Liber Martis - Chapter 11

Verses

Nergal rose at noon, when even shadows had grown too tired to hide the dead.

He said: Call me plague if you fear me, war if you employ me, and justice if you have already won.

The kings poured wine before him and asked for the enemy's fever. Nergal laughed, for fever reads no banners.

Where he walked, bronze grew hot in the hand and proud speeches became very short.

His priests counted victories by cities. His undertakers used a more accurate arithmetic.

Nergal blessed the gate with one hand and broke it with the other.

Do not say destruction has no order. The locust has a route, the flame has a hunger, and the grave keeps perfect attendance.

A prince asked how to become immortal. Nergal appointed three poets and one enemy.

The enemy wrote better.

Every empire calls the god of war by a patriotic name.

Nergal's mercy was this: he never pretended the sword was a flower.

He entered the underworld not as a prisoner but as a landlord inspecting neglected property.

And the demons praised him, though several did so from a sensible distance.