Andur gazed across the ravaged battleground and felt the last of his rage seep away into the
bloodied ground. Above him the black-garbed ravens darkened the autumn sky calling harsh
tidings of death and destruction. In lowering flocks they flapped and settled upon the
mangled and still twitching corpses of the battle just recently won. Picking up a stone, the
bronze and leather-clad plainsman-warrior at his side drew back his arm to shie the stone at
the scavenging birds, but Andur’s voice stayed his hand.
“Leave them. They do no harm and much good, besides they will save us the chore of
burying them…”
The blood-splattered plainsman nodded and let the stone drop soundlessly into the grass by
his feet. “What of the others?” he asked, remembering how the remaining Serat had fled into
the vastness of the Havart plains which bounded the Trident Range’s foothills.
Andur shook his head, “The army is in no fit condition to follow them. Let them go. I am
done with war.” Slowly and stiffly he removed his mud-splattered steel helmet and mail coif,
and pulling from his head the rust and blood stained arming cap, finally shook his dirty blond
braids free. Wearily he wiped the blood of his enemy from his face with the back of his hand
and sheathed his sword in the wood and leather scabbard. Gazing once more across the
battlefield and the circling ravens he sighed heavily and turned away from the carnage to
gaze instead at the army regrouping at his back. After making sure that his orders were being
followed, he turned again to the west and his companion’s silent contemplation of the death
that lay strewn before them.
“It is all over Erike,” Andur said at last, “The remaining Serat flee. Let the wolves pick off
what is left of the enemy. I am bone-weary of blood and battle. We have a land to cleanse
now.”
“Aye Warleader,” replied the other, removing his blood splattered leather gauntlets, “We
surely have much work ahead of us.”
Slowly, singly, and then in groups, the provinces rag-tag army rejoined their Warleader at
the camp. Andur regretfully noted the many missing soldiers—dozens of men he had only
just begun to name as friends before the months of battle had taken their lives. As soon as
word filtered back to the towns, there would be many widows and mothers mourning their
dead. Although this victory had come at great loss, a defeat would not have been imaginable.
If the Serat had taken the field and the day, there would have not been a person left alive. Not
one of his soldiers, or any of the people of the province of Havart guarding the great walled
towns would have been spared death by burning, which was the Serat punishment for
rebellion and disobedience. In truth the province would have died upon their defeat.
This had been the final battle in a rebellion that had lasted ten months. First the small
outlying villages had been retaken. Then as the rebel army had doubled, then tripled in size
from the growing intake of peasant soldiers, the major towns had fallen one by one after
several protracted sieges. With the occupying soldiers under siege by the rebel forces, the
normally placid townsfolk had taken up arms and begun to harass the Serat guard. Facing
enemies from within and without, the Serat finally surrendered and were imprisoned in the
same dungeons and cells that rebellious citizens had only recently vacated.
