A Winter War

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From a distance, it might have been an army of statues, or of the dead.

Six thousand riders upon a plain of ice and snow, in a land where it seemed that nothing might live. The wind rattled against tall spears like a gale passing through a winter forest, but the horses did not stir, and under close carved helms and thick furred hoods, the men’s eyes seemed hollows with no glimmer of life. Seen from afar, one might have thought them a great monument carved to a forgotten king, or an army from a long forgotten war struck down by curse or spell, doomed to stand in place for eternity and wait for a command that would never come.

It was only if one drew close that one could see the little whorls of their breaths frosting before their lips, here and there see a horse toss its head and stamp at the snow. Closer still, and one could hear the impatient whicker and mutter of the horses, more eager for the battle than the men who rode them. They thought only of the rush and joy of the charge, the surge of muscle and hoof, for unlike men they could not imagine their own deaths. Their riders were silent as they looked on the frozen river before them and waited for the Romans to come across the ice.

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