Chapter 28 #2
Another came in from the side.
She turned into him, grabbed his wrist, drove her knee into his stomach. He grunted, doubled over. She buried her blade in his ribs. He folded around it, breath catching in a wet rattle.
She pulled free, and a leaden weight struck her back hard.
She hit the ground flat, ribs jarred. A man crashed atop her, a knife in hand, driving it down toward her throat. The blade inched closer. She couldn’t move her legs. Couldn’t breathe.
She jerked her head sideways, then snapped it up, smashing it into his nose. He grunted, faltered.
She twisted, got her arm free, elbowed his throat. He rolled off, coughing. She scrambled to her knees, mud in her teeth, vision blurring.
Another came.
He surged forward, all muscle and armor. She threw up her sword just in time; the hit stung to the bone. He caught her collar and slammed her into the tree. Her head cracked, ribs howling.
“You’re just a girl,” he dumbly offered.
She spat blood into his face and stabbed up under his jaw. The blade lodged deep, her arm trembling with the force of it. He twitched. Dropped.
Behind her, another sound. She turned.
One of them had reached Death, knocked him to the ground. Death raised a hand, but the man kicked it away.
Ilys charged. She tackled him low, driving them both into the mud. They rolled. She came out on top, straddling him, sword in both hands.
She didn’t speak. She drove the blade into his chest.
Once.
Twice.
A third time.
Only then did he stop moving. The field fell quiet. Only the wind remained.
Ilys stood, covered in blood and mud. Her hair stuck to her face, her breath ragged. Her sword sagged in her hand.
Death sat slumped nearby, his coat torn, blood running from a cut at his brow. One glove gone. His eyes met hers, hollow with shame.
“You,” he began, voice hoarse, “you should not have done that.”
She turned to him, furious. “And you,” she accused, voice low, “should be a god.”
He looked away. The field did not answer. The dead did not rise.
She wiped her blade on the grass, then walked to him and held out her hand.
He took it, her grip iron.
Without a word, Ilys mounted Spire, though her ribs protested with each breath and her left arm throbbed from shoulder to wrist. Blood caked her fingers where she hadn’t noticed a cut, and her cloak was heavy with it, both hers and others.
She didn’t bother wiping her face. She’d take the discarded, muddied veil and hide.
Hide from the bodies. Hide from Death. Hide from herself.
They did not speak as they crested to where the trees gave way again, and the forest spilled them into a second field, wider and infinitely worse. The battlefield opened before them like a hollowed body, gutted and laid bare.
Ilys rode ahead, her fingers white-knuckled around Spire’s reins, the bones in her side shifting with every jolt.
Her breath came shallow, each inhale scraping the inside of her chest. Crows had already descended, their black wings flickering like scattered ink across the field, tearing into whatever flesh had been left unclaimed, starved and greedy.
The mud had been churned into foul sludge with the rain that had fallen and the blood that had spilled.
It sucked at the hooves of her steed, clinging to Spire’s legs as they moved forward.
Men lay where they had fallen, their armor dented, their bodies twisted in unnatural angles.
Some still clutched their weapons, fingers locked around hilts.
Others had been stripped, their bodies left bare and crumpled, uniforms stolen by the desperate or the victorious.
A man lay on his back, his throat cut so deeply that his head had nearly separated from his body, the gash yawning dark against his pale flesh.
His uniform soaked through with blood, the crest of Tyl barely visible beneath the gore.
A soldier of Annon knelt beside him, his body slumped forward, dying in prayer, a spearhead still buried in his side.
She passed another body, a boy—too young, her mind supplied distantly—whose helm had fallen from his head to reveal hair matted with blood.
His eyes were open, glassy, fixed on the sky that no longer cared for him.
His ribs had been caved in, his breastplate crushed beneath a fallen horse that had died on top of him, its legs twisted, its mouth still stretched open in a frozen scream.
Ilys pet Spire, instinctually, reassuring, and begging the horse not to see.
Death revealed its full spectacle, all the malice and gore laid bare.
Ilys did not stop. She did not look away.
Another body, another ruin. A woman lay bound, her throat cut clean from ear to ear, blood dried black against her tunic. She hadn’t died in battle; this was no act of war, just a slower kind of violence. A cruelty left behind after the fighting had stopped.
Ilys’s stomach twisted, but she swallowed it down.
The battlefield stretched on, a mass grave in the making.
More bodies. Some alone, some tangled together, limbs entwined; even in death they clung to one another.
Some were headless, their skulls taken as trophies while their bodies were left faceless in the mud.
Some had been left to rot where they fell, others dragged into piles and set aflame.
Smoke still curled from the embers, the charred remnants barely distinguishable as human.
She guided Spire around a heap of corpses, stacked like logs, ribs bending beneath the crush. Some still wore their expressions of terror, mouths frozen in screams, eyes bulging from sockets that had begun to sink.
Rain leached the color from their uniforms, reduced their banners to rags, and scoured their flesh to what remained: blood, sinew, bone.
