"How long does it usually take for Frostbite to kill a man?" Michael asked. The question was not for the man standing next to him, instead it was a rhetorical question that Michael was asking the universe. The universe responded with a frigid breeze, that told Michael Not quick enough.
"Frostbite isn't deadly, hypothermia is," Alexander replied, before continuing onto an entirely different topic, "So how do you like Fort F? I think it's my favorite place on the whole wall. I mean it's the only place I've ever been stationed, but I still like it the most. Working on the wall is a pretty alright job, it isn't very busy up here, I've only ever had to run over and light the signal fire twice. But we've got an important job, the Tribesfolk up here are vicious, if they ever got south of this wall they'd rape and pillage, they'd kill thousands. So like, you know, even though half of the people up here are criminals and traitors, were actually sort of heroes in a way. Despite the responsibilities, there are some upsides to working up here. I think the leadership is alright, Fortmaster Walton is a pretty neat guy, I think..."
Michael stopped listening to Alexander, listening to his voice was the only thing more painful than the cold. , gazing out onto the frozen taiga ahead of him. Supposedly, there were men out there, Tribesmen hiding out beyond the wall waiting to attack Zytria, and Michael was up there to keep them out. But that's not really how it works, most of the Tribesmen who get across the wall just climb over it, they don't attack fortified outposts like Fort F. Supposedly there were other things out there too, Werewolves, Witches, Ice Demons, but all anyone had ever seen for hundreds of years were just snow, trees, and the Tribesmen of the Frigid Beyond.
As Michael stared out onto the snow he sighed painfully. He couldn't imagine a more boring way to spend the rest of his life, staring at trees and snow for an eternity. He might have seen an endless plain of white snow and forest, but all he could think about was her. He used to have everything, now there was nothing more than snow and black steel.
"When do I get to die?" Michael finally asked, interrupting Alexander.
"Not until the Commander orders you to. It's illegal to die without the Commanders orders," Alexander temporarily ceased his vigilance over the static snow and turned to face Michael, "What did you do to get sent up here?"
Michael continued staring stoically. He thought to himself, honestly, why am I here? He realized the truth, he was there because he had no other place to be. There was nothing left on this earth for him to be and no place he could call home, maybe with his family, but he was so different now he didn't even know they'd recognize him. He still knew he didn't deserve to be here, but the life he did truly want was lost to him. Where else could he even go? Brandon looked to Alexander an picked the most honest answer he could think of, "I loved a girl, and I did the right thing, that's why I'm here."
Alexander laughed, "Everybody has the same answer. It's always some variation on the same thing, "I thought I was better than the rules." "
Michael was irritated by the man's stupidity, "When do I get to die?"
"You already asked that question." Alexander frowned, "I get the sentiment. You know when I first got here I walked up to the commander and punched him straight in the face, with the hopes that I'd be court-martialed and executed. But Walton understood what I was trying to do and instead, he locked me in the brig with no food for 4 days. By the time I got out I was a changed man, and I held a more significant appreciation for my own life. I understand now that my job up here is important, but I'd be lying if there weren't some days when I wish that he'd just shot me. But I guess-"
Alexander's head exploded in flash of blood and bone as a Gunshot rang out from the snow beneath the Wall. The ringing in his ears and the wet blood on his face was all he could feel as the world seemed to shift into slow motion.
"HOLY SHIT!" Michael threw himself to the ground, quickly realizing that he didn't want to die nearly as bad as he thought he did. The sound of machine gun fire started from the bottom of the wall as he scrambled to grab the rifle he left lying against one of the steel ramparts. The top of the wall had a few sections protected by small steel barriers, allowing a soldier to crouch into cover and pop out to fire back at possible attackers. But Michael had no plans of risking his neck to fire back. Besides, a quick check of the firing mechanism showed that the bolt had been frozen shut.
Michael's boots shook. He lied with his back to the metal barrier. 3 Inches of steel stood between him and oblivion. His mind was racing, trying to contemplate what was going on. He wasn't a real soldier, he knew that. He flew planes, miles above his enemy, and dropped bombs onto people he'd never see or know. He couldn't fight, so in that moment he did all he could do, he pulled himself into a ball against the stone cold steel parapet of the wall and just waited for it to all be over.
