Triumph has a bitter taste, the one that poisons all the sweetness of the successful battles. So what? The Empire has emerged victorious from yet another battle and the powerful army reached the previous border, garrisoning nearly all castles and outposts.
So what?
Three hundred thousand left the capital, only the third is still alive, their banners jagged by war. The rest has fallen to enemies’ onslaught, hunger, diseases and biting frost, sucking out the breath of every living creature. What was the point of this victory, not even delaying the threat of the Empire’s fall? Never-ending winter, with only a couple of months of pale spring, kept lasting, reaping its deathly toll of the hungered and the frozen. Although the barbarians were pushed out of the borders, the Empire grew weaker and weaker.
Bands of reavers circled the snowbound provinces, robbing the leftovers from granaries, abducting the starving cattle and massacring the citizens. Even the former defenders of the Empire have abandoned their orders and pointed their blades against those, whom they have sworn to protect. There was nopony to stop them. They could only be kept at a crossbow’s shot’s distance.
Even among the victorious soldiers, now defending the borders from continuous attack, the battle spirit weakened with each day, mutilated by macabre images of the daily struggle in recaptured keeps. Food was gained aplenty, but it was kept in the armories and disposed in small amounts, sufficient for them only not to die out of exertion.
The frost was unbearable and no firewood was to be found in a radius of many miles. Nopony would have risked such an endeavor anyway, even if it meant finding a miraculously preserved grove. Everything that could sustain the dim fireplace was thrown into the flames. Furniture, floors, ruined houses’ beams, even the hordices hanging over the fortifications, were long since hacked and burned.
Dead bodies were successively thrown on the hideous hills growing in the walls’ shadows. Nobody bothered with proper burials, it would require digging the frozen ground with pickaxes and there were no volunteers, so the corpses were left where they fell in battle. Some of them were already frozen to the cobble and, because they didn’t smell of death, the soldiers just walked around them with indifference. As if the frozen carcasses were nothing out of ordinary. Nopony was surprised by seeing, sticking form under the snowy veil, frozen limbs or nameless visages.
The fruits of their sacrifice were bitter and the Captain knew it all too well. With complete clarity he noticed the things that didn’t bother the thoughts of his subjects. What counted for them was the victory, return to their homes, their clans’ castellums, and a quiet hope for the coming spring. They hoped that, by conquering their enemies, they might have broken the curse looming over the Empire. They have won, they have beaten their foes with all force they could muster, right? The captain was sitting in a chilly chamber. His hope has died long, long ago.
He led his grim gaze over the crystal walls of his billet, observing his own reflections, staring at him with a hundred eyes. What good comes from victory when it is the hunger and not the sword that lays waste to the Empire? Was it not better to burn in the fires of war, on the barricade, while raising a sword before the next blow? So sweet that thought seemed compared to slow, agonizing death of a wilting Empire. For how long will the gathered crops last, locked away tightly in the granaries? A month? Two? Maybe for a whole year will they be able to survive with their heads in the noose of snow and hail. Then a moment will come when the educated citizens will lose their minds and not unlike rabid dogs they will begin to kill their neighbors and sack their homes in search of even the poorest fare. Somepony will at last notice that the flesh of his closest comrade thus far can be bitten off their bones. There will be no Empire then, no knights, no yearly fair in the crystalline shine of the Imperial Spire. There will only be a herd of wildlings being slowly extinguished by the merciless winter.
Why the war? Why, in face of so many disasters, nations so alike have strived so vigorously to cut one another’s throats? Why not join forces, forge an alliance the world has never seen before? How many great feats could have been made if they would all push hate off the pedastal and place peace in its stead?
That is exactly what has kept the Empire alive thus far. The truest magic coming from the feeling of safety and unity has shielded the country from all dangers that were thrown against it by unfavorable fate. Even when the times were bad once a year crowds of citizens would come to the capital to celebrate the Crystal Fair together. It didn’t matter if you have come from the lowlands, or if you had azure blood in your veins. For a few days everypony was equal and servants could speak with masters on the same level.
Now very few still believe in the eternal fair of happiness. The minds were filled with hate and grim determination to survive yet another day and, most of all, freezing cold. It would seem that the citizens of the Empire became just as cool as the crystals they loved so much that they have mined them from beneath the earth. There was neither honesty nor joy in their hearts, only the desire for the murderous winter to drift away to the abyss and for the streams to flow with blood of the invaders.
The knight lifted himself from his seat and leaned his shoulder against the still of a narrow embrasure. Ah! How wonderful would it be to have at ones disposal the powers described by the ancient tomes! To be able to force the sun with one’s mind to stay above the horizon for long enough for all the snow to melt! To be able to force the winds to blow the clouds far beyond the borders and to change the unfertile fields into blossoming orchards! Would it not be the most wonderful gift of fate? Indeed it is said that the very same force supports the aggressors. The Empire would field even twice as many warriors as there were foes and even then they would march onwards without fear. How could one explain their strength if not by wizardry? Maybe if the forbidden gates in the castle’s library were forced open to enter the parts of it available only to the wisest of the Empire’s counselors… Maybe then it would possible to work out from within the secret grimoire a weapon that could shift the vile fate? To find a way for everlasting peace, unity and prosperity for all?
But who would be able to master such arts, even if such tomes were to be found? Are there powers great enough to turn years of hunger into blossoming abundance in a matter of days? Only few knew the answers to those questions. He was not one of them.