Ralph and the Pixie

This, reflected the Thane, was the truth of war. There were no glorious charges, no battle horns blaring defiantly, no colourful standards being carried into battle, no honourable dead, and no honourable living. It was a grisly, terrible business, and there was nothing, no song or speech or epic poem, that could elevate the truth: that war is a brutal, inglorious, senseless, heartless destruction of life. Death itself seldom came at once, but was usually preceded with unbearable pain, the like of which is unimaginable to those who haven’t experience such. Those mortally wounded were ignored by foe and defender alike the moment they were cut down, left to writhe and to moan, to scream and to weep, and to stare aghast at their own broken and mutilated bodies, gaping stupidly at horrific injuries that could never be set right again. For many, it wasn’t until they lay upon the battlefield, mortally wounded and in unbearable agony, that they fully realized that their one and only life was coming to an ignominious and untimely end; and end they did, not standing upright in glory in the midst of a field of honour, but rather writhing and contorting in the mud of the battlefield, their minds filled only with suffering as they gnashed their teeth in irremediable pain and unutterable fear of their own mortality.