War - Short Story (Part 2)

No one slept that night, none of my comrades. During these ten years, since our closest ones went to war and never returned, fifty of us were in those years to go now. We did not think we needed to train for the army. Although it was an obligation of an inhabitant, it possessed basic knowledge of the combat. It should be fathers to teach us, although this ultimately meant that we knew the lines of movement, and how to keep the shield and spear up. No one was here to teach us. And now they ask us to go there and fight, to die in the same place where everyone else lost their lives. We need to be in front of the walls of the nearest city seven weeks from now, and bring with us all the equipment we have. We are all aware that in next several days we have to move because we did not have horses, and this city is far enough, that we will need more than six weeks of walking to there. We were a complex and organized family, for years the survival of our people depended exclusively on us and we knew what we were doing.

The next morning, it was as quiet as the previous night behind us. Everybody saw the concern in our faces. Tiredness and reluctance was reflected in every move while we were doing the usual morning jobs. We will all go, there was no doubt in that, because it is our duty. We must try to defend our country, or at least what has left of it. Because only in this way can we be sure that our home will be safe, only if we survive long enough to see the end of this wretched war.

In two days we were already ready to travel, and we were saying goodbye to those who stay behind. Many of us were left without families, but we still had the people to say goodbye to. Those three soldiers who brought us news for days have kept upside-down, and mostly talked only to one another. Now they came and everyone wanted us luck.

We went to the army, for me it seemed to me that a part of the soul remained in the foundations of the settlement that we began to build. I hoped that I would be able to came back and finish what I started. But now a completely different task is ahead of us and we had a duty. For the first few days we talked very little with each other, everyone was preoccupied with his own thoughts. Everywhere around us we saw signs of war. Villages destroyed, new villages built, houses devastated. A lot of broken things that the refugees left behind lied down by the road. War left behind scars that might never heal.

We have not met anyone during the past ten days of travel. And that was all tragic. We tried to practice as much as we could in our possibilities. We started talking, making plans. It seems we even started to rejoice because we will work together.

We did not even know how wrong we were.

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