Joan brought her sword down with all her remaining might, inflicting a deathblow on her opponent, and watched the last of her country’s foes collapse.
Exhaustion made her knees wobble. She stumbled toward her nation’s flag, fighting hard not to collapse, and rose from the field of corpses, holding onto its flagpole.
An eerie silence hung in the air.
She was the last soldier standing.
She waited for victory’s sweetness to reach her soul, but all she experienced was the acridity of battle and the metallic taste of the blood that ran from her forehead to the curl of her split upper lip. She shook her hand free from its gauntlet and wiped her face, caked with mud and blood.
She expected feelings of relief and euphoria, not grief and sorrow. Triumph was supposed to be…
