The dust swirled over the plane, driven into the air by thousands of shuffling, stomping

feet, and carried along by the breeze.

It settled slowly, coming down for a moment before fresh gusts of hot wind brought

it aloft once more.

In those moments, when the dust cleared, the bright rays of Mesopotamian sun glinted

off the bronze spearheads and axes scattered over the powdery ground.

Copper helmets polished to a sheen before they had been split by the blow of an axe,

gleamed in the occasional bursts of light.

The bodies, on the other hand, didn't gleam in the sunlight.

Hundreds of them, thousands, were scattered across the dusty plane amid the shattered

spears, broken shields, and the arrows stuck upright in the ground.

Some of them were still moving, moaning for water or the sucker of agada soared just

an end to their pain.

Their cries were abicent to the Akkadian soldiers wandering the battlefield, drunk on victory.

Those two injured to be useful, they finished off with one more stab of a spear or blow

of an axe.

The remainder, they heard it at spearpoint, like so many livestock, binding their prisoners'

hands behind them with rope.

These men of Uruk and Lagash, the defeated, wore their hair curly on top and shorted

the sides for now.

It would grow long in the coming months as they were marched long distances across the

flood plains of Mesopotamia to dig ditches or build the walls of Akkadian garrisons.

...