The mass funerals and all the individual funerals for the fallen lords and kings and champions were all completed. The prayers were recited, the lamentations sung, the tears wept, the sacrifices made. The broken spears and lances, the wrecked chariots and the vast log rafts cleared from the Mahanadi were all used to build the funeral pyres, but at last the sweet smoke palls diminished and dispersed. The sky above the plain became blue and clear again. Eventually the grass grew once more on the trampled earth, at first in small pale patches, but then an all over carpet, richer, sweeter and greener than it had ever grown before. Bright green shoots sprang up among the hewn tree stumps on the edge of the forest, and the darker green of vines and other foliage began to strangle and conceal the black steel of the crashed Tri-thruster. Work began to rebuild the bridge and the walls. The Mahanadi flowed clear and sweet, and boats appeared again, hauling upstream from the cities by the sea with cargoes of food, oil and wine.
