Jamie Davis's Blog, page 16

Chapter 15 – Cori Sees Battle and Killing

Disclaimer: This is a work in progress as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). You are reading the work product of a first draft writing session and not a finished product. Comments are welcome, but bear the first draft nature of the work in mind. Thank you and enjoy!

Start with Chapter 1 here.

Chapter 15

They followed the trail south through the late afternoon before Declan came back to the lead element of the platoon. They halted on the trail as he gave his report. Lissa and Shelby were still to the south, hidden and watching the enemy force. The scouts had counted forty-two of the Imperial regulars. They wore the standard splinted mail armor and hob-nailed boots they had been described as wearing. They were setting up an ambush along the side of a rutted forest road to the south. It looked like they were waiting for something to happen.

“They must know of a party coming up that road,” Sergeant Neale surmised. He looked up at the sun through the trees; it was rapidly sinking to the west. “How far south are they?”

“No more than twenty minutes,” Declan replied. “Whoever they are waiting for, they must be close. Anyone on that road will be thinking about camp soon.”

“I agree,” Sergeant Neale said. “Okay, here is what we will do. We are going to ambush the ambushers. We are outnumbered, so we have to wait until they are attacking whoever they are waiting for before we hit them.” He looked around. “Third squad go with Declan and swing wide to the north and come back down the road from the other side. Be ready to come at a run when you hear the fighting start. Hit them hard from the other side. Take one shot with your bows and then close fast with your knives and tomahawks. Make a lot of noise as you hit them. That will make them think we are a much larger force than we are.”

He turned to the rest of the first squad and second squad. “We’ll do the same thing from behind them. Wait until they strike the target then hit them hard from behind. Two shots with your bows, then close with weapons drawn and finish them off. We’ll get as close as we can without being seen.” The assembled platoon nodded as he looked at each of them. “Okay, let’s move out.”

Cori started towards the enemy ahead, walking with the rest of the platoon, spread out abreast in the forest ask dusk’s gloom started to fall around them. Declan was right, it was just about twenty minutes later when she caught sight of Shelby and Lissa ahead of them, crouched behind a fallen tree. Lissa looked back and waved her hand toward the ground. The signal was passed, and they all crouched where they were. This was as close as they were going to get before the trap was sprung.

There was a distant creak of wagons, and the whicker of a horse could be heard through the forest. Someone was coming up the road beyond the trees. She could see shapes moving behind the brush at the woods’ edge. They were close enough to see the enemy rise up as one as someone yelled something she didn’t understand and the Imperial soldiers fell on the travelers on the road. That was the signal. She stood up and rushed forward with her bow half-drawn back to her chest. She saw an armored figure loading a crossbow behind a tree twenty yards ahead, and she stopped, drew and shot. She saw the arrow take him in the neck pinning him to the tree against which he had been leaning. Another arrow sprouted from his armor. Some other legionnaire had spotted him, too. She drew another arrow and stood to look for another target. She saw another crossbowman who was turning to see where the arrows were coming from, and she took the shot, striking him in the chest. He clutched at the arrow and fell backward into the brush. She slipped her bow over her head and shoulder then drew her long knife and tomahawk and charged, screaming at the top of her lungs, wanting to kill the ones who had ended that boy’s life back at the farmstead.

The rest of the short melee was a blur as Cori charged through the trees to the road beyond. There were splint-mailed imperials attacking a group of fleeing farm families in wagons there. The enemy soldiers realized they were being attacked and had turned from their prey to face the attackers. Cori ducked under a clumsy sword thrust aimed at her head, chopped at an ankle with her tomahawk and, as the man fell to the side, drove her long knife home through armpit under the sword arm. Warm blood spilled out along her hand and arm as she pulled the blade free. She stood up from her crouch as the members of third squad charged home from the other side of the track. And then it was over. All the Imperials were down. There were just the whimpering cries of wounded men and the screams of horses who had been hit by the initial volley of crossbows. There were also the sobs of the farmers’ wives and children crouching in their carts and wagons, not knowing if they had been rescued or suffered a double attack.

Cori found herself starting to shake as the excitement of the attack gave way to the relief she was still alive. The tremors in her hands made it hard to clean off her knife blade. She looked at the imperial soldier at her feet. He was still taking gasping breaths, but his eyes were already dimming. He seemed to be only slightly older than herself, and she watched as his efforts to breath stopped and he finally died. She had never seen anyone die before and not at her hand. She found her tremors turn to wracking sobs as the horror of what she had done overcame her. A hand on her shoulder caused her to look around, and she met the eyes of Uncle Vernon. Not Sergeant Neale, but the eyes of the man she called ‘Uncle’ who had helped train her and raise her alongside her parents. She turned and gave in to the urge, the need to hug him.

“This is what your father and brothers and mother wanted to shield you from, little one,” He whispered. “War is not glory; it is doing what needs to be done because no one else will do it for you. Remember the cabin in the woods, Lass. It will help put this into perspective for you.” She released her from the brief embrace and then started striding down the line of wagons, looking over his platoon to make sure all were accounted for.

“First squad, see to the people in the wagons. See if anyone is injured and needs our assistance,” Sergeant Neale ordered. “Second squad, gather up any wounded Imperials and keep them under guard. Third squad, half of you scout north and the other half south along the road. Watch for signs of any Imperials who escaped our notice or of any help that they might have coming. Snap to it. It’ll be dark soon.”

