Chadwick Rye

The rain fell in sheets across the battlefield, washing blood into rivulets that carved crimson channels through the mud. I huddled beneath the skeletal remains of a charred tree, my standard-issue cloak doing little to keep the chill from seeping into my bones. Three days since the clash between Karithian forces and our Aldenguard regiments, and still the rain refused to grant us reprieve, as if the sky itself wept for what we had done to this once-peaceful valley.

My first campaign. They never tell you about the smell. The songs speak of glory, the veteran soldiers talk of strategy and valor, but none mention how death ripens in summer heat, how it lingers even after rain has diluted its visible evidence.

I shifted my weight, wincing as pain lanced through my thigh where an enemy arrow had found its mark. Field medics had removed the shaft and bound the wound, declaring me “fortunate” before moving on to soldiers with more pressing injuries. Fortunate. The word tasted bitter. Half my unit lay somewhere beneath the mud, unrecognizable now even to the comrades who had shared ale with them mere days ago.

Lightning split the sky, illuminating the desolation in stark white brilliance before darkness reclaimed the land. In that brief flash, I glimpsed movement near the broken remains of a supply wagon, not the scavenger birds that had grown bold in their feast, but something deliberate. Human.

My hand found the hilt of my sword instinctively, though I doubted my ability to stand, much less fight. Another lightning strike confirmed what I’d seen: a figure moving methodically among the fallen, kneeling beside each body regardless of the uniform they wore.

Enemy scout? Looter? Neither explanation seemed likely given the careful attention they showed the dead.

I should have called for the nearest patrol. Should have sounded an alarm. Instead, I watched in silence as the figure approached my position, moving with neither urgency nor hesitation through the field of the fallen.

The stranger paused before me, rain streaming down a face partially obscured by a deep hood. Not a soldier, the attire was wrong, lacking both the regimented uniformity of Aldenguard and the distinctive armor of Karithian forces. Instead, they wore layers of weather-beaten leather and rough-spun cloth, adorned with peculiar symbols I didn’t recognize.

“You’re wounded,” the stranger said, voice neither distinctly male nor female, but carrying a resonance that seemed to penetrate the constant drumming of the rain.

I tightened my grip on my sword. “Who are you? Identify yourself.”

The stranger made no move toward weapon or retreat, instead simply crouching to my level. Hands emerged from voluminous sleeves, weathered hands bearing intricate tattoos that spiraled around each finger and across the palms.

“Names have little meaning on battlefields,” came the reply. “I’ve had many. You may call me Vesper, if you require something to call me.”

“Are you a medic?” I asked, momentarily hopeful despite the stranger’s unusual appearance.

Something like amusement flickered across what little I could see of their face. “Not exactly. I tend to those beyond medicine’s help.”

A grave robber, then. Anger flared through my exhaustion. “The dead deserve their dignity,” I spat. “Their personal effects belong to their families.”

“I take nothing but their pain,” Vesper replied, seemingly unaffected by my accusation. “I leave trinkets and tokens for the living. It is the memories that must find their way home.”

Before I could make sense of these words, Vesper reached toward my injured leg. I flinched away, but my back was already against the tree trunk, leaving nowhere to retreat.

“I mean no harm, young soldier,” Vesper assured me. “But that wound festers. The field medics’ attention was inadequate.”

I wanted to protest, to maintain my suspicion of this battlefield wanderer who spoke in riddles, but exhaustion and pain overwhelmed caution. I nodded once, granting reluctant permission.

Vesper gently removed the blood-soaked bandage, revealing an angry wound that had indeed begun to putrefy. From a pouch at their belt came a small clay jar containing a salve that smelled of earth after rainfall and herbs I couldn’t identify. As they applied it to my wound, a cooling sensation spread through my leg, dulling the throbbing pain that had been my constant companion.

“You’re not from either army,” I observed, watching as Vesper rewrapped my leg with clean cloth produced from their seemingly bottomless pouches.

“I belong to no banner, pledge to no crown,” Vesper confirmed. “I come when the killing is done, when the living have retreated to lick their wounds and count their losses.”

“Why?” The question escaped before I could consider its implications.

Vesper was silent for a long moment, hands stilling on my newly bandaged leg. When they finally responded, their voice had softened to something barely audible above the rain.

“Because someone must remember them as they were, not as they ended. Because battlefields are hungry things, young soldier. They consume more than flesh, they devour memories, hopes, futures.”

From within their cloak, Vesper withdrew a small wooden cup and a flask. They poured a measure of amber liquid that steamed despite the cold, offering it to me with those tattooed hands.

“Drink. It will help with the fever I sense building in your blood.”

I hesitated, years of training screaming caution against accepting unknown substances from mysterious figures encountered on battlefields.

“If I meant you harm,” Vesper said with that same hint of amusement, “I would simply leave you to that infection. Far more efficient than poison.”

The logic was irrefutable. I accepted the cup, inhaling the aroma of honey, cinnamon, and something sharper beneath. The liquid burned pleasantly down my throat, spreading warmth through my center that pushed back against the persistent chill.

“I saw you,” I admitted, returning the empty cup. “With the bodies. You knelt beside each one.”

Vesper nodded, tucking the cup away. “I listen to their final thoughts. I collect the words they wished to say but never spoke. The promises they made but cannot keep.”

Under normal circumstances, I would have dismissed such talk as the ravings of a battlefield scavenger driven mad by too much death. But there was something in Vesper’s steady gaze that forbade disbelief, something in the calm certainty of their movements that suggested capabilities beyond ordinary explanation.

“That’s not possible,” I said anyway, because it seemed required.

