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He's all and he is more.	By : DarklingWillow Category: M through R > The Old Guard Views: 776 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own The Old Guard movie (or comics), and I do not make any profit from this writing.

Chapter List
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Chapter 3.

            Yusuf could see tears streaming down the Frank’s cheeks as they stepped over the body of a young boy. The young boy who would bring water from the well for Yusuf and his men, when they were in camp. A bubbly little kid, with a fantastical imagination, and a smart mouth on him. He had collected discarded bits of ruined lamellar and told Yusuf that he had plans of creating an armour of his own, so he could fight in the war as well. And here he was, dead on the battlefield, collateral damage, a sacrifice of war.
            Yusuf screamed in anger, in sorrow, in confusion, and turned from defence to offense, swinging his sword wildly at the stinking barbarian, this devil from the cold north who had come here to murder the children of his people.

            Yusuf could feel the hot tears scalding his cheeks as he tripped over even more women and children; they had been corralled here, chased here like prey, and then cut down without any mercy.
            How could these pale faced demons be so cruel?
            How dared this pale faced devil cry at the sight of the dead children of Yusuf’s people? These were not his people, these were not Franks, these were children. Women, and children.

            The Frank’s green-grey eyes welled with more tears as they fought on, and Yusuf could feel that somehow, they were both pulling their strikes now. Somehow the fight was going out of them. Somehow it was beginning to seem so meaningless.

            No, it could not be meaningless. Yusuf looked down at yet another dead child and roared in fury, swinging his sword under the young Frank’s arm as he ducked to the side.
            He felt his sword slide through the chainmail, which was more or less in tatters now, and find soft flesh, and then Yusuf twisted his sword and pressed forward.

            He felt the hot steel of the Frank’s sword slide into his chest, pierce his lung. It felt almost welcome now, as if it belonged there.

            “You heartless barbarian,” Yusuf growled, ignoring the blood filling his lungs again. “You disgusting heathen.”

            The young Frank chuckled, blood foaming at his lips, and he pushed forward, into Yusuf’s sword, pressing his own sword deeper into Yusuf’s body. Yusuf did not care anymore. He would die, and he would rise, and they would continue this game for the rest of eternity. Just the two of them, here, among the bodies, for all of time.

            “I don’t murder children,” the Frank said in Latin, his eyes shining with tears. “I only kill soldiers. And you.” The Frank let go of his sword with one hand and reached up to wrap his arm around Yusuf’s neck, pulling him closer, embracing him tight. “I am sorry. I am sorry, for all of this. This is not right,” he continued in Latin, leaning his head forward as blood flowed freely from his mouth.

            “It is not right,” Yusuf agreed as he felt his knees give out, and he wrapped one arm around the young Frank’s back, leaning his head forwards until their foreheads were touching.
            At least he would not die alone. At least, they would have each other as they lay dying.

            Yusuf looked up with tear filled eyes as they sank to the ground, embracing, impaled on each other’s sword, yet again. They were beautiful, those light green-grey eyes. So full of emotion, of passion. Of truth. Yusuf saw it now. This man would never stoop so low as to murder children and women, not even in the frenzy of war. He would be the one who would let the women and the children flee. He would not strike a man as he lay defenceless on the ground. He had honour.
With his dying breath, Yusuf lifted his head and pressed a kiss to the man’s forehead, and whispered, “Oh, Allah, forgive him.”
            In the same moment, he heard the Frank with those beautiful green-grey eyes whisper a wish for God to forgive Yusuf.

            Yusuf awoke to agony, the sword through his body making him feel as if his whole body was on fire. Yet the first thing that met his eyes was the young Frank’s face, peaceful in death.
            Had he done it? Had he killed the Frank, finally? He hoped not.

            Yusuf gave a small start, and pushed harshly backwards, making the Frank’s sword move in his wound. Coughing and gagging Yusuf got his arm and his leg under himself and pushed away again, making the sword slide out of his wound, and he staggered a little as he rose to his feet. With an unceremonious yank he pulled his own sword out of the Frank’s body and sat down on a tumbled down part of the retaining wall, facing the Frank, catching his breath.

            A moment or two later the young Frank gasped, and coughed, blinking his eyes open and with a start he sat up, reclined back against the water trough.

            They sat like that for what felt like hours, even though Yusuf only counted about a dozen breaths. Then he looked to the dark village where he could still hear shouts and clashes of steel, the battle was still going on, somewhere in the depths of the stronghold. Yusuf looked back at the fallen Frank and lifted his hand. The Frank gave another start at the sudden movement, clutching his sword tighter, which made Yusuf grin a little bit.