Cori wiped the tears from her eyes and looked up into the first wagon, which she was closest to. In it were about ten people crammed in and watching her with fearful eyes. The horses pulling the wagon had both been struck by crossbow bolts and were down in their traces. They wouldn’t be pulling a wagon again. Cori tried to show a smile as she approached the wagon.

“Is everyone alright in there?” She asked as she walked up. “We are the from the army of the Free Kingdoms. We are here to help you.”

A woman looked around at the other wagon occupants and then back at her, “We are fine, mistress,” the woman said. “Where are you from? You came just in time.”

“We have been following this group of Imperials all day since we came upon a burned out farmstead to the north earlier,” Cori said.

“Your accent, is odd, you’re not from Verona?” The woman asked.

“We are from the Princess’ Own Legion of Solon from the Kingdom of Rhodes.”

“All the way from far-off Rhodes?” a little girl said. “Have you come to save us from the invasion?”

“We’re going to try and do the best we can,” Cori said. “The whole of the Free Kingdoms have assembled armies to the south of here. We hope to stop the imperial assault.”

“That farmstead you found burned out, we saw the smoke,” a man asked. “What of the family that was there, the Olson’s? They were supposed to meet us on the road farther north.”

Cori thought of the family and the bodies they had found earlier. Her silence answered the question for the man and a few in the wagon began sobbing anew.

Sergeant Neale returned from checking the platoon deployment around the scene of the fight. He spoke in a loud voice to the families on the road. “Look, we need to get you out of here. These wagons are not going anywhere with the horses killed,” He said. “You will all need to gather what you can carry and be ready to move away from here when we are ready. We’ll stay with you tonight since it’s so late. We will get you back on the road safely tomorrow.”

He turned to Cori and looked her over. “Are you alright?” She nodded, and he continued. “Take half of first squad and find a place to camp for all of us, off the road, somewhere to the north. Be quick about it. There’s only about an hour of daylight left.”

She nodded again and called out to Shelby, Lissa, Declan and Gil. Together they trotted off to the north, passing the members of third squad watching the road for signs of trouble. About five hundred yards north there was a clearing off to the side of the road that offered some open area for shelter. The clearing was in a little hollow that was sheltered from view directly from the road. She thought it would be alright for a few small campfires to warm the refugees in the night. She sent Gil back to Sergeant Neale to tell him what they’d found and then she and the others started gathering some dead wood for a fire. It took an hour or so, but the rest of the group, including the farmers, made it up the road to the site of their camp and the people collapsed inside the perimeter of their makeshift camp.

Sergeant Neale set out sentries around the clearing and also north and south along the road and then ordered the rest to help the refugees get settled. There were a few who had been injured in the initial Imperial attack, and their wounds were tended to. Cori was happy to hear that none of the legionnaires in the platoon were injured in the assault. Only three of the Imperials survived the assault by the platoon. They were off near the road being questioned by Geb and a few of the older, more responsible members of the platoon. Sergeant Neale told the platoon sentries to stay alert. At least two of the Imperials had escaped based on the initial count of bodies recovered. They might just be stumbling around in the woods, or they could be going for help.

Cori was assigned to a sentry location outside of the circle of firelight to the west, and she settled into her selected spot behind a fallen tree, pulling her cloak tightly about her as the gloom and chill of night descended. She thought back to the battle, and she found herself scrubbing the back of her hand with a handful of her cloak, where the Imperial soldier’s blood had spilled on it. She stopped, she knew it was clean. She had washed the blood away with water from her canteen almost as soon as she could, but she couldn’t forget the coppery smell of it or the warm, wet feeling as it flooded out of the man’s body along her knife blade and on her hand and forearm. She continued to think and re-think every moment of the brief fight along the roadside as she passed the time away on sentry duty. It was well after midnight when Shelby came and found her and relieved her so she could get some sleep. She was tired, but sleep was a long time coming. Eventually, though, she closed her eyes and succumbed to sleep.

———

After spending a day getting the rescued farmers on the road and handing them off to third platoon, the second platoon of Stag Company returned south to continue their sweep for raiders. They discovered that the tactic of staging ambushes on the roads to set on refugees as they passed was being used by many of the raider groups. Sergeant Neale developed a sort of counter-ambush that allowed them to fall on the over-confident Imperials from behind in much the same way they had attacked the initial raider group they encountered. It depended on the fact that the enemy soldiers were horrible at traveling unseen or unheard in the forests. Sergeant Neale said that many of them were probably from the broad plains and deserts of the eastern parts of the Empire. This lack of fieldcraft allowed the Legion scouts to track and shadow them unseen for miles until they settled for the night or had set up a roadside ambush. Once the Imperials camped, the platoon would set up an attack for just before dawn. They would take out the sentries with planned archery shots and then sweep into the camps, taking most of the enemy as they were climbing out of their bedrolls.

Cori kept the images of the bodies at that first burned-out farmstead in her mind as she charged into each camp of Imperials, screaming the ululating, high-pitched wail the platoon members had taken to using when they attacked. She was not becoming used to the killing, but she kept telling herself that they were keeping innocent refugees and farmers alive by their attacks on the raiders.

