LJ Idol Season 9 Week 40 Home Game Edition: Good time, feel-good stories for the whole family
Bilt stood, proud and rigid atop his unit's train car, holding his Hochminster Longrifle aloft before him at parade rest, the wind passing through his company banner to tug at the chinstrap of his cap. The officers were below having coffee, so he and the boys smiled freely, white crescents splitting firm and angular features. They could smell the salt of the sea already, as trees and villages raced past.
This stalemate was about to end: the 82nd Timberwolves were imminent. The Ermine Monarchy had held back the Egret Republic's march to the sea, but that was because they'd been struggling futilely against opening slaps. Bilt was a knuckle on a great iron fist that was coming for them.
Other "knuckles" stood to his left, right and rear. His friend Jorge was watching the scenery roll by, always a dreamer, but a good man when the chips were down. His fireteam mates, Nem and Colle, were taking turns watching the officer hatch and dragging on a cig, their hard eyes watching the approaching sea with anticipation. Their colorguard, Corporal Ferm, had one hand on the company standard. His other rested on the leather flap that concealed his pride and joy, a nickel-plated double-shot Lionhead pistol he'd been awarded for excellence.
The lot of them were young and elite. None was faster on the lance than their cavalry, none a more honed hundred-meter scythe than their riflemen; nearly two years of training in the leadup to the war's outbreak had forged them into steel. Bilt had so long ago mastered the martial basics that he was progressing into lethal niche maneuvers - especially art of shoot-bayonet-shoot in rapid order, eliminating three Ermine dogs quickly, to help shatter their morale and force a rout. He jigged with the anticipation of trying it out on the soft, yielding flesh of a real foe.
If the Ermines thought they were a match because they'd halted the Republic in a bloody stalemate years before, they hadn't seen the technology the Republic could bring to bear now. Bilt had seen the effects their mighty high-bore rifles would have on flesh, as he'd used his to hunt deer a year ago. The slug had cut the pronghorn in half, after passing through a sapling. The Monarchy's shields and dugouts would fall like paper.
The snapping of banners slowed and the steam from the engine stacks lulled into a vertical pile. Ahead, the wooden platform grew: they had arrived. As they rolled in with lengthening whooshes and the flat screech of pneumatic brakes, the rail station came up alongside Bilt's car. He could now see that it was ringed with sandbags and concrete baffles, and that spurred a thrill through Bilt's chest. That meant it was real, now. These were real, wartime emplacements!
In the distance, Bilt could hear a couple of halfhearted pops, but they were told that a heavy fog had rolled in off the bay, stalling hostilities - and giving them the cover to bring in reserves like the 82nd.
They were formed up on the friendly side of a hill and inspected by the local brass, a colonel and his flock of adjutants and lieutenants. Although he knew the real Field Marshal would be elsewhere down the line, Bilt couldn't help but be impressed - he'd never seen such a glistening field of medals set atop a carnival of ribbons. The Colonel had a poise that would have put him right at home among the oil paintings back at the War Academy, where twirled mustaches and pressed greatcoats stood squared against the smokey sky, with a polished boot resting atop captured cannons or ramparts. The man nodded briefly, with a stern approval that made Bilt's heart swell. He said a brief word about the honor of fulfilling one's duty to home and country, then with a bark and callback of "Glory to the Republic", he pivoted. Hands behind his back, hair neatly slicked and mustache waxed skyward, he stalked back to the repurposed farmhouse that served as his field headquarters.
A junior officer directed their company through a shadowy steel forest comprising their impressive artillery batteries. Briefly, the pervasive smells of wood smoke and upturned mud were eclipsed by the machine-shop smell of oil and raw metal. The troop couldn't help but be heartened, having these monsters at their backs, as they made their way to forward stations ahead on the line.
