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[url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/5588024][img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/617914243760783381/1335308407477108848/image.png?ex=679fb25d&is=679e60dd&hm=82999d3a59f885d1573bee74bdb416c82b415942d26e79fe348d4141830fc5ae&[/img][/url][/center][/cell][cell][center][justify][color=cfbcae]𝕹o doubt the vultures of Rodelkog had not feasted this well in decades—maybe centuries. Even a single skyward, squinting appraisal said as much. Lazily they circled overhead, yawing on lethargic breezes, their bellies seeming to slosh with every pitch, every shrugging tilt. In disposition they such resembled men, stumbling from taverns at indecent hours—gorged and bloated, sighing and groaning, their gluttony straining them at the seams. But a great many beasts and creatures called Rodelkog their home; the outskirts and, for a time, when the silence and the absence had stolen in, the streets soaked in shadows, and the very walls which cast them. Voles and finches scratched at the wheelbarrows, the granaries, the trampling and the burning having crushed the fallow, broken the seeds from their blackened hulls. With them came stoats patting along on noiseless paws, owls on moonlight-dusted wings. Ratsnakes and foxes and kites, all drawn to the city's smoky emptiness, drinking deeply of its stillness.

The din of hammers soon enough had chased off these trespassers; the unshuttering of doors and windows, the protests of ungreased wheels. As the people returned to the still-smoldering streets of their city, so too did routine, and even a vestige of normalcy. They churned the fallow and buried again the spilt seeds; repaired the doors; cut new bricks for the walls, and stirred their blood into the mortar. There was grieving, of course. Cries and wails which went unheard by the beasts of the earth, returning to their burrows, their brooks, their copses. For while one world came unraveled and undone, another carried on, without very much interruption whatever. Hawk still ate fox ate owl ate stoat ate vole ate trampled wheat. And while the people wept, only the vultures seemed to hark.[/color][/justify][/center]

[/cell][/row][/table][justify][indent][color=cfbcae]Szaalm reckoned this to have been, at one or another time, a royal forest, or the erstwhile elf-lord's approximation of such; for how else could the trees, tall and aged and beautiful, have for so long eluded the lumberman's blades?—and how was the stream not infested with washer-women, with water wheels, with grazing herds and all their refuse?—......but no matter. It belonged to no lord now but to God, and that which belonged to God belonged to all who needed the shade from those estimable cypresses, a sup from clearer waters.

Young was the morn and still it gilt the groves from on high, still bejeweled every blade with dew; and stood the man before his congregation: the five hundred who had half a fortnight past returned from the walls of Rodelkog (and, perhaps, at least in memory and spirit, the hundred-and-fifty who had not). They who hadn't yet broken their fasts stood a slow-moving vigil, these queues ending at great copper cauldrons, where ladled into their bowls and cups by silent, oxen cooks were forcemeat puddings boiled in broth. Those who had not cut seats for themselves from the cypresses, or claimed for themselves various stones and logs scattered about the clearing, sat dutifully, attentively, in the damp grass. Half-dressed were the five hundred, some without their doublets, others without cravats or hats (though they doffed their hats who did wear them, for the name of God was already present and spoken-for at this assemblage). A mild breeze kicked up the regiment's flags¹, rippled against their oilcloth tents.

As it happens, Szaalm had with great strategy and choosiness selected this place for the laying of camp. Though the battle was already won, the elves already ousted like so many vermin—though Ariana's wine-and-milk standard already billowed high from the ramparts, and the city was, by all accounts, now safe for its new inhabitants to enter—by his estimation another war still ravaged this place; a war not won with shot and steel. 'Twas the war fought by the bilberries, pushing hard to burgeon forth their tender flowers, small and pale and bell-like. 'Twas the war of the foxgloves, their fiery-purple blossoms stealing sunlight at the clearing's every edge. 'Twas a war of sparrows pecking at seed and unripe berry, of warblers combing the grass for caterpillars. Of rustling leaf and babbling water. 'Twas the war, in all, of every heart and every spirit against fear, against remorse, against pity for the enemy, against dwelling on the dead; indeed, against all pause and falter. The war of all life's little beauties over the unsightly desolation of battle. Less than a mile away stood the shattered ruins of Rodelkog and yet no man would know it hadn't he climbed the battlements himself, hoisted the flags himself, himself cut down the scrambling defenders and pried the gates. Not in a place like this, alight with the song of birds and breeze and petals. 