The platoon kept at the attacks on the raider groups for two more weeks. They had found and routed twelve groups of Imperial raiders in all. The single prisoner they took in the last group called them the “devils in green” when questioned. The attacks on the raiding parties by the Legion platoons up and down the chain of mountains north of the City of Veron had been noticed, and the Imperials had developed a healthy fear of them. Sergeant Neale called that good and bad news. It was good that they were striking that kind of fear into the enemy. If they were afraid of the deep northern forests and the dangers that dwelled within them, that was a good thing. But, the attention would eventually divert larger and more prepared forces northward to counter the Legion’s efforts. They needed to be careful.

Cori and the rest of the platoon were down to just half a quiver of arrows or less when Sergeant Neale told them they would start making the trek back to rendezvous with first and third platoons and Captain McAffrey. When they connected back up with the other platoons, Brother Jerald used his healing magics to heal up the few wounds and injuries they had sustained while on patrol. No one had gotten any serious injuries, the attacks and ambushes had all been routs. But there were still a few cuts and wounds that needed attention beyond what field dressings had been applied. Cori watched as Katina was healed of a slash to her shoulder from an Imperial blade. Brother Jerald laid his hands on her wound and then closed his eyes. A golden glow appeared from beneath his hands and between his fingers. As it faded, he removed his hands and underneath was a pink scar where the wound had been. He told Kat to keep from using that arm for a few days to let the muscle underneath the skin finish knitting together and then he moved on to the next injured legionnaire. Cori had heard of the healing arts of the holy monks who traveled with them but had never seen the magics at work before. It was amazing to see first-hand.

Captain McAffrey sent a runner to reach Captain Desai to the north to tell her to bring her company down to meet with them. Cori was glad to settle in a regular camp set up again rather than sleeping in the woods as they had when on their patrol. She took advantage of the extra time to tend to her own aches and pains from the long days on the march. It was also good to get the extra rest and relaxation they needed to regroup. It took two days for Panther Company to join them in their improvised camp. As their platoons were integrated into those of Stag Company, Cori learned of similar raiding parties stopped by the Legion forces to the north as well. The “devils in green” had taken their toll on the Imperial incursions in this whole area. Cori wondered if Logan and the rest of the Legion were having as much success to the south. There was talk of marching back to the main camp to resupply with arrows and field rations to supplement their hunting. That would change as a squad-sized hunting party returned to camp with a bedraggled refugee telling wild stories of an Imperial column traveling up the mountain road to the east. A flurry of activity around the command tent at the center of the camp told Cori and the other legionnaires that the time for rest was over.

—-

Disclaimer: This is a work in progress as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). You are reading the work product of a first draft writing session and not a finished product. Comments are welcome, but bear the first draft nature of the work in mind. Thank you and enjoy!

The post Chapter 15 – Cori Sees Battle and Killing appeared first on Jamie Davis Books Author Page.

Chapter 15 – Cori Sees Battle and Death

Disclaimer: This is a work in progress as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). You are reading the work product of a first draft writing session and not a finished product. Comments are welcome, but bear the first draft nature of the work in mind. Thank you and enjoy!

Start with Chapter 1 here.

Chapter 15

They followed the trail south through the late afternoon before Declan came back to the lead element of the platoon. They halted on the trail as he gave his report. Lissa and Shelby were still to the south, hidden and watching the enemy force. The scouts had counted forty-two of the Imperial regulars. They wore the standard splinted mail armor and hob-nailed boots they had been described as wearing. They were setting up an ambush along the side of a rutted forest road to the south. It looked like they were waiting for something to happen.

“They must know of a party coming up that road,” Sergeant Neale surmised. He looked up at the sun through the trees; it was rapidly sinking to the west. “How far south are they?”

“No more than twenty minutes,” Declan replied. “Whoever they are waiting for, they must be close. Anyone on that road will be thinking about camp soon.”

“I agree,” Sergeant Neale said. “Okay, here is what we will do. We are going to ambush the ambushers. We are outnumbered, so we have to wait until they are attacking whoever they are waiting for before we hit them.” He looked around. “Third squad go with Declan and swing wide to the north and come back down the road from the other side. Be ready to come at a run when you hear the fighting start. Hit them hard from the other side. Take one shot with your bows and then close fast with your knives and tomahawks. Make a lot of noise as you hit them. That will make them think we are a much larger force than we are.”

He turned to the rest of the first squad and second squad. “We’ll do the same thing from behind them. Wait until they strike the target then hit them hard from behind. Two shots with your bows, then close with weapons drawn and finish them off. We’ll get as close as we can without being seen.” The assembled platoon nodded as he looked at each of them. “Okay, let’s move out.”

Cori started towards the enemy ahead, walking with the rest of the platoon, spread out abreast in the forest ask dusk’s gloom started to fall around them. Declan was right, it was just about twenty minutes later when she caught sight of Shelby and Lissa ahead of them, crouched behind a fallen tree. Lissa looked back and waved her hand toward the ground. The signal was passed, and they all crouched where they were. This was as close as they were going to get before the trap was sprung.

