Field of Iron Littered with Steel

One last cut of his shining blade and he let it fall to his side, dangling in the exhausted arm that had sliced through metal and bone more than a thousand times that day.  Earlier the blade had glinted a grey-white in the sun but now the length was hidden in a vivid, red film.  Bodies littered the field around him many fallen from his sword. Spaced randomly his fellow guardsmen stood as blood spattered pillars in the evening sun, casting shadows in long lines over severed limbs, slashed necks and perforated torsos, along with the battered arms and armor that belonged to once-living men.  They and their gear would mix with the bones and rusted steel that also littered the field, pounded deeper into the dust and ground with the clash of battle, every year more buried than the last.  The guardsmen left in unison, converging into a group as they walked the length of the plain, trudging towards the black stone walls of the castle they protected, the lord they served even after his death, and the secrets that lay beneath the surface in the dark catacombs not even those brave men dared trod.  In their wake the field came alive with skittering, small black bugs drawn to the scent of fresh gore that seeped into the iron-stained earth.  None of the guardsmen watched, too familiar to their eyes the sight of the ground seeming to rustle and move, then swallow the work of their strong arms like it had for decades before and would continue so for as long as their impossible oath stood unbroken.  The open portcullis lowered behind them as the last of their number passed through the gate, some splitting off to the kitchens and others seating themselves in the courtyard to clean their weapons off for the next day of killing.  A few made their way up to the ramparts on sharp-cut stairways to take up the night watch, though none ever came during the night.  Crossing the mile-wide plain that stretched out in all directions while the bloodsucking beetles claimed their meal dissuaded even the most gallant knight from trekking to the sealed gates without the sun's protection.  Still, vigilance was their strength, the force behind their blows and the breath that filled their chest.  Not one of the fifty-three guardsmen had fallen; the thirty that went out each day, drawn by lot, were still as fit as they had been sixty years past when they took this field of battle on the first rising of the sun.  The cup they passed each morning, filled with the courtyard well-water and blessed with their oath, each sip of its chill liquid filled the men with renewed vigor as it passed from hand to hand, lip to lip in the dawn's light.  The portcullis would raise and they would walk out, tall and strong to face any foe the marched or rode against them as they had thousands of times before.  Unbroken by faithful servants to a good king that once sat upon a charred-black throne: none looked upon the corpse entombed below, and none woke the dragons that kept it.