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The refugees looked down on their city and watched it burn.

From the hillside, they could see the mass of red and orange flames and the pillar of

black smoke reaching straight up toward the sky.

They could hear the crash of collapsing buildings and the thousands of smaller, crackling, spitting

sounds joining together to form a chorus, the low roar of a fire larger than any of them

ever could have imagined.

The spell of burning timber, plaster, shingles, and reeds hung around them, coming not

just from the burning city below but from the people themselves.

The sent clung to their tunics and robes, hung in their beards, and emanated from the

soot caked onto their faces and hands.

None of them would ever forget it for the rest of their lives, but better that smelled

in the stink of burning flesh or the rotting dead they had left behind.

One man cried out in pain.

Blood slowly leaked through a bandage wrapped around his bare midsection.

Too strong when the held the man down while a former dock worker tried to pull out the

bronze arrowhead embedded in his ribs, but he wouldn't live.

The blood was dark, nearly black, and was coming from his liver.

There had been so many arrows down there in the city, wishing through the smoke filled

air sticking in plastered walls and such numbers that they resembled the spines of a pork

combine.

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