The Meaning of the Mission
"Why? Why are you doing this?"
Arst found himself thinking back to these words as he went to bed that evening. The city they had taken today... people had died, many of them by his own hands. He'd ordered civilians and soldiers who surrendered to be spared, but so many of them had fought back. It had been necessary to crush the opposition, he needed this city to proceed any further, but he found that it was no solace to know that when the faces of people haunted him- innocent people who had never asked for this war, crying over the mangled bodies of their dead loved ones.
And then these words. "Why are you doing this?" Why had he brought the war to them, why had he destroyed their lives?
I didn't, he wanted to shout. I told you to surrender, I told you I would spare you, I didn't want to do this, this wasn't meant to be a bloodbath...
Yet what good was that? What good would it do anyone to know that he hadn't intended to take the city by force? It wouldn't bring back the dead. The ones killed by his hand or command. No matter how he twisted, he was to blame for the slaughtering, the deaths...
He could have said that he was fighting for their own good, that it was their own fault for resisting, but that left the bitter taste of hypocrisy in his mouth. Did he even have the right to say that he fought for a better Auj-Oule if his conquest only served to make people more miserable? What was the point of this war, then? He had set out to dethrone Merad, to right the wrongs he saw, but all he had done today was to cause more suffering, the very thing he seeked to end.
Was he right in doing what he was doing? Or should he just... stop? Stop and crawl back home and forget anything ever happened?
And then the memory of three years ago came back. He remembered Lars, the Long Dau patriarch, staying behind on a hill while sending his soldiers to their deaths. Lars, laughing at him, saying that he did not care about lowly peasant soldiers.
And wasn't that the difference … ? Lars, and Merad too, wouldn't lie awake at night because of what happened, would they? They wouldn't have cared, just as Lars hadn't cared then.
Arst cared. He wanted to create a nation where the elite cared and he still believed in that goal.
Yes, he was to blame for what happened today, but in the end, he realised, that just meant he had to try even harder. The lives taken today should not have been in vain. He had a duty not to fail them.
That was the true meaning of his mission. The throne didn't matter much. Creating a better future for everyone did.