Trigger Warning: This chapter contains depictions of war & violence, soft gore, physical violence, and the suggestion of rape. It can be skipped if someone can't stand this topic.

At the end of the chapter, it contains a song recommendation to listen to while reading.

Ghostly clouds and thick fog lay all around him and drew an eerie veil around the crescent moon in the sky. Its otherwise silvery-white light was drenched in a bloody red and shrouded stick and stone in the ominous glow of doom and death.

Robin averted his eyes and closed them. The stench of decay lingered in the air, so thick he could barely breathe. The stifling sweet smell mingled with sweat and leather, dust and ash. It clung to him and invisibly branded him a sinner. He had seen so many men, women, and children die that this horror was enough for more than one life and eternity in damnation.

Somewhere a man was screaming in agony, and not far from him, something was scratching in the ash-covered ground. There was snorting and growling, cracking, and then a loud munching. He turned his head, even though he didn't want to. A dog was tearing at the carcass of a man. The mutt was skin and bones, starved and obviously desperate to venture so close to the fires raging everywhere. Its mouth was smeared with blood as the dog pulled and tugged at one arm.

A cawing interrupted him as a vulture came to fight for its prey. As if there were too few carcasses here. You could hardly walk down a street without tripping over dead bodies. But the vultures and the wild dogs gave each other no quarter. Barking mingled with wild screeching, then again the horror-awakening cracking. Flesh and sinew tore, a heaped mountain of empty eye sockets and bodies.

Robin gagged as the images overtook him. Quickly he turned away and pressed his hands to his ears to muffle the screams and the terrible breaking and tearing of bodies. The sound was horrific, and he wished himself back in Sherwood Forest. To the chirping of the birds, the rustling of the leaves. He missed the English rain and... his Marian.

He gasped under the weight of his regrets. They would be heroes; they'd been told, luring young hearts with false promises. For their country and king, for God and their faith, they would go forth and return as saints. Glorious and celebrated... but there was nothing heroic about this. Everywhere was rubble and death; under collapsed buildings, soldiers rotted in the heat beside the enemy. Dust, dirt, sand, and blood. Lots and lots of blood.

Robin saw the distorted grimaces of disgust, hatred, and deep despair. Tears in the eyes of the mothers, screams in the narrow alleys and shadowy houses. Moans and groans. How many women and even children had been violated, and how many innocents slaughtered for God and the king?

Why did he doubt it? Why did it disgust him so? Why did it break him?

His desperate gaze clung to his left arm. His hands were filthy; ash and blood had crusted under his fingernails and stained his fingertips blackish. The bracers were scuffed and stained. His heart was heavy and numb as his fingertips brushed over the dark blue silk ribbon he had used instead of a sturdy leather strap to pull his splint together since it had broken long ago. He wanted to keep the ribbon close to him. His heart pounded in his chest with regret and longing as he closed his eyes.

Lady Marian was the daughter of Earl De Burgh, a friend of his father. Four summers separated them in age, and so she was often the perfect victim of his pranks. Until that spring day...

Fox-red hair gently rippled as the young girl lay against the trunk in the shade of the great oak. Young Robin grinned broadly and slyly as he crept up on silent soles, finally loosening the bow with a deft grip to release the ribbon from her hair. He could still hear the cry of protest as he climbed onto a nearby branch of the old oak tree, laughing loudly. His legs dangled in the air as he teased the red-cheeked girl on the ground. Everything was easier then. He curled in laughter as the nine-year-old girl tried to climb the tree after the older lad. But then she slipped and fell on one of the nearby stones.

He had thanked heaven; nothing too wrong had happened to her. But she did not wake up for three days. Robin remembered the crushing feeling of guilt. 'It was just supposed to be fun,' he kept thinking. His stomach was in knots, and his father's reproachful and loud words did the rest.

From that day on, he no longer wanted the girl with him. Not on any of the sneaky outings with Guy, not on any of the pranks. Of course, he would never have said it was for her own protection. They were young, so he blamed it on her being a weak girl. It was the beginning of a rift between them that would probably never be bridged. Marian did not understand his rejection, and Robin was too proud to clear up the misunderstanding.

