Others lifted their arms to the sky, as if to drag the gods down and force them to witness what we had done.
But I did not cheer.
My eyes were on Salvatore.
He stood apart. Bruised. Bloodied. The last embers of arrogance burned into ash. His sword dangled limp in his hand, caked in gore. His shoulders sagged—not only with exhaustion, but with something heavier.
Failure.
I walked toward him through the wreckage—bodies broken, armor split, spears jutting from the sand like grave markers. The sun blazed overhead, merciless, glinting off every shattered helm and blood-slick shield. Heat rolled over the field, carrying with it the stink of decay.
When I reached him, I said nothing. He didn’t even look up.
“It’s over,” I said at last, my voice low. “We won the war.”
Still, he didn’t answer.
His pride had always been armor. But here, in the white blaze of day, it looked more like a prison.
I stared at him—not just the man before me, but the boy I had once known—the boy who shielded me from fists and fury. Who bled so I did not have to. Who stepped between me and the older ones when they circled like jackals, fists clenched, jaw tight, daring them to come closer.
The same boy who came to me afterward—broken, shaking from his father’s rage. And I would patch his wounds in silence, whispering,“You’re not him. You never will be.”
We had held each other through fire and ash, dragging one another from the dirt again and again.
Now he said nothing. His eyes stayed fixed on the sand.
So, I did what words could not.
I set my hand on his shoulder—not softly, not out of pity, but with weight—a reminder.
That he was still here.
Still breathing.
Still one of us.
Then I turned, walked to the corpse of the enemy warlord, and wrenched the severed head from the blood-caked sand. Blood ran thick and slow from the ragged stump, the color of rusted wine. His face was frozen in disbelief—death hadn’t frightened him, only surprised him.
I raised it high.
“The army of Ugarit!” I roared, my voice tearing through the smoke-stained sky. “Look upon what we’ve done! Let the ghosts of this war remember us!”
The roar that answered could have shaken the mountains.
I climbed into an abandoned chariot—reins in one hand, the warlord’s head in the other—and rode across the blood-slick sand toward the camp. Soldiers swarmed around me, cheering, howling, fists striking the air as if we had slain the gods themselves.
That night, we drank until the fire blurred. Songs rose with the smoke.
And in the center of the camp, impaled on a stake like some cursed relic, the war chief’s severed head stared out with hollow, unseeing eyes.
A silent tribute to the gods of death, survival?—
And vengeance.
But even in triumph, the taste of victory soured in my mouth.
Too many of the army of Ugarit lay broken or buried—their deaths stitched into the battlefield by Salvatore’s recklessness and pride. We had won, yes. But the win had been carved from the backs of the fallen.
