The dreams...

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This was all one dream, but the others I have and will have like it...

I watched as a battalion was sent in, pretty much sacrificially.  It was a stopping play, a task to hold everything just as it was, no matter the cost.  And so it went.

When ammunition went empty, bayonets or enemy ammunition.  When that was gone, rifles as clubs, knives, and hand-to-hand.  If all you could do was bite, you did so.  Ambushes in the dark, we would hit them and rip them apparat, and die.  They had every advantage but we were insistent.  While they killed us en masse, we crawled right into their hearts and mind, imprinting a fear which caused them to kill more of their compatriots then we could have even hoped were we being well supplied.  Plucky royalty like officers, who would push their luck... wouldn't push it twice... at gates and else.  Learned to hollower out, well in advance, their name, rank, and the nature of their visit.  More than a few well feathered peacock got his ass shot off, trying to assert his bona fides, without offering them rightly first.  And many platoons were decimated trying to sneak in.  Damned if you do, damned if you don't.  For many were slaughtered for calling out to the wrong group.

On and on it went.  After days, nearing a week, there was only a company left.  Completely out of food, water, ammunition.  The best that could be done was to plunder the dead, and hand-to-hand night raids on small patrols, or into weakly held larger camps.  They learned to keep the patrol loadouts light, and send them out in small groups.  And... to just shoot right into whichever unit came under attack.  We learned to sacrifice a few men, then have the rest flank the other two units.

Finally, the last platoon was pretty much surrounded.  So angry were the enemy, they attempted to take no prisoners.  But they were doing the killing slowly.  Trussed like pigs, we were bayonetted or shot, once in a while, to jeers and laughter.  Our commander, a woman, alive and with us, was tortured and raped before us.  She was as us, and just thanked the enemy for providing entertainment for her boys.

She ended up pregnant, and surviving.  Raised her lad to be like us, and herself.  Only about a squad lived, for some, at some point... couldn't... wouldn't... stab or shoot us anymore.

We were glad for the sacrifice.  We would meet each year.  I only remember meeting until half of the original crew were left.  Never did cry.  We did what we were asked to do.  It was a wonderful thing.  She did get her son in the service, and he advanced.  But secular service have a disregard for those who will go the distance.  Command expects their own to not go in, get hurt.  And, if you are going to get that bunged up, then just die.  He didn't go far, for they feared he... might be like his mother.  At least in that, they were correct.

Then, I realized.  I wasn't one of them, or her.  I was all of them.  In time, I will steel the hearts of good men, and loose the hope of peace for men with no peace in their hearts.  Many will die, only my Lord will abolish more men than the riders, in His second role, in the war portion of the apocalypse.

The horror, is knowing death is not preferred, but must be had.  Many, good and evil, will die.  I will drive them to these things, but things they need no driving too albeit.  I will, even with the enemy, leave signs and portents that, if they choose, even at their ends, they may see the light and change... even if it means nothing to the wars raging around them, as they are dying.  Well, and to be with those who die for the errand of fools which besets them for no right cause.  It isn't about death, or life, but can be.

Even all the rage I will release, there is one who will slay more with a word than all the riders will, in rider form, until Him.  It will not be with joy, but with justice.  All the generals, politicians, billionaires, bankers, along with the armies they toss at the world, will simply end.  Blood will flow through the streets.  Still, there will be hope for them, right to the end.  Signs, portents, words of wisdom, and more, will be sent.  They will certainly have chosen.  Amen.

Such... dreams.