There was a distant creak of wagons, and the whicker of a horse could be heard through the forest. Someone was coming up the road beyond the trees. She could see shapes moving behind the brush at the woods’ edge. They were close enough to see the enemy rise up as one as someone yelled something she didn’t understand and the Imperial soldiers fell on the travelers on the road. That was the signal. She stood up and rushed forward with her bow half-drawn back to her chest. She saw an armored figure loading a crossbow behind a tree twenty yards ahead, and she stopped, drew and shot. She saw the arrow take him in the neck pinning him to the tree against which he had been leaning. Another arrow sprouted from his armor. Some other legionnaire had spotted him, too. She drew another arrow and stood to look for another target. She saw another crossbowman who was turning to see where the arrows were coming from, and she took the shot, striking him in the chest. He clutched at the arrow and fell backward into the brush. She slipped her bow over her head and shoulder then drew her long knife and tomahawk and charged, screaming at the top of her lungs, wanting to kill the ones who had ended that boy’s life back at the farmstead.

The rest of the short melee was a blur as Cori charged through the trees to the road beyond. There were splint-mailed imperials attacking a group of fleeing farm families in wagons there. The enemy soldiers realized they were being attacked and had turned from their prey to face the attackers. Cori ducked under a clumsy sword thrust aimed at her head, chopped at an ankle with her tomahawk and, as the man fell to the side, drove her long knife home through armpit under the sword arm. Warm blood spilled out along her hand and arm as she pulled the blade free. She stood up from her crouch as the members of third squad charged home from the other side of the track. And then it was over. All the Imperials were down. There were just the whimpering cries of wounded men and the screams of horses who had been hit by the initial volley of crossbows. There were also the sobs of the farmers’ wives and children crouching in their carts and wagons, not knowing if they had been rescued or suffered a double attack.

Cori found herself starting to shake as the excitement of the attack gave way to the relief she was still alive. The tremors in her hands made it hard to clean off her knife blade. She looked at the imperial soldier at her feet. He was still taking gasping breaths, but his eyes were already dimming. He seemed to be only slightly older than herself, and she watched as his efforts to breath stopped and he finally died. She had never seen anyone die before and not at her hand. She found her tremors turn to wracking sobs as the horror of what she had done overcame her. A hand on her shoulder caused her to look around, and she met the eyes of Uncle Vernon. Not Sergeant Neale, but the eyes of the man she called ‘Uncle’ who had helped train her and raise her alongside her parents. She turned and gave in to the urge, the need to hug him.

“This is what your father and brothers and mother wanted to shield you from, little one,” He whispered. “War is not glory; it is doing what needs to be done because no one else will do it for you. Remember the cabin in the woods, Lass. It will help put this into perspective for you.” She released her from the brief embrace and then started striding down the line of wagons, looking over his platoon to make sure all were accounted for.

“First squad, see to the people in the wagons. See if anyone is injured and needs our assistance,” Sergeant Neale ordered. “Second squad, gather up any wounded Imperials and keep them under guard. Third squad, half of you scout north and the other half south along the road. Watch for signs of any Imperials who escaped our notice or of any help that they might have coming. Snap to it. It’ll be dark soon.”

Cori wiped the tears from her eyes and looked up into the first wagon, which she was closest to. In it were about ten people crammed in and watching her with fearful eyes. The horses pulling the wagon had both been struck by crossbow bolts and were down in their traces. They wouldn’t be pulling a wagon again. Cori tried to show a smile as she approached the wagon.

“Is everyone alright in there?” She asked as she walked up. “We are the from the army of the Free Kingdoms. We are here to help you.”

A woman looked around at the other wagon occupants and then back at her, “We are fine, mistress,” the woman said. “Where are you from? You came just in time.”

“We have been following this group of Imperials all day since we came upon a burned out farmstead to the north earlier,” Cori said.

“Your accent, is odd, you’re not from Verona?” The woman asked.

“We are from the Princess’ Own Legion of Solon from the Kingdom of Rhodes.”

“All the way from far-off Rhodes?” a little girl said. “Have you come to save us from the invasion?”

“We’re going to try and do the best we can,” Cori said. “The whole of the Free Kingdoms have assembled armies to the south of here. We hope to stop the imperial assault.”

“That farmstead you found burned out, we saw the smoke,” a man asked. “What of the family that was there, the Olson’s? They were supposed to meet us on the road farther north.”

Cori thought of the family and the bodies they had found earlier. Her silence answered the question for the man and a few in the wagon began sobbing anew.

Sergeant Neale returned from checking the platoon deployment around the scene of the fight. He spoke in a loud voice to the families on the road. “Look, we need to get you out of here. These wagons are not going anywhere with the horses killed,” He said. “You will all need to gather what you can carry and be ready to move away from here when we are ready. We’ll stay with you tonight since it’s so late. We will get you back on the road safely tomorrow.”

He turned to Cori and looked her over. “Are you alright?” She nodded, and he continued. “Take half of first squad and find a place to camp for all of us, off the road, somewhere to the north. Be quick about it. There’s only about an hour of daylight left.”

She nodded again and called out to Shelby, Lissa, Declan and Gil. Together they trotted off to the north, passing the members of third squad watching the road for signs of trouble. About five hundred yards north there was a clearing off to the side of the road that offered some open area for shelter. The clearing was in a little hollow that was sheltered from view directly from the road. She thought it would be alright for a few small campfires to warm the refugees in the night. She sent Gil back to Sergeant Neale to tell him what they’d found and then she and the others started gathering some dead wood for a fire. It took an hour or so, but the rest of the group, including the farmers, made it up the road to the site of their camp and the people collapsed inside the perimeter of their makeshift camp.

