The Garrison

When we reach the age of adulthood, we begin our service. Some are fortunate and go to the hospitals or the schools or the cathedrals. But most of us will be sent to the Garrison.

In the center of our town there stands a wheel, tall and ancient. It turns with the days and the months and the years, grinding down the passage of time between slabs of ancient stone and weathered wood. It keeps the time and tracks the heartbeat of the ages.

It is there where the officers arrive. They stand on the dais before the great wheel and speak in booming voices amidst the clatter of trumpets and drums. Their uniforms are starched and crisp. Their plates burnished and shining in the high sun, gleaming mirrored silver. They are radiant and proud.

And they are eloquent. They speak to us of honor, bravery, nobility, and service. Service above all. Service in splendor and glory. It is the Garrison, after all, that keeps us safe, safe from the fangs and claws in the night, the dark and brutal things that slink in the slime and muck outside our borders. Without the garrison, without the brave men and women who stand astride the battlements, without the lions baring teeth and claws against the unrelenting night, we would all be exposed. To go there is privilege. It is noble and true to stand tall on those walls, straight and narrow, facing boldly into the brisk wind beneath the fluttering flags, as the watchers, ever vigilant.

And when you return, the rewards will be great, since we honor our heroes, the noble veterans of the Garrison.

And so we are sent.

We don’t always think we will go. It’s not an easy thing.

I’ve heard parents of friends shout and yell and bang their mugs down on their tables and say things like “I won’t send my children to the Garrison!” and “Enough is enough!” They agree with each other, raucous and loud. This time it will be different, or so they say.

I used to play dice with my friends just off the square and we would stand tall and proclaim that we would not fight the wars that don’t belong to us, that we would make our own choices. We would never go to the Garrison. We were worth more elsewhere. We would live our own lives. Safe we were, there, shielded by the fact that we had not yet come of age and our choices couldn’t bring the fell weight of consequence.

But the truth comes with the turning of the great wheel, and we are sent. The wheel grinds away the time, the excuses, the dreams of youth. The soldiers stand on the dais and in the miasma of passion and fervor, parents push their kids forward. The children hold their heads high and brandish ancestral weapons while praise and glory are heaped upon them. They stride boldly forward and board the trains. Those of us who would remain are menaced from all sides, but perhaps more from behind by the savage knives of scorn and judgment and shame. For you have now come of age, and in your heart you know what you will do, and have always known, because it’s the way it must be and because the time has run out. The wheel wears it away.

You take your weapons, hold yourself regal and step forward, and begin your service.

And thus we go to the Garrison.

***

It’s cramped on the trains and it’s quiet. We stand shoulder to shoulder with our fellow recruits in nervous, heavy silence. When we board the trains, some bring with them the bravado of the town square, but as the trains pull away and we watch our families fade into the distance, crying and waving flags and handkerchiefs, the bravado disappears. We try to act brave and hold our heads high, but it’s harder here with nothing but the now, and the future, and weight of consequence.

Someone shouts boldly somewhere down the train. There is a clatter of metal and rustle of bodies. No one responds and the voice weakens and fades as confidence bleeds out. Whatever it says is drowned out as the silence seeps back in, covering everything like freshly fallen snow.

Mostly we watch. We look out the windows as the train speeds ever onwards.

We speed over tundra, watched over by towering and ancient sentinels of frosted stone, and high plains strewn with lavender and corn and alfalfa. The train winds through mountain passes and valleys, lush with moss and rot and hanging rhododendrons. Around us, the world blooms and rages amidst frost and wind and fire.

We stop sometimes, to sleep and refuel. Recruits disembark and stretch our legs in the crisp air. We pitch canvas tents and or roll out our sleeping bags under the radiant stars. We cook stew and break bread around roaring fires, but we are quiet. We have little to say. The past doesn’t matter. Its time is done. And what can you say about all the things that have not yet happened? There is communion here, but it is weak and brittle. We are a cohort, but not a family.

Sometimes we stop in villages and towns. Our train pulls up to the city squares and stops at the base of a great wheel, all different yet all the same. We watch the numbers on the wheel when we arrive and see how they’ve changed. Days and weeks pass away. The wheels grind them down.

