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"Lay down your spear, Qaram." Her brother brushed away a fly on his sweat-darkened beard and squinted at the battlefield. "The enemy retreat."

Qaram, her face part-hidden under a swathe of furs, squeezed the haft of her crude spear so tightly her fist trembled. If a romantic were to kneel before her then, they would find beauty in the curve of her jaw, the length of her narrow neck. (Her turban hid the pale scars crisscrossing her right cheek, and the long one that split her top lip.) An elder would be drawn to the shadows pooling beneath her brow, where a weak light rimmed her irises in gold, as though a dying fire hid there. In a way it did. But this is a battlefield. On it, there is no place for the romantic nor elder.

So far as Qaram was concerned -- is concerned -- there was her and there were the dead.

Her foot wrappings were old moccasins, worn and supple. She could feel the ground beneath the thin soles, earth made soft by scattered formations and the blood and bile of many corpses. 

"Qaram," her brother barked. Desperation soaked into his voice, bright as varnish on oak. "These were once our ilk.”

Her answer was silence.

"Child." Sadness too now. "It is enough." Fear.

Her brow creased, a ripple in her conviction. Then, in her inner ear, the wet sound of a knife leaving flesh and her brow smoothed again, hardened. Her eyes turned up, and the band of gold shifted from the top to the bottom of her irises.
 
[i]I have known many winters,[/i] she thought. [i]I am not a child, and it is not enough.[/i]

Sunrise crept up behind the forsaken hills of the highlands edge, casting a long shadow that reached all the way to her feet. In that shadow, some of the rival warriors tried boldly to keep formation against waves of howling attackers. Some scrambled towards the yellow sea of grass, others, the pine forests to the left. Most fled towards the decrepit remains of their settlement.

"They even revoke the divine, gods help them." If Qaram had looked at her brother, she would have seen the threat of tears in his rheumy eyes. "Lay down your spear and accept their surrender."

The gods. Their gods. They even revoked their names.

[i]Let them.[/i] She signed this to her brother with her free hand.

There were bodies strewn in a rough circle around her, somewhere between ten and fifteen, most dead, some groaning. Let them throw down everything they have. Qaram, not trusting herself to keep her voice low, did not say this aloud.
 
"Qaram!"

[color=DodgerBlue]"Not yet."[/color] The air around her mouth rippled as if suddenly warped by a great heat. She had barely whispered. She breathed deeply then, absorbing the quiet anger of her voice, and when she exhaled to dispel it, her breath came out in wisps of blue smoke.

"Not yet?" Her brother peered at her through the blue-grey haze. "They have given up, child. You have won the battle – this is vengeance now."

So it was. What of it?

Qaram clicked her tongue; it was the sound of an old oak cracking in half.

Two or three of the closest bodies moaned, faces buried in the mud. All of them wore matted furs. One crawled all the way to Qaram and clawed at the fur skin greave strapped over her right shin. His head lolled forward as he started weeping onto the top of her boot. 

"Mercy," he sobbed. Someone had relieved him of his left leg from the knee down. How? She did not know. The wooden point of her spear gleamed.

[i]That's the last thing I've brought you,[/i] Qaram thought, biting down on the walnut shell that never left her mouth.

"For the last time, Qaram – enough. Lay down your spear and end this." Her brother stepped in front of her, blocking out the battlefield, and pointed a finger at her heel. "Or at least spare him some mercy. These are your people too now, as they once were before."

The warrior clinging to Qaram's ankle gurgled unintelligibly now. Soon his leg would make him pass out, but it would be a mangled organ that killed him. His mouth was wet and red, the shape and colour of knife holes in a woman's back. 

When Qaram signed now, her hand trembled. [i]Do you know this man, Older Brother?[/i]

"Give him mercy, Qaram."

[i]If you say you knew him, I will.[/i]

His nostrils flared. "I do not know him, that should not make him less deserving."

[i]He is my age. He would have been there when you took me and ran away from the pointed spears of his tribe. He had many moons to pray for mercy and the gods did not strike me down in that time.[/i] Qaram stopped a moment and breathed in through her nostrils, for her jaw was clenched tight enough to gnash her teeth. [i]Do you know how long a cycle is when you starve in the day and scream at night?[/i]

“Long enough to taste deer when we had to eat the refuse of drakes." The lines in his brow smoothed and his voice softened. "Long enough to mourn our brethren and far too long to dwell on the dream of seeing my people again."

The gold in Qaram's eyes flared. [i]Turn around and you will stop dreaming.[/i]

"Look down and so will you."

Qaram's lip twitched. It was neither smile nor frown, just the tug of her scar.

Her brother nudged her aside, ignoring the gurgling of the traitor clutching her foot and disappeared into the pine.
 
She looked down at the warrior with his arm hooked around her ankle, face pressed to her boot. She could feel his lips moving, perhaps in prayer. Qaram let go of her spear, though it still stood tall and holy and damning in the mud. She sat down and cradled the young warriors head in her lap. As he bled over her knee, she bent down to whisper in his ear. Keeping her voice so low that only he could hear, she brought out the fullness of all its hidden tones and tenors, turned over every corner of it, and poured it into his ear with a hum.

His gurgling stopped. So did his heart, but so long as she hummed, a part of him would cling to life.

[i]It is too late to ask for your name,[/i] she thought, stroking his hair. [i]Still, I will honour you, Nameless One, though you fought for those that make me want to sing Death in the face of your offspring. But death is not mercy, so I will not kill you, not in the traditional sense. Instead, I will sing Life for you, and I wait until you have had your fill before I walk into the innards of your people.[/i]

She heard his last sigh and stopped humming.

[i]"If you want more, tell your decrepit gods to come over here and take it."[/i]

[hider=Summery]
WAR! The boreal highlands knows it. Small-minded tribes war over territory and recourses already, culminating in a desperate attack that killed many of Qaram’s own people, perpetrated by a rival tribe. Desperation is real. A little later Qarum seems to have rallied what little of her tribe remains, and with some unknown power, slaughters the enemy tribe. Her brother is horrified, believing that humans should know no such horror, they are of the same ilk. But with great magic power at her fingertips, Qarum is only getting started. Fuck the gods they killed her fam.[/hider]