Trickles
Oh, this is new, another post in a span of two weeks! You must either be having tons of coffee-and-smoke time, or you’re finally giving in to that urge to write more since the reader visits to this site are coming in trickles. Admit it, mofo, you have that vain streak almost every pathetic soul who fancies himself a writer has. You ain’t no J. D. Salinger by a million miles.
Well, perhaps it’s just that the creative juices are slowly trickling to life too, ya know. You don’t have to have readers to write. Maybe you just write for yourself. Or perhaps you write just for the heck of it. Or—as the Westerosi are wont to say—“mayhaps” you write for the sake of writing.
Oh, you got that one from first-year philosophy, didn’t ya? “Knowledge for the sake of knowledge.” You could spew out total bull sometimes, ya know.
But whatever the reason is, it’s Monday and I’ve got a piece of digital paper on my screen. It’s mocking me, daring me to make something out of nothing. “Something out of nothing,” yeah, just like how the old gods used to roll. Except when they created you, poor slob. You’re still nothing out of nothing.
So, yeah, let’s do this. And write something new. Not your usual ramblings. Your girl has you totally figured out. She hammered that nail right on the head when she said, “You write well. But they’re usually of two kinds, really. They’re either (a) a rant or (b) a whine. If you’re a coin, with your two sides, you’d be a worthless mint.”
Oommppphhh! That was a straight and true arrow! So here goes nothing . . .
It was a frenzy of divine magnitude. Spittles of blood were making a drizzle over the earthen dirt path bounded by woods on its west and east sides. It was high noon, and the sun was on its peak. Vision, however, was obscured by the rainbowless crimson mist. There were hail blobs too of human meat. Roars and shouts and screams filled the air. Some were of glorious victory, or perhaps of timely relief, but others were futile protests of death and last farewells to mothers, wives, sons and daughters. Some called to whatever gods they swore allegiance to—for aid that would never come or in anticipative greeting, one could only guess.
Metal slashed through flesh and grated bones, jarring the hand that held it. Wood and leather stood in defiance in a moment of swirling struggle to keep fire-tempered steel at bay. In the collision, some failed and broke, accompanied by the sickening music of flesh violated. Some succeeded for the free hand to hurl its own instrument of death and blood. But only for a moment. A moment stood between Hades and Elysium, between desolate hell and the raucous hall of heroes. There was but an instant to deal death with death so that the second breath may be inhaled.
Such was the ferocity of that day when a Roman cohort was caught in a deft Gallic ambush.
Marcus looked around while dispatching his lying barbarian with a final lean on his sword. The Gaul chieftain was down, he saw, the almighty infantry gladius thrust in his side. He did not however feel that he almost stepped on the head of a masterless spear when he tried to stand. The dog, Marcus thought, what untamed courage does he have? Hesitation was however gleaned from Marcus’s nature the first day in the dusty training yard. Drawing his bloodied sword from the bowels of his last victim, he turned and made for the chieftain. The Gaul was trying to reorient himself, and when he turned his head, his wolf eyes recognized danger approaching. Yet he looked at danger as an opportunity, so he strode with those long legs toward Marcus. Marcus was running now and was almost a meager arm’s length before the chieftain lifted up his long sword. Opportunity, Marcus’s own eyes recognized. This will be your own undoing, slave! I won’t be firewood for your axe! He set his guard low and plunged into the waist of his ambusher. A quick thrust and stab did it all. Before a lightning can finish its streak, the barbarian was stripped of his princely position and tumbled face first into the centurion. Rising from the heap of extricated bowels, Marcus drove his gladius into the naked chest of the groaning prince and twisted it first before drawing it out.
His cohort was in disarray, he saw, yet they were fighting as soldiers should. For life or for duty, he knew that it was for the former. His sword was dripping slick with the life of the fifteen or twenty men he slew. And his arm was throbbing, not from pain or weariness, but from anticipation and hunger for more killing and death. Grim-faced he set out in a trot to his optio who was being engaged by three men. Terrentius was quite capable on his own, Marcus knew. But the barbaric soldiers were the closest to his circle of death. Leaping over a fallen Roman, he kept his sword arm abreast. And before his leathered feet touched the blood-mudded soil, a blond head—with shocked, wide-open eyes—flew up, chasing the wake of his sword. Marcus gazed at Terrentius for a moment and almost winked.
How’s that for a first page, first chapter? Pretty impressive, huh? Newp, not really. Except when you consider a trickle of rain impressing a salty veteran-of-a-thousand-storms sailor.
But how do we know this hasn’t been sitting in your notebook for years? How do we know this wasn’t sleeping in your “My Documents” folder for centuries now, and you’re just rehashing it? Or—here comes the kicker—how do we know that you wrote this years ago as part of a book you were trying to do and got stuck on the first page? If it was ever born, that book must have seen the axe long before it saw its first editor.
