The Bloodening

Broken trees swayed quietly under the pressure of a dull wind. Wretched twisting shadows writhed beneath a sun made crimson by a bleached smoky haze. Toxic essence dripped from dying shrubs. Broken bones lay scattered like a fine gravel among shattered wood shields and rusty iron swords. Blast marks peppered the ground. Artillery craters filled with death.

A single imperial railroad cannon shone black from an improvised concrete bunker. Cannons with long barrels sat on wooden cars. They were spaced on high points along the line and protected by barbed wire.

The trenches dug waist deep into the earth. Sandbags and barbed wire fortified the line taller. The riflemen watched the battlefield from breaks in the sandbag wall. A crew of engineers faced the battle scarred plain without cover. They hurriedly repaired a broken barb wire fence.

The men in the ditches looked ashen. Dark circles lined their eyes. Their summer uniforms were covered with mud and ash. Powdery bone dust lingered over everything. Uniforms chalked white with ancient human remains. Boots pressed skeletal limbs into the trench bottom. Reading uniform insignia required brushing off the dust first. Men coughed, sneezed, and blew blood into their handkerchiefs.

The trench stretched on this way for kilometers, a reinforced front. Muskets clattered across the backs of weary soldiers. At every break in the sandbag wall, they turned to watch the horizon. Streaks of dried earth and coke dust marred their half-shaven faces. Lips sunk with trench weariness. Fingers rubbed at the irritating dry white dust burning their eyes.

Shallow mud remaining in hot dry weather because of poor drainage sucked at boot so greedily it threatened to tear them off. A rare smokey breeze reduced visibility. Soldiers leaned over their stations to aim the loaded muskets.

A clacking creak of dry skeletal limbs massed shoulder to shoulder as the white wall of death appeared over the poisoned farmland on the horizon. Skeletons marched in a line stretching without end, massed in a formation so thick it looked unbroken. Each had an abused steel sword and a rounded iron plated wood shield.

An officer raised a scope behind his cannon team. He took a step back. The lens cracked as the instrument tumbled. He grabbed at his chest a knelt down. Cheeks brightened. The artillery crew held him from collapsing.

“We need a medic!”

Under the hazy sun a broken chalky hill rolled with a rumbling of oversized wheels. Felled trees served as wagon axles. Gray muscular beasts, several meters tall with broad torso muscles and bloated limbs, pushed the cart from thick carved handles extending the sides. Thick ashen fingers with torn knuckles tensed whenever the cart struck a divot. The trolls roared, pushed with their full weight, and kept the cart moving.

Skeletons pushed from behind with a large troll. A tower of bones narrowed as it ascended. Cannons poked from the bones like porcupine quills. The closer it came to the trenches, the more the earth rumbled.

At the top stood a figure in full bone armor. Skeletons torn apart and defiled made his greaves. Boots of compacted shards were studded with polished kneecaps. Bone link chain ran down his chest. The hands of the dead hugged him from behind, in two rows down his torso. The polished helm spiked with sharpened fingers gleamed in the sun.

A massive ivory sword, all consisting of the same material from handle to the blades tip, pierced ribs the warrior stood upon. A pile of bloody molars rested in his left hand, and more surrounded his boots. A throne of fused teeth, incisors, canines, and jagged molars, waited impatiently.

“Another skeleton wave!” someone shouted through a hollow brass bullhorn, “At your stations. At the ready! Hold your fire!”

Bells rang from tilting posts. Soldiers ran to cover prepared positions along the trench line. Some moved with bags of explosives, passing out thin iron balls with thin fuses.

Old swords clanked against the wooden shields as the army moved slowly, but without ceasing. It sounded like a storm.

A soldier checked the mass formation through his binoculars. The front-line skeletons struck their shields with each step forward, “What the hell are we waiting for?”

“Hell,” said another while setting grenades at the position, “May these mage devices bless and keep you.”