He would never forget her face as he left for the crusade.

'God bless you. May you return safe and sound,' her voice murmured in his mind. She looked so hurt and angry... and Robin understood. He really did. He knew how it must seem to her. That he would rather go to war than walk down the aisle with her. But Marian was just fourteen years old. In his eyes, she was a child yet to blossom into a woman, and he would not obey his father's command to stain the sheets with blood even now. Should she hate and loathe him. Then it would be easier for her not to grieve if he did not return home.

'When I get back here, I'll explain everything to you, Marian,' Robin had vowed to himself as he kissed the back of her hand one last time and then mounted his horse. But he had never spoken those words aloud, and so they remained an echo in his mind. A faded memory from years ago that seemed infinitely far away.... as far away as his home and the breath of happiness he had never appreciated.

He had to survive. He had to return.

The world around him shook.

The reddish moonlight gave way to day, glaring sun, and still he remained. The swirling veil before his eyes shrouded everything in bloody red. The world was passing away in the corner of his eye, but Robin didn't notice. It was so boiling. His skin was on fire.

He wanted to leave, so he started to run. He ran past the ruins of a house, of which nothing was left but a few scraps of the wall. The city was a battlefield, a heap of rubble shattered by the war.

He ran and ran, but although he was breathless, he did not feel the burning in his lungs. He knew it was there... had been there. The blazing spikes of the desert sun beat down on him like a hail of arrows, making it hard to breathe. It was so infinitely hot... but Robin kept running.

The alleys were narrow, and among the rubble, they formed veritable labyrinths. His fingers tightly gripped the bow and the string with the arrow on it. It was the only thing to save him from death when it mattered. Keep going, keep going. He had to keep going.

Again and again, he jerked the bow around, aiming into shadows and corners of houses. Death lurked everywhere. A sob came from a house, and Robin pressed against the stone. All around him, screams and shouts rang out. Robin's gaze darted around, restless and panicked. Was that movement around the bend? Was there a shadow on one of the houses?

His fingers slid across the string of his bow like a juggler dancing on his high wire. The tension poisoned his mind and made him see shadows where there were none, but he knew he had to stay calm. Then it sounded again. A child was screaming.

Instinctively he moved in that direction. Robin pushed himself away from the protective wall and drew his bow. The arrowhead gleamed treacherously in the sunlight as he stepped through the doorway into the house's interior. Coarse, dirty fingers were buried in night-black hair, pressing a slender female body to the grimy floor. The soldier's trousers sagged at the knees, and the woman sobbed and wept. Another held the little boy... forcing him to watch.

There they stood-the fighters, in God's name.

The heroes of the Occident.

Sinners. All of them.

Robin's body trembled.

"What are you staring at? Get out of here or get in line!" it blared from the darkness. He remembered the voice. Scratchy, cold, far from mercy. But Robin didn't remember the face. He couldn't feel his fingers, but he knew they had been stiff and his heart cold and clammy - despite the blistering heat. The eyes... her eyes he would never forget.

There was a hiss as the arrow shot away.

"Traitor!" he heard the cries of the others. But before they had even drawn their weapons, they sank to the ground, already gasping, with an arrow in their throats. There they lay, eyes dilated and tired - but no sound drowned out the loud throbbing in his ears.

On the boy's face, tears had blurred the dirt and left marks on the copper-colored skin. The child crouched by his mother, who tried to cover herself with the tattered remnants of her clothes. She was shaking, sobbing, and crying. Her trembling hands reached for her child, and her eyes were filled with agony. Would it have been more merciful to put an end to her suffering?

"Flee," he heard himself say. But his voice sounded distant, so terribly distant. He watched as they hurriedly left the room... and, in the blink of an eye, were taken by the arrows that greeted them in the street. They died arm in arm.

'Please, Oh Please God...!'

They all prayed up to heaven and begged for it to end. For salvation, mercy, succor, or forgiveness. They begged to escape from this hell, begged for victory - that it would finally be over.

But God did not hear them.

Not one of them.

Recommended song for this chapter

https://youtu.be/oBGFueJtOzw