Sergeant Neale set out sentries around the clearing and also north and south along the road and then ordered the rest to help the refugees get settled. There were a few who had been injured in the initial Imperial attack, and their wounds were tended to. Cori was happy to hear that none of the legionnaires in the platoon were injured in the assault. Only three of the Imperials survived the assault by the platoon. They were off near the road being questioned by Geb and a few of the older, more responsible members of the platoon. Sergeant Neale told the platoon sentries to stay alert. At least two of the Imperials had escaped based on the initial count of bodies recovered. They might just be stumbling around in the woods, or they could be going for help.

Cori was assigned to a sentry location outside of the circle of firelight to the west, and she settled into her selected spot behind a fallen tree, pulling her cloak tightly about her as the gloom and chill of night descended. She thought back to the battle, and she found herself scrubbing the back of her hand with a handful of her cloak, where the Imperial soldier’s blood had spilled on it. She stopped, she knew it was clean. She had washed the blood away with water from her canteen almost as soon as she could, but she couldn’t forget the coppery smell of it or the warm, wet feeling as it flooded out of the man’s body along her knife blade and on her hand and forearm. She continued to think and re-think every moment of the brief fight along the roadside as she passed the time away on sentry duty. It was well after midnight when Shelby came and found her and relieved her so she could get some sleep. She was tired, but sleep was a long time coming. Eventually, though, she closed her eyes and succumbed to sleep.

———

After spending a day getting the rescued farmers on the road and handing them off to third platoon, the second platoon of Stag Company returned south to continue their sweep for raiders. They discovered that the tactic of staging ambushes on the roads to set on refugees as they passed was being used by many of the raider groups. Sergeant Neale developed a sort of counter-ambush that allowed them to fall on the over-confident Imperials from behind in much the same way they had attacked the initial raider group they encountered. It depended on the fact that the enemy soldiers were horrible at traveling unseen or unheard in the forests. Sergeant Neale said that many of them were probably from the broad plains and deserts of the eastern parts of the Empire. This lack of fieldcraft allowed the Legion scouts to track and shadow them unseen for miles until they settled for the night or had set up a roadside ambush. Once the Imperials camped, the platoon would set up an attack for just before dawn. They would take out the sentries with planned archery shots and then sweep into the camps, taking most of the enemy as they were climbing out of their bedrolls.

Cori kept the images of the bodies at that first burned-out farmstead in her mind as she charged into each camp of Imperials, screaming the ululating, high-pitched wail the platoon members had taken to using when they attacked. She was not becoming used to the killing, but she kept telling herself that they were keeping innocent refugees and farmers alive by their attacks on the raiders.

The platoon kept at the attacks on the raider groups for two more weeks. They had found and routed twelve groups of Imperial raiders in all. The single prisoner they took in the last group called them the “devils in green” when questioned. The attacks on the raiding parties by the Legion platoons up and down the chain of mountains north of the City of Veron had been noticed, and the Imperials had developed a healthy fear of them. Sergeant Neale called that good and bad news. It was good that they were striking that kind of fear into the enemy. If they were afraid of the deep northern forests and the dangers that dwelled within them, that was a good thing. But, the attention would eventually divert larger and more prepared forces northward to counter the Legion’s efforts. They needed to be careful.

Cori and the rest of the platoon were down to just half a quiver of arrows or less when Sergeant Neale told them they would start making the trek back to rendezvous with first and third platoons and Captain McAffrey. When they connected back up with the other platoons, Brother Jerald used his healing magics to heal up the few wounds and injuries they had sustained while on patrol. No one had gotten any serious injuries, the attacks and ambushes had all been routs. But there were still a few cuts and wounds that needed attention beyond what field dressings had been applied. Cori watched as Katina was healed of a slash to her shoulder from an Imperial blade. Brother Jerald laid his hands on her wound and then closed his eyes. A golden glow appeared from beneath his hands and between his fingers. As it faded, he removed his hands and underneath was a pink scar where the wound had been. He told Kat to keep from using that arm for a few days to let the muscle underneath the skin finish knitting together and then he moved on to the next injured legionnaire. Cori had heard of the healing arts of the holy monks who traveled with them but had never seen the magics at work before. It was amazing to see first-hand.

Captain McAffrey sent a runner to reach Captain Desai to the north to tell her to bring her company down to meet with them. Cori was glad to settle in a regular camp set up again rather than sleeping in the woods as they had when on their patrol. She took advantage of the extra time to tend to her own aches and pains from the long days on the march. It was also good to get the extra rest and relaxation they needed to regroup. It took two days for Panther Company to join them in their improvised camp. As their platoons were integrated into those of Stag Company, Cori learned of similar raiding parties stopped by the Legion forces to the north as well. The “devils in green” had taken their toll on the Imperial incursions in this whole area. Cori wondered if Logan and the rest of the Legion were having as much success to the south. There was talk of marching back to the main camp to resupply with arrows and field rations to supplement their hunting. That would change as a squad-sized hunting party returned to camp with a bedraggled refugee telling wild stories of an Imperial column traveling up the mountain road to the east. A flurry of activity around the command tent at the center of the camp told Cori and the other legionnaires that the time for rest was over.

—-

Disclaimer: This is a work in progress as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). You are reading the work product of a first draft writing session and not a finished product. Comments are welcome, but bear the first draft nature of the work in mind. Thank you and enjoy!