There we pick up new recruits. Through the train windows we watch the ceremonies with their ribbons and speeches and fanfare. Parents weep as they push forward their children clad in shimmering iron and velvet. Trumpets bark glorious refrains and the recruits board the train. They come aboard shouting and waving, then they join us in the silence. Like all of us, they are struck with the savage truth as the train grinds steel on steel and presses us onward. We are going to the garrison.

We don’t all make it. One day a recruit collapses in the back of the train. We learn his name was Percival Clemens.

The train stops and we hold a funeral, hundreds of new soldiers in patchwork armor, as we have not yet received our uniforms. We stand at attention as Percival is buried in full honors. None of us knew him, but we all know him now. We shed tears, for he could be any of us, no matter who he was before.

Where he is buried there will stand a small landmark in the purest white. He is buried as a hero. His family is awarded full honors. For he did his duty after all. He never made it, but when he was sent to the Garrison, he went.

On the hills above the resting place of young Percival, there are cages hanging from the crags. The cages are wrought from old iron and sway and whistle in the breeze. They are full of bones, some so new that insects still pick them clean, and some older than our ancestors. We don’t mention them. We think that they could never be us. But we all see the bones and we know them well. They did not go to the Garrison.

The train presses on. It feels like days melt into weeks into months into years, but then we arrive.

The Garrison stretches beyond us, farther in any direction than the eye can see. It is tall and powerful. It is ancient stones hundreds feet high, bound in cast iron and steel, interwoven by staircases and towers and gates, bolstered by ramparts and supports, pockmarked with doors and windows leading into ancient tunnels and forgotten places. It is a wall as strong and old as the earth. Buildings are scattered around its base. These are kitchens and barracks and armories, and all the trappings of violence and order.

Snow covers everything here in the northern plains. The tundra is hard and unforgiving. The train deposits us at the periphery of the Garrison, and we take our bags and weapons and disembark.

As we walk among the buildings scattered at the base of the garrison, we watch soldiers training in the fields, repairing fences, and carrying heavy stones to bolster the wall. A group of old veterans sit around a fire at the base of the wall. They are scarred and savage looking, wearing makeshift armor with stained and well-worn weapons leaning against their chairs. Their leader glances at us, one eye cloudy and scarred from an old wound. “Look at these new ones, barely weaned,” he grunts. His comrades laugh.

“So raw and fragile,” he continues, “they won’t last the night.” They go back to their meal.

We settle into our bunks and spend the days working and training. We spar and shoot at dummies. We labor in the kitchens and the field. Whatever it takes to maintain the Garrison. We grow lean and hungry, but strong. Our muscles are toned. The bravado bleeds away. The proud among us are humbled. No one is shouting boasts in the train cars now. Life is hard here, but we persevere. We’ve done it. We’ve come to the Garrison.

But then we hear the alarm. It is morning on a frozen day and the fog is thick and cloying. The drums call us to arms. We grab our weapons, just as we have in all of our days of training, but now with deadly purpose. We head to the wall.

We’re shoulder to shoulder now, with our fellow recruits, with our officers, with the old veterans and all who dared to answer the call. There are no distinctions now. Not here on the wall. It’s us against the dark.

We hear the voices then, and the shouting, and the impacts of grappling hooks and ladders on the Garrison, and soon the enemy is coming. Weapons and gear scrape the walls as they climb.

Soon we see their faces, eyes fierce and wrathful behind their helms, skin caked with mud and grime from the bogs below. Their faces are locked in angry grimaces, full of rage. We open fire. Bodies fall from the wall and men and women shriek in agony as the world explodes in a bouquet of carnage. All is blood and hate.

We try to keep them off the wall but they move too fast and there are too many. Soon they reach the top and it is knife work now. I push and shove as bodies swarm close. My arms grow tired from the labor and drenched with gore up to my shoulders, but I fight on. Blades whisper malevolent agony across the stony rampart, at once chaotic and eerily silent. No one is chanting with bravado now.

I lose one knife in a man’s eye as he falls from the rampart before I can withdraw it. I have a spare. I draw it just in time. Another one of them is upon me, but I duck under his strike. My knife caresses his leg at the knee, and it buckles. Then I open his belly. The rampart is slick with guts and blood and sweat.

I try to pause and take a breath, but it’s a mistake. I turn and a mailed fist slams into my nose. Now the blood is mine, streaming down my chin and into my mouth. I choke as I stumble backwards. No, not backwards into the wall. I can’t stop, I can’t see where I’m going. I lose my footing, and then I fall.

