“We had never seen so many bones in one place. The scale of this so-called battlefield defies comparison with anything in humanity’s own very long and very bloody history.”
When a man reached a certain age, he would march off to the war. His wife would accompany him as a shield bearer, or not – it was a woman’s prerogative, when they had reached a certain age. Many went, preferring to spend their final days, weeks, or months in the company of their best husband, and it was something that all boys were reminded of as they grew to marriageable age – if you did not wish to be alone at the end, treat your wife well.
It was a sad but simple fact that a young woman’s life was more dangerous than a man’s – childbirth did not always end in celebration. There were, therefore, fewer young women than men, and thus many women had several husbands. This was merely sensible – any other arrangement would certainly have resulted in needless conflict, a waste of the most precious resource the society produced – warriors.
Men spent most of their lives preparing for the war. The preparation was largely mental – learning about the why of the war, the how of living a good life until you were called to Valhalla. The dangers of certain tools, and of certain thoughts. The ways to manage those dangers. Anything could be used to kill another man – or woman, or child. Purpose-made tools that were useful for hunting, farming, or metalsmithing could be used to murderous effect if one's mind was not strong, or if they were used in the wrong ways.
If you felt bad feelings because of things another person did or said, it was a sign to remember to others must feel the same – and probably about you. Logic dictated that only two paths diverged from such feelings – both parties must be satisfied, or the village must consume itself in violence – if thoughts begat words, words begat fists, fists begat knives, knives begat death, and death begat vengeance.
If both parties did not reconcile, the cleverer would win with words, the stronger with fists, the luckier with the knives, and no one would win after that – once brothers and sisters and widows and children turned upon the luckier man, and were in their turn beset by his brothers and sisters and widows and children.
A woman might bring forth life for the community – could bring forth several lives, if she was fortunate – but a man had only one death to give for the sake of his people. To waste it would be something beyond selfish. And so, along with whatever other roles birth, talents, and inclination caused a man to fill, each man spent no small amount of time focused on their final and finest profession. First one learned, then one taught, and finally one left to fulfill one’s ultimate purpose as a man – to go to war.
Besides the mental training, there was physical exercises – strength, flexibility, endurance. Men ran, threw tree trunks and lifted boulders, carried one another on their shoulders. What they did not practice was actually fighting – they knew that there would be plenty of that at the end of the last road.
From time to time, a messenger would arrive from the East – from the front. Very, very rarely, this was a veteran of the war itself – haggard and worn to skin and bones. More often, it would be a man or woman far too young to be a veteran – they would announce themselves and the village from which they had come, recite the name of the original messenger, the one who had made it to their town and no farther. Whatever the nature of the messenger, they would be offered food and water and would pass on the latest news of the war.
The reports were generally much the same; the front line had been pushed forward – the enemy pushed back, but the foe remained numerous, more so than themselves, if neither so well-prepared nor so determined. Occasionally a more ominous account of their own forces being pushed back, but every such small reverse was inevitably followed, in the words of later messengers, by accounts of successful counter-attacks, a renewal of the slow advance against the implacable foe.
Done speaking, the stranger or old friend (for in every generation, there was at least one veteran messenger who hailed from that very village) was offered rest. Many veterans lay down to sleep, and never woke again. The few that did would make their slow way out of town, towards the West, carrying their dispatches as far as their worn bodies would take them, secure in the knowledge that they would die in the service of the war as surely as anyone felled by enemy arms at the front itself. Knowing, too, that when they fell, another would take up their task and carry the latest word to the farthest reaches of their country.
If the messenger was a more youthful man or woman, they would be offered the usual choice – continue West, carrying their news, seeing sights and meeting people they had never seen, but with every step carrying them both further from their own homes, every mile being one more that they would ultimately have to retrace on their own march to the front. Or ask for a tribute from this village to take their place. If the latter was the case, volunteers were called for. If none presented themselves, lots were drawn – but of course, that was true if more than one stepped forward. The newly minted messenger would be drilled on the report they were to carry, and would depart in one direction, with their predecessor returning to their own village in the other.
Similarly, from time to time, men arrived from the West – old men, but still sturdy, not the broken husks of the veteran messengers. These fellows were on their way to the front, making their pilgrimage along the last road in small groups, sometimes accompanied by sturdy women, but more often not.
They would be offered food, drink, and the latest news from the front – a night’s rest, and they too were gone. And so it went, and so they went, never to return.
Their deaths, far from home on the front lines of a war against an enemy who looked very much like themselves – though strange of speech and feature – preserved the lives of those they left behind. Their final fight kept the peace throughout their country for generations.
Until the people from the sky arrived, who said they came in peace as well.
***
Secretary-General's Note: When the crew of the UNSS "Beagle" landed on [redacted] they accidentally wiped out the [redacted] - a bipedal, hominid-adjacent species whose likeness to our own had not been seen before of since during mankind's exploration of the galaxy. Disease spread by the human explorers spread rapidly, killing 99 percent of the [redacted] on the planet's sole habitable continent in the span of just three months. During that period, the ships' focus was on attempts to mitigate the suffering, and - as that failed - to document what they could of the [redacted] civilization's history.
From accounts collected during that period, and confirmed with the few survivors of this apocalypse, the [redacted] lived a seemingly peaceful existence, but held that they were engaged in a long-standing war with the [redacted] - another racial group of similar indigenous, whose lands "lay to the East." Recordings suggest the [redacted] believed that generations had died in fighting carried out by clan elders along a front line in the far East of the continent, but despite the horrifying expanse of the bone fields that stretched for miles from the continent's shoreline, nothing could be found to substantiate this account.
The "Beagle's" scientists noted that the thousands of recently deceased appeared to have died from the same viral infection that had killed the rest of the [redacted]. Moreover, they appeared to have been living in large villages spread along the coastline - similar to those occupied by the [redacted] elsewhere on the continent. Two anomalies were noted; all of the deceased were extremely old - and no weapons or fortifications were evident. While the researchers were justifiably horrified by the extent of the bone fields, on close inspection the remains of the fallen [redacted] bore no signs of trauma. As with the villages, no weapons were found among the bones. The nearest parallel which can be posited is the phenomenon of "elephant graveyards" on ancient Earth's African continent.
Author's Note: I'd very much appreciate any thoughts you have on the concept underlying this story - which I think would be much better told in the first person through one or several protagonists. Or do you like it as it is? Does the "thought-experiment" resonate with you? Do you find flaws in it? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments!
