When The Snow Melts

Excerpt from When The Snow Melts

Chapter 14: Absent Without Leave

It was Nix 4BC. We were still using the Aklon calendar back then so we would’ve recorded it as 48,004 in our journals. I remember the morning of the 3rd we had just finished tearing down camp and were preparing to move out along the southern embankment around Calhaze. Right around 7AM the snow began to fall. Not a light dusting but a flurry of frost. Winter had come and we were ill prepared.
By noon the snow was up to our shins, but we kept marching. You would think that the rising sun would’ve warmed us but somehow, in that godforsaken land, the cold only worsened the longer the day rolled on. That’s the funny thing about war. You think when you enlist that enemy arrows and swords will be the greatest threat to your life but often times war is about trying to keep yourself alive long enough to die for the cause.
By the time we reached our staging point on the east side of Calhaze fifty-three of the hundred sixty of us were suffering from some form of frostbite. We were in no condition to take on the Kongjun fortifications around the village; especially when the Kongjun were far more equipped for winter combat.
We begged and pleaded with the Captain to divert course south toward Chipivati where we could get warmer clothing and additional supplies, but our requests were all unilaterally denied. We were told to march into certain, frozen, death.
And so I left. I didn’t run, no matter what reports may say. I calmly approached the captain and said I was leaving. I remember the conversation to this day. It’s seared into my memories.

“Captain,” I said, “I’m leaving. There’s no way we make it past two forts and a village with only a hundred men in fighting condition. I’ve got a limp and you can’t even use your left hand.”
He barely seemed surprised; didn’t even lift his head from the report he was reading; “Not a wise plan. You’ll be branded a deserter, Gar. I’m well within my rights to have you hung for even suggesting it.”
“I’m not suggesting sir, I’m informing you what I’m doing. What you decide to do about it is up to you. Way I figure is the Kongjun have lived here more millenia than I can count so if I meet one in a snowfield either I die, or I manage to kill him before I freeze to death, but there isn’t any way I come out of it alive.”
“That’s war. Sometimes a good man’s gotta die to stop a bad one.”
“Yeah? And when spring comes and when the snow melts, who will be left then? Only the dead, kept preserved by a winter that hates life almost as much as war does.”

I didn’t know till much later that that’s exactly how we found our dead. Did you ever notice that reports on casualties during the war always spiked in Summer and were at their lowest in Winter? That’s because you only list someone as a casualty once their body has been recovered.
See, in the heart of Wyrmm it’s only warm enough for the ground to thaw about two months out of the year. So there’s no point in risking surprise attacks to recover bodies during the other ten. The snow and ice will preserve the dead. Then, when the frost melts in the late spring, the bodies are uncovered and the gravediggers can get to work.