Hope in the Ashes

The soldiers left as abruptly as they came. That is to say, it was announced as a grand surprise, although the village had known it was coming for days. For all their secrets, the army revealed their plans years in advance, broadcasting them long before they were even decided. Even if it hadn’t been clear in the slow movement of goods, the village’s wealth being leached into the hands of war, the plan wouldn’t have taken much effort to uncover. A town as small as this, regardless of its location, cannot offer the soldiers much more than a few crates of spices and a fortnight’s rest. And so, after 13 nights of rest, the leader stands before the town, beard dancing around his mouth as he announces the decision long known. 

The youngest of the elders speaks only the language of herding and farming, the language that hums from the land itself to meet the village. She knows little of the language of empires, less still of the language of war and destruction. When the leader climbs onto his pedestal, she does not listen to his words, and her eyes are a few years too old to watch the way each individual clump of hair bounces. Still, she knows even before the speech begins that the soldiers will now move on, crashing their way up a new mountain to a new village. 

The elder does not react as the words float over the gathering, doesn’t let any new relief slip into her expression. She will not be calm, not until the last trace of conflict has left the village. But now the end of this particular cruelty is official, and so there can be some hope. 

*

War leaves no spare hope, and so every ounce is to be cherished. The soldier scrapes fragments from every victory, from every messenger, even as his boots sink into the mud and every step begs to be the last.

It’s a holy war, and so every death is martyrdom, every killing righteous. But holy words do too little in the face of death, and the soldier isn’t much more than a boy. He watches them fall, friend and foe, and sees no difference. They are all just children, really, fighting for a cause too big for their torn uniforms and secondhand weapons. 

They began only hours ago, and already the ends of the lines lag in their marching. In the beginning, it was only the ones like the boy soldier that dragged their feet, the ones who had already seen war and knew better than rushing to return. Now, the eagerness has died. The most eager of the children marched perfectly, rushed to the battlefields in a flurry of holy excitement, and died in the same stream. The boy soldier had never prayed to the empire’s god before, but he prayed for them, that they would be remembered. There are no heroes in a war with no end, and martyrdom has stretched to the point of breaking. 

The boy soldier knows he will not die a hero, nor even a martyr. He will fall quietly, perhaps in a great climax but more likely in another of the constant skirmishes. He is a boy soldier of a thousand boy soldiers, and he will die in the same manner. One death in a thousand, without mourners or even a burial. He has no companions close enough to drag his corpse from the front lines. The only one to hold him in his final moments will be Death, and its touch won’t bring comfort. They will burn his body where it falls, and his ashes will mingle with all the thousands dying in a war they cannot win. An endless river of death flowing through a holy empire.

*

The river runs sour with ash, and so the villagers journey upriver to a more secluded stretch of mountain. The elder does not go with them; her people are plenty strong enough to divert a new stream towards the village without her limping along behind them. Instead, she goes to the darkened river.

 She is old enough to remember a time of peace, but far too young to know it well. Every regiment that enters the village promises that all fighting will soon cease, that the soft haze of memory will clear from the last moments of calm. That the divine end will be worth the martyrdom. The village knows better, and the children enlisted often do too. They were born in a world of conflict, and they will likely die before any progress is made.

The youngest of the elders sits on the bank, cane resting beside her, watching specks of ash float towards her submerged ankles. A desperate optimism says the ash is merely a fire higher up the mountain, but the season has been wet and the only smoke has come on the wind from the clearing of battlefields. The elder has lost more to the war than anyone should, but no more than anyone else has. She has no children, no family but the village, and she will protect it with all that’s left of her life. 

She wasn’t the only elder to object to sending their children to fight in a conflict for a god none of them prayed to. If the war does prove to be holy, will it be worth it to the dead? The children had stayed, and so when the soldiers arrive, they disappear into dark cellars and the hidden corners of orchards. Refusing enlistment is punishable with execution, and desertion is no better. The youngests may cry in the dark, but soldiers exist with far worse than shadows, regardless of age. 

*

The shadows stretch much darker than they should for the hour of morning, but the boy soldier supposes that is just Death, curling against sides and winding around necks. They rise long before they’re ready, and the lack of marching only pulls Death nearer. 

The orders come quickly and without explanation, and they are obeyed with the same ruthless efficiency. The boy doesn’t fall, and soon it is night again, with every shadow tucking around him in a way that should be comforting. 

He wishes he didn’t care, that the idea of dying no longer sent a terrified chill through his bones. When the younger soldiers ask, his voice is the same numb murmur that the rest of the soldiers have, but his answer is a lie that tastes sour on his dry tongue. He tells them dying will be relief, that Death will be a gentle hand pulling him out of misery. But every battle is a desperate scramble to survive, and he can’t bring himself to let go. 

Some of the older soldiers do. They let go, either in battle or on their own after dark. The weapons work the same no matter where they’re aimed. The dead were the same as him, the ones without a village awaiting their return or a family fretting at every messenger. Nothing left but the holy cause that long ago abandoned them. The boy soldier wishes he had their resolve, but his hands shake, and he wants to live. Terribly, desperately, with a frightened strength that does nothing against bullets. He has survived so far by will alone, and despite having nowhere to return to, he wishes for home. 

