A single powerful stomp brought a heavy boot down onto the bandit's head and drove it into the packed earth with wet, final force.
When the foot lifted again, the stump of the neck bone jutted upward from the ruined remains in a way that turned my stomach over again. I had to look away and swallow hard against the taste of bile.
In less than ten minutes, fifty bandits who had looked experienced, organized, and confident were slaughtered as if they had been nothing more than weeds being casually pulled from a garden path.
The field that had held a small army now held only silence and the wreckage of human beings.
It was terrible.
Blood had splattered across the long grass in wide, dark curves that already attracted the first flies.
It stained the pale stones of the road in irregular pools and thin rivulets that ran downhill until the packed earth itself seemed to have drunk its fill for the day.
