SHORT STORY SERIES - CHILD'S PLAY
- Mar 23, 2016
- 2 min read
He groaned.
She slit his throat.
“Shame.” Frieda thought to herself, pulling her hand out of the housecarl’s pocket and pouring the contents of the satin purse into her hand. She fingered through the change, carefully counting out the gold and silver bits, and finally storing the coins between her breasts. This was her twentieth body today, but the thirty-third that she had looted, and although it was only approaching one in the afternoon, she had procured nearly five-fold her average yearly income doing laundry.
The battle had started early that morning, cool autumn fog still settling in the low valleys that defined the English countryside. From the top of a nearby hill, behind the English front and their ‘impenetrable’ shield wall, Frieda watched as the Normans charged to shake hands with Death himself. She felt no sympathy for these men, however. To her, and the many other serf women hired to drag off the dead, this war was child’s play. Boys will be boys.
Now in the aftermath of five hours of bloodshed, Frieda stood over the body of the man she had just killed, looking out at the same hill that was so beautiful this morning, now soaked crimson and littered with men. “Funny,” she thought, “that their blood is the same color as mine.” Funny as well that she barely knew the names of the men fighting. She had heard whispers of, “Duke of so and so” or “Count something.” She was sure she had even heard the word “King” spoken in the hushed voices of giggling women, but as impressive as those titles were meant to be, Frieda remained underwhelmed. She knew better than to hope to be noticed and taken in by any of these men, let alone be wed to one of them, but being overlooked was sometimes the key to success. She looked down at her bosom again; a sly smile touched her face and was gone.
Finally dragging the soldier towards the edge of the battlefield, she heard a cry rise through the ranks of the English front, a flurry of arrows raining down from the Norman archers and blacking out the sun. The shield wall became an iron roof, arrows striking off the hard metal and ricocheting in all directions, piercing leather armor and felling men left and right. The shouts of warning turned into quiet cries of agony mixed with the metal-on-metal sound of shields returning to their original positions. The smell of blood made the air thick and heavy. Frieda smiled.
As the shield wall pushed forward, she followed closely behind, looking for the best weapons, dark solid leather, gleaming chainmail. A shimmer of light caught her eye, the subtle movements of a fallen man’s iron bracers drew her close to him. She could see a dark stain growing on his cloth insignia. Frieda leaned down toward the injured knight—who was truly no more than a boy, arrow piercing his leather breastplate—and traced his cheekbone with the tips of her fingers, then across his dry, chapped lips. Blood trickled down his forehead. She removed his helmet gently; looking at his wounds, then lightly kissed his forehead. His breathing was slow, shallow, careful.
Frieda whispered, “Thank you.”
He groaned.
She slit his throat.
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