There's a heart beating in her chest and a drum pounding in her ears as Andy stands and waits.
Battle is coming, the never ending. . . always clashing ring of it still screaming at her from the last round as she tightens her hold her her ax.
Battle.
Death.
Grief.
These things are part of war and she's known each of them in turn. They run together, they turn over each other and as she waits she knows that this will not be her last war. It never is and if there ever will be a last she wonders if it won't catch her by surprise.
She has lived too long.
Longer than anything she'd ever imagined as a girl.
A girl when the world was different.
It's never been simple.
There is no simplicity in life, not really.
She tightens her grip and readies herself, the drum in her ears entwined with the heart in her chest, the vibrations flooding through her body and making her inch forward while men stand ready around her to kill and die.
They'll all die and they'll leave behind wives and mothers and children who will all eventually die too.
She thinks bitterly that they're fools for causing such pain to ones who love them. They aught to know how precious that is but they don't.
On the edge of battle she can only watch them fall like hapless children, a game like any other but with real endings. Real finishes. Real death.
The battle breaks and she swings her ax, metal meeting bone, flesh and steel making union, the earth dyed red with the blood of man.
She screams, strengthened by the pounding in her ears and chest.
She knows this fight, knows the movements and in it there is a faint glimmer of mortality. She relishes this, ready for the next opponent as she fells one, his head slapping the earth and his eyes unseeing.
She feels wild, ready and eager and seeks out another, swords glinting and chiming around her as men fall to their deaths.
She swings her ax and claims the day.
Claims another life.
She's taken so many and all for a brighter day. All for. . . but as she strikes down another she wonders what for. How could she. . . even as old as she is already change the world?
She changes the lives of the wives and the mothers and children that aren't there. Takes from them their husbands and sons and fathers.
She will do this again.
When this battle ends there will be another one.
There is always another one and it won't stop until she does.
Andy knows this and so she fights on, claiming lives and days and turning the earth red beneath her feet.