Death followed behind her, silent. He did not speak. He did not command nor call her to hurry. He let her see.
She could feel him watching. She rode on.
Ahead, more crows had gathered, their black wings glistening in the dull light, their beaks slick with the remnants of the feast they had been granted.
One tore at the flesh of a fallen man, pulling away a strip of skin, the sound wet, viscous.
Another hopped between the ribs of an exposed chest cavity, pecking at whatever soft parts remained.
She turned to Death, her voice sharp. “Where shall you collect?”
He sat atop his horse, still wrapped in his mortal body, his dark coat speckled with mud, his hair wind-tossed, his face a study in control.
His gaze swept the field before him. “It will come.”
Ilys swung down from Spire and her boots sank into the clinging mud. The battlefield smelled of blood, earth, iron, and rot. She threaded through the bodies without looking too long at any one of them.
Then she heard him.
Not all the bodies were still.
Further ahead, a man still lived, choking on wet breath.
Small mews of pain guided the pair to him.
He clutched at his stomach, intestines spilling through his fingers, dark and glistening, steam rising faintly from them in the cold.
He blinked at her as she passed, lips trembling, as if forming words took more effort than dying.
Each breath gurgled, blood rising in his chest. He lifted a shaking hand toward her, fingers spread in a plea.
“Please,” he rasped. He would not last long.
Ilys knelt beside him, unsheathing her blade and from behind her, Death shifted in his saddle. “Ilys.”
She ignored him.
The man’s eyes fluttered, unfocused, struggling to keep hold of the moment. His fingers twitched.
She gripped the hilt tighter. Her hand ached from where she’d slammed it into a man’s jaw less than an hour ago. She inhaled.
“Vasha,” she whispered, driving the blade home.
It ended in a breath. Relief left him first, then everything else. Blood welled up around the blade as she withdrew it, staining the mud beneath him.
“That is not your decision to make.” Death spoke low, edged with warning.
The air around them changed. Ilys turned her head just in time to see him change.
The mortal weight of him faded, his frame stretching, sharpening, settling into a shape not meant for this world. His coat billowed, his features refining into a cold and distant perfection. The space around him warped, the air bending to accommodate what could no longer be called a man.
He kept his eyes on the battlefield, on the bodies, on the souls rising loose from them.
Death moved with a reverence that Ilys had never quite understood, a quiet, practiced efficiency that spoke of repetition, done not once or twice but a thousand times over.
His steps were mesmeric, as though he could have walked this battlefield blind and still known exactly where to go.
He approached each body with the same quiet solemnity, pausing only for a breath before moving on.
A transition from life to death, from presence to absence.
Ilys watched, her fingers brushing idly at the air where the souls had passed, her hand following the invisible path of what lingered for only a moment before vanishing.
A soldier lay sprawled across the mud, his face slack, his eyes dull, a deep wound carved through his side.
His body reposed, yet Death stopped beside him, tilting his head, listening.
Then, he raised a hand, fingers barely moving, and a tide of energy rolled through.
The soldier’s body sagged, energy releasing from it, rising in a way that barely caught the light before fading entirely.
Death bowed his head, murmuring words Ilys could not hear.
Then, he moved to the next.
Death knelt beside a woman, her fingers curled in the fabric of her ruined tunic and a streak of dried blood trailing from the corner of her mouth.
He lifted his hand just enough to stir, to loosen.
Though her lungs no longer worked, the woman sighed, her body slackening as her soul slipped free, disappearing into the air like breath on a cold morning.
His lips moved again in a whisper too soft for Ilys to catch.
Again and again, he repeated this ritual, the same careful movements, the same hushed words. They moved through the twisted bodies of Annon and Tyl alike, through the remnants of a war that had left a gaping wound in its wake.
A dying man groaned softly, his chest rising and falling in shallow, uneven breaths. Ilys paused, watching as Death knelt beside him, lowering his head, listening. The man’s lips barely moved, the faintest ghost of speech escaping before his body shuddered and went still.
Death raised his hand, calling on his power. The shift in the air came like a sigh. Finally, it seemed to say. Finally.
Ilys closed her eyes briefly, pressing her fingers to her brow. The last soul slipped free, and the battlefield settled once more.
Death straightened, his dark coat grazing the bloodied earth, his gaze lifting beyond the ruin before him.
He inhaled deeply and as he did, the field itself seemed to pull inward.
Every body, every lifeless form, what remained within them gave way on a final exhale, a quiet surrender.
Vitality drained from flesh, pouring like unseen threads into his embrace, drawn back into whatever lay beyond the Veil.
The bodies, now emptied, seemed somehow less than before, their presence dulled, their fingerprint upon the world diminishing with the last of what had tethered them here.
Death stood at the center of it all, his form unmoved
"Is it done?" she asked, her voice softer than she had intended.
He glanced at her, his dark eyes smooth as still water: reflective, yet withholding.
"Let us leave,” he ordered.
Neither looked back.