Suncradle on the Bloodfield

Beginnings and Aftermaths

Photo by Donna Elliot on Unsplash

“I’ve never seen so many limbs scattered on a battlefield.”

Tach Dahnicco observed his new novice… where did the scrawny child come from?...chewed a small chunk of his beard and spit a loose whisker.

“Aye, the GherenJa won’t put a sword through a man’s heart. They’ll cut them anywhere else and let their god decide if their blood should spill.”

Michhen Rahnno hesitated, looked off, over the trees of the Waath.

Tach sniffed. “You’ve something ya wanna say boy. Loose it. I’m your Field Boss, not a Crown Judge. Talk.”

“Looks like their Gods didn’t spare too many of them. They must…be…that thing where they…uhhh… don’t pray right…or—“

The old Sweeper let out a quick burst of breath followed by a laugh loud enough to rattle the nails in the Chuchen Bridge on the far side of the Waath.

The rest of the sweeper crew stopped briefly, then returned to the task of clearing remains from the battlefield.

Tach put his glove on the novice Sweeper’s shoulder, an errant piece of leg sinew clinging to the lad’s drabs.

“Sorry, taylo,” Tach said, using the old Hahten term for young one. “ Just funny to me after all these years. I rarely see the work of merciful gods. I see the result of better equipped armies. And this is only your second bloodfield, correct? Didn’t they send you to me because the fighting reignited by Sasseran Dam? You were the youngest on Vach Isicc’s crew, yeah?”

Micchen nodded, eyed the piece of human flesh on his dark green coverall and said “Leader Vach let us bathe in the water, Leader Tach.”

Tach smiled. “We’ve just begun, taylo,and there ain’t no bathin’ water till we cross back through the Waath, and even then the current of the Yiggo would have you half way to Gheren before your ass was clean.”

Micchen stared off again.

“Let the seeds of thought in your head bloom out your mouth, lad. I know better than most that collecting the dead from an otherwise harmless field will make you think hotter than a midmoon bonfire.”

“Will you laugh at me again?”

Tach chewed his beard, shifted his weight.

“Don’t take that laugh to dinner with your mother, taylo, we got dead boys and young ladies strewn about us because the Cluhns see the need to war all the time. And I mean all the Cluhns…River, Mountain, Meadow and Sea. I try to laugh more than I vomit. I find some things funny that most men won’t. What is it you want to say?”

Micchen bit his lip on the same side of his face that Tach was chewing his beard on.

“I…I was gonna say one thing…but…you said…”

Micchen squirmed, not knowing if he would cry or wet himself or both.

“Whu…whu…when do I get to have dinner with my mother again?”

Zich, the closest Sweeper, dropped a lower leg with bone protruding from two different parts. He made no effort to pick it up, making brief eye contact with Tach before the Field Boss turned back toward the novice.

“You didn’t go to Sweeper school, did ya lad?”

Tach knew the answer and silently chided himself for blurting.

Micchen looked at the lone piece of foot in his bag. In his head it was still warm, might be able to run away on its own.

“No, Leader. The…Council assigned me…no… errr…schooling…they said Leader Vach would teach me what I needed to know. Mostly it was just lifting bodies…with some Draben horsemen riding by calling us ghouls and sword chasers.”

“You’ll get called a lot worse before it’s over, taylo. Draben horsemen and Morric spearlaunchers throw cowshit from outside the healer camps. Doesn’t seem like Boss Vach taught you six barrels of fuck all, Sweeper. But that can’t be yer fault, and I hold it not against your breastplate.”

Micchen looked down at his armorless chest.

“It’s a way of talking,taylo,” Tach said. “ I wasn’t meaning a real breastplate. Like that thing I said before about taking that laugh to lunch with your mother. That’s just a roundabout way of saying don’t take it seriously.”

“I’ll effort that, Leader.”

Micchen reached and put what looked like a shoulder, in his sack, prying off the twisted chainmail and gently placing it in the metal box.

Veteran Sweepers handled the heads, seeming to take special care. A Sweeper with no eyebrows made the sign of the Endless River over a head before placing it in his sack.

Tach followed the boy’s eyes.

Swarms of flies began to blot out parts of the golden sun cradling down to sleep for the night.

“A few quick lessons, taylo, as it seems Vach wasn’t much of a schoolmaster.

Firstly, most of these are Arakun bodies. They don’t pray to their God, they sing high, high notes that very few can hit. They didn’t die because they did it wrong, or because they’re bad singers in the eyes of their God. They died because the GherenJa are born to be two handed swordsmen and their King has enough stolen coin to equip em all with two. The few GherenJa lying here were either old, or unlucky or both.”

Micchen nodded.

To Tach it seemed like he was absorbing the lesson.

“Secondly, no matter what any Cluhn calls us, we serve a proud and noble cause. The healers use what we bring them to make new skin for the burned, new legs for the infirm, and with the help of some elemental sorcerers, even some eyes for the blind.

I’ll be a crimson cave bat playing storm cards for porridge before I can explain to you or anyone else why Cluhns keep going to battle and use bits of the dead to help the living, but that’s the way it’s worked since before the mountains grew from the flatlands. At least we assist in bringing comfort instead of warring ourselves.”

Micchen’s mouth was dry, in the distance another Sweeper was placing a head in a bag, but the boy’s eyes seemed to be awakening to an understanding.

Tach picked up a short blade with a finger still attached. The blade he tossed to the metals box, the finger into his sack. When they were all done in a day or so, a farmer could plow this field and plant Luzzien beans.

“Leader, about visiting my mother…”

Tach Dahnicco spit.

His own mouth was dry, but stringy saliva managed to leave his lip and land next to a puddle of blood inside a bootprint.

“Where you from, lad?”

“Diddin, Leader. The village in the western lowlands, just below the Vattan Mine.”

“Can I ask you why they didn’t send ye to Miner’s School? Your father must like have been a Miner, yeah?

Micchen pushed a fly from his temple with a bloody glove.

“The Vattan Mine collapsed a moon after midsummer, Leader. My father and older brother were lost.”

Tach broke eye contact with the boy and gazed out over the battlefield, looking at his crew, blood pools and shiny objects.

Flies seemed to fight in groups over pieces of carcass, horse and man.

The smell couldn’t be described in words. Possibly, Tach thought, someone could describe it with poorly tuned string instruments, played by someone who had never held a child.

Tach turned back to the boy. His sack, not nearly full, rippled in a breeze that brought no respite from the stench.

“Don’t know how you landed here, with me, specially without being assigned to Sweeper school.

They would have…umm… told ya first day there, if ya ever would have been there in the first place. They don’t assign boys to Sweeper school while their mother lives. This is…well…it’s that thing I told ya about me not really being acquainted with merciful Gods. Once you’re a Sweeper they don’t let you go home. It…I…I never knew a Sweeper in all my years who had a living mother, taylo.

For all the good we do, too many Cluhns believe once we handle the dead we have a curse. I can’t let a promise get tangled in a lie, but…it’s a strong chance you’ll never see your mother again.”

Micchen closed his eyes, and crouched as though he would pick up another body part.

His knee touched the ground, and his coveralls began to soak up a stranger’s blood.

*****