            “Yusuf,” he said, patting himself on the chest, then he held his hand out, palm up to the Frank and gestured at him.
            The Frank did not seem to understand, just stared at him dumbly.
            Yusuf waved his hand, palm up, at the man again, then laid his hand on his chest, and repeated, a little clearer, “Yusuf.”

            “Yussuv?” the young Frank said, a questioning look on his face.
            “Yusuf,” he confirmed with a small smile, and then nodded at the young Frank.

            He hesitated, licked his lips, and looked around them, then looked back up at Yusuf.
            “Nicolò,” he said, and patted himself on the chest with his hand.
            “Nic…olò?” Yusuf repeated slowly, halting, the word unfamiliar, even if the language was obviously of the Latin origin.
            “Nicolò,” the Frank repeated with a small grin, his eyes clearer now, seemed as if he was seeing Yusuf clearly for the first time.

            Yusuf put his sword on his knees, and sighed, looked up at the village again, listened to the distant sounds of battle, waning battle; his side had lost the stronghold. Soon, he would be the only remaining Arab within these walls. Yusuf chuckled to himself. He would be the only one, and he could not die. What would the smelly Franks do to him, when they returned here, and found him deathless?
            Yusuf turned to look at the young Frank who was standing up, shaking his legs to wake himself up. Yusuf chuckled again and then started to laugh, softly.

            The young Frank, Nicolò, looked at him, gave him a concerned look. But then he too lifted his head to listen to the sounds of the last Arabs being killed in battle, the final defenders being slain. And he looked at Yusuf again, and he too began to laugh.

            He spoke, but it was not in Latin, so Yusuf did not understand it fully. Something about death and finding.
            They were five for five deaths now. They were even. They could not die. What was there to do, other than continue killing each other, other than hope that the next time would be the last time?

            Yusuf stopped laughing and looked up at Nicolò.
            “I do not want you to die,” he said, hoped that he had recalled his Latin correctly.
            Nicolò looked at him. Nodded his head.
            “I don’t want you to die, either,” he said quietly, seemed to think that Yusuf could not understand him. “There is no point to this. These are children,” Nicolò continued, waved his hand at the ground behind Yusuf.
            Yusuf did not want to look around. He knew there were children there. He had already seen them.

            “There is no point. There never was,” Yusuf answered, and looked down at his sword. “I have seen you in my dreams,” he continued in Arabic, knowing that Nicolò did not understand him.

            “I see you in my dreams too,” Nicolò answered in Latin.
            Yusuf gasped and looked up with wide eyes, too shocked to answer.
            “It feels…” Nicolò tried to say, but then they heard shouting from between the buildings. Nicolò gasped, and before Yusuf knew who had shouted Nicolò was on him, the long sword had run him through, and he was falling backwards, into the pile of bodies on the other side of the crumbling wall.

            “Stay still, play dead, then use the darkness to steal away,” Nicolò whispered as he fell on top of Yusuf.
            Yusuf tried to speak, but all that came out was the gurgling of blood in his throat.
            “Play dead,” Nicolò repeated, and then he leaned down all the way, and pressed his lips to Yusuf’s lips.

            The feeling was so sudden, and so short, that Yusuf did not have time to process it before life slipped from his grasp again. The darkness came, and the nothingness that held him weightless.
It had happened too fast. He had not had time to warn Nicolò.
And now, it was too late.

Nicolò wiped the blood from his lips and rose up, pulling his sword from Yusuf’s body. He looked down at the dead Saracen, his dead Saracen.
Why had he kissed him? Why had he been so overwhelmed with yearning that he had decided to kiss him? He was trying to save Yusuf’s life, not end his own.
            Nicolò turned to face his fellow Crusaders as they came walking out of the narrow street at the other end of the gardens, and with a shout he walked towards them. Someone made a joke about Nicolò playing with the bodies, and Nicolò shouted back that he had chased one last Saracen into the gardens, had killed him trying to play dead amongst the corpses.
            Nicolò drew a sharp breath, feeling breathless, a tightening in his chest, a strange, loose feeling in his stomach. He felt his sword arm weaken, and he stumbled. His fellow Crusaders came running, shouting, yelling at him whether he was alright. Nicolò tried to reassure them that he was fine, that he was just tired from fighting, but the words did not seem to find enough air to come out. His sword fell from limp fingers, and he stumbled again as his men grabbed him.
            Pain flared through Nicolò’s body as one of his fellow soldiers pressed the front of his stomach. Nicolò looked down, saw his guts trying to spill free.
            Yusuf had had his sword on his knees. He must have thought that Nicolò was attacking him, trying to kill him again, betraying him. He had lifted the sword in his defence. He had sliced open Nicolò’s abdomen.

