Rune and Ruin

Seeds of the Gods - 8 - Pruning

395 B.C.E. - The Warmarch through the Acerian Valley, Outside the Gates of the City of Veii, Early Spring, Month of Aprilis

From His Memory

Gods, the anticipation was incredible. The cursed Veii, the hillside Acerian neighbor to Rune, was finally toppling. His father had been there for months already, and before him, the Runion legions had been battling the city for ten years. Ten years. An embarrassment, to be sure. Now, the gates were aflame, the walls crumbling, the Acera army lay scattered, dead wherever Falx's belators had encountered them. The thick smoke and boom of the gates seemed to echo in his demon's head. Far above their heads, the ribs of Veii's dome cracked and burst into showers of stone and dust. The Flight attacked wherever they could, destroying the ceiling that marked Veii as an Acera city. Their success was the herald of imminent victory.

The cry went out; the resounding cheer caused Falx to smile grimly. His belators, his best, would be the first through the gates. It would be a bloody dawn. He fought by their sides, knowing that his father, the Dictator, would frown on such recklessness. Falx went anyway, slashing and hacking with his men. In the town's streets, his specially-trained warriors knew how to fight. No complicated battle formations, no siege weapons, just them, their swords and claws, and the hapless enemy they fought.

The city's defenders fell like wheat underneath the scythe as Falx swept the city. That night, they crossed halfway through the city, and the next day, they entered the topmost villa. There, Falx found the headsman of Veii, huddling with his family. Fool. The man should have fled when he had the chance.

The city was his. His father would triumph at last. His critics in the Senate would rue belittling the Fyrrin line. Falx fell to his knees in the blood and muck, thanking the gods.

His father greeted him with tears in his eyes and a bold smile on his lips. "Son," Marcellin clapped Falx's shoulder. It was all the Lord could say for a moment. Falx understood; he basked in the same victory. "The city's treasure I leave to you, son. Leave the bastard Acera to me."

Startled, Falx glanced at his father. Then he nodded his acceptance. Marcellin Fyrrin needed to control the slaves, especially after the tumult in the Senate. Let his father have his revenge, doling out breeding slaves as he saw fit. Falx had no need of them. "Who will you leave this city to?" Falx asked, curious.

His father looked out a the city with a grim look. "We will destroy this city, Falx. Remove the valuables and claim the best of this scum as slaves."

"Father," Falx growled his protest, horrified at the waste of the city. "Do we not send for the plebeians to take up residence? Do we let this place burn into a wasteland?"

"Son, you know nothing of the rumors circling in the Senate," Marcellin Fyrrin, Lord to his House, glared at Falx.

Gods, his father was always thus. Since he was a young boy and his older brother, Camillus, had been struck down by plague, the Lord had turned his paternal attention to Falx. Falx could actually remember the shift in his childhood. He had been trained for war, given wooden swords and shields as gifts from the time he could hold them in his hatchling claws. Camillus had been given the orator's education, the pen and parchment. Then Camillus was lost, and Falx was the surviving son. His father began to mold him to be a statesman. It was not a natural form for Falx. War was his livelihood, his art, his gift. He never knew or cared exactly what the bloated carcass of Rune's Senate was doing.

"I have delivered Veii to them," Falx growled. "Finally. You will seed their harems with fertile females. We have gained ground in a decades-old war. The Senate will reward the Fyriin family. They will have no choice."