The battlefield was silent.
Ash floated in the wind like mourning snow. Corpses, friend and foe, littered the ground. The Earl's army had been annihilated, their banners torn, their chain of command shattered. There were no survivors left to surrender.
It was finished. The war, the charge, the dying, it was all done.
Lumberling stood amid the wreckage, his cracked spear digging into the earth just to keep himself upright. Smoke stung his eyes, and every breath tasted of iron and ash. Around him, the wounded groaned, and medics moved swiftly among the fallen. Shade lay nearby, a web of blood drying across his dark carapace, mandibles twitching in exhaustion. Skitz slumped against a half-burnt log, one eye swollen shut, the other watching.
And then came footsteps, rhythmic, disciplined, alive.
