Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [29]
“Meer, there’s a flat space, like, and it’s all covered with dead men. They’re not buried or anything. They do just lie there, and they be all puffy. And the birds do crawl all over them like ants. The birds keep fighting with each other, and that’s why they keep squalling and flying.”
“Indeed. “Meer’s voice was very thin but steady. “How many men?”
“Oh, lots and lots. They’re all human beings. Off to the north there’s an overturned wagon. It be all broken, and there’s someone really tall lying by it.”
“I hate to ask you this, lad, but can you bear to lead me there?”
“I’ll try.”
Fortunately they could skirt the edge of the battlefield rather than walk across it, but even so, Jahdo was caught by the horror and found himself staring at the corpses. He would never forget that sight, not as long as he lived, of bodies heaped and tumbled like firewood, broken, slashed, tangled, left there for wild things in a last gesture of contempt. Whenever the singers back in Cerr Cawnen had told lurid tales of battlefields, they’d always spoken of red blood and deathly silence. Here all the bodies lay gray and swollen, streaked with the black of dried blood or the dull maroon color of torn flesh where the birds were feeding. The field itself pulsed with life and noise as ants swarmed, ravens screamed and chattered, broke to fly only to circle and settle again, while under it all sounded the vast drone of thousands of flies.
“I think they were killed with swords. There lie hoof-prints all round, too, and a couple of dead horses, but only a couple. Oh, wait, here’s an arrow, just lying here.”
Although the shaft was broken, the point was mercifully clean. When Jahdo stooped down, he saw the tiny paw prints of foxes on the horribly moist ground—no doubt they crept up at night to share this banquet. He concentrated on the arrow, picked it up, and ran his fingers down the wood.
“I’ve never seen an arrow so long. When it were whole it must have been longer than my arm, and the feathers are from some kind of blue bird.”
“None of my people would loft a thing like that.” Meer was whispering. “Ah, evil, evil, evil come upon us!”
Jahdo wanted to agree, but he didn’t dare risk speaking for fear he’d sob aloud. Between them and the wagon lay a scatter of corpses, as if they were a few sticks of wood tossed in the eddy of this river of death. A young man lay on his back, his head tilted in an unnatural angle, his eyes pools of slime in a bloated gray face. The body of a comrade lay slung over his legs. Nearby lay an arm, torn clear off and as gray as stone, with the bone exposed and picked clean all down the wrist. Flies crawled between the fingers.
“Meer, watch out!” Jahdo’s voice came out all strangled. “Step round to your right.”
“Very well.” Meer was tapping with his stick, but gingerly, afraid no doubt of what he might touch. “Lad, what are these dead men wearing?”
“Some of them aren’t really dressed at all. The others have shirts with big sleeves and these leather vest things, and trousers that come all the way to their ankles, and there’s these thong things that tie them in.”
Meer whimpered in a way that said he recognized this garb.
They came at last to the overturned wagon and the enormous warrior stretched out beside it. At their approach a scatter of ravens shrieked and flew, but someone had dropped a cracked shield over the man’s face and folded his arms over his chest, too, with a cloak upon his hands, so that the birds had barely got a start on him. When Jahdo described these scant signs of respect, Meer made a long keening sound under his breath.
“What does that shield look like?”
“Well, it be wooden, and sort of egg-shaped, and whitewashed. In the middle there does lie this circle of metal with funny designs on it, and down at the bottom someone’s scratched this little picture that I guess is supposed to be a dragon.”
“A little more detail, if you please, about