He couldn't do anything but wince and gasp as bullets ricocheted around him. It wasn't supposed to be this way. Everyone knew the Tribesmen were like cave men. They had stone age weapons, bows and spears, not guns. Guns, guns meant a real fight. Guns meant they could shoot back. Guns meant he'd have to shoot back.
What were the Tribesmen even doing attacking this place? The wall was hundreds of miles long, yet they chose to attack the one part of it that was the most fortified. Unless... A terrifying realization hit Michael, They want through the gate. Fort F was one of the few places with a gate to the other side of the wall, if the Tribesmen were to break through it then they'd be able to get a whole army through and before they faced an army large enough to stop them. They'd march for hundreds of miles doing God knows what to the Zytrians before they were stopped. But the gate is built out of two-foot thick steel and it can only be opened from the southern side. You wouldn't be able to break through it without explosives, he thought, except... If they have guns... who's to say they don't have explosives?
Michael peered reluctantly out onto the snow, his head barely above the steel barrier that protected him from most certain death. He saw easily a thousand men in fur clothes rushing towards the wall. Some of them were dragging sleds, sleds filled with what appeared to be satchel charges. Michael couldn't get a better view before the sound machine guns once again rang out beyond the snow.
A horrible sense of dread filled Michael as he ducked back behind the steel barrier that separated him from the machinegun fire. Somebody had to stop them, they couldn't be allowed to get through the gate. If they did make it through than thousands would die. Michael Crawled towards the south side of the Wall, he peeked his head over. Beneath him was Fort-F, a rusted out steel castle. He could see people as small as ants walking around beneath him. It was a tall wall, easily several hundred feet, but only in that moment of desperation did Michael realize just how far up he was. He screamed as loud as he could, "HELP!" the roar his voice was lost in the howling of the wind, "THERE'S AN ATTACK!" He screamed again. Nothing. His vocal cords strained as he yelled, "PLEASE! THERE'S AN ATTACK!" The ants beneath his feet didn't even seem to notice he was there. He cursed commander Walton for not putting more men on the guard.
How was he supposed to signal these people from hundreds of feet up? How could he warn them of what was coming? His eyes turned across the blackened steel wall. The deafening howl of the winter wind and the terrible chorus of bullets whizzing above his head couldn't overpower the sound of his heart thumping itself to pieces inside his chest. His eyes came to a small tower, rising slightly above the wall. Atop the tower was a large pile of wood and oil. The Signal fire.
Michael knew he couldn't. Even if he managed to make it, there's no way he could climb the tower to light the fire without being shot. It was a journey of certain death. better that he stays up here and survives, than to die with everybody else. He rationalized his own cowardice, what did he care if other people died? Who cares if the men at Fort-F get slaughtered? Who cares if the Tribesmen march south, and rape and pillage as they go? Who cares about the thousands of men who will die trying to stop them? Michael shook his head. The one person he actually cared about was dead, so the rest could die with her. He tried, he did. He tried so so hard to save one person, not even the whole world, just to have one person. And he failed, he'd fail all these people too and he knew it. The only rational thing to do would be to hide, to try and save himself.
His mind could only think of one word, Coward.
The wind and snow whipped around him, the sound of bullets almost like music against the metal of the wall. Michael couldn't escape his own mind in that moment. He had thought very highly of himself, even before the war. He was born to a rich family, he had a track and field scholarship at a nice college, which he went to so he could get a comfortable job as an accountant, to live an exceptional life. He felt that he was entitled to those things because he was Michael Branton, and everyone agreed he was a remarkable individual with a bright future. He thought that he deserved peace, and happiness, and money and gold and a life free of machine guns. The universe had been cruel to him, it handed him a shitty deck of cards and it took away the good cards that he'd earned. He deserved happiness, but he was never given it. There was only one thing he could ever admit that he didn't deserve, the one thing he simply hadn't earned.
Her.