I’m in the swamp now. I survive the fall by landing in a pile of bodies and soggy peat moss. I can’t see from the blood and the throbbing in my head. The world pulses around me. It strikes me now, I’m amidst the enemy. I run for cover keeping my head down. I dodge and duck and weave as bodies fall around me. I see a depression somewhere in the distance and I sprint. I go over a hill, and then I’m in the hole, but the ground gives out underneath my foot and I fall. I slam my head into a stone on my way into the put and the world turns black.

***

Then the world is light again. It’s twilight, and I’m in the bogs. The echoes of war roar around me and pulse in my ears. It’s frigid here. The fog turns to drifting snow and then back to mist. I don’t know how long I’ve been down here, but the battle rages on. I’m bone tired, and famished. I try to crawl but my muscles are weak. I shelter under the rocky overhang. I’ll need to rebuild my strength if I’m to make it back to the Garrison, but I’m stuck in enemy territory, surrounded by them, with no allies and resources. I find bugs and small lizards creeping around the hole and use them to sustain myself. It’s better than nothing, and soon I can crawl again.

I spend days recovering, gathering my strength. Maybe months, maybe years. The battle rages on, perpetual. Soon I’m ready. I can make it back to the wall. I can defend the Garrison. I cake mud on my face and arms to disguise myself. I hide my burnished armor, though it’s now rusty and pitted. I crawl from the hole. Men sprint beside me, through the fog and mire. I follow the crowd, staying close to the ground.

I see a man in a mask running by my left. I slide in front of him and catch him in the leg with my heavy knife, snapping it off at the knee. He screams but his voice is lost in the rage of battle. I take his mask for myself to hide my identity. I move on and leave him to bleed. I don’t know how long I run, but I am tireless in my goal. Eventually I see the walls of the Garrison. I am home.

I run to the base and plant my knife in the back of a man climbing one of the great ladders and step over him. If I can make it to the top I can rejoin the fight. Carnage rains down upon us as the men above fire their weapons. I dodge and weave, hiding under ramparts and crevasses and soon I’m near the top. Knives dance in the twilight at the top of the wall beneath great skies of smoke and dust. They try to sweep me from the ladder as a group of us crest the wall. Wait, not us. I am not one of them. I parry the daggers and grab a hand wielding a knife to lift myself over the wall. Near the top I yank and slash the hand from the arm, sending him to the bogs below. I’m back on the wall, and remove my mask. I’m home, and I take my knife to the savages attacking the garrison. It’s knife work now, and I’m brutal and cold.

We hear the horns again, and the assault abates. Ladders are withdrawn and we cut down the ropes. The enemy recedes, they slink back into the mire. The battle is done.

We descend the walls triumphant, and changed. I bear a deep gash in my head from my fall, and unknown scars from my time in the swamps. My armor is worn and dull, but battle tested. We return to our lives. But now I sit around the fire, with the old veterans, many of us who came on the trains are now here together, stained and scarred. We eat mutton and tell old stories. Sometimes trains come, and unload new recruits, bold and boisterous, in shining plate and starched whites, eager for glory.

“Look at these new ones, barely weaned,” I scoff. The old veterans around the fire laugh and gulp their mead. “So raw and fragile,” I continue, “they won’t last the night.”

***

Years come and go and we grow old. And eventually, those of us who are left, we leave the Garrison. We are retired with honors, and we return home on the trains amidst flowers and laurels and brass bands. The trains take us back to the town square, where the great wheels still turn, marking the passage of time and pounding the years into dust.

I start a family, and raise kids of my own. They sit on my knee as I sit in front of the crackling fire and they watch the light glint off of my weapons and armor, now hanging in a place of honor above the hearth, weapons they will someday wield when we send them to the Garrison.

As they grow I see the signs of the familiar struggle. They rebel, they lash out, they do not want to go. And indeed, some will go to the universities, some to the churches, some are too weak and frail to be called. They will do what they must to avoid the wall.

But then the troops run low and the invalids are needed to bolster the ranks. The clergy are needed in the tundra to administer the last rights to the dying. The academics are needed to build and fine-tune new weaponry, to apply engineering principles to bolster the wall. One by one they are called nonetheless. And we go to the town square in our finery and wave our flags and push them forward to the sounds of horns and drums as they board the trains.