A second horn sounded, a sharper note, “Prime the cannons, take aim at the siege engine!”

The noise increased, striking metal echoed across the line. A soldier sunk into the trench holding his ears and cried, “They’re too many. There’s too many!”

Flintlock muskets of the 14th Polish Conscript Division remained aimed with bayonets fixed. Fingers trembled. Guns refused to stay steady. One fired prematurely and bounced off a skeleton’s shield. The front ranks marched several meters from the trenches when the next bull horn blasted out the order.

“Fire!”

Grape shot blasted plumes of chalky fragments all along the front line. Soldiers felt the blasting force of close explosions rattle their chests. Musket fire snapped in response. Dry skulls shattered, the headless warriors continued marching.

Nothing struck the siege engine. An officer at the cannon grabbed the telescope and turned it back to the giant rail artillery behind the line. Skeletons walked behind the safety rails. Across the line, the cannon aimed at the siege engine remained aimed. The crew lay dead.

“Why aren’t the mortar crews firing! Get the rock slingers to the front of the line!”

The officer swung the telescope at the approaching siege engine, to get a better view of the warrior. The cap of a molar dominated the view; it became a blur before he could move. It burst through the lens, down the scope though his right eye, and out the back of his head with a murky trail behind it.

The remaining crew prepared the canon to fire again. They hurriedly sponged the barrel and loaded fresh power. They got behind the canon, not bothering to steady it, and lit the charge. The wall of the siege shattered, but the ball wedged into a pile of compacted bone. The breech repaired itself, the hole closed.

Seconds later, the cannon crew lay dead. The cannon sat facing the unharmed siege engine. Trolls roared. Skeletons poured into the trenches. The bone shard across the battlefield rose in whirlwinds.

Grenades burst skeletons, feeding the whirlwind. The rock slingers entered the fray. They patched the trenches. Walls of stone burst from the ground to block the advance. Stone flung the ranks, bursting skeletal warriors into fragments.

The siege engine halted, but the skeletons kept moving. They flowed into the trenches. A rock mage countered with a stone storm, grinding the undead to a pulp. The chalking fragments joined the whirlwind that chased fleeing soldiers.

A rock mage jumped from the trench. He rolled only for the whirlwind of shards to rip the flesh off his fingers. His uniform shredded up the arms. Hair and scalp pulped together until all that remained was a bloody skeleton. It walked out of the storm, sockets hollow, and grabbed the throat of a fleeing soldier. Naked phalanges pierced flesh like sharpened knives.

“I can’t see,” shouted a young man clinging to his gun. The roots of thick teeth pushed from his eye sockets.

A mage knelt beside him, “It’s their mage. A bone mage. We have to eliminate him!”

The mage focused. A pile of quartz laden rock floated in front of the trench line. Skeletons tumbled into the trenches. The rocks shot at the armor-clad figure on the siege engine.

Skeletons shot skyward to meet the projectiles with their shields. The sword raised as walls of bone enveloped the corners. Stones burst through shields and knocked the obstacles aside. They arced upward to rain upon the warrior from above.

The stone slinger smirked. Pieces of his skill exploded behind him. Molars ripped his arms off. A severed hand rolled under the cannon. His torso exploded. The neck ripped apart as his head fell between his knees, still smirking. A blood-soaked helmet clattering into the trench spooked the conscripts.

A rain of small pebbles scattered across the rampart. A large stone crushed a skeleton in the ranks.

Polish conscripts dropped their weapons and ran. One jumped over the trench line and caught himself in barb wire, only to be cut down by a bent steel sword.

The warrior floated on a disc of feet, turned upside down and fused together. It held his weight while he surveyed the remaining humans fleeing the trenches. They were cut down by loose shards, every last one. The guns fell silent. Cannons sat restless, primed with powder, manned by corpses.

The bone bastion rumbled forward, broke the barb wire, and rolled across a trench line filled to the brim with remains.