The Aftermath: a short story inspired by a slightly disturbing dream I had ages ago

I've saved this from the abyss that is one of my notebooks. I apologise in advance. Partly because it's a bit disturbing (or maybe that's just me remembering the creepy dream when I read it), and partly because it was only edited a bit, when I typed it up. (Don't tell anyone, but I would've edited it more tonight, except that I nearly forgot about posting something... Ssh!) So, yeah. Enjoy... if you can. :) Please tell me what you think! (Again - or at least, I think I put this last time - I'd rather you weren't too mean, it helps absolutely nothing. Thanks!)

If it had not been so quiet, then maybe it would have been better.

The anger of man and nature had long since subsided here, and he had long since stopped thinking. The scene was dead. The sky had cleared, the storm clouds leaving a vast, empty darkness in their wake, giving the lonely stars plenty of room to cast their eerie white light down on the ice. Not even a slight breeze whipped the water into waves; the forlorn blocks of ice drifted aimlessly among frostbitten and bloodied corpses, the shadows, the lifeless shells, of the soldiers – the humans – they once were. He didn’t know how many of these barely recognisable bodies they would be able to recover for identification and burial, if they attempted it at all. He knew some were lost already, pulled by the strong tides of the storm and their heavy armour and weapons deep into the bottomless unknown.

In the midst of the battle with both the enemy army and the elements, he had lost his sense of direction. And part of his arm. He had no idea where he was, other than that he was on what they called the Ice Road, the wide pathway of glistening cold solid water that never melted. All he knew as that if he had any chance of surviving, he had to move, before he froze, before he bled to death.

His echoing breaths were probably the only breaths in this stillness for miles around as he pushed himself to his one good foot with his longbow, gripped tightly by fingers far past shivering. It was a desolate place, the Ice Road, even without the atmosphere of death that lingered, even before the battle, in the air. He wondered vaguely, as a frozen body – face-up in the water, mouth and eyes wide open in a final expression of terror and despair – bobbed against the edge of the Ice Road, whether anyone else had survived this long.

It was doubtful.

Step. Step. Step. Pain. Pain. Pain.

Men littered the road, like toys abandoned by a spoiled, careless child who had spilled cherry juice over the white carpet. It was the blood of friends, the blood of enemies, the blood of strangers that stained this white carpet. His mind was numb; he could spare no energy on thought, as with every strained breath, he felt what was left of his arm throbbing and leaking lifeblood, he felt his injured leg crying out at every half-step, he felt life’s hourglass ticking by. Ticking, ticking, ticking. There was no sense of time here, but hours had surely passed. The darkness and the ice were never-ending.

It was one of those nightmares that you just couldn’t escape; no matter how far and how long you walked, the whole of empty eternity still stretched before you. In the midst of a frigid Northern winter, in pain, he knew he should not reach the end of his journey. He finally became aware that he wouldn’t be able to move his remaining hand from his longbow if he tried, so hard were his fingers frozen to it for support as he limped on. But he would die out here whether he was attached to his makeshift crutch or not. It was unimportant and he forgot it in moments; his laboured breathing, painfully loud in the painful silence, fogged his head so that if ever he looked back, all he would remember was ice and blood and a blur of pain, pain, pain.

At one point, he realised he was exhausted. Starving. Suffering from blood loss. But stopping was not an option. If he stopped, he would only be able wait to die. Moving did not make enough warmth to do battle with the cold, but it would be so much worse if he simply sat and let it get to him. He would die on his own two feet, fighting for life, whether one ankle was broken and half-slashed to pieces or not. He returned to his ghostly thoughtlessness.

In the end, he didn’t realise he had reached the first Northern village until he had almost walked straight through it. So focussed on moving forward, no matter the speed or lack thereof, was his brain that he had not even registered that there had not been a trace of war’s destructions since a mile and a half ago. He hobbled to the nearest house and knocked on the door, and collapsed on its opening.

His last thought was that his mind must be deceiving him.