The post Chapter 15 – Cori Sees Battle and Death appeared first on Jamie Davis Books Author Page.

Chapter 14 – Cori Sees War and Death

Disclaimer: This is a work in progress as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). You are reading the work product of a first draft writing session and not a finished product. Comments are welcome, but bear the first draft nature of the work in mind. Thank you and enjoy!

Start with Chapter 1 here.

Chapter 14

After dinner with her brothers, Cori joined Logan and Jonathan on their trip back to the Legion camp. Jonathan had been quiet during dinner. He had always been so, his nose usually in a book rather than a conversation. She asked him his thoughts on the war. He had read extensively about history and might have insights.

“Sister, you ask a loaded question,” Jonathan said in a quiet voice. “The Empire would never have given up the Free Kingdoms on their western frontier were they not tied up with widespread revolts elsewhere. It was thought by many who study the Empire that they would eventually seek to bring us back within their borders. Father has long advised King Edgard to get the other Kingdoms to keep a standing army in Verona to respond to what he thought was an inevitable threat of invasion. The expense of such a blocking force, maintained for who knew how long, was deemed prohibitively expensive.”

“Not as expensive as losing half of Verona in the first months of the invasion,” Cori countered.

“Ah, but that is known only in hindsight, Sister,” Jonathan chided her. “Hindsight often sees much more clearly than we do in the moment. That is why I and others study history. We seek to avoid the mistakes of earlier generations.”

“So now we are at war, with no way to avoid the death, dying, and destruction that we see now.”

“Exactly,” Jonathan said.

“Are you ready for war, Jon?” Cori asked. “I know Logan is prepared, he has seen combat on the northern frontiers, but you are as new to this as I am.”

“I will do what is needed to preserve the lives of my comrades and to defend myself and them using my arts and teachings from the Brotherhood,” Jonathan replied. “I am sure all of the Brother Monks that have joined the Legion forces will do the same. I have talked with Brother Jerald Marras, who is assigned to your platoon. He is a good man and an able healer. He will help keep you all well.”

“I have heard that you have magics to counter the shamans of the Empire,” Cori asked. The Empire worshiped the Emperor and the shamans who led that twisted religion regularly sacrificed slaves in their rites to support the Emperor, and it was said that they could do strange things with the life force of the slaves they killed.

“I have studied what we know of their rites,” Jonathan said. “I think that we of the Brotherhood have some things that will help. There is no way to be sure. I will not know until I encounter something supernatural if I can come up with a counter-spell.” He sighed. “It is something that troubles me, little Sister.” He fell silent, and she was certain his mind was working through the problem yet again. She was confident he would come up with something. He was the brightest of them all, she knew.

They soon arrived back at the Legion camp and Cori sat with her squad mates and told them what she had learned of their potential deployment, perhaps as soon as the following day. She also brought them some of the fresh fruit from the dinner, wrapped in a cloth napkin. They all sat around their campfire and thought of the challenges that faced them while they enjoyed the treat of the sweet apples, pears, and grapes she had brought back with her.

“Cori, you win the squad mate of the week,” Shelby said, taking another bite of the apple she was holding. “This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted, which is silly since I’ve had apples before, but it’s been so long since we’ve not been eating trail rations and living off of whatever we could catch or shoot that I’d forgotten what fresh fruit could taste like.”

“I’m glad you like it,” Cori said. “I couldn’t go there and have dinner with my brothers like that and not bring something back for my comrades here in the squad.”

They all continued to sit and talk late into the night and through to the early morning hours. Mostly they all talked of home and family. Cori noted that it was similar to the conversations she and her brothers had back at their dinner. It must be a common theme for soldiers facing their first taste of war to talk of their loved ones and the homes they left behind. She looked up at one point and saw Uncle Vernon standing off at the edge of the firelight. The sergeant watched them for a time, saw Cori watching him, and he turned and walked off into the darkness. He had changed back to be more like the man with whom she had grown up. The change had started in the days since they landed here in Verona. It was as if he had done what he could to train them as hard as he knew how, but now, when the time for training was done, he was seeing them as fellow soldiers and legionnaires.

The squad members talked long into the night. Even Lissa chimed in with a few observations. They had gelled into a tight-knit group who relied on each other and trusted each other. Even the ones who had started as outsiders, like Lissa, the former bandit, and Gil, the son of a prostitute, were included in the group. Cori pondered what would happen when that bond was tested in combat when tensions caused them to react instantly. She suspected that was why Vernon Neale had trained them as hard as he did, grinding the members of the unit like paste until they all had something in common that glued them together. She was still thinking about it as she dozed by the fireside, wrapped in her blanket and cloak against the midnight cold.

Morning arrived too quickly for most of the platoon as Sergeant Neale roused them with a loud shout and few well-placed nudges with the toe of his boot. “Time’s a-wasting, legionnaires. We have our marching orders, and it’s time to see if you know how to do your jobs. Come on folks, we are burning daylight.”

Cori stood and stretched in the pre-dawn hour, looking around at the movement around the Legion camp. All the platoons and companies were packing up. Logan must have gotten his orders in the night. She set to gathering up her gear and packing her tarp panel of the two-person tent, rolling it with her blanket inside to keep the interior dry if it rained. She tied the roll to her pack and looked at the three quivers of arrows she had to arrange on her back along with the pack. She opted to have one slung low on her hip and the other two on either side of her pack. She knew they would be away from the main army and the ability to resupply so she knew that ninety arrows would not last them long if they needed to fight for any length of time on the trail. She finally got all the gear situated in such a way that she could still draw her bow and reach her other weapons and stood waiting for Sergeant Neale to give the platoon orders.

