battlefield - quotes and descriptions to inspire creative writing
Come as a friend we shall make a festival upon this grass so woven with blooms, with their gay colours bright under a buoyant sun. Come with weapons to harm those we love and we shall make a battlefield. The choice is yours.
God gives me the right to protect whom I love, yet never for your ideologies and dogmas. You slay for no more than semantics and greed, blind to how we live from passion and in a sense of liberty. So you step foot on these hills and you make them not a meadow yet a battlefield, because you are in my backyard now and I change from lamb to lion.
It was a battlefield that appeared to be anything but, the players unknowing of their roles and every one of them a double agent. I wish I could have told them all what reality is, how to choose the side that is love and healing... avoiding the chasms that open and the knives that appear in the hand without asking for them. Each sought to be on the right side, convincing themselves that they were. When they did the bidding of the darkness they made up stories to justify their actions rather than face what they had really done. It takes someone strong to feel the sting of the dark-side and remain steadfast in a will to work only for the light - to see the dagger in hand at the exact moment you feel compelled to use it and still be loving and kind, to let the weapon clatter to the floor, soundless, unnoticed. That's what being a warrior for the light requires, an inner strength, a keen eye for noble and good opportunities to bring peace, health and love - a self-control to avoid doing service for the one who harms. That was the war, the one we won, but it was hard every day, turning for the better only when we became players instead of pawns, destined to protect our king.
The battlefield lay quiet, for it was now a graveyard of the unburied. Their corpses lay among the buttercups and forget-me-nots. The sun still shone and the wind still blew, but somewhere mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters waited in vain. These men that were once boys who played in the yard with sticks and laughed at each other's silly tales were now meat for the birds.Their eyes were as immobile as their limbs. Their souls had long departed to the celestial planes to walk with the ancestors. The battle was lost, the enemy had won. Now they camped a mile away to plan the ransacking of the town itself.
The battlefield that day saw fathers fighting to their last breath and the young army of conquerors wielding swords without mercy. The wounded and dead lay thickly over the wintry ground, garish scarlet flowing over the frosted white. When the bugle sounded the mothers came too, not all, just the ones schooled in battle. Without a victory death was the better of the two options, these foes took only perfect specimens as slaves and left the rest to fertilize their new fields.
A bitter wind swept the hillside and the ground was slick with rain. The lucky few wore thick leather armour, the rest only sweaters of wool. The menfolk stood in formation, four rows was all they had, their eyes trained on the road to see how many the duke would send. They heard the boots long before they saw the mass of uniformed bodies lead by a horseman bearing a flag. Their answer had come. This is what it meant to fail to pay taxes in the district, no excuses, no mercy. Every face blanched and the messenger fled to the village with the order to evacuate. This was never a battle they could win, only a sacrifice to buy time.
The battlefield was dust and dirt, all baked under an unrelenting sun. To the soldiers from the south it felt more like a gladiator's arena, albeit without the cheering blood-thirsty crowd. For the northern men it was the hottest summer day they'd ever felt and their clothes were too thick, trapping their body heat, soaking with sweat.
The pasture was slick under-boot and made treacherous by the manure of the cows. Heavy armour was needed to stop the swords, but if the extra weight took the man to his back his battle was done. No meadow flowers were noticed that day, nor the sound of the nearby brook. It was a place for many to end their days, to sacrifice in the hope of better days for their loved ones back home.
Every mind was as much a battlefield as the sand at their feet. Before the invaders beached their vessels each soldier had time for their minds to bid farewell to far away lovers and children while trying to wipe all emotion clean away, to focus on the task at hand. Every gaze lay resolutely ahead, none able to take in the emotion of their friends as well as their own. When the cry came they launched forwards without delay, the grains shifting under their boots were their homeland and to see the foreign warriors upon it was all the motivation their hearts required.
Though the ground glistened like rain had fallen, the liquid that shone wasn't clear but red. The men who died, pawns in a game of warlords, were for the most part dead and those who were not soon would be. Their masters took stock of the outcome, considering their armies in numbers only. How many had fallen? How many remained strong and able to send to the next fight? Each warlord rounded up and executed the deserters, their minds already lost in trauma; each one pinned medals on the chests of their generals, nodding their heads in grim approval.