Drake collapsed to the mud as the black magic spew receded into his body like a genie returning to its lamp. He had pushed himself too hard. The soldier wanted this to be a quick battle, and it had been. The nude man surveyed the bloodshed he had reaped. The sun was still molested by the darkness, casting the battlefield in a gray twilight.

  “Ring the bells, ring the bells.” The tune danced through his mind.

  His tanned skin was stretched tightly over lean muscles and prominent bone. His pale blue eyes looked over the growing horizon as the darkness receded. Drake felt the sweat forming on his bristled head. He had forsaken his hair long ago, tired of it always being soaked in blood when he transformed back into his human body. The hot, fetid clumps tangled in his locks were a most unpleasant feeling. Damn difficult to wash out too.

  “With bodies, the river swells. Ring the bells, ring the bells.” Intricate black tattoos laced his body from the neck down, showing more ink than skin. The runes claimed him - body, mind, and soul. The kingdom had been scarring his body with them for longer than he could remember.

  He felt little regret for his deeds. The slaughter did sadden him; he hated seeing the wanton ending of life. However, these were men of war. They always knew death could come on the battlefield. Like him, they weren’t human anymore. They were swords. They were all destined to muddy fields, such as the one he stood on, for graves. He grimaced as he thought about his own death under the yolk of the kingdom in service to the sovereign.

  There was the loneliness that hollowed him for years on end. The hollow space in his chest filled with the knowledge that he deserved to die. He pictured his karmic scales before him. One side brimming with the bodies of the masses he had brought to slaughter and the grieving widows and children who would never see their fathers and husbands again. At its height, the other side was empty and awaiting his payment. To balance it out, what had he to offer? Words of apology? He wondered what he could ever do to balance the scales. If anything other than his death could set them to even. He wondered if even his death would put it right.

  He knew he should be focused on the report to the captain. However, instead, he wondered how much of his shadow he had wasted on this meaningless fight and how much he had left to give. He could feel the piercing longing for more, even through that nagging worry. He felt small among the field of the dead. He looked down at the corpses, trying to picture the families of those he killed. Were they loved? How did that feel? Drake tried to picture a family of his own, someone who would smile and hold his hand through good and bad. But even as he attempted to put a face to the image, the shadows gnawed away at the specter, leaving him cold and alone.

  Try as he might, he couldn’t put shape to the person he was with except to know it was a woman. Anything beyond the mere idea was hard to give shape to. He had heard tawdry and bawdy tales of affairs, whores, and wives from the loose lips of the knights that called him boy. Their mere existence caged him, chaining him to his position as much as any physical shackles made of iron ever could.

  He grimaced as he thought about when he was taken from the orphanage as a boy. They told him it was an honor to be a “Sword of the Kingdom.” Worst of all, he had believed them. He didn’t know then that it was a kind of honor reserved for boys and girls that nobody would miss. Men in robes and armor came to the decayed halls he had known as home to test all the children for something. As old as he was now, he still wasn’t sure what they sought, but Drake and his brother possessed it in abundance.

  “Ring the bells, ring the bells. For dead men rot in the seven hells.” That tune was the only keepsake he could bring into his new life. He recalled only glimpses of life before they had taken him before they had forced him to forget the name his mother gave him. He couldn’t even remember her face anymore.

  He was stripped of his boyhood name, given the name Drake, as had his predecessors before him. Each Sword of the Kingdom was given only one name. The King believed it made them seem more mythical, almost divine. It provided a sense of continuity to the people. The Swords meant stability; the Swords provided strength to the kingdom of Paxia. The Swords also died often, so a rotating supply was needed. There was no reason to get sentimental over things like names.

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  There was no greater honor in Paxia than to serve at the leisure of the King as one of his esteemed Swords. Or so the story went anyway. Drake had found the reality of being a soldier very different from the dreams of daring and courageous acts. It was mostly mud, blood, and pain. They had begun the weaponization process almost immediately. Each rune was painstakingly carved into his skin and filled with black ink droplets.

  “With bodies, the river swells. Ring the bells, ring the bells.”

