10.9

Jewel swept the fields with her flame as Father ordered.

It seemed wrong that men, horses and armor smelled little different under her fire than the shrubs that grew in the waste of a fallow field.

That there was hardly any difference between the way mens’ flesh burned under wyrmfire then the simple rotten posts and scraps she had rendered to dust for the Countess and her war council.

Why were they the same?

Shouldn't men fighting honorably in war smell differently than grass when they were felled?

She swept a third time but Father had stopped ordering her to fly over the fleeing men.

Sweeping over empty fields and fallen bodies, the torn and twisted landscape where Wizards had clashed.

The enemy lines were broken.

Had been crumbling since her opening pass.

The first strike had been against a tower that had been rising by sorcery during the battle.

A tower which had whispered to the earth and the stones around the line of the battlefield.

A single line of her flame had cut through that tower and the embankments and hills past it.

Leaving dust and crumbling stonework in its passing.

And from that first pass half the sorcery arrayed against them had faltered and stalled.

The whispers that had been running so subtly through all the valley silenced.

It left Jewel feeling sad.

But not just her, the very stones and grass around her cried in a way she had never heard before.

Mourned the quiet voice that had been whispering to them the entire time.

A lamenting wail that rose and fell through the air, through the earth, through the stones and trees. It washed over everything around Jewel and dragged on her thoughts, going back to the feathered wings sheared through and the blankly staring and gaping head of the Gryphons she had fully unleashed her wroth upon.

The valley was still ringing with the cries of the world at its loss.

At the wound of silence that Jewel had made when she toppled the tower.

Jewel needed no one to explain.

A Weird had died in this place.

The world would miss them.

And Jewel knew it was she that had slain it.

After her second pass where she confirmed that men and horse flesh absolutely did burn with the same scent as wood and fallow waste shrubs, any sorcerous support for Thurzó’s men vanished.

Not accompanied by the sucking wounded sorrow that had come when Jewel had struck one down.

No this was just the muted absence of sorcerous voices that opposed those on their side.

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Bereft this support, the Weirds and Wizards drove deep wedges and in many places on the line Knights and Lords broke and fled the field as if they were too youthful levies.

And without the Knights and Lords?

All but the most stalwart of warriors ran together as one panicked mass when the very blood in their veins might tear itself loose and strike them in defection to their enemies.

Jewel saw close to four hundred men melting away amidst a teeming mass of black cats wielding sharp shining knives in the dark. Ankles, thighs or groins cut through as the felines leapt through them.

The bodies vanished after they fell and were briefly covered by the river-like flow of black fur.

Father failed to order her to make another pass of Wyrmdoom and Jewel could not find it in herself to do anything but hover in the air.

The skies were theirs.

The enemy Gryphon Riders had fled shortly after the Wizards.

Jewel looked to her Father, she gave a cant to ask if she had missed another order.

But he replied in the negative and gestured to return to roost.

Jewel shook her head and waved out a negation. Pointed to the still teeming knots of battle and bloodshed even as the enemy was broken and fleeing the field.

Footmen were fighting.

Knights were charging down fleeing levy.

Some of their force were encircling and mustering at the still closed gates of the Fortress.

Wounded and dead were either being recovered or stripped for armor and valuables.

There was so much more she could do here.

But Father ordered more firmly that it was time for them to return to camp.

And Jewel could only look at the scattered lines where fleeing men had been cut down, or charges had failed.

From up here she could not really tell apart who was with Viznove or Zekhedge or from the forces of Thurzó. All were bodies, horse and man and the terribly torn and tumbled mess that showed where Gryphons and their riders had been thrown from the skies by their melee.

The battlefield was a contrast of pristine farmland, fields, the still risen hills that the Weird of Fortresses had made yet touched by grass.

And the patchwork tangled landscape that each particular Wizard had passed through.

Cobblestones and collapsed brickwork with strangely feline shadows cast amongst them where Fizzbunches had fought.

Pale barked trees unseasonably flush in red and golden yellow from saplings to elder heights where Euewyn had struck.

The stink of iron and burning blood where Jaksa the Red had slain men. Bodies torn in half, steaming hot or burnt black.

One field was strewn with bodies that looked as if the illustrations of a great war had been taken from the page and left tumbled among the grass and dirt.

The only sign they had been men was the very real and wet blood soaking the soil around them and the rends which showed once living flesh and bone beneath the painted parchment made of their skin and armor.

And then marking along the battle lines were three wide gashes of powdery ash where Jewel had released her Wyrmdoom.

Zephyrvam called sharply to get her attention and Father turned towards the camp.

Jewel followed.

Trying to focus away from it, trying to remember what she had learned when she was five. It was just like the harvest fields.

The men were simply wheat under her sickle.

Nothing more.

But it was so much harder than it had been to ignore the cries of the wheat

She was failing in her duty as a Daughter and Lady of Rochford.

This was what she was supposed to do.

What she had trained for.

It’s what would keep her and Rochford safe.

Though she was faltering now she would strive to do what was right going forward.

It was her Duty.

And Jewel was a Dutiful Daughter.