They were a pitiful harvest, winnowed from the wreckage of the camp and made to walk and kneel in the cold dew. There were old men with skin similar to wrinkled parchment who should have been in their beds rather than sporting steel, and boys who looked more at ease with their mothers' teats in their mouths than the iron of war.
It mattered not. No matter the age, no matter the frantic, bubbling begging that filled the morning air, they were all made to kneel.
Each would jolt once, as the steel undid the connection between head and heart.
"The Crownless Prince sent the weakest to protect his belly. Bloody fools," a soldier muttered, his breath hitching as he hoisted a heavy, gore-stained axe. He brought it down with a wet thud onto the neck of a weeping man. The prisoner's limbs went rigid for a heartbeat, then slackened into the mud as the head rolled away.