We still send them to the Garrison.

Some come home, older and calloused now. They start families of their own. And now I am an old man. I play with my grandkids but I don’t have the strength I once did. These young children are different though. They have a passion and a fire. They don’t want to watch the light dance across burnished plates and sing the old songs. As they age, they say they will not go to the Garrison. That those days are gone. They will not give their lives for the cause of the old men. We say they don’t understand and they say it is us that don’t understand. Who’s to say who is right? I’m too old now to fight. It’s not my place.

The children never want to go, but this time it’s different. They march in great lines and refuse to board the trains. They reject the polished officers who come to take them. The officers return with soldiers from the Garrison and still, they refuse. There is fighting and war and death. Not in the bogs now, but in the fields and valleys. The children go to battle on their own behalf, to not go to the Garrison. And they win.

Eventually, the officers stop coming. The old soldiers from the Garrison surrender and stop fighting. The children, older now, battle hardened, take control, and say those old days are over. They are in charge now. There is a year without a conscription, then another, and another. Maybe things are different.

But small skirmishes drag on. There are attacks, petty insurrections. They say there are still forces of the old order out there, those who want to return us to the old ways, and what we’ve built must be defended. We must keep them out so they can’t endanger it. And, of course, what better way to keep things out, than with a wall.

The Garrison, though standing idle, is still stout and broad. Its ancestral chambers are empty and stale with dust and cobwebs, but the stones fit tightly and the gates are shut fast. With some coal in its furnaces and the hands of strong, young men at its bellows, the old gears grind again with ancient, relentless power. They push them out beyond the walls into the muck and the grime. And volunteers from the new order take their stations.

But the walls are long and deep, and it takes fighting men and women to watch from the towers, and there are not enough volunteers.

It’s different this time, they say, it’s for the good of us all. It’s to preserve what we’ve built from those who would take us back to the old ways. They promise a short term of service, all will take part so we all participate in saving the great experiment. Everyone will take part and, when they come of age, they will go to the Garrison.

***

They all fail to see it, of course. All the teachers and doctors, the preachers and prophets, the idealists and revolutionaries, they think they can break the cycle of violence if they don’t make the same mistakes as their fathers. And they don’t make those mistakes, but they make different ones. And in doing so, they fail to see the bitter truth, that perhaps all choices lead to the Garrison.

Because the truth is that history, like the great wheels that grind down the ages and keep the heartbeat of time, moves in a circle. And there’s a problem with circles. They have more than one beginning.

My grandkids return from war, and I’m relieved to see them. Having my family home brings me peace. I don’t need much now, I’m a very old man. I rarely move from my spot in front of the fire. My old arms and armor still hang in a place of honor and the firelight gleams in the reflections of the ancient metal.

There is little for me to do but look back on my life and consider my mistakes. I’ve had many loves and triumphs, but it’s the mistakes that define us. Boarding the train. Falling from the wall. Everything that happened in the swamp that we never speak about. Sending my sons and daughters on my same path. Fighting as a soldier for the old order, and doing the same for the new one. The mistakes echo in the wind and cast shadows in the firebox like ghosts.

My first great granddaughter was born recently, and in her, I see the light of the world. It’s hard for me to move, but sometimes I manage to work my way over to her crib and watch her squirm with delight. She has just started smiling, and nothing on earth is more beautiful. Her eyes are blue like arctic ice, and she giggles when I tickle her belly.

In her I see everything that could be good in the world, and I can’t wait to watch her grow, and I hope to live to see it. In the year to come she will crawl, and then take her first steps. I will watch her eat fresh fruit on the tables out on the lawn in summer and see the peach juice drip down her bib while she giggles with glee. I will watch her cry from her first skinned knee as her parents bandage her wounds and I will sneak her sugarcane and we will watch shooting stars in the brisk night under clear skies. She will grow fast and strong and smart and wise. She will have ideas to change the world and the light in her will burn away the dark places and the hearts of her family and those who learn to love her will grow in the outpouring of her grace and kindness and beauty.

She pulls on my finger, so small and delicate in her crib, and giggles with pure joy. A tear falls from my cheek as I watch her, and dream of everything to come. For the wheel will grind on, and she will grow, and grow, and grow.

And one day she will come of age and we will send her to the Garrison.