Meta Gods War by B N Miles

Author:B N Miles [Miles, B N]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-06-17T22:00:00+00:00

27

Cam returned to camp with the others and got to work.

The field still smoldered and the mud still sucked at feet and held the dead wolves. Cam worked to pull any dead Humans he found from the muck and carried them over to the stream to be washed. The living were tended to, wounds patched and stitched where possible. Some of the survivors wouldn’t last the night, though as the final count became clear, the numbers weren’t as bad as they all feared.

Thirty warriors still stood. Most of their losses had come from the old and the young, those tasked with killing up close. They were the ones that the wolves could more easily snap and pull through the shield wall as they exposed themselves with each new thrust and slice. Cam felt every one of those losses personally, since it had been his idea to put them in that position. They had helped stave off the wolves, and he saw them fight bravely and with passion, but their deaths still haunted him as he dragged a young man clutching a broken axe in his right hand away from the killing field.

They put their dead in rows along the stream, arms crossed over their chests. Women stooped to wash them with stream water, rinsing the dirt from their faces. Lamps were lit and hung from the carts, and across the field, the Elves were busy setting up their own makeshift camp.

A large tent had sprouted from the earth, rounded and made of a strange dark blue cloth that shimmered in the twilight. The Elves hung lamps from trees and started a large fire, sending dark plumed smoke up into the air, and Cam thought he could hear them singing in that odd, lilting language.

He had to push the Elves from his mind and keep working. Once the dead were all collected, he was tasked with repairing and repurposing what weapons and shields they could scavenge from the fallen. Most of the broken spears could be salvaged, since the tips were made from copper and hadn’t shattered against the wolves, but they’d need new shafts.

The axes and sickles survived more or less intact, though some would need minor leatherwork or new hafts and handles. The shields tended to be in the worst shape, some of them nearly torn through by wolf claws, others cracked and bent beyond use. Those had to be discarded, though he knew they’d find some use for the wood sooner or later.

As he sat on the earth near a low burning fire and removed spearheads from their shafts one after another, he watched the camp around him. Lightning bugs flashed their arrival in a chorus of yellow dancing lights, and through this spectacle he saw Theus helping Indri dress wounds, Key and her parents help carry water from further upstream, and young and old alike helping to cook the evening meal.

Although the village had just gone through one of the most traumatic events of its existence, it was still alive, still moving forward.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.