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[FICTION] The First Defense of Lutetia

     All thunder and manic fervor, the scrawny, filthy man fell upon Cornet Laurent, the terrified boy. In the trench, hastily half-dug and now equally a river of muddy blood, the filthy man pressed his weight upon the broken spear, attempting to end Laurent with the jagged and splintered wooden end. Screaming and crying, the cornet with hands so already slickened, tried to press back against his enemy. And just as suddenly as this scene began, a shell blasted just above the two, and the scrawny filthy man from Colchis was now as much shredded ribbon as he had been a soldier.

    But, truly, he was no soldier; no more than Cornet Laurent was. What had he been? A farmer? A serf? A brother? Lover? A teller of tales or jokes? Now only shot and roaring silence could be the answer; he was dead. And the "cornet"? A boy of 16, who, tragically, was literate and had been in school. Enough for King Alphonse IV to have him commissioned, as a cavalry officer no less. In the following several weeks, Laurent had barely seen a horse, let alone rode one. And his squad to command? Only on paper. When the Army of The Golden Heaven, Hands of the God-Emperor of Colchis overran the Northern Paths and the regular army, The Royal Lycian Guard that remained south barely had powder, let alone men. Not after suffering rout after rout, after rout. And the Colchis encroached; an ever-advancing king tide of ragged men, who killed for no other reason than their human-god demanded it. The tide rose until it came to the gleaming walls of Lutetia, the capitol, with it's quick-hewn defenses and terrified levies of young boys and old men.

    Laurent, having soiled himself again that day, shakily pushed the mess of a man off himself, and while he might have known better, curiosity and terror made a fool of him. He slowly peered over the wall of the trench, to glimpse the "battle", and he could barely understand what it was his eyes were telling him. What he had seen as clean and neat lines on a map, in reality, a pandemonium not seen outside sermons and scriptures of doom, of the end times. It all moved so fast, so hard, and so red; several dozen Colchis, clad in as much mud as leather, pulled a Lycian knight in silver and burgundy armor down, and then apart; a Lycian regular, with dead eyes and sure movements, sent his screaming foe to his Golden Heaven with a heavy stone; and the dazed and armless Colchis that stumbled forward to an unknown destination, only to then be made one with the earth and sky when a shell burst, nearly directly upon him. Laurent saw no clean and neat lines, no war, no battle. He only saw the end.

    The Cornet Laurent slid back into the trench, face blank. When he finally found the floor again, he curled up and made himself so very small as the cold numb; the terror; the dread; and so much of the lack of understanding of it all, crashed and savaged him all at once. The boy Laurent, simply sobbed, and waited.

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