[ WP ] Describe a massacre from the perspectives of one of the killers , a soldier .

It was murder. That was the only word to describe it. 
 
 They had been chased down like game, funneled towards the kill zone by the lines of screaming warriors that blocked off all avenues escape save for the one allowed. There was no order to the rout; all the officers had long been killed, expert marksmen blasting any with an officer's squares on their breast. Any who stopped to fire back were quickly silenced, the rumors of what they did to prisoners urging them onward, desperate not to be the poor souls in the rear of the disorganized column. Any who tripped or stumbled were left where they fell, their screams adding fuel to the soldiers' fears. Fighters strafed the fleeing men, staccato blasts of laser fire tearing into the frighten mass. Weapons and armor had been thrown aside long ago, their weight impeding their owners. Most went unarmed, going so far as to toss caps and canteens away into the brush. 
 
 Shapes in the trees blurred, and accurate laser fire laced in, neat little holes for the entrance wounds, ugly gaping chunks of flesh blasted away on the other side. Here and there a poor soul would take a step and then just vanish, his screams cut off as he fell into a pit of sharpened stacks. Another soldier leaped over the pit, only to be caught by a length of razor thin wire. He managed to decapitate himself as did three others before they started to surge around it, the sound of screaming and blaster fire growing nearer. 
 
 Tomess Ghast raced past comrades as they scalped dying men, leaping over the bodies of freshly fallen foes. His blaster pistol was tucked away in its holster, his vibrosword sheathed at his waist. Over his armor was a freshly skinned hide, its dark green blood still dripping onto the damp soil. Clasped lightly in one hand was a hunting spear, designed originally for beasts. It worked just as well against sentients. 
 
 The hunt was reaching its apex, skiffs carrying hunters forward for the kill. Ahead, marksmen started to rappel down from their perches, calling out to their comrades the number of dead they claimed. The dead foes were quickly stripped of their clothes, their naked bodies left for the carrion beasts. A speeder bike came to a halt next to him, its rider offering a hand. 
 
 `` Ghast,'' the rider said, a collection of fresh scalps hanging from the sling of his blaster rifle. 
 
 `` Mecfin.'' He said, climbing on behind the man. The bike quickly speed up, passing the slower bands of hunters and the barely visible rear ranks of the retreating Imperials. 
 
 `` Well, Ghast, you were right!'' Mecfin shouted over the din of the engines. `` They took the bait and are regretting it!'' 
 
 It was almost too easy. Play the part of primitive savages still using melee weapons and slug throwers, fake some rudimentary defenses whilst hiding the real ones and wait to spring the trap. The AT-AT's they brought along were nothing to the expertise of the monastic Pyro-Drakes. Khern marksmen shot any officer or NCO who dared issue an order. Rigorous psychological warfare and it seemed as if the Ivrish outnumbered the Imperials ten to one instead of the paltry two to one. Their imagination playing tricks with them, a bit of excess blood spilled and they broke like game before the hounds. It took only one charge by their one band of Galloglas for them to flee the killing field, ironically worsening their chances. It was the retreat that the largest amount of casualties happened, not open combat. But they broke like prey and so were chased down like prey. 
 
 The speeder dropped him off at the mouth of a large canyon, scores of Ivrish warriors waiting just beyond the reverse slope. The two hundred of so surviving Imperial troopers knew the dangers of the enclosed space of the canyon, but speeder bikes and accompanying kherns kept them from breaking out of the pocket. Flamethrowers and scatterguns drove the rear ranks into those ahead and so were driven deeper into the canyon. Ghast smiled beneath his battle mask. It was a box canyon, with only one entrance. A massacre it was. 
 
 The entrance sealed off with heavy blasters and lines of warriors, the rest of the Ivrish troops crawled to the rim of the canyon to fire down at the helpless foe. The cries of pain and of surrender reached up to their ears. Grenades were rolled down hill into the clumps of dying and pleading men. 
 
 `` Pour it on! Give'em Tarlanore's Quarter!'' 
 
 It was doubtful those being murdered would have recognized the name of a man nearly twenty years dead. 
 
 Mortars were brought up, the ***Whumfp! *** of the shells heralding their lethal payloads. Flamethrowers scorched the foe into tighter and tighter clusters that grenadiers made beats on, that they could throw fragmentation grenades in the middle of those pockets of crying and bleeding men. Hunting songs went up among the killers, bloody promises as to the doomed men's fates. 
 
 Thirty minutes later there were no sounds save for the birds and beasts feeding upon the bodies, the Ivrish picking through the dead for anything of worth. Tomess Ghast paused to stare down at one body. The man was young, with a wedding band on his hand, its fingers clenched tight to something. Prying the stiff fingers open he discovered it to be a miniature holoprojector, and he turned it on with a flick of his wrist. Blazing to life was a small hologram about four inches tall, depicting the young soldier with his arms around an attractive woman. Both motioned to someone of camera and a young child scampered into view and up into the woman's arms to face the recording unit. They were happy looking and healthy, not at all realizing what was to be fall their husband and father. Ghast threw it as far as he could into the gloom with a frown, the noise scaring away a few carrion beasts. There was no point on feeling sorry for what had happened. At least the child still had a mother. That was more than the Imperials left him.