He was made of pain as the four soldiers crowded around him, lifted him up, carried him towards the gate, ripping cloth from his tunic to try and stop his guts from spilling out.
  The physician was overwhelmed, yelling and shouting, running between men, as he tried to save those that were not too badly wounded. He took one look at Nicolò, shook his head, and pointed to the side of the tent, where dozens of men lay dying, alone and cold.

Nicolò moaned, and his saviours took it as final prayers. He moaned, and his saviours took it as pleas to not forsake him. He moaned again and felt death take him, as the four men knelt around him.
The feeling of floating in nothingness was brief this time. Nicolò blinked his eyes open, hoping that he was alone, begging God to let him be alone amongst the dead. But he was not. The four soldiers were still kneeling around him, praying, praying for his soul. Then one of them opened his eyes, cried out, cursed.

It did not take long before Nicolò was on his knees, in chains, before their commander. He knew their commander. He was from Genova as well. He had been friendly with Nicolò’s father. He had known Nicolò as a child. He had never forgiven Nicolò for surviving that fever, when his own daughter, his only child, had passed away.
The four soldiers insisted that they had seen Nicolò rise from the dead. They were not believed. Nicolò tried to plead that he had only been exhausted, that he had been weak from the long fight with that one rogue Saracen, but the four insisted. They insisted until the commander’s second in command declared,
“There is only one way to settle this.” And then he had pulled out a dagger and sliced Nicolò’s throat open.
While Nicolò bled to death into the commander’s floor rug he heard them all yelling at each other.

When he came back, they were all quiet. Too quiet.
The priest was called, told what had happened. When he did not believe them, the second in command repeated his demonstration. Nicolò came to, being held upright on his knees by his hair. He yelled in pain and promised he would kill the second in command.
The priest crossed himself and pulled the commander aside, whispering furtively. When they returned, the judgement was no less than Nicolò expected.
He was no saint, nor was he returned from death by God, for he bore no stigmata. He was a demon, a devil, a foul defiler of their faith.
They would behead him before dawn.

            Yusuf waited. When he came back to life, he drew measured breaths, slow and steady, kept his eyes on the stars overhead. He waited. Waited until he heard no more sounds of battle, no more sounds of pillaging. He waited until the village was full of the sounds of an army returning to camp, getting ready for the night. Then he rolled over, grabbed his sword, and the sword that Nicolò had dropped, and crawled into the darkness.
            He had been camped in this village for months. He knew which houses had still been lived in, which ones had been abandoned completely. As quiet as he physically could, he found his way into a small house at the far edge of the village, away from the gates. He found clothes that would fit him, he found some provisions, and most of all, he found water.

            He drank some, then found cloths to wash the blood off himself. He cleaned himself as best he could in the darkness, then packed what he could of clothes and provisions into a pack that he found in the bedroom. He carefully cut apart the black cloak of the woman who had lived there and wrapped himself in the fabric so he would be even less visible in the night.
            He had to find Nicolò.
Nicolò had forgotten about the sword on Yusuf’s knees when he had fallen on top of him, to make it seem as if he was killing Yusuf in a fight, when those soldiers had come. Yusuf had not meant to do it, but the fall had caused his sword to slice into Nicolò’s body, and the last he had seen was Nicolò’s fellow soldiers trying to hold his guts inside him. They would find out about Nicolò’s immortality. And given their religious zealotry, Yusuf could not imagine that they would see it as a good thing.

            Yusuf slipped from the house, silent as a ghost, and made his way through the village, deftly avoiding Franks as he went. Their camp just inside the main gate was chaotic, so it was easy for him to slip around the periphery in an attempt to find Nicolò.
            It was only luck that brought him to the gate, as Nicolò was dragged through the gate by the four soldiers who had saved him. Their commander was in the lead, along with his second, and their holy man.
            Allah was gracious and allowed Yusuf to slip out of the main gate unseen, and steal into the night, keeping his eyes on the men who were dragging Nicolò away from the village.
            Just outside the camp that had risen outside the gate of the village the Franks had dug a long trench, and were busy laying their dead in there, side by side, wrapped in blood stained sheets. A little further away, there was another trench, and there they were busy dumping the bodies of Yusuf’s fellow soldiers, the women, and the children of the village. There was no such ceremony for them. They were just dumped in any way they would go. The men were laughing, making crude gestures, making crude motions with the bodies as they worked.
            Yusuf whispered a quiet prayer for his dead, so they would be forgiven and welcomed into Paradise.