Tau was the opposite of the kind of person Michael would expect to love him. She was smart, brave as all hell, more beautiful than the moon and stars combined, and beyond that, she fought to become the person she wished she could be. She started out as a farm hand in some field town in northern Zytria, but she ended up being one of the only women to ever graduate the Zytrian air academy. She worked hard and wasn't afraid of anything. She loved everything Michael hated, she was everything Michael could never be. That's why Michael never understood why she loved him. He always believed that she was simply the consequence of some cosmic mixup, that some deity in the sky made an error that stuck them together. They weren't star-crossed lovers, they were flukes of destiny.
Michael shook his head as the Tribesmen started closing in on the gate beneath him. She was better than he deserved, but the Universe corrected its mistake. She was dead now, blown out of the sky by the damned Atherians, and he was left to think about what could have been.
The natural thought burrowed into Michael's skull, What would Tau do?
Tau would light the signal fire, Michael knew that much. But why? What motivated her to be so brave? Why did she sacrifice so much just for the opportunity to sacrifice even more? Did she have an endgame, or was it all just because she could? What did she fight for?
He didn't know. He couldn't know. Michael wished that he had asked her when she was still alive. But now all he could do was sit there and wonder why she was brave and why he was a coward.
Arthus.
Michael froze instantly. A terrifying chill went reverberating down his spine as he realized how wrong he had been. Tau's family home was in the north of Zytria, only a few hundred miles south of the wall. Tau was dead and she never cared much for her mother, but she always loved her younger brother, Arthus. The little boy who wanted nothing more than to be just like her big sister, That little boy who wanted to be a pilot, that little boy who wanted to be a hero, that little boy that Tau swore to God she was fighting to protect. She said, that was why she was at the Air Academy in the first place, to show Arty that he could be anything. There was nothing in the world Tau cared about more than protecting that little boy, more than being a hero to that little boy. Michael could let them all die, the soldiers, the civilians, everyone. But Michael couldn't bear to think of those damned tribesmen ripping Arty to pieces. He wasn't able to save her, but dammit he could save the little boy she loved, the boy who carried her dreams, that last little sliver of her left in the world. He could save Arthus.
Michael crawled to the edge of the Steel Rampart. He bent over and put his fingers down onto the cold steel of the wall. He moved his legs behind him, extending his left leg fully while keeping his right bent and closer to him. He lifted his head, his eyes narrowing on his own personal finish line, the Signal tower.
He launched forward like a sprinter off the block. The wind howled in his ears as he devoted every single ounce of his effort towards running. One foot forward, then another. His legs were like springs as he channeled every part of his mind and body towards his goal. He could still hear bullets whizzing past him, but it didn't matter, A runner only thinks about the finish line.
Eventually he reached the tower. Without a second thought, Michael started on the climb. It was twenty feet up at best, a long climb considering he was being shot at. Michael stuck his foot into the bottom rung of the metal ladder that ascended the steel tower. Next he put both hands on the rungs above him and pulled himself up while pushing off of his feet. He practically flew up the ladder. Sparks rained down onto his head as bullets ricocheted around him. His arms felt like they were on fire and his legs screamed with pain, but he pushed them to go even further. Before long he had run out of the ladder and above him lied only the flat steel floor of the signal tower. He pressed his frozen fingers down onto the steel as he pulled himself up onto the floor of the tower.
Michael pressed himself flat against the steel floor of the tower, hiding from the bullets that whizzed above his head. The Tower was built so that the actual fire is on a platform above the first level of the tower, but the fuse for the fire hung down through the ceiling of the first floor. Michael clumsily pulled a knife and a magnesium bar out of his jacket. He stared up at the fuze. Dripping with Gasoline, it hung from the ceiling of the tower. Michael shook his head, why couldn't they have just built walls around this thing? The bullets above him ceased temporarily and he seized the opportunity.