Bilt overheard their orders, being discussed among the sergeants, and it was everything his heart could have desired. When the fog cleared, they were to take part in a glorious charge, a burst of energy shot into the iron right arm of the Republic, that would sweep away all resistance. The 82nd was here to break the enemy, and the men burst into hymns on their march to the ready stations.
Cresting a valley in the hill line and into a startlingly sudden pea-soup of fog, they were split into their fireteams. Good old Fire Team Two stood at the ready: Bilt and Jorge, Nem and Colle, Corporal Ferm. Beside them was Fire Team Three: Barl, who never scored a goal but was always on the winning soccer team; Gril, who could take a punch but always got sick on the train; Harper, who had once famously killed a bear with the butt of his rifle after missing with the shot; stout old Corporal Mayn; and "Kid" Trellis, whose lie regarding his age when he signed up was an open secret.
As they wound their way down into the trenches, he couldn't help but look with some disdain on the men already here. These men, who had clearly been unable to beat the Monarchial dogs despite being parked not a hundred yards from them for two months ...even after their victory, that was going to be a stain on the history books. He felt bad looking out over them, as though they would read those thoughts on his face as they made furtive eye contact.
Unlike the men of the 82nd, who strode with their heads held high, these filthy men crouched, hard eyes glaring out of faces the same color as their helmets, backs always to the trench wall. There was another pop from somewhere out in the soupy fog, and Jorge actually laughed aloud when a cluster of regulars flinched deeper into the dirt their backs were already boring into. They clutched their rifles like shephard's crooks and smoked in silence, one hand cupped over the cherry on their cigarette for some reason, underlighting pathetic and hunted eyes.
Well, this was a right mess, wasn't it? And after the fog ascended to a light drizzle that finally moved along, dawn burned away the mist, and the 82nd prepared to fix it - raising high its banner and advancing up the parapet. He heard a sergeant call down a count from five, the energy brimming from the tight groups of young men tapped and bounced and came to a head, and finally a trumpeting fanfare sounded the mighty charge they'd waited for all night. With a roar to shake heaven and earth, they erupted up into the sunlight and out onto the mud of glory, the dull distant thump of artillery and a drumroll of machine-gun emplacements sounding off behind them.
Bilt's elation was underscored by the surprising thought that he had never seen so many corpses. It occurred to him that it was not mud he was walking on, when a slice of shrapnel laced his face open just under his eye. He cursed and raised his rifle, skimming the distant emplacements; finding no target he walloped one off at a likely clump. Still moving, he stuck his handkerchief to his face and charged on. He actually had time to think what a fine scar that would be to show the ladies - perfect placement - when ahead of him, Corporal Mayn's arm disappeared.
The man trotted a few paces ahead while staring blankly at his stump, now gone above the elbow, and Bilt stared at it too. He was snapped back to attention when Fire Team One began raining down on him with a roar he almost couldn't hear. Since their position to his left had become a liquid geyser of vertical mud, he was aware that an artillery shell had bulls-eyed their group, showering Bilt and his friends with spatters of mud and intestine and knee and hand and hair.
Nem, from his own fireteam, had his head spread open like flower petals - slowing to a standstill, curiously, as though his body couldn't believe it as Bilt trotted past. Harper's right arm was suddenly chewed up badly by shrapnel that simply hadn't been there an instant before. He stopped cold and shouted and clutched his side. Bilt watched him over his shoulder as the man suddenly sprouted a constellation of holes, some distant machine-gun having turned lackadaisically his way. Bilt leaped over a log that he realized, in midair, was in fact big Barl the soccer player, his face purple.
In the space of what had to be ten, maybe twelve seconds, Bilt stopped recognizing individuals around him, and in the storm, stopped marking those that fell.
Fell. That was a term for the War Academy. These men were disassembled and thrown. They "fell" the way rain fell.