Death still lurks in the corners, scaring the boy far more than he would ever admit. He thinks of running, but where can he go that Death won’t wait? Where can he escape the fighting that controls all the land?

*

The fighting has spread to a corner all too close to the village, and the village grows dangerous. The villagers send the children off, to a meadow two days away by trail, and many of the elders follow. 

The youngest of the elders, though, stays. Her eyes are too old to truly see the fighting from the lookout, but she looks regardless, watching dark shapes crash into one another across the valley. The sides themselves are meaningless; both have promised peace but delivered only destruction. 

Few of the soldiers themselves even understand who they are fighting for, and they meet one another as enemies simply because that is what they’ve been taught. And why would they question it? If they don’t believe that they are fighting for a holy cause, then their supposed heroism is no better than the opponent’s bloodshed. 

It’s the same as it was in the days when the war first began, when the elder’s brothers enthusiastically signed their names in their village center. They vowed to avenge their father, murdered by the enemy when they burned his farm. They didn’t pray in the same manner that the soldiers did, barely spoke the languages, but they believed it didn’t matter. Vengeance was vengeance. Heroism was heroism. They had been eager, as children often are. 

In those days, few had left and fewer had returned. There was no one to counsel patience, no one to warn of the truth behind the holy cause. The elder can only pray that they met some sort of satisfaction before they, like their father before them, were turned to ash. 

*

There is no satisfaction in surviving the night, not when the air is still thick with yesterday’s ash and the day will only bring more. The boy soldier marches with all the others as they advance, retreat, advance. This is not a small skirmish. This is a true conflict that will leave more dead than alive, one that requires bonfires nightly to clear the valley and destroys more than just empty land. 

They use a hastily abandoned farm as shelter, then burn it to the ground when they’re forced to retreat yet again. The boy soldier remembers the fires in his village, the way the soldiers didn’t seem to notice the screams surrounding them. 

There are screams now, too, but fewer. The ones left are too afraid to scream. The boy marches, hides, shoots. A shot skips off his arm, sending pain screaming down to his fingertips. The medic sends him away with merely a glance. Boys like him are not the priority. 

He shoots. Ducks. Marches. The orders are to continue attacking, but there aren’t many left on his side and far too many on the other. Death is draping itself over his shoulders, preparing a shawl for his corpse. He continues attacking.

The ground explodes in front of him and he falls, tearing skin and bruising bone. The boy soldier pushes himself upright, scrabbling for his gun. 

He shoots. Stumbles. Falls. 

Death is nearby, waiting still, but there is no comfort in this.

*

The battle has ended, but there is little comfort in the silence. The valley is thick with the dead and dying, and the ground is too wet for the fires to light quickly. So the victorious army abandons etiquette in favor of tending to their wounded. Soon, they begin to march away, and even the elder’s aging eyes can see that they have taken few prisoners. The smell of blood is worse than the clouds of ash, and so she walks slowly back towards the village center, away from the sea of death.

*

Death is nearby, but the boy soldier is alone. 

The victorious have left. The defeated have been left to burn. And the boy is alone, laying on the hard ground. 

There is an urge, almost overwhelming, to stay down and let Death arrive to comfort him. But the boy soldier wants to stay alive. Despite the deep ache settling into the boy’s bones, despite the blood drying on his skin, despite the bodies around him, the boy still wants to live.

He wants to live, and so he fights for it, using every ounce of strength to push himself to his knees. To his knees, then to his feet, then upright. Then he is standing, walking. Stumbling, but still moving forward. Away from Death.

*

The elder is nearly to the village when she hears movement, the crashing of unsteady footsteps through the undergrowth. Her mind is still thick with the scent of blood, and so she doesn’t notice it until it’s nearly upon her. It could be no one, nothing but an angry wind whipping through the trees, but she pauses regardless, turning slowly to regard the dark shapes of the forest.

The movement emerges slowly, staggering out of the green and onto the trail. A soldier, judging by the torn uniform draping their shoulders. A child, judging by the desperation in their eyes. A boy, barely old enough to leave home, fighting his way off the battlefield. 

*

The boy fights his way away from Death. He pushes at branches, pushes at his own stumblings, pushes until he reaches a break in the forest. He doesn’t look up until he hears the voice, a startled query in the language of grazing animals and tilled fields. 

The soldiers spoke a harsh language of war and destruction, but this voice is in the soft language of his mother. She would tuck him out of sight when the soldiers came, and even when they dragged her away, she made him swear to keep fighting.

He fought. He fights still, dragging himself to follow the old woman, to sit as she tends to his wounds, to answer her gentle questions. 

The village is small, and tucked into the crook of a mountain far from the boy’s old home. But something about it is familiar, and just comforting enough to trust. And the trust, very quickly, leads to hope.