Chương 418: 13.4

Jewel stared at the disturbing lack of desolation. It seemed somehow wrong that such a verdant expanse would fill the fields that had seen the end of Murad and his army. Unlike every other time that Hewer of Wheat had pulled forth grain, fruit and grazing from the land, this space where so many had fallen was lush, the leaves were crimson yes, the stalks shining red, the only color not of viscera among the foliage pale white flowers. But it was verdant!

Even in the disturbing heat of the southern Dacian Vault, the scene was more fitting for spring than the early autumn. The dead were burned, or for the enemy the Hewer of Wheat and Vladimer had 'tilled them over'. She stared and wondered, was the war over? Murad was dead, all of his princes were dead, all the captains and officers who had tried to rally and the chaplains that had stood with them were also dead.

Thousands of bodies had been piled upon the land as the surviving loyalists refused to flee, despite the destruction of their king and their bonds to him. In any sensible meaning of the term, Jewel should have been victorious. But she was uncertain at that moment if she could declare it so, for there was, as far as she was aware, not precisely anything resembling a unified Kingdom of Magarska anymore. No one who could represent its kingdom and surrender to her.

A messenger had arrived a day after Murad's death from Vladimirescu in Orad, Lord Móric had been elevated as guardian of the people when the panicked word of the broken deserters from Jewel's 'victory' met their walls. His first act in that capacity was to declare that Orad and the villages who owed their protection to it had no quarrel with Viznove or its Countess. But one city and its villages was not the High Kingdom of Magarska.

She walked up to where an unarmored Vladimer Tepes was kneeling in the dirt in his under shirt and trousers. No finery upon the man, but honestly, all the better for it since he was making a mess of himself clumsily doing as the Hewer of Wheat instructed him to do regarding one of the newly grown red leaved shrubs.

"Ah see here, you need to strengthen the roots more, a fancy thing you've made, working that blood curse of yours into the leaves and stem, will make for strong iron rich trees if you plant them in the right place in the ground." The vampire nodded but said nothing, his eyes once more restrained, showing no sign of the ravenous hunger he had unleashed on the battlefield. Hewer of Wheat looked up at her as she wandered the crimson verdance that had been left behind.

"What are you still doing here ya cockerel snake? The war is over, you've rightly won." Jewel snarled, the pain of days of fighting, watching and smelling terrified men lunged after her. The sting of spears in her sides, cutting through her guts. It all suddenly burned inside far worse than any flame and the words found their way out of her throat and over her mouth before she could even consider they might be sorcery." Have I? This does not feel like a victory! Where is the surrender? Where is the nobility in it?

This does not feel like victory! It feels like little more than murder!" She stared at Hewer of Wheat in shock, a momentary panic that she might have somehow uttered a curse, only to find that only mere words had left her lips. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. The straw colored Weird leaned back with his elbow on a shovel that he only seemed to be holding for precisely that purpose.

The shirt of his torso was folding with a sharp, inhuman kink that Jewel realized was because there were no bones to speak of in that form, only straw, grain and soft lambskin leather.

"That's a mighty fancy kind of war you must have fought before this one Lady Wyrm, One that ended in something other than murder? Blessed be ya by the heavens and the earth that you got to live a life with such a war in it." He looked over the field then back up at her.

"I don't know what fancy noble nonsense war you had before Lady Jewel, but every war I've ever seen has been a great wrong on everyone and everything it touches. War sucks fields dry, drags daughters and mothers from their homes and plants, spoiling seeds in their bellies and hearts, digs endless graves for men, boys, farmers, enemies and allies alike thick and far enough to drown my fields in their bones." He looked over the crimson foliage and stalks of strange burgundy grain sprouting around them.

"Those rich fools that dance around in cities, sucking everyone proper dry for their sick hunger call war a harvest, but war doesn't harvest nothing but death and misery. As such things as war goes? This was one of the better ones I've ever seen." He nodded to Vladimer.

"A high lordin man thing was willing to cut three portions of ten of the fields and give them to those that ought to properly have had them from the start. More so he's willing to care about his land in a way few nobles hardly ever do." He turned up to her and nodded.

"A great beast of a Wyrm was willing to help a simple farmer spare thousands of people who did nothing to deserve pillage, theft and worse for her men's forage, and the right bastard who was actually pushing the poor boys in his army to kill and die for him was proper gotten and mulched down into good black earth and soil that will feed generations." He thumbed up the brim of his hat, then leaned to the side, Jewel turned her head, seeing Gem and the twins running towards her, faces looking distraught.

Before she could even utter a word they reached her, their memories washing every thought from her heart, the words that had arrived by a messenger upon horse ridden to death to make pace crashed into her mind burning all else away. The simple frustrating scrawl of her brother Alexander's hand, the faint scent of salt from tears mingled with the ink. The utterly horrifying words.'

Father is dead' Jewel felt her legs give out from under her, the pain of her still healing side not even enough to make her wince against the rippling trembles, the grip of all three of her smaller selves pressing hard into her sides. And the words of Hewer of Wheat found that moment to fill the void.

"Ah, yeah, definitely the best war I've seen yet... hardly ever get to see every single one of you stuck up nobles who are responsible feel a proper bite of what it means." She turned to stare at the weird, at the thing while it had already turned to examine another one of the plants Vladimer had made by use of its sorcery. Before she could even try it spoke again, voice under its breath but clear to her ear all the same.

"The war is over Lady Wyrm, go home with your army, mourn your dead, I call this service to you done, I've done my rights and my wrongs by you." Then the void under a straw brimmed hat chuckled.

"And if you ever see that cobble skinned-alleybreathed-leech Fizzbunches again? Tell him that the wound you gave him made us square for the trespass he made against me and mine."