A voice shouted from the other side of the company area in the camp, and the word was relayed to gather around the center of the camp where Captain McAffrey stood waiting for them. She joined the rest of Stag Company as they gathered around their captain the sergeants in the center of the one hundred legionnaires. The Captain looked around to make sure all were assembled and then spoke to the group.

“Stag Company, the time has come to deploy against the enemy and do the job we have trained to do,” he said. “We will be joined by Panther company to travel to the mountains and forests just north of here to stop Imperial raiding parties that are terrorizing the populace of the farmsteads there. This is something we understand. Many of you have lived defending the frontiers of Rhodes against incursions by Krator raiders for years. Now we must defend our cousins here in Verona from raiders who are no less ferocious and every bit as dangerous. We will be operating as independent platoons, for the most part, although you will likely patrol in squads as well. Remember your training and the Legion standing orders. Always know your mission and your rendezvous point. Let’s make sure we live up to the legacy of the Legion of Solon and show our Veronan cousins what it means to fight alongside legionnaires. We set out north in ten minutes. Organize by platoon for the march. That is all.”

There was a cheer and then the platoons of Stag Company formed ranks to start marching on the road north. The were joined at the northern edge of their former camp by the three platoons of Panther Company, headed by Captain Maria Magdalena Desai. Captain McAffrey spoke to his colleague briefly and then waived his arm overhead, beckoning them to start northward.

———

Cori chose her footing with care as she walked through the forest with the rest of the platoon spread out around her. They were traveling in single file with scouts out to the front side and rear. It had been a day and a half since they had detached from the company on the march north. Captain McAffrey had given Sergeant Neale a map, which he went over briefly to point out where each platoon would be operating. Second platoon was to leave the road and cut off cross-country through the farmland until they met the forested foothills of the mountains to the east. It was said that raiders were operating in this area, and it was their job to find them. If the group was small enough, they were to engage and neutralize them. Take prisoners, if possible, but stop the raiding parties. Should they encounter a larger force, they were to shadow them and send runners to bring the rest of the company to their location. If needed, Captain could summon Panther Company, too.

That had been a day and a half before. Now they were stalking through the forest and the smell of wood smoke in the early afternoon alerted them to the presence of other people nearby. The platoon was nearly silent as they moved through the woods, going from tree to tree, watching all around them for signs of any enemy. The smoke was now a haze in the still air as they got closer to the source. This was why they slept in cold camps. Smoke was a sure signal that other humans were nearby. Cori stopped when Declan stopped in front of her, holding up a hand and kneeling down. She looked around her seeing the others had stopped as well. She had an arrow nocked on the bowstring and she rested her bow on her knee as she hunched over there on the trail.

Lissa had been on point, and she came back to talk in a quiet voice with Sergeant Neale. Whispers carried too easily, so they had been taught to talk in a low normal voice rather than use the sibilant whispers to communicate. Hand signals from the sergeant had them spread out in a line abreast and then advance in a loose skirmish line. The smoke was noticeably thicker now, the acrid odor itching her nose. She continued to walk carefully forward, checking to her left and right to make sure she was keeping up with the others on either side of her. They came to the edge of a clearing and stopped to look around. In the center of the clearing was the remains of a log cabin similar to the ones she had seen near Gladestown. It had been burned down to a single layer of log foundation marking the exterior of the home. The roof beams had caved into the center and lay canted and smoldering where they were propped up by other debris in the center.

Sergeant Neale came along the edge of the clearing, staying in the trees, talking to a few of the platoon members. Cori saw Lissa, Kieran, and Shelby move off to the left around the clearing’s edge to scout the far side before the went further to investigate. She kept her eyes trained on the far side, too. If this were an ambush, that is the area from which it would come. She was pretty sure there was no one behind them. The sergeant came over to her and crouched down.

“First squad will investigate the clearing once we’ve made sure there is no enemy still around. Second squad is working their way around to the south, and third squad is watching the rear. When Lissa signals from the far side that it is clear, I want you and the rest of first squad to move into the farmstead and investigate. Look for tracks, Cori, and see if you can decipher which direction they took from here. Got it?” Sergeant Neale asked. She nodded in reply, not taking her eyes off the far tree line. The platoon leader moved off to the rear to get third squad situated.

After about five minutes, she saw Lissa appear from behind cover on the far side of the clearing and nod. Cori motioned to the rest of the squad on either side of her, and they all moved into the clearing. She started scanning the ground for signs of what happened. That was when she found the first body laying in the tall grass. It was a boy of roughly eight years of age. His sightless eyes stared skyward, and there was a look of surprise locked on his face. There was a crossbow bolt standing out from his chest. She stared for a moment longer and then stepped around him, continuing towards the smoldering remains of the cabin at the center.

They searched for a few minutes, circling the cabin and looking inside. There were charred bodies inside, and Cori got her first whiff of the sickly sweet smell of burned flesh and hair. It was not something she would forget. Sergeant Neale joined them at the center of the clearing.

“What did you find?” He asked.