            At the edge of this trench, the Franks’ commander stopped, and they spoke briefly, the seven men who held his Nicolò. Then the second in command pulled his sword free, and the four soldiers held Nicolò tightly by the arms, making him bend forwards, exposing his neck.
            They could not be… It was impossible.

            Yusuf let out a silent cry of horror as the flickering steel cut through the night and Nicolò’s head fell to the ground. Blood spurted from his severed neck, and then his body went limp. The four soldiers laughed, congratulated each other, knelt by their holy man, and received his blessings. Their commander made some command, waved at the mass grave and then turned away to leave. Two of the soldiers picked up Nicolò’s body and tossed it into the grave at one end, but the second in command took Nicolò’s head and spat at the dead face, then stepped into the grave to place Nicolò’s head between his legs.

            Yusuf found himself a small hollow between some rocks and huddled down there for the wait. He could do nothing until the men stopped filling the grave. It should not take them long, there had not been that many villagers or Arab soldiers left in the village. He wrapped himself in his black cloak and smothered his sobs in the soft fabric.

His heart ached as the hours ticked by. He yearned for Nicolò’s green-grey eyes, and his small smile. He could not explain why.
Nicolò was his sworn enemy, a sweaty, smelly barbarian who had invaded his land, declared his religion and his people as barbaric, savage, and uncultured. These swine did not even bathe, and they called Yusuf’s people uncultured. And yet, his heart ached for that young Frank. Yusuf could still feel Nicolò’s lips on his own. The fire that had raged through him during that brief kiss. It had been transcendent; it had been as if he had touched Paradise on Earth. He needed to get Nicolò back.

The men finished covering the grave with a thin layer of sand before the dawn, just before the beginning of the darkest time of night. Then they hurried back to their camp, taking their torches with them.
Yusuf’s eyes were accustomed to the darkness of the night, and the faint light of the dying moon. He found the spot where those savages had thrown Nicolò’s body. It had not been deep, there had not been many bodies thrown on top of him.

Yusuf threw himself into the sand and clawed at it with his bare hands. He dug so fast and so hard that he could feel his fingernails tearing, ripping out of his skin. But he did not care. He would heal. All that mattered now was to find Nicolò. Find his Nicolò and carry him away from this accursed place. Carry him to safety.

It did not take long for him to come upon the bodies. They had already begun to smell, despite the chill of the night. By noon tomorrow the stench would be unbearable. Yusuf pushed aside the heavy bodies of men dressed in Arabic armour, groaning inwardly as his hands slipped in caked blood and innards that slipped free from their owners. He felt his despair rising as he did not see Nicolò.
Where was he?

After pulling and pushing bodies out of the way, digging some more, Yusuf saw him. The blood soaked white tunic bearing that hated red cross of the Franks. Their holy attire. Yusuf smothered a sob of relief and pushing aside the legs of a woman, he saw that Nicolò’s head was still there.
Why would that second do that? he wondered, as he noticed that Nicolò’s face was facing his ass. What kind of last insult was this?
Now was not the time for this, though. Yusuf grabbed the head and gently brushed the sand from the caramel coloured hair before he eased the head into the pouch he had found in the third house he had burgled. It meant he would have to leave behind some of the clothes he had stolen, but this was more precious cargo. Then he bent down and grabbed Nicolò’s legs and pulled. And pulled. How the hell could this skinny man be this heavy?

Yusuf groaned as he slowly, far too slowly, dragged Nicolò’s lifeless body out of the grave. He left it there for a few moments so he could roll the other bodies back into the hole he had created but did not bother with anything more. Let them believe that Nicolò had come back to life and crawled out of his grave. He whispered another quick prayer for the dead and turned back to Nicolò’s body.
Then it struck him. How was he going to get the body out of here? He could not risk staying here, as he tried to bring Nicolò back to life. They were too exposed here. And he could not carry him. The dead weight was too much.

Near the camp a horse whinnied, and Yusuf grinned. He dropped his bags where he stood, and slipped into the darkness again, silent as shadow.
It did not take him long to find a dark horse, and it took him even less time to get the horse saddled and to lead it into the darkness with him. Getting Nicolò’s body up on the horse proved to be the most difficult part, for the horse was tall, and Nicolò was heavy. But in the end Yusuf was on the horse and riding into the darkness of the desert night, carrying the weight of his affection with him.
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He's all and he is more.