Kingshelm (Renegade Druid Cycle Book 1) (25 page)

Then, sometime during the foggy, exhausted delirium of those first weeks, the digging began to make sense to Barryn. In the third week, he and his fellow recruits were digging defensive works around their camp sites every afternoon.
 

The routine of military life was soon burned into his very being. Wake up. Pull some detail around the tidy camp. Eat. Realize the sun is coming up. Wonder what
 
seasonal observance he is missing. Help fill in the trenches around the camp. Break down the camp, load the wagons. March off in a line to some new place where they would stop for the day, dig defensive works that would surround their camp. Barryn was almost delirious from lack of sleep and always a little drunk. Soldiers on the march had limited access to clean water, so kegs of weak, watery “small beer” accompanied them in the supply wagons and was the only means by which to quench the recruits’ thirst.

The sergeants marched with them, yelling and prodding and cajoling and, little by little, teaching. The sergeants, almost demonic in their vigor, taught the recruits more and more about tactics, field craft, and actual combat as the weeks drew on without slacking on their incessant yelling and their orders to dig.
 

After the first month, the bell became mostly silent. Those who were going to voluntarily wash out had done so, and the recruits who remained were ordered to memorize more than their general orders and code of conduct—facts like the authorized composition of the Black Swan Company: 1,000 infantry, divided into 10 platoons commanded by a captain and a first sergeant each; each platoon has two eight-man crossbow squads. Five hundred cavalry, also divided into troops of 100. Fifty small artillery pieces, a scorpion and an onager per infantry platoon. A surgeon captain and 20 medics.
 

In addition, the quartermaster and his platoon commanded hundreds of wagons, carts and mules that directly supplied and supported the company. And then there were the camp followers—the sutlers, blacksmiths, procurers, tanners, families and vetted prostitutes who serviced the needs of the mercenaries. The quartermasters and camp followers, in fact, outnumbered the line troops two-to-one. Barryn learned that an army on campaign was essentially a nomadic town.
 

“And what do you think happens to all those excellent whores and wives and squalling brats on the losing side of a battle?” asked Sergeant Drake in what approximated a normal tone of voice. “You’re a smart lot. What do you think happens to all that sweet, easy pussy?”
 

“They get raped is what, Sergeant!” one of the recruits yelled. His name was Delton, and was supposedly a young knight. He and Barryn got along, but the heathen saw nothing to indicate Delton’s putative nobility.

“Exactly,” Drake said. “While your brains are leaking out of your split skull and your comrades are running like scared rabbits, the enemy is charging through your spilled guts to rape your field wife. Think on that the next time you break ranks. Again!”
 

The score of recruits under Drake’s command took up their wooden arms and closed ranks, blunt swords hidden behind their heavy shields. The other half of their platoon, under the critical eye of Sergeant Otaraz, had broken through their line and was now reformed 30 yards away. They advanced behind a wicked hail of obscenities from their lead recruit that rivaled even the sergeants’ blue cursing.
 

“Stand fast!” Barryn yelled. He had been chosen lead recruit that day for his group. The men to his left and right passed the order down the rank.

“Fuck them. Do it!” Delton muttered.
 

It was against the sergeants’ instructions—“One side stands fast, the other advances! It’s a fucking drill, recruits! You hold your fucking ground when it’s your turn to stand fast!”—but Barryn and Delton had reasoned that actual battle called for initiative.

When the two opposing ranks were 10 yards apart, Barryn raised his wooden sword and howled, “Charge!”

That battlefield improvisation gained a lopsided victory for Barryn’s team and earned him five lashes for insubordination. It had been a valuable lesson in military discipline for him, and good training for the medic who had cleaned, sutured and dressed the wounds on his back.
 

The next day, Barryn reported to Zgard Ad-Din, the company’s executive officer, at Falgren Keep. He stood rigidly at attention in the sparse office and waited for the man sitting behind the desk to address him. A stack of parchments sat in front of the company’s second-in-command, and he methodically signed each one and placed it in another stack at the corner of the desk as Barryn tensely waited.

