[🎶 Surrounded by Silence – David Arkenstone.]
"THE DRUMS OF WAR! O how they pound!"
"Dum! Dum! Dum!"
"THE BELLS OF BATTLE!!!
—O'er the hills come ringing!"
"Clang! Clang! Clang!"
"LIPS OF WARRIORS a'singing!"
"Yah! Yah! Yah!"
On the march of the eighteen thousand barbarians, it was one folk war chant after another.
A hard maiden would call the opening line from the front of the lines; swinging her sun-browned, brawny arms. Ten thousand men would harken back. Their voices echoed across the desert like the clacking of a million rattlesnakes. It carried on the wind and sand, and before ever they crossed the first triliths on the border of the Capital, news had reached the golden city.