Held he in his right hand his breakfast half-supped, the colonel; in his left (closer, as it is, to the heart), his copy of [i]The Inſurgente's Liturgie,[/i] which he held high aloft (for he had long ago memorized its contents, its worn pages serving better as symbol now than guide). And so, breakfast's prayer already issued, and the day's first song as well, the catechism continued thusly:

"I, flaming Life of the divine substance, flare up above the beauty of the plains," called he.

Answered those among the five hundred who knew the words, whether by heart or recitation: [i]I shine in the water and blaze in the sun, the moon, and stars.[/i]

"And with an airy wind, as if by an invisible Life, I arouse all things to splendor."

[i]And so I, the fiery power, lie hidden in these things.[/i]

"And they themselves burn by me, as the breath unceasingly moves the man, like windy flames in a fire."

[i]I am life.[/i]

"Whole and entire, all that is living is rooted in me."

[i]I am life.[/i]

"For reason is the root, and in it blossoms the resounding Word."

[i]Amen.[/i]

Six hundred and fifty voices. He had known so well the admixture, the texture to their harmonies, before the battle had stolen away with a hundred from his choir. Then, of course, about one lad in three actually knew how to read; the other two murmuring along in mimicry of the first until they learned the words through rote alone. So many men he'd learned to recognize just through their birdsong. An eight-fingered, barrel-chested baker who crooned like a milking cow; a repented thief turned butcher, a twiggy little creature with a brittle, reedy tune. A drummer boy, just turned ten-and-seven, with a head of hair like goldcloth and a voice like an angel's clarion. Aye, just a fortnight ago he'd known all the brightest, boldest voices, could pick them out from the choir like eggs from a low-hanging nest. Now Szaalm strained and pored over the sound and still he wasn't so sure. The texture had changed. Six hundred were too many names to remember but he knew every face and which faces laid nose-down in the muck now, which faces would he not see again around camp?

But in the congregation's front rows, still those drummer boys sat in a circle, scratching the bellies of the hunting dogs. Two, three, five men still huddled all around each copy of the [i]Liturgie,[/i] stumbling over the words as its more learnèd owner read along, guiding their eyes with the slide of his fingertip across the newsprint page. Life commenced and continued, even for soldiers, there when the thick was thickest.

He lowered the [i]Liturgie,[/i] stowed it, for the time, in the crown of his hat, upturned upon a table cut from the saplings of this place. "Amen," he concluded fondly. And just as he raised again his hand to strike up the next song, a noise. Footsteps. At first Szaalm paid them no mind—he assumed it a local poacher skulking for roe deer, or a goodwife collecting potables from the stream—if, of course, it was not a man of the regiment, returning from making his morning water behind a tree—but—along with the footsteps, unmistakable was the sound of steel slipping over steel; the shifting and clinking of armor. He turned, and standing there was a soldier of the 1[sup]st[/sup]: a grenadier of Ariana's honorguard. The man had left his halberd elsewhere, but the tabard and the hanger and the morion left little to the imagination. And how he glowered. Not curiously, not (in truth) as a matter of any sentiment at all, but expectantly all the same. Szaalm knew at once who he was here to collect.

Went he just abreast of the nearest chaplain, a Mittelman by the name of Chlodowig; grasped him by his black-caped shoulder, and charged him with the ceremony through to its natural conclusion. He scooped up his capotain, and returned to his tent. After all—on that fine, mild morning, with only the men for his company, he was hardly dressed to stand in the presence of royalty.[/color]

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