by Candy Rae
CHAPTER 28 (Northern Continent)
In the north, three weeks passed while the wide patrols confirmed that both the convict army and the Larg kohorts had gone. Jim felt that there were not enough hours in a day to do what had to be done. It had been an unpleasant shock to realise that the aftermath of a war was often more troublesome than the battles themselves, even when one won.
Stars, it was hot. The command tent was like a furnace, even with the sides open to let in what little breeze there was. Jim sighed and bent his head once more to the casualty lists. It seemed as if he had been reading them forever, making annotations here and there against certain names. He had known many of those who hadn’t survived to see the victory and some of them he had served with for years on the WCCS Argyll. Larya, lying resting on the floor beside him, raised a sleepy eye in his direction then promptly shut it again before Jim noticed the movement and embroiled her in sad conversation. It was, she reflected; as she drifted off to sleep once more, really far too hot even to think.
Jim felt sorry for those colonists labouring to clear the battlefield in this heat, trying to rid the ground of the Larg carcasses before they became more of a health risk than they already were. The raptors were being drawn to the battlefield like the vultures on planet Earth and guards had to be detailed to chase them away from the allied bodies. The area was full of incessantly buzzing insects beavering away and they were an even greater annoyance than the scavengers.
It was decided to burn the Larg dead and the funeral pyres were rapidly becoming an extra burden for those detailed to the grisly task. The stench of burning flesh filled the air and permeated clothing right down to the undergarments. Jim felt that he would never rid his clothes of the smell, no matter how many times they were washed.
The disposition of the allied dead was a task that Jim had taken upon himself, hence the seemingly endless lists. He had the bereaved to visit too.
Those vadeln-pairs who died together were to be buried alongside their life-mates. It seemed a fitting tribute, although the backbreaking labour involved in digging so many graves was extremely difficult in the dry, impacted soil. The prisoners’ grunts of effort as they laboured pleased those who came to pay their last respects. The infantry dead, it was agreed, were to be buried in one large battle mound. Robert himself claimed the honour of making sure that they were put to rest. The harsh-looking mound would grow over and soften with time, but would forever be a reminder of those who died during what had been christened ‘The Battle of the Alliance’.
It was, naturally enough, the humans who felt a need to give the battle a name. On their own, the Lind would not have bothered. Once the mound was finished Robert Lutterell marched his surviving men and women back to the settlement. Jim would meet him there that evening for a working dinner.
The Lind accepted the human wish that their own dead should not be left where they lay as in the past. The scavenger birds would have picked the bones clean and more, but that was before humans had begun to inhabit the coastal plains. It would not be possible now. The colonists held land there and the ground was fertile, ripe for growing crops.
A large ravine-like hollow was selected as the Lind gravesite and presently the Lind were to be seen dragging their dead pack-mates towards it with the help of harnesses manufactured by the settlers. Once filled in, the prisoners would heap good soil on top. Through time, it would become as one with the landscape even more than the battle mound. Zanatei’s body and those of the other Elda who had fallen would lie with them, the Lind having refused a separate gravesite for them. They did not believe in venerating one Lind above another, no matter how important he or she had been in life or how much valour they had shown in battle. Zanatei would have expected and wished to lie with his brethren.
The humans on the other hand were already making plans to erect a commemorative monument nearby. It was as Jim reflected, a matter of perspective and tradition, with both species respecting each other’s wishes although they might not understand them.
Jim hoped that the whole melancholy process would be finished soon.
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