Michael lept up from the ground and rushed the fuse. His boots struggled for traction against the icy metal floor of the tower, but it was only a few steps before he reached the gasoline-soaked rope that hung from the roof. Now the next part, starting the Fuze up. He lifted the magnesium bar up towards the fuze and struck it with his knife. The shower of sparks it created were pushed away from the fuze by the wind. He once again positioned his knife to strike the mag ba-
Michael felt a dramatic punch to the stomach that knocked him to the ground. Lying face up on the floor, Michael scanned the tower for any possible assailants who could have knocked him down, but he saw nothing. He took his hand and felt around his stomach where he was punched. It felt warm and wet. Michael pulled back his hand to see that it was covered in blood. "Shit." Michael said with a melodramatic tone. He tried to push himself up, but the gunshot wound made him too weak to do anything but just lie there.
As Michael stared up at the fuze that hung tauntingly close to him, a tear started down his face. So Fucking Close.
He wondered what Tau thought before she died. Did she think of me? Then he remembered, Tau finished her mission. Tau Accomplished her goal. Tau only died after winning.
His tears turned to outright sobbing. He didn't want to die, not like this. He accepted the idea of dying for something, but dying for nothing? Dying as a failure? He didn't want that. He didn't want to be weak, to be that coward who wanted to run then died in his first week at the wall. He wanted to fall asleep in her arms, and some part of him wanted to be home with his parents in a nice warm bed reading a book. But if he couldn't have all that, he'd settle for just another day in this fucking cold. In fact, he'd just settle for the chance to die as something more than a failure.
Out of the howling wind, he heard a voice. A voice that sounded so strange, a voice that he knew could not have been his own.
Get up.
It was probably just the blood loss. Lots of people hallucinate before they die.
Get up.
Michael was distressed that his hallucination refused to acknowledge reality. "I can't," He said. The voice did not care.
Get up.
To Michael's horror, he recognized the voice. It was Tau's voice.
Get up.
Michael struggled as he rolled himself over onto his stomach. He tried to push himself up with his hands, but it was simply too much. He didn't lift himself an inch before he gave in and slumped back down onto his stomach. His broken voice whimpered, "I can't."
Get up.
It wasn't just Tau's voice anymore. It was a chorus, a silent scream so loud that only he could hear it, a deafening roar that drowned out the wind and the gunfire.
Get up.
"I can't." He said meekly, But he could not hear himself speak over the roar of them screaming.
Get up!
Michael pushed against the steel floor, fighting with all his will to get onto his knees. His arms were on fire and the wound in his stomach was gushing blood as he felt his body rise a mere inch from the ground. He felt his arms go weaker and he wanted nothing more than to collapse back onto the floor.
Get Up!
He pushed even harder and managed to raise his body high enough for him to get one knee underneath him to support himself.
It was more than just Tau now. He could hear his mother' voice and his father's and the voice of Alexander and Captain Walton and the voice of Arthus; the boy he'd never met, the voices of every man he'd ever killed, the voices of the people he spared at that village, the voices of those would die if he failed. All of them were screaming, screaming two words with the force of an explosion.
"Get up." He said to himself, pulling his other knee underneath him. Tears were streaming out of his face as he forced his arms to push even harder, I am not going to die like this. My story does not end with me almost making it. I am going to light this fire, I am going to save them, I'll be like Tau. I'll finish this.
"Get up!" He cheered with the voices. Then, with some herculean effort that neither god nor man could ever understand, he pushed hard and gave himself just enough height to get his foot underneath him. "GET UP!" He screamed as his other foot found its purchase on the blood soaked steel beneath his body, "GET UP!" His stomach burned. His legs ached. His head was light and his fingers tingled. But his body, as if acting on its own accord, complied with his command. He rose completely to a full standing height. Every part of him hurt, he could feel every inch of his body in pain as he stood.
Finally, he lifted his arms and struck the magbar with the knife. This time the sparks caught on the gasoline-soaked fuse. The cord burst into a flame that traveled upwards and ignited the signal fire in a small explosion. Michael listened to the roar of the signal fire for a mere moment before his legs finally gave out and he collapsed back onto the ground.
He thought about death in those final moments. What happens to people when they die. He hoped for an afterlife, maybe a place for warriors to go when they fight their last. He was a Warrior now, he died fighting just like Tau. A smile crept across his bloodied face as he thought about seeing her again.
The cold took him away, but in the darkness he swore he could feel her lying against him one last time.