Spontanéité

Miracles 🔹 snapshot

There are horses screaming, horses whinnying, men and women roaring, shrieking, wailing. So many yells. So many screams. They continue on and on in the silence they have left behind. The silence is thick. It is heavy, like the fog that hangs low over the mountains of the Shadows. And it reeks. The stench of blood, death and all kinds of waste matter smeared across the earth littered with corpses human and horse is overpowering. The same odour coats some of the living too, some of the soon-to-be-dead. They break the silence with their gasps, their moans, their whimpered last prayers and curses directed at gods with eyes but no sight, ears but no hearing, mouths but no voices, noses but no breath.

Thousands. There are thousands dead, some hundreds in the process of dying, crawling, limping, dragging themselves through the furrowed dirt to say their final words to the dead or fellow dying. There are tears and whispered gasping sobs that don't linger long in the invisible smog. Swords, knives, daggers, bows, empty quivers strewn across the ground. Scattered pieces of armour and cloth, stained, ripped, broken. Chariots empty and limp with no horses or riders.

An eerie stillness rests over this battlefield.

But there are voices and noises still, carried by the swirling Airs.

Far behind this place, beyond the encampment of the Wandering Lions' Realm, past the first cluster of trees, the distant whisper of children's uninhibited laughter. True laughter. Far beyond this battlefield, far away, the low rumble of chariot wheels and horseshoes, like approaching rolling thunder.

Is this surrender? Is this a truce? Or more troops?

The blood flow will not slow, will not thin, will not waver in its torrent. My blood. The deep red that runs through my body with each beat of the heart in my chest, shielded by no armour. Flesh and bones and skin. Cloth. Leather. That is all. Clothing bloodstained and muddied.

The other Guards stand alert, spread out across this plain and no fewer in number than before the Children of the Earth came. Save for one. The one sent as herald.

Miracles were worked here. I live. We live. We all. There were troops with us, troops not of our Realm and not Pack. There are Pack members here too, wandering slowly among the wounded and dead. The Children of the Airs with their healers will be here very soon. Yes, there were troops. Golden armour, rich blood-red cloths like wings as they fought with weapons I've never seen before. Miracles.

"Do you think they come in hostility? Or in peace?"

I shift my stance, straighten, fingers flexing. "We will find out." The herald had better return, alive still.

Some of the Pack are moving with some purpose now, driven by the stench and by the need to do something while they wait the oncoming thunder. Their skin and armour already smudged with blood, dirt and waste, they collect strewn objects- broken armour, discarded blades, bows, arrows, strips of cloth- and begin gathering them in small piles.

Shocked or sorrowful murmurs signal the presence of Children of the Airs who have descended from the Citadel to help where they can. "How many of the Pack are-"

"None dead."

I turn to look at the man, a healer, I assume, as his eyebrows furrow and his mouth parts. "None dead?" he repeats slowly. His eyes flick between me and the speaker, the younger woman at my side.

"Not one," she replies simply. She smiles at the expression on his face. "You don't look like you believe me."

He coughs. "Well, that can't be a surprise. You can't be serious."

Her eyes narrow just slightly, her gaze sharpening. "There is not one of our People dead," she says, each word clipped and deliberate.

He looks like he's about to respond, so I speak before he can. "Look around you, healer. Help the others." I turn, looking straight ahead. Not long now before the troops come into clear view. "Every Wanderer here lives. Every Pack member who fought with us live."