Warrior

Head bowed, chest heaving
Reality slowly returning
The smell of blood, gore and death
Fills the air, its substance clinging
To her hair, staining her hands and her sword.
The ground beneath her feet is a hellish
Stew of mud, blood and piss.
A hundred men, felled by her sword,
Lay dying and dead at her feet.
She steps over a mangled arm, a decapitated head.
Their cries for mercy had fallen on deaf ears.
The only sound now is the last cries of dying men.
One man, still whole, hand holding a wound made
Fatal by the surrounding carnage and trampled legs
Calls out to her, begging for help.
Her heart is not moved and she steps on him
Like so much garbage, and leaves him behind,
Abandoning him as yet another offering to the grim reaper.
Her face is an emotionless mask of indifference.
She steps over another body, blending with the earth.
An arm reaches out to clasp her ankle in a last effort
Of a dying plea; she pulls away, and continues her trek
Over the field of once-humans.
As the bodies thin out and blades of trampled,
Dead grass begins to peak out from the carnage.
The only sign of emotion slowly appears on her face,
Her lips curving ever so slightly upwards in an ironic
Smile of victory.

©October 2003