Asag walked along the city wall, his boots pressing against the cold, unyielding stone that had borne the weight of countless men—men who had fought, bled, and died upon it for the last three weeks.
Two days had passed since they had turned back the enemy's fiercest assault. It had been a slaughter, a day when the walls had nearly fallen, and yet, they had held.
Below, the earth was littered with corpses, the dead heaped atop one another like grotesque offerings to war. Their blood had soaked into the dirt, turning it into a festering graveyard. The defenders had seen to it that every attacker who perished upon their walls was cast back over the edge, their lifeless forms left to rot under the sun. Now, should the enemy come again, they would be forced to wade through the swollen, stinking remains of their own kin—trudging over death itself to try and claim the city that refused to fall.