  He wondered how old he was. He was sure he was out of his teenage years, but he was not sure exactly where in his twenties he lay. He began to count on his fingers. How many summers had it been? Twenty-eight. He thought he was twenty-eight years old. Many in the kingdom would have considered him middle-aged. He would have been able to look forward to a life of family and simple pleasures, to look over at his wife and their children with pride. He sighed. No, that was not his lot.

  Retirement for a Sword was death. Be it on the battlefield or when their bodies finally gave out from the intense use of magic. Drake had lived much longer than most of his peers, and his body was a roadmap of the pain he had endured from the enemy and his superiors. He longed for freedom, even if it meant death. Whatever he needed to do to escape.

  He had a nameless hunger for family and a life beyond the battlefield. The man made into a weapon had known only the solace of his brother, his fellow Swords and the Knights Watch that swore an oath to the Swords and, more importantly, the king. The Swords were not allowed to marry. They were not even permitted to have lovers. They were to remain chaste, and this chastity was enforced by the end of a blade. Friends were allowed technically, but few soldiers chose to be friends with a grim reaper.

  The only education he was permitted was one of combat and cruelty. His classrooms were the mess tent and battlefields like the one he meandered through at present. Reading and writing hadn’t been forbidden, but they were deemed unnecessary. A Sword only needs to know the will of the hand that wields it. At this point, he had figured out the methodology behind the cruelty. If he knew too much, he would become less pliant. If he knew too much of himself, then he could rebel like he had before. No, it was better to keep him in the dark, sharp yet stupid.

  Drake's thoughts went to his paper and bits of charcoal, which had been given him as a reward for victory in battle. Drake wouldn’t have called himself an artist, but rubbing the crumbly black chalk onto the infinite possibilities of the paper gave him a treasured escape. He savored each and every opportunity to create something beautiful.

  “Do you hear the bells? Then say the farewells.”

  When he was younger, he relished in the fame, the infamy, of being the Sword known as the “Shadow Drake.” A name he would have worn with pride had anyone known who he was. Swords seldom get their due credit. There was no enemy of the kingdom alive who had seen his power and lived to talk about it. A braggart’s boast it may have been, but it was also a lonely truth.

  He had taken so many fathers, brothers, and sons from those who loved them. He had never been forced to kill women or children until that faithless day. The day the orders came down for him to raze a border city. No soldiers, just civilians, a neutral place, until it wasn’t. For the first time in his life, Drake had refused an order. He would never call it a mistake but would admit he paid dearly that day.

  Gaius, the Lord Commander himself, a man Drake thought he knew, had come to persuade Drake personally. However, that persuasion came to nothing but another soul-shattering fight, one Drake lost. The city was slaughtered by the Lord Commander in the same way. The flames from the fires danced behind the soldier’s eyes as he lost himself in the memory. Whatever creature comforts the Swords enjoyed had been stripped from Drake with his act of defiance. He had thought life could not get worse. He had been wrong.

  He knew that had been a couple of years ago now. After the battle had been lost and the innocents slain, the weight of the blood and failure on his conscience smothered him. Drake tried to take his own life but found that it was no longer his to take. He was no more successful in stopping his heart than the enemy had ever been.

  He traversed the dead and slain, wondering why it had to be this way. Their groans and pitiful whimpers would fill his dreams that night. He was sure of it. They would mix with the thousands of cries that haunted him every day. He was sure these men were no worse than the ones waiting back for him at the barracks and tents. They may even be cut from a better cloth as he thought this, one of the felled men stirred by Drake’s foot.

  Drake stopped to consider the half-dying man, sword still gripped in hand, armor broken from where Drake had struck him in the fight. Red insides leaked out from the steel. Drake felt a pang of remorse. It was so easy to shut down, not to feel. However, when faced with your hands' work, it was impossible to turn away. The dying man gurgled. Drake squatted on his haunches, leaning over the man.

  “I am sorry, friend. I doubt you deserved to die here.”

  With a final gasp, the man on the ground used the last of his strength to raise his sword, slashing clumsily at Drake. The sword passed through him harmlessly, and a sigh passed through Drake’s lips. Perhaps all men were the same after all.

  “Die well, friend.”

  Drake stood and began the long walk back to the bridge to Paxia and the insufferably smug captain awaiting him. The soldier in the mud gargled his last breath as the light left his eyes.