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The drums thumped slowly.
The marching was crisp, as the three regiments set off down the red road.
Down the road that led ever onward, farther from home than they had ever gone. The road that led ever deeper into the unknown.
Down the road with no return.
They looked back.
They saw many others setting off.
Others from their village, and from other villages. Also some who looked different. Perhaps their village was one of the few lucky ones in this wide world where the Great Men dwelt.
For the Great Men had come.
They had come to harvest, to take away people from this small place.
They had come to take away the people of little significance. They had come to take away the people who led insignificant lives. They had come to take away the people who did nothing. They had come to take away the people who were fit to be harvested.
The Great Men had come, yet again.
And here were the three regiments: the Not-Just-Folks regiment, the Lost-The-Nothing regiment and the When-We-Are-Lucky regiment. The first two regiments were marching to glory, up the hill toward the Great Men. The last regiment was marching down the hill.
All three regiments were made up of men from the village of Pahrump. Except for the Lost-The-Nothing regiment, which included the men of neighboring lake-town, Lake So Than to the north-east.
Lake So Than had been ruined by something very strange. The people from the two towns had gone to war when they had been kidnapped by the Great Men, and yet they had been able to fight as allies when it came to fighting their captors.
They had been grouped together in a regiment with the people of Pahrump, because they had been united by a strange thing that they did not talk about.
But as they marched to the lowlands, the Great Men were silent. No one could hear them coming. No one could see them taking people away to serve them, year after year, lifetime after lifetime after lifetime. The Great Men were silent.
But today, the day when the regiments set off on a great journey —a journey that would apparently last all their lives, and perhaps beyond that — something very, very strange and unexpected was happening. No one noticed. No one could hear it.
But the regiments began to make camp. They settled in for the night.
On this first day of the journey to the lowlands, they sat in their tents and did not talk. They were not afraid. They knew no one was listening. They did not expect the Great Men to come this day. They followed the instructions that they had been given. They prepared for the journey.
They were such men, the three regiments.
They were such men because they looked forward to nothing. Their lives were dedicated to the future, as all paid no heed to the present. They looked to the future because they could not look to the present: not due to submissiveness, but because they were not submissive.
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