Twenty three warriors and a King, laid in blood when the battle has done The price of a long due reckoning, laid in blood when the battle has done Old King Cole has paid the toll of the crimes levied upon his soul The rebel blades have achieved their goal, laid in blood when the battle has done His mouth hangs open, and his eyes are wild, with a gaping hole is his chest defiled While round his throne room the dead lie piled, laid in blood when the battle has done
Twenty three warriors and General White, laid in blood when the battle has done Fought like the devil in the dead of night, laid in blood when the battle has done Believed in peace, yet marched to war, shot through the heart, dead upon the floor Covered in her own and her sister’s gore, laid in blood when the battle has done With an army to lead and a war to win, put the bullet to dozens of her own kin Atoning for some vast and secret sin, laid in blood when the battle has done
Twenty three warriors and Rose Red, laid in blood when the battle has done While outside the door many more lay dead, laid in blood when the battle has done Her body lies in her wife’s caress, her face finally free of her life’s distress Wearing the rags of her wedding dress, laid in blood when the battle has done Released from her cell, like the wrath of hell, the three little pigs to her anger fell But King Cole sounded her funeral knell, laid in blood when the battle has done
Twenty three warriors gone to their rest, laid in blood when the battle has done Fought with the worst and died with the best, laid in blood when the battle has done Cinders saw her betrothed at last, her beauty untouched by the decades past Then the old king fired and it went too fast, laid in blood when the battle has done The girl to whom through the years she’d sing, dead at the hand of the thrice-damned king She pieced his chest with her scarlet ring, laid in blood when the battle has done
INSTRUMENTAL
Their bodies are still and their blood is cold, the book is closed and the story told. No Happily Ever After for a tale so old, laid in blood when the battle has done.