Free Death of an Empire by M. K. Hume

roadway. Corpses had been burned here in an ordered cremation, although the remains, once the fire had cooled, had been pounded into splinters. Myrddion realised that the pitiful mementos of once-strong warriors had been carefully gathered for those who waited, far away, for the return of their menfolk.
    ‘At least this army has respect for its own dead,’ Myrddion muttered to no one in particular. ‘Perhaps they might have spared the children of the town.’
    ‘Not the Hun, if Tournai is their work,’ Finn replied in a voice that was pregnant with world-weariness. ‘From the descriptions of those peasants who fled from Attila, I doubt we’ll find anything but corpses in this accursed place.’
    The horses shied away from the smell of death, and Myrddion’s gorge rose as he led his pair, afoot, off the road and past the ashes that filled the roadway. Here and there lay isolated fragments of bone from dismembered corpses, such as jaw or knee splinters. Small pieces of metal from oxhide breastplates had been overlooked by the enemy horde who, even though they burned their dead with respect, had clearly contrived to collect every item of armour that could be reused by prudent warriors in battles yet to come.
    ‘This small heap of ash is all that remains of the enemy dead, indicating that very few of them became casualties in comparison with the civilian defenders,’ Finn Truthteller muttered as he turned over a tiny fragment of skull with his booted foot. ‘Whoever they are, these warriors are skilled in the arts of war.’
    ‘Or the citizens of Tournai put up very little resistance,’ Myrddion murmured in agreement.
    ‘Peasants and traders are rarely skilled in the dance of death. Perhaps they threw themselves on the mercy of the attacking army.’
    ‘More fool them, if they did!’
    As the road turned towards the walled town, another dark mound revealed itself to be a pile of dead bodies that had been flung haphazardly into one spot to spare the army from any threat of disease. Kites, crows, ravens, domestic cats and even stray dogs rose angrily from their feast and slunk or flew away from the approach of the wagons to wait until they could return to their feeding. By what was left of the dress of the ransacked and partially stripped bodies, the healers could tell that these citizens had been farmers or traders, men who had found that pitchforks and domestic knives were no match against iron swords, spears and arrows.
    But of all the casualties, the children affected them the most. The lower arm of one small child lay under a heap of tangled adults, fingers already gnawed away to stumps by scavengers and its palm mutely appealing for mercy, while nearby a large bird hopped away from the belly of a young boy. Finn cursed and threw a rock at the ungainly creature, which turned one baleful, yellow eye towards him before slowly taking to the wing.
    ‘All creatures of the earth must eat,’ Brangaine murmured from the wagon, one hand covering the eyes of Willa, who was sucking her thumb in distress. ‘Are these dumb beasts any less deserving than us? At least the scavengers clean up the mess that men have left in this place of tears.’
    As the wagons moved inexorably forward, the remains of the gates of Tournai slowly hove into view.
    Timber trunks had been used to fashion a war machine that could take advantage of the only weakness in the walls of the town. Myrddion could see the large tree trunk that had been used as abattering ram to smash the great latch open, and the remains of fires that had been set to burn the timbers and weaken the planks around the iron-braced supports. The expertise of the attackers was obvious to any eyes that understood the ruthless trade of war. Tournai’s defences had been breached by a determined, brutal and well-organised enemy.
    Shattered timbers were all that remained of the huge double gates, and the healers soon found more corpses lying in untidy piles where they had perished.