Pawn's Gambit (The Mortal Techniques)

by Rob J. Hayes

I have commanded armies. I have waged war, true war in all its myriad incarnations. I have come to understand it like none other before me, and none other will after I am gone. People think war is a concept inflicted upon the weak by the powerful. A contest of battles, a push and pull of opposing forces struggling for dominance, searching for that one move that would cut off the head and let the war die. That is a lie. War is a living thing, unique to humanity amongst the physical and spiritual kingdoms, and it mimics its conceptualists with alarming accuracy. A war starts small. An idea, a thought. A conception. Never quick, it takes time to gestate, to grow, to take form long before it is birthed into the world. And it is always birthed in blood. Violence and screaming and love. No war can take place without love. Be it love for a person, love for power, love for money, love for a nation. Wars grow, expanding beyond the boundaries of their initial conception. As more participants join a war, they add their own purposes to it, muddy its waters and change its flow. Wars grow, and as they grow, they change, consume, spread. They are lonely things, seeking company, spawning smaller conflicts. Yet they grow tired over time, giving and taking scars that heal into tougher tissue, more callous. And when they die, they die hard, just as people die hard, clinging to every second, every scrap of life. Wars never end when the head is chopped off. That is also a lie. Battles continue...