City Must Survive
The lamentation of the frigid wind reverberated through the cell, an chamber he had once forced people to die in the merciless embrace of the cold mistress of death. Having long ago reconciled himself to his own end, he felt neither anticipation nor despair; death had become merely another administrative inevitability.
Footsteps approached, and he recognized their cadence instantly. Mary—his childhood love—had come. Though he did not raise his eyes, he could envision the mournful contours of her expression. She wore sorrow as a necessary costume; in truth, her mind remained composed, but she understood the ritual of grief expected of her, even knowing that he could perceive the performance.
“Where is Winston?” he asked, his voice scarcely more than an exhalation.
“He… he is on his way, my lord,” Mary replied, the strain in her voice betraying her awareness of his suffering.
Racked with feverish shivers, he awaited Winston’s arrival. When he heard the clipped cadence of military commands echo down the corridor, he knew the moment had finally come, a moment he had awaited for what felt like an eternity. At last, it was time not merely to endure, but to live.
Winston entered with lowered head, carrying the personal provisions of the Lord Commander: a package of three cigarettes and a small flask of whiskey. “My lord,” he said, offering the flask and the cigarettes. The Lord Commander’s hands trembled with a mixture of cold and long-denied anticipation. Placing a cigarette between his frostbitten lips, he accepted the lighter from Winston and, after many barren years, drew in a lungful of nicotine.
In that moment, he felt alive—released, for an instant, from mere survival.
“Fuck you,” he said with a brief, sardonic laugh. “You don’t get to smoke. You are not dying just yet.” He continued to inhale, shuddering with equal parts pain and grim amusement.
Winston, attempting to mask profound sorrow, managed a faint grin. Only he truly understood the burdens endured throughout this unrelenting “Age of Cold.”
“We are grateful for your service, Lord Commander,” Winston offered formally.
“What service?” the Commander muttered bitterly.
“To annihilate faith, affection, and the remnants of human nature? To impose extended and emergency shifts until bodies collapsed? To decree triage protocols that condemned the weak to die? To conscript children into lethal labor? To compel mothers to witness the amputation of their children’s frost-ravaged limbs? To send scouts into the wilderness, half of whom never returned? To force the mutilated to keep working rather than offer them refuge? To consign the dead to snow pits because we lacked even a cemetery? I ordered people tossed into frozen trenches so their organs might prolong another’s survival. Sons do not know where their fathers lie. Mothers were denied the smallest rite of mourning. ‘Redfox the Cruel’—is that not what they call me? And this is my service?” he asked, exhaling smoke in a thin, wavering stream.
Winston responded with measured compassion.
“You marched with the expeditions, giving people hope. You labored beside them. You looked into their eyes while their loved ones died in agony. Where others sought to look away, you confronted their suffering directly—with austerity, yes, but never indifference. You offered them the cruelty necessary to endure. Survival was all we could afford; living had become a luxury, had it not, my lord? And still, you guided us.”
Then, with unguarded emotion, he asked, “Why did you allow them to depose you? With your authority, you could have preserved our safety—our very existence.”
The Commander gave a weary, reflective sigh.
“Winston, my dear friend… history remembers the triumphant figures who rose from civil wars to forge new eras. But I was always more captivated by the forgotten souls—those who possessed the power to ascend yet deliberately remained silent for the sake of preserving fragile stability. I chose silence, so that order might outlive me. Beneath my belongings, you will find an emergency directive. Use it only if stability once again falters.”
This was the Lord Commander’s final instruction.
Winston saluted him with unfeigned reverence.
With tears gathering at the edges of his vision, the Commander looked one last time at Mary, dismissed them both, and spent the remainder of his night savoring the whiskey and cigarettes that would accompany him into oblivion.
Morning arrived. He was bound to a steam pipe—his sentence to perish by scalding heat. The entire settlement gathered: some in gratitude, others in vengeful anticipation.
Amid the hush, he scarcely heard the enumerated charges of treason.
“Have you any final words, Lord Commander Redfox?” the spokesman asked.
After years of ruling with brutal efficiency, driven solely by the imperative of survival, he offered only four words:
“I did my best.”
The steam roared.
Consciousness slipped from him within three minutes.
Death claimed him fourteen minutes later.
He never uttered a single cry.
