The banners of the Visigoths flapped above the valley, their edges ragged from weeks of relentless marches.
Medellin Valdesca sat her horse at the ridgeline, watching the clouds of sand were kicked up over the dunes in the distance below like smoke from a dying hearth.
She had been on campaign for close to three years straight now with only a breif repreive between each not to rest but simply to reorganize her forces before marching off once more to war.
But now, as she tightened her cloak against the morning chill, she felt only a strange heaviness, as if the air itself pressed against her lungs.
The orders had come at dawn.
Sealed with the emperor's mark, carried by a courier whose eyes betrayed that he had not dared read the parchment he bore.
Medellin had broken the wax, scanning the words once, twice, then a third time as though repetition might change them.
No restraint.
No hesitation.
The Concordat is ash.