They were nearly halfway across the field, with disappointed bayonets still fixed, when a screaming firebomb went off into a group nearby who took up the chorus - and suddenly Bilt had had enough. A wild, white, animal consciousness reared up and clawed down the proudly erect martial pride that had been at the helm less than a minute before. Bilt fell back onto his rear as a thresher of shrapnel rendered Corporal Ferm into pieces before him, that nickel Lionhead pistol still held in a detached hand. He scrambled over onto the balls of his feet, and smelling as much as hearing lead whistle past his head, he began a blind sprint back towards his line. He became aware of his friend Jorge beside him, cradling a seeping shoulder, his rifle forgotten somewhere in the charnel house behind them.
A shell erupted near enough to deafen him. He darted and dodged like a hunted animal as fire and lead chewed the ground around him, forward, back, sideways, somehow just outside of the busy teeth that ground the fabric of the entire world.
He and Jorge reached their own sandbag parapet, miraculously as whole as they'd been back in the center of Hell's own gullet. He hadn't begun to catch his breath when they found themselves looking at an officer who had popped out of a communications bunker, hair slicked and uniform pressed, cooly leveling a revolver at them.
"Dereliction of duty", he intoned, and shot Jorge through the forehead.
Bilt wordlessly turned on his heel and ran back into the fire, where he crawled and cried and begged God for mercy until the peal of a trumpet sounded a general fall-back.
He'd never even seen a Monarchial soldier. He sat in the mud and clutched his rifle like a shepherd's crook, and he smelled the smoke and the copper tang of butchery, and listened to men scream from over the wall, in varying stages of delirium. A week and another trainful of proud reinforcements later, and he still had never seen even one enemy soldier. He'd heard them once, hollering like outraged animals as they charged fruitlessly into the guns of the Republic one morning.
He sat with his back into the mud of the trench wall. After seeing a sentry having a smoke suddenly lose his throat to a sniper, Bilt began smoking with one hand cupped over the cherry. And his white eyes stared out at nothing in particular, from a muddy face the same color as his helmet.
Over the next year, the machine of war would grind in forward and reverse, forward and reverse, as the same hundred yards of beachfront property were gained and lost. Bilt never did see that Colonel again, so he was not aware that after the general truce was declared a year later, the crisp man was awarded a blue medal in the shape of a wave, for tactical ingenuity and valor during the Seaside Campaign.
This stalemate was about to end: the 82nd Timberwolves were imminent. The Ermine Monarchy had held back the Egret Republic's march to the sea, but that was because they'd been struggling futilely against opening slaps. Bilt was a knuckle on a great iron fist that was coming for them.
Other "knuckles" stood to his left, right and rear. His friend Jorge was watching the scenery roll by, always a dreamer, but a good man when the chips were down. His fireteam mates, Nem and Colle, were taking turns watching the officer hatch and dragging on a cig, their hard eyes watching the approaching sea with anticipation. Their colorguard, Corporal Ferm, had one hand on the company standard. His other rested on the leather flap that concealed his pride and joy, a nickel-plated double-shot Lionhead pistol he'd been awarded for excellence.
The lot of them were young and elite. None was faster on the lance than their cavalry, none a more honed hundred-meter scythe than their riflemen; nearly two years of training in the leadup to the war's outbreak had forged them into steel. Bilt had so long ago mastered the martial basics that he was progressing into lethal niche maneuvers - especially art of shoot-bayonet-shoot in rapid order, eliminating three Ermine dogs quickly, to help shatter their morale and force a rout. He jigged with the anticipation of trying it out on the soft, yielding flesh of a real foe.
If the Ermines thought they were a match because they'd halted the Republic in a bloody stalemate years before, they hadn't seen the technology the Republic could bring to bear now. Bilt had seen the effects their mighty high-bore rifles would have on flesh, as he'd used his to hunt deer a year ago. The slug had cut the pronghorn in half, after passing through a sapling. The Monarchy's shields and dugouts would fall like paper.
