"Tell me: will you go blithely back to your loved ones after having feasted upon the very barbarous cruelty that you have forever reviled in the enemy?

"For myself, there is more hope here in the tears of one young man than there is in all the successes I have experienced in battle! Think on that while you sharpen your blades and finish this business!"

When the last of the fallen was pronounced slain, they gathered bits of dried gorse, pieces of scrub pine, and anything else that would burn, including the crude weapons and shields of the fallen, stacked the bodies like cordwood upon this, and set the huge pyre ablaze.

Eighteen hundred bodies do not burn easily. The acrid stench of burning flesh was horrific, and more than a few hardened veterans of many seasons could bear. But by evening, the pitch-rich pine had produced such ferocious heat that what remained was gradually reduced to grey ash, and an ever-diminishing pile of embers that were scraped ever towards the centre and stoked, until not a single glowing gleed of wood or bone-charcoal remained.

Come morning they dug a series of shallow trenches along the ground and removed the scar of killing from sight by turning the ash-stained ground under and leveling it once more. Trackers then carefully laid dead scrub and scree to conceal the place from all but the most discerning eye. By late morning, even the sign of trampling feet and horses had been removed.




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