youth

Our Young Writers

Simon Cox

Jessica Edelman

Black Blood

by Simon Cox (aged 11)

      You don’t have people in war; you have sides. You have nations; you have armies.
      In war you are not a person; you are a battalion. You are a regiment, a platoon.
      You are not human, but infantry. You have not rights, but rank.
      This is the one thing that allows soldiers to remain sane.
      In war armies attack armies, people do not attack people.
      When you die in war you become not a corpse, but a statistic.
      You kill the enemy as an army, not a person. It is when this is taken away that there are problems. When
      you see the human in the enemy there are hesitations. Hesitations that could cost you your life.
      For when you see the human in the enemy, your only hope is that the enemy can see the human in you….

      Jerome hesitated, the bowstring trembling with tension under his shaking finger. He saw the enemy raise his sword and then Jerome let go.
      Such a small action, such a large consequence.
      The arrow sailed into the enemy’s breastplate, knocking him off his horse and onto the dusty road.
      It had all happened so quickly. They had been on the road to Chinon and then they’d entered the forest and been ambushed. So simple; so quick.
      A minute ago Jerome had been riding on a horse. Now he was off the horse and killing people. No, he told himself, not people, the enemy. There’s a difference.
     A crossbow bolt flew past Jerome and crashed into a tree.
     He had to fight, he had to stop them killing people...by killing other people? No, not by-
     Jerome saw the arrow coming. It sliced ominously through the air towards its target: him.
     He dived to the side, rolling in the dust.
     The arrow ran through where he had just been and into the back of a sword-wielding soldier. He screamed. Jerome knew the voice.
     Sergeant Freeman, Second Officer in Charge. One of Jerome’s few friends on this journey.
      Rage is like a fire, the heart tinder. All it needs is a spark.
      The spark inside Jerome exploded.
      Rage burned in his heart, clouding his vision with the black smoke of the great inferno. He brandished his short sword and charged forward. The crossbowman didn’t stand a chance.
     It’s hard to describe the look in a man’s eye just as he dies, the exact thought that crosses the mind. Is it a thought cut short? Of clouded pain, or of something unknown, something deeper...
      The smoke cleared, blown away by the winds of realisation. Jerome looked down, past his bloodstained sword and at the lifeless body of the man. He trembled.
     The important thing is to fight, not to think. When you start thinking you begin to wonder. You wonder about things like, Why do we always call them the enemy, not my enemy but the enemy? What is it that makes them the enemy? What their leader thinks? Is the will of the leader, the will of a nation? What if I was born in the enemy’s country? What makes them different? Were they born into it? And just what were they born into? When questions like these float in your mind they stir up water, they create waves; storms. Things get brought to the surface, things you’d rather not have…
      Jerome stared at the dead body, and then he saw it. He saw past the dead body, and saw a dead man. A man like him, with thoughts and friends and family and a life. No, Jerome thought, no life. I took that away.
      The water of Jerome’s mind stirred and whirled and bubbled and then slowly, ever so slowly, the thought rose to the surface. It sat there, as if it always had.
      I’ve killed, he thought, I’ve killed!
      The waters of Jerome’s mind froze. Suddenly all he wanted to do was run. Run away from war: the hardship, the pressure, the depression, the blood shed, all of it! Jerome wanted to run, to run, run and never look back.
      You could get punished for running from battle. You could get killed.
      His own side would kill him for not killing those that wanted to kill him.
      One word just kept popping up in that sentence.
      Jerome knew he had to, and he did. He ran.
      Jerome didn’t know where to, but he knew what from, and he certainly knew why. Perhaps that was all that mattered.

Kylie Boner