“Many things become possible in the space between heartbeats,” Vesper replied. “In the moment when breath ceases but awareness lingers. There is a threshold where what we call ‘life’ and what we name ‘death’ briefly coexist.”

Lightning flashed again, closer this time, and in its brilliant illumination I caught my first clear glimpse beneath Vesper’s hood. The face was neither young nor old, neither handsome nor plain, but the eyes, the eyes reflected no lightning. Instead, they seemed to contain galaxies, depths of darkness punctuated by points of light so distant they might have been stars.

I looked away quickly, suddenly certain I had glimpsed something I wasn’t meant to comprehend.

“You’re afraid,” Vesper observed without judgment. “Most are, when they truly see.”

“What are you?” I whispered.

“A collector of last thoughts. A keeper of final moments. A witness to both sides of the threshold.” Vesper’s hand moved to a leather satchel that hung at their side, patting it gently. “Within this bag are the unsaid words of five hundred and seventy-three souls from this battlefield alone. Words of love, mainly. Regret. Forgiveness sought. Names of children. Memories of sunlight through leaves.”

My mouth had gone dry despite the tea. “And… what do you do with them?”

“I deliver them, when possible. To dreams of loved ones. To places that held meaning. Sometimes simply to the wind in locations where they once knew happiness.” Vesper’s gaze turned toward the battlefield, where lightning continued to illuminate the fallen. “Your friend Darren wished his mother to know he did not suffer long. Your lieutenant wanted his wife to sell his horse rather than keep it out of sentiment, the money would serve her better.”

The names struck me like physical blows. I hadn’t mentioned anyone from my unit. Hadn’t spoken of Darren who had shared his rations with me when mine had spoiled, or of Lieutenant Marshfield who had once owned the finest stallion in the province.

“How could you possibly,”

“I told you what I am,” Vesper interrupted gently. “Whether you choose to believe makes little difference to the truth of it.”

The rain had begun to slacken, the storm moving eastward across the valley. In the distance, I could see torches from our encampment, steady points of light in the darkness. Soon a patrol would come searching for survivors, would find me beneath this blasted tree with my newly dressed wound.

“Why help me?” I asked suddenly. “If your purpose is with the dead, why stop for one wounded soldier?”

Vesper stood, adjusting their cloak against the diminishing rain. “Because you saw me. Because you watched without judgment as I tended those beyond help. Because someday, young soldier, you will command others, and I would have you remember this night when you decide whether to send them into battle.”

The certainty in Vesper’s voice silenced any protest I might have made about my low rank and unlikely prospects for advancement.

“How could you know that?”

“The dead aren’t the only ones whose thoughts I glimpse,” Vesper replied. “Sometimes the living reveal their paths just as clearly, if one knows how to look.”

From within their cloak, Vesper produced a small object and pressed it into my palm, a simple wooden disk, polished smooth, bearing a symbol matching one of the strange tattoos on their hands.

“When the weight of command settles on your shoulders, when you must decide whether flesh and blood is worth whatever objective lies before you, hold this and remember our meeting,” Vesper said. “Remember that someone walks the aftermath, gathering what remains of souls cut short.”

Before I could respond, a shout came from nearby, one of our patrols had spotted me. I turned instinctively toward the sound, relief flooding through me at the prospect of proper shelter and medical attention. When I looked back, Vesper was gone, with no tracks in the mud to suggest they had ever been there.

Only the wooden disk in my palm and my neatly bandaged leg remained as evidence of our encounter.

The patrol reached me moments later, soldiers expressing surprise at finding me alive after so long exposed to the elements. As they fashioned a stretcher to carry me back to camp, the medic examined my wound with growing confusion.

“This is expert work,” he muttered, probing the clean bandage. “And this salve, I don’t recognize it, but the infection’s already receding. Who treated you?”

I closed my fingers around the wooden disk, feeling its smooth surface against my skin. “A passing stranger,” I replied. “Someone who remembers what the rest of us try to forget.”

The medic clearly wanted to press further, but urgency to return to camp before darkness fell completely took precedence over curiosity. As they lifted my stretcher, I gazed back at the battlefield, now silvered by moonlight breaking through the departing clouds.

For just a moment, I thought I glimpsed a solitary figure moving among the fallen, kneeling beside each body regardless of the uniform they wore, gathering what could not be seen but should never be lost.

I never spoke of Vesper in my official report. Never mentioned the strange encounter to fellow soldiers or commanding officers. But fifteen years later, when I stood before a table covered with maps showing enemy positions and possible routes of attack, when younger officers awaited my command to advance, I reached into my pocket and felt the smooth wooden disk that had never left my possession.

I remembered a voice that carried beneath the rain, speaking of last thoughts dominated by love and regret rather than glory or victory. I recalled eyes that contained galaxies and hands tattooed with symbols that promised to remember what war demanded we forget.

“We won’t engage,” I declared, to the surprise of my war council. “We’ll seek diplomatic channels. The objective isn’t worth the cost.”

Later, alone in my tent, I held the wooden disk to the lamplight, studying the symbol carved into its surface, a perfect circle bisected by a jagged line that might have been lightning or perhaps the boundary between life and death.

“I remembered,” I whispered to the empty air. “I remembered what follows victory and defeat alike.”

And though no response came, I felt certain that somewhere, perhaps on another battlefield in another land, Vesper nodded in approval as they continued their eternal work, gathering the words that must find their way home.

Thank you for reading this short story. If you loved it then be sure to check out the others on my blog. You can also find two volumes of these short stories on Amazon. Follow the link and you will find Fleeting Fantasies Vol 1. for only .99 cents. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F148V229

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