The notion that battlefields smell of blood is a fallacy.

The vermilion elixir leaking from the fallen and pulsing from the wounded does not seep into the earth, then evaporate into the air as a boundless red mist, soaking all it touches in its metallic, gruesome scent.

That is folklore.

In all actuality, the pungent and choking odors of smoke, ash, heated steel, and sweat overpower the stench of old blood.

A present battlefield smells of destruction.

A past battlefield smells of death.

For that is the fate that befalls a battlefield: to become a graveyard. The ground that once supported the valor,...