Just give up. Just say it. Just say it. Who is the blood for?

The whispers are distracting.

After a few more years, he decides to talk while he works, to blot them out.

The red doesn’t like that either.

‘Two millennia before the start of the first modern era on Terra, it was written in the Sumari epic lyric, called by some the Record of Gigamech, that two warriors debated whether or not to execute a captured enemy–’

Behind the wall, the red hisses in annoyance.

This again.

‘They eventually elect to kill him. This brings down on them the opprobrium of what, at that period, were considered gods. There were no gods. But in this case, “gods” are a metaphor for societal outrage. The poem, some thirty thousand years old, is the earliest human record of ethics in warfare. The idea of just and unjust killing. It is the first application of morality to warfare.’

The red growls its displeasure.

He smiles, and adds, ‘Mankind realised, even then, that blood was never just for blood.’

Another growl.

He carries on working, scratching, planning. He is not really talking to the red, because you cannot really hold a conversation with it, not any conversation he is prepared to have. But there is no one else here besides him and the red. He talks to drown out its whispers, so he can concentrate. It is simply a bonus that what he says annoys it.

‘Some… and we can only estimate… but some one-and-a-half-thousand years later, the cultures of archaic Eleniki developed the first rules of war. They were not binding, and had no legality, but they were agreed, and abided by, at a social level.’

These are the things he remembers. He learned them, long ago. Someone taught him, when he was young. His father, perhaps? He thinks he had a father. He recites the history of warfare ethics as a mantra, a focus for his rusting mind, a wall to block out the whispers. A calculated annoyance. He keeps talking to himself. It’s odd at first, for no one has really spoken for almost a century except the whispers. The sound of his own voice surprises him. He had almost forgotten how to speak.

Give up. Give in. Say it. Say who the blood is for–

‘Circa three hundred, M1, in the period known as the Martial States, in the Eastern Eurasian expanse, the concept of yi bang was devised to regulate the application of war. This formalised the justification for killing, making it the supreme method of judicial punishment. It could be used only by the ruling elite. Just kings, lords, emperors. Blood was not for anyone else.’

Behind the wall, the red snarls.

‘This is the convention later known as jus ad bellum.’

Years pass. Plans are scratched, scrapped, and new versions added. Frustrated by his dry-voiced lectures and the scritch of his blade, the red stops whispering. Sounds come, instead. Noises on the other side of the wall. Distant murmurs of battle and destruction. He stops and listens. He presses his ear to the wall to hear better. The sounds are close, just on the other side. They are so tempting. But he can’t climb the walls, because the walls are slightly too high, and he knows that if he treks up to the top of the highest dune, he still won’t quite be able to see over.

He wipes red dust off what remains of his blade, and resumes his work.

‘I am Rogal Dorn,’ he says. He clears the dust from his throat. He picks up where he left off, perhaps hours or centuries earlier. ‘Long ago, a philosopher and sometime remembrancer proposed a framework for the conduct of war, suggesting that war was permissible if it resulted in secure peace. But this was compromised by the notion that war could be divided into just war , which was that waged against outsiders, and unjust , which was war waged upon one’s own people.

This distinction remains. War to suppress or annihilate an outside threat, that which is xenos, is judged as justified as a means of security. Civil war is regarded as unjust and an abomination. Not all blood is the same.’

The sounds of war grow louder. The wall vibrates slightly, sifting red dust down onto his working hands.

His hands are blood red.

He ignores it.

He steps back to examine his latest diagram. Out of the wall’s shadow, the sunlight is hard and strong. He looks up and sees, for the first time in a century or two, for the first time since he arrived, however that happened, that there is a sun in the sky. Everything is blood red – the wall, the desert, the sky, the dust – but there is a sun now. It is more of a star, in truth. A single, steadfast star. It is small, white, bright, fierce. It is the only thing the sky has done in the whole time he has been here, except change colour.

He closes his eyes and feels the light and heat on his skin. He basks, for a second.

Just give in.

He goes back in under the shadow of the red wall, and returns to his work. His worn-away nub of sword scritches new lines of escape and defence. He resumes his recitation.

‘A later philosopher formulated the principal criteria that serve as the foundation for warfare in civilised societies. There are two – just cause and formal authority. Only a king or an emperor can declare war, and then only if it has legal justification, such as the protection of a culture. It is otherwise illegal and forbidden, even for gods.’

The noise of war on the other side of the wall becomes a palpable roar.

Give in. Give up. Let go. Just say it. Blood for the Blood God.

‘There are no gods,’ says Rogal Dorn.

He leans close to the wall, his mouth almost touching it.

‘Not even you,’ he whispers.