The snapping of banners slowed and the steam from the engine stacks lulled into a vertical pile. Ahead, the wooden platform grew: they had arrived. As they rolled in with lengthening whooshes and the flat screech of pneumatic brakes, the rail station came up alongside Bilt's car. He could now see that it was ringed with sandbags and concrete baffles, and that spurred a thrill through Bilt's chest. That meant it was real, now. These were real, wartime emplacements!
In the distance, Bilt could hear a couple of halfhearted pops, but they were told that a heavy fog had rolled in off the bay, stalling hostilities - and giving them the cover to bring in reserves like the 82nd.
They were formed up on the friendly side of a hill and inspected by the local brass, a colonel and his flock of adjutants and lieutenants. Although he knew the real Field Marshal would be elsewhere down the line, Bilt couldn't help but be impressed - he'd never seen such a glistening field of medals set atop a carnival of ribbons. The Colonel had a poise that would have put him right at home among the oil paintings back at the War Academy, where twirled mustaches and pressed greatcoats stood squared against the smokey sky, with a polished boot resting atop captured cannons or ramparts. The man nodded briefly, with a stern approval that made Bilt's heart swell. He said a brief word about the honor of fulfilling one's duty to home and country, then with a bark and callback of "Glory to the Republic", he pivoted. Hands behind his back, hair neatly slicked and mustache waxed skyward, he stalked back to the repurposed farmhouse that served as his field headquarters.
A junior officer directed their company through a shadowy steel forest comprising their impressive artillery batteries. Briefly, the pervasive smells of wood smoke and upturned mud were eclipsed by the machine-shop smell of oil and raw metal. The troop couldn't help but be heartened, having these monsters at their backs, as they made their way to forward stations ahead on the line.
Bilt overheard their orders, being discussed among the sergeants, and it was everything his heart could have desired. When the fog cleared, they were to take part in a glorious charge, a burst of energy shot into the iron right arm of the Republic, that would sweep away all resistance. The 82nd was here to break the enemy, and the men burst into hymns on their march to the ready stations.
Cresting a valley in the hill line and into a startlingly sudden pea-soup of fog, they were split into their fireteams. Good old Fire Team Two stood at the ready: Bilt and Jorge, Nem and Colle, Corporal Ferm. Beside them was Fire Team Three: Barl, who never scored a goal but was always on the winning soccer team; Gril, who could take a punch but always got sick on the train; Harper, who had once famously killed a bear with the butt of his rifle after missing with the shot; stout old Corporal Mayn; and "Kid" Trellis, whose lie regarding his age when he signed up was an open secret.
As they wound their way down into the trenches, he couldn't help but look with some disdain on the men already here. These men, who had clearly been unable to beat the Monarchial dogs despite being parked not a hundred yards from them for two months ...even after their victory, that was going to be a stain on the history books. He felt bad looking out over them, as though they would read those thoughts on his face as they made furtive eye contact.
Unlike the men of the 82nd, who strode with their heads held high, these filthy men crouched, hard eyes glaring out of faces the same color as their helmets, backs always to the trench wall. There was another pop from somewhere out in the soupy fog, and Jorge actually laughed aloud when a cluster of regulars flinched deeper into the dirt their backs were already boring into. They clutched their rifles like shephard's crooks and smoked in silence, one hand cupped over the cherry on their cigarette for some reason, underlighting pathetic and hunted eyes.
Well, this was a right mess, wasn't it? And after the fog ascended to a light drizzle that finally moved along, dawn burned away the mist, and the 82nd prepared to fix it - raising high its banner and advancing up the parapet. He heard a sergeant call down a count from five, the energy brimming from the tight groups of young men tapped and bounced and came to a head, and finally a trumpeting fanfare sounded the mighty charge they'd waited for all night. With a roar to shake heaven and earth, they erupted up into the sunlight and out onto the mud of glory, the dull distant thump of artillery and a drumroll of machine-gun emplacements sounding off behind them.