Zgard Ad-Din was even darker than the rest of the castle dwellers Barryn had met since his flight from Clan Riverstar. The man’s features were ruled by predatory eyes above an aquiline nose and a prodigious, drooping mustache. This he twisted before finally putting his quill down and breaking the uncomfortable silence.
 

“Every recruit who perseveres beyond a certain point in his training meets the commander in person,” he said in a measured tone. His voice was seasoned with the hint of an exotic accent Barryn did not recognize. “Our captain is away, so the task falls to me to me this day.”

The executive officer lightly tapped the sheaf of parchments stacked neatly on the otherwise bare desk. “You perhaps will be interested to know that Sergeant Drake expressed admiration for your decision to charge during sword and shield drills. Your team broke the opposing line and set them to rout, according to the report.”
 

“Sir?”

“Speak.”
 

“Sir, I was still lashed for that decision.”
 

“Indeed,” the executive officer said. “And rightly so. To break ranks is to kill your comrades. I do not speak in abstractions, nor do I exaggerate. A competent enemy would have exploited the gap you created in your lines and divided the army. And your comrades would have died. This is important to understand, recruit, for we occasionally face competent enemies on the battlefield.”
 

Zgard Ad-Din folded his hands on the desk. “But you are not here for a lecture on tactics. You are here to speak. Every recruit must tell the commander why he persists in the miserable business of marching, digging, fighting, and submitting to stern discipline. Why stay, when one can easily ring the bell and go in peace from the wretched life of a sellsword?”
 

“I’ve learned too much to quit now, sir. I think I can be a good mercenary.”
 

“But
why
do you wish to be a good mercenary? My sergeants try their very best to shatter the illusions of glamor and romance surrounding this foul business. Why do you persist?”
   

The constant fatigue, pain and slight but chronic intoxication had finally broken his distrust of the castle dwellers. At least this one.
 

“A goddess wills it, sir,” he said, keeping Ashara’s name to himself. “She told me it is my wyrd—my destiny.”

The executive officer regarded the young recruit for several moments in a neutral and quietly scrutinizing silence, but did not pry. “It is a cruel goddess who wishes this life on those in her thrall.”

“She will protect me, sir.”
 

“Ah,” Zgard Ad-Din said. He changed the subject. “A moment ago, you told me you had learned too much to quit your training. What have you learned?”

Barryn paused. Nothing came to mind that didn’t sound like sarcasm.
I’ve learned how to dig a latrine. And take an ass kicking. And how to stay awake on guard duty.
 

“Well?”
 

“I’ve learned to trust my comrades,” Barryn said.
 

“Good,” the executive officer said. “It is they who may keep you alive. Until, of course, Ad-Gallah—the All Compassionate—appoints the time of your death and grants you final peace.”
   

“It is beyond my understanding,” said Governor Torune of Relfast, “how the two of you were unable to provoke Brynn into attacking us. You, Duchess Betina, are my realm’s most caustic diplomat and yet were unable to nettle Duke Grantham half as much as you torment me. And Lord Marek, my most vicious warrior…you were sent to harry their frontier and return with an invading army nipping at your heels. And yet here you are, and no war to show for it. I simply do not understand how we got ourselves in this position.”
 

There is much you do not understand, you tiresome shit
, Marek thought. “Duke Grantham is conservative with his armies, my lord.”
 

Marek and Duchess Betina stood quietly before the Governor in his lavish apartment. He paced back and forth behind a table covered with a map of the two provinces’ border reaches. Marek noted the Governor had not bothered to mark any troop positions, or any other useful information for that matter, on the expensive map.
 

“Your grace,” Duchess Betina hazarded, “our position is nevertheless favorable. Lord Marek has assembled a formidable invasion force, and our Dear Emperor is sinking too deeply into his newfound mysticism to pay attention to our business with our ancient enemies in Brynn.”
 

“All due preparations are made, your grace,” Marek said. “The very flower of our chivalry awaits my command to attack.”

