouded, the pain closed in and he fell down in the mud, dead.
Yesliabeta took the gun, dagger and bullet back. No use leaving such valuable things with a dead men, when dead men tell no tales. He flipped him over with her foot to look into his face and rolled back his eyelids.
He reminded her of her father, who had always told her to come home victorious, or not at all. He had been dead for thirty years, but she never failed him. Then again, she never came home.
Nat would be awake in twelve hours. Yesliabeta reloaded the gun.
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