The heir of the Princedom of Yarzat watched the slow, rhythmic revolution of a cartwheel. It hit a deep rut in the track, causing the wagon to rattle violently enough to dislodge a dented helmet, which tumbled into the churned mud like a dice on a table of marble.
A passing soldier, his face hollow with fatigue, stooped to retrieve it and tossed it back onto the mounting heap of salvaged iron.
The dead were so numerous that the harvest of their steel would take days. In the wake of the carnage, the camp had succumbed to a collective, death-like slumber; thousands of men had slept for twelve hours straight, leaving only the skeletal sentries to haunt the perimeter. At first light, the silence had been absolute, where the splash of a stone in a puddle could be heard from one end of the palisade to the other.