“Augmented significantly with mercenary forces,” Torune said. “And I find it telling that you were unable to negotiate a single contract with a Guild company.”
 

“The free companies are loyal enough as long as they are in receipt of timely payment,” Marek said. “Besides, your grace, I do not trust the Mercenaries Guild. Imperial stink hangs too heavily around them all for my liking.”
 

Torune stopped pacing and shook his head. “But Duke Grantham has inked a five-year contract with the Black Swan Company. The stink of the Empire does not seem to bother your adversary so much as it does you. And do you find it odd that, on the eve of such a glorious conflict, only one Guild company is taking part? Where are the rest of the carrion birds who normally circle the battlefield?”
 

That very fact, Marek hated to admit, had vexed him mightily over the past few months as he assembled his forces. The Mercenaries Guild, like all of the guilds, were chartered under Imperial authority. Marek had no idea how much the Emperor’s influence corresponded with the legal fiction under which the Guilds operated, but he had his suspicions.
 

“When money is involved, anything is possible,” the Duchess said, interrupting Marek’s thought. “Even the corruption of the Black Swans’ professional ethics. I have reserved a not inconsiderable amount of coin to buy their contract when the time is right—and I have a direct channel to them through certain members of the Courtesan’s Guild. Semen-befouled harlots that they are, they do have their usefulness.”
 

Marek tried to suppress the thought that it takes one to know one.
Damn it. I thought it anyway.
He kept his face impassive and changed the subject.

“I believe Duke Grantham’s scheme to use the Templars as a stick to thresh gold out of the heathen fields is having unintended consequences,” Marek said. “Every stronghold in Brynn is manned and fortified to some extent, and their levies are called into service. But they seem to be evenly distributed throughout the province…”
 

“Dominion, Lord Marek. We are provinces only by dint of a fragile legal edifice that shall one day be overturned,” Torune said.
 

“Throughout the dominion, your grace,” Marek corrected himself. “But virtually nothing is known about how the Templars are faring in the heathen wilderness to Grantham’s back, and he refuses to mass forces to his front where we openly threaten him. I think the Duke is just as worried about the Caeldrynn as he is about us. Perhaps the Templars are not covering themselves in glory to the extent that the bishops would have us believe.”
 

“All the more reason to strike now, your grace,” Duchess Betina said.
 

“But what of the Mercenaries Guild? Their absence from the coming affair still disquiets me. Are all of the Guild companies accounted for?” Torune resumed his pacing.
 

“They are,” Betina said. “All of them have signed or renewed contracts with your peers, Lord Torune, and are busying themselves chasing bandits and patrolling each realms’ borders.”

“And none could be found who would take our banner?” Torune pressed.
 

“Duchess Betina offered to hire me XXIII Legion when they were available, but I would not have them,” Marek said. “We agreed to save the money for her plan to buy the Black Swans out when the time comes. But I intend to crush the Swans myself and save her the gold.”
 

“Your distrust of the Mercenaries Guild runs very deep, I see,” the Governor said.
 

“My distrust of all the guilds is deep, your grace, as well as the damned Imperial roads,” Marek said. “Our nobles grow rich and fat from the trade they facilitate, but I fear we are swallowing a nasty hook that is hidden in the savory bait.”
 

“They are useful, Lord Marek,” Duchess Betina said curtly. “Mind the military operation, and leave the high politics and the intricacies of economics to your betters.”
 

“You shall ride to your coronation in Brynn on a road paved with the skulls of our enemies, my Duchess,” Marek said almost too unctuously.
 

“You must gain our victory with utmost speed,” Lord Torune said. “And yet it must be thorough if this is to work as you plan.”

“Yes, Lord Torune,” Marek said. “I will scorch the ground between castle and stronghold until Grantham’s men come out to fight or they starve behind their walls. I can best them in the field, even if Grantham sends his men from the heathen frontiers. I shall leave the castles strictly alone and keep them intact for Duchess Betina’s later use.”