Icarus's blog: "Augurs, Martyrs, and Agnostics"

"At first I just wanted to run-" no one likes hearing a story about inglorious retreat
"I wanted to take what little blood I had and spend it as far away from those monsters as I could"
"The rain was coming down in big, thick sheets, my feet could barely hold ground, but I stomped and drove myself as hard as I could to the artillery line"
He remembered flinging off armor, packs, belts and straps, he remembered the sharp severed sting of torn muscles and open wounds as he plowed through the downpour, waving his arms like some wild, gangly upright bird shooing foxes from a downed nest.

A shot was fired and he felt wobbly, forceful air rip by his head- that's when a fatal flaw in his plot had come to his attention.
The regular army riflemen and canoneers had no idea who he was, or why they should help him.

"When I reached the line, they were just setting up for the morning's first bombardment, the riflemen were on high alert expecting raids or sabotage, so needless to say when they saw a conspicuous figure charging straight at them gesturing strangely, and failing to identify himself, someone took the proper initiative to fire, for a minute I was sure they'd put me down just to be on the safe side"

"In the good old days, if a mercenary fell under friendly fire it was just one less swordhand to compensate.-
But those days have passed, shorthanding mercenaries had become a bit of a frowned upon practice in my time, after the formation of guilds, houses, and banners of our own, we started to learn contracts, to read, write and negotiate, we were more than skulking brigands wielding a rusty sword- a lot of us were former rank and file army, even officers of foreign nations- so we often had our contract set to formally compensate us in our deaths at a greater price than our survival, even the folk without wives, families, and plowshares. We'd usually just have our wills paid to a contractor, or a house, mutual protection and collective bargaining kept thousands of us from being murdered after service. Especially when our stake was double in death-
I was terrified that once I reached that firing line I would be cut down and erased, but my contract was still on me, as was my mark-"
Byron held up his wrist, pulled back the cuff of his tattered shirt, revealing a spidery, faded brand.
"When I caught my breath-"
"Wait- what does that mean?" Piped one of the older children, poking at his tattoo.

Byron rolled back his sleeve and held the mark out clearly and deliberately for all to see.
"It was to identify us as mercenaries in death, if we lost our contract, or no other representative was there to identify our bodies, we bore the mark of our house, often our enemies would turn in unclaimed bodies just so the force that hired us would have to pay our contract, I heard some houses offer a bounty for the return of their own fallen men just so we'd have fewer disappearances but... that can be a dangerous practice too"
"why?"

"If you knew someone would pay for my body, just for this scribble on my arm- and you were a baaaaad man, wouldn't you want to kill me for the reward?"
"Nuh uh! That's wrong" chimed in one of the groundling girls, swaying uncomfortably at the memory of a misdeed.
"It is, but if you could just tell a stranger that you -found- me like this, and you still got paid, who's going to get you in trouble?" That got some of the adults uncomfortable, and a lot of the children confused.

"the important thing was that the shot that nearly took my head off my shoulders was an accident- the soldier was chided, and I halted dead in my tracks while the razormen weren't far behind, I could either gasp an explanation over the rain and up a foothill, or I could keep running-"

Unarmed, and unshielded, Byron stormed the foothill

"HALT!"
"Identify yourself!"
"Stop or we'll f- and that was all the confusion those young, drenched soldiers could take, a cascade of bullets and powder clouds went off, I was caught here-"
He pulled up his shirt over his left hip where a large, scorched cicular scar had formed, and pulled the collar down where a similar wound had formed between his neck and collar.
"and I fell down that wet, muddy hill as the giants were coming over the bend, I don't know if they understood the sound of gunfire, or if they knew it from thunder, but they seemed intent on crushing every bone in my body, I didn't know how long it would take for the riflemen to reload
I didn't care, the bullets striking me were enough to knock me down, and I was sure I had lost more blood than I knew I had-"

He remembered watching his fingers twitch uselessly, how his legs refused to stand him back up
and the all encompassing, cold, bitter pain of his being
ending.

"I watched as the wet world became blurry and melted into a fuzz of noise and anger- I think I saw one of the giant, spiked, smoky men getting ready to crush my head when I heard a bang, and his body went flying off in an explosion of dark smoke and hot pieces of metal sprinkling on my face against the cold rain

after that there was nothing."

The sensation of oblivion was absolute. The oppression of pain and cold was empty, the torrent of the heavens was parched, and he was left light, bodiless and unaware.