I’m taking a course on Novel Writing. This was written as a bit of homework to practice showing, not telling.
The man to his left fell, chestplate ferociously torn through, and Ulrich seized his chance, falling with him. He let his legs go limp, let his arms ragdoll around him, flung his head back as though he too had been struck. The dead weight of his armour pulled him uncontrollably downward, and the metal heel of some poor fallen soul rushed up to meet his nose. Crack! Blood. Tears. But… alive.
The men behind simply ran over him. He was one more body, one more brother who, by his sacrifice, gave them purchase on the boggy ground and eased their climb up the hill. Each foot on his back forced more air from his lungs, submerged him further in the deep mud, stopped him taking another breath. In spite of his panic, Ulrich maintained sense enough not to move. Only when several seconds had passed without a single boot on his back did he angle his broken nose and mud-filled mouth to breathe again. The air was thick with smoke and sulphur and iron and shit, and the pops of enemy hand cannons, the wails of wounded men, the brays of dying horses.
Fuck Sigismund. If Sigismund wanted war, if the Pope wanted war, let them fight it themselves. The Hussites were armed with pistoles and their pockets were laden with enough lead to cut through every Praguer fool enough to charge them, and charging them was the order. Well, Sigismund certainly wasn’t so stupid – he had the good sense to fight his wars from a fireside, fat and drunk. And Ulrich was drowning in shit, starving, afraid, cold, and in pain. Fuck Sigismund.
Sleepless and soaked in cold sweat, Ulrich had spent last night planning. Desertion was not an option – or, if it was, it was an option only for braver men than he. It was a capital offence, and avoiding death was the object of desertion. But death in battle seemed inevitable. The choice then was to run and be hanged, or charge and be shot. But as he lay awake on a thin pile of straw, stones digging into the small of his back, a new idea had taken hold. Not run or charge; charge then run. Any man marching into battle might be expected to never return.
He pushed himself up ever so slightly, blinking away tears, the better to see ahead. Atop the hill stood an old wooden fortification, sturdy and uncomplicated, waves of charging crusaders crashing upon it. From on high, Hussites took shots with handgonnes and crossbows. They fired with abandon, and where shots went astray another was close behind. Soldiers in full plate were falling quickly under the barrage. Cavalrymen were being flung by terrified mounts.
Slowly, praying to be noticed by neither friend nor foe, Ulrich unbuckled what he could of his heavy metal armour. He freed his arms, then found a small blade sheathed at his waist and cut the leather straps holding his chestplate, then his leg armour. Lighter, more nimble, he was able now to scramble across the battlefield, grabbing at stones and beards and caparisons, anything his hands could grasp to drag his prone figure across the battlefield. He need not have moved so gingerly; the Hussites were too busy killing, and the crusaders too busy dying, to pay attention to one fleeing coward.
Some distance from the fortification, at the bottom of the hill, stood a trembling horse, saddled and riderless. Ulrich did not pause to imagine its owner’s fate, but climbed atop and kicked, urging it on. Only too happy to be leaving, the horse carried him away from the battle at a gallop, until the screams were quieted and the fields smelled sweet again and Prague grew small behind. Ulrich bent close to the horse’s neck, wiping his bleeding nose on the sleeve of his gambeson. Holding tight, he dug in his heels. Fuck Sigismund.
Matthew Weldon's Dangerous Thoughts 