After that epic duel at the front, Jeska's squad had been fighting for six hours.
The setting sun hung low, with corpses strewn inside and outside the trenches, both human and horse alike.
Every body was horribly disfigured by solid shot, grapeshot, and bullets, but at least they still had a shape.
Just a few steps away—the area between the trenches and the walls—the scene was completely different.
In stark contrast to the trenches, the ground beneath the walls was littered with shattered chunks of flesh, scattered limbs, spilled entrails, and horses with eviscerated bellies.
Those who died here were mostly torn apart by exploding grenades.
By comparison, deaths by sword were a more tolerable sight.
At the edge of the ditch, a Herder, trapped under a horse carcass, was begging for relief from a life he could not cling to and a death he could not reach.
His intermittent groans, incomprehensible to the Paratu People, made everyone's skin crawl.