Bilt's elation was underscored by the surprising thought that he had never seen so many corpses. It occurred to him that it was not mud he was walking on, when a slice of shrapnel laced his face open just under his eye. He cursed and raised his rifle, skimming the distant emplacements; finding no target he walloped one off at a likely clump. Still moving, he stuck his handkerchief to his face and charged on. He actually had time to think what a fine scar that would be to show the ladies - perfect placement - when ahead of him, Corporal Mayn's arm disappeared.
The man trotted a few paces ahead while staring blankly at his stump, now gone above the elbow, and Bilt stared at it too. He was snapped back to attention when Fire Team One began raining down on him with a roar he almost couldn't hear. Since their position to his left had become a liquid geyser of vertical mud, he was aware that an artillery shell had bulls-eyed their group, showering Bilt and his friends with spatters of mud and intestine and knee and hand and hair.
Nem, from his own fireteam, had his head spread open like flower petals - slowing to a standstill, curiously, as though his body couldn't believe it as Bilt trotted past. Harper's right arm was suddenly chewed up badly by shrapnel that simply hadn't been there an instant before. He stopped cold and shouted and clutched his side. Bilt watched him over his shoulder as the man suddenly sprouted a constellation of holes, some distant machine-gun having turned lackadaisically his way. Bilt leaped over a log that he realized, in midair, was in fact big Barl the soccer player, his face purple.
In the space of what had to be ten, maybe twelve seconds, Bilt stopped recognizing individuals around him, and in the storm, stopped marking those that fell.
Fell. That was a term for the War Academy. These men were disassembled and thrown. They "fell" the way rain fell.
They were nearly halfway across the field, with disappointed bayonets still fixed, when a screaming firebomb went off into a group nearby who took up the chorus - and suddenly Bilt had had enough. A wild, white, animal consciousness reared up and clawed down the proudly erect martial pride that had been at the helm less than a minute before. Bilt fell back onto his rear as a thresher of shrapnel rendered Corporal Ferm into pieces before him, that nickel Lionhead pistol still held in a detached hand. He scrambled over onto the balls of his feet, and smelling as much as hearing lead whistle past his head, he began a blind sprint back towards his line. He became aware of his friend Jorge beside him, cradling a seeping shoulder, his rifle forgotten somewhere in the charnel house behind them.
A shell erupted near enough to deafen him. He darted and dodged like a hunted animal as fire and lead chewed the ground around him, forward, back, sideways, somehow just outside of the busy teeth that ground the fabric of the entire world.
He and Jorge reached their own sandbag parapet, miraculously as whole as they'd been back in the center of Hell's own gullet. He hadn't begun to catch his breath when they found themselves looking at an officer who had popped out of a communications bunker, hair slicked and uniform pressed, cooly leveling a revolver at them.
"Dereliction of duty", he intoned, and shot Jorge through the forehead.
Bilt wordlessly turned on his heel and ran back into the fire, where he crawled and cried and begged God for mercy until the peal of a trumpet sounded a general fall-back.
He'd never even seen a Monarchial soldier. He sat in the mud and clutched his rifle like a shepherd's crook, and he smelled the smoke and the copper tang of butchery, and listened to men scream from over the wall, in varying stages of delirium. A week and another trainful of proud reinforcements later, and he still had never seen even one enemy soldier. He'd heard them once, hollering like outraged animals as they charged fruitlessly into the guns of the Republic one morning.
He sat with his back into the mud of the trench wall. After seeing a sentry having a smoke suddenly lose his throat to a sniper, Bilt began smoking with one hand cupped over the cherry. And his white eyes stared out at nothing in particular, from a muddy face the same color as his helmet.
Over the next year, the machine of war would grind in forward and reverse, forward and reverse, as the same hundred yards of beachfront property were gained and lost. Bilt never did see that Colonel again, so he was not aware that after the general truce was declared a year later, the crisp man was awarded a blue medal in the shape of a wave, for tactical ingenuity and valor during the Seaside Campaign.