Geb spoke up. “There are five bodies, a man, a woman and three children. They shot the boy from the edge of the woods and then trapped the others inside. They set fire to the cabin and milled around the outside and watched while it burned with the family inside. Based on the char and smoke, I’d say it happened first thing this morning. The boy was likely up and doing chores when they hit.” He stopped and wiped his nose. “This farm is just like mine. This could have been my family. I want to kill these bastards.”

“Where did they go when they were done?” Neale asked.

“They headed south,” Cori said. “I found clear tracks that lead off that way. They didn’t even try to hide their passage. My guess is that it’s a group of twenty to thirty. It’s hard to tell. They trampled all over their tracks in the trail heading south. Are we going after them?”

Sergeant Neale nodded. “We are. This is what we are here for, and we’ll track this group down and make an example of them.” He whistled and the other squads soon came trotting into the clearing. They became wide-eyed as they saw the bodies and the destruction.

“Cori found a trail heading south We’ll head off in that direction and track the group that did this down. They are acting cocky and likely don’t think they have anything to fear. Let’s teach them to fear the woods, to fear us.” Uncle Vernon had a feral look in his eyes that she had never seen before. She, too, wanted blood and wondered if she had a similar look. Looking around, she saw it elsewhere in the platoon, as well.

“Lissa, you, Declan and Shelby strike south, follow the trail but go slow and be careful,” Sergeant Neale ordered. “We’ll be right behind you. Don’t take any chances. If you catch up with them, send someone back with word and we’ll come up to where you are. Got it?” Lissa nodded and, with a look at Declan and Shelby, the three of them took off to the south end of the clearing. Thy looked like wolves on the hunt. The rest of the platoon made ready to follow them, each checking their weapons and looking again at the charred remains of this farmstead and family. Cori knew the feelings sweeping between them all and knew she wanted to exact payment for this needless slaughter. The Legion of Solon would take that payment in blood.

—-

Disclaimer: This is a work in progress as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). You are reading the work product of a first draft writing session and not a finished product. Comments are welcome, but bear the first draft nature of the work in mind. Thank you and enjoy!

The post Chapter 14 – Cori Sees War and Death appeared first on Jamie Davis Books Author Page.

Chapter 13 – Cori Travels To War With The Legion

Disclaimer: This is a work in progress as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). You are reading the work product of a first draft writing session and not a finished product. Comments are welcome, but bear the first draft nature of the work in mind. Thank you and enjoy!

Start with Chapter 1 here.

Chapter 13

The boats were standard three-masted merchantmen who’s holds had been emptied of their cargo to carry troops and supplies across the Southron Sea to the open ports in Verona. The Kingdom of Rhodes was taking advantage of the shorter travel time across the water rather than take the month and a half to march by the land route. The same trip by sea could be made in just three days if the winds were right. The Legion loaded up their companies and all their gear into four of the merchant ships. The king had already loaded two hundred thousand arrows on another ship to account for the five hundred arrows per legionnaire it was expected they would need in the initial campaign.  Each member of the Legion also carried a quiver with thirty arrows at all times.

Cori would have thought thirty arrows would be enough for any campaign until she had trained to fire all thirty of them as fast as she could at targets downrange. The entire company of one hundred archers could send three thousand arrows against an enemy force in just over two minutes. Once she realized she’d have an empty quiver on her back in just a few minutes of firing, Cori wished she could have more than the five hundred arrows allotted per legionnaire for the campaign. She liked the idea of killing the enemy at more than an arm’s length with a bow rather than letting them get in close.

Uncle Vernon told them during their weapons practice that it was the close-in melee fighting that was unpredictable. “You could stumble over a fallen comrade and fall on your own blade. There is no rhyme or reason and sometimes pure, dumb luck determines who lives and who dies. So train to kill your enemies fast and get away from them to shoot at them again from a distance.”

She thought of those words and other bits of wisdom he and the other sergeants had tried to impart to them as she sat in the hold of the ship to which they were assigned with the other members of Stag Company. Some already looked green from the gentle rocking of the boat in the harbor. They weren’t going to have a very nice trip once they got out into open seas and the boat started rocking. She had been at sea before and was somewhat used to this mode of travel but to people who lived in the inland mountains and forests, the concept of a wide body of water where there would be no land in sight was a frightening thought. She remembered the look on Shelby’s face, and some of the others, too, when they rounded the bend in the harbor road through Rhodes City and they saw the harbor and the sea beyond it for the first time.

Soon enough, with the coming of dusk, the evening tides rolled in, and the merchant sailors on the decks above raised the anchor and started for the harbor mouth and the sea beyond. Cori again felt exhilarated to be on another leg of the journey that would bring them to the far shores of Verona. She had never left the Kingdom before so this would be a new journey for her as much as it was for the other members of the Legion. She was still thinking about it when she was startled from her reverie a retching sound nearby, and then another and another as the ship’s movement and the roll of the waves caused many of the ship’s human cargo to loose what was left of their lunch on the lower decks of the cargo hold. There were a few buckets scattered around but not enough and before long there was a nasty, slippery mess everywhere around. This was going to be a long three days.

———

The Legion arrived in Verona on the third night after they left. The relief to be out from inside the stinking holds of those merchant vessels could be seen as all the legionnaires took deep breaths from the fresh sea air as they came on deck and walked down the gangplank to the dock in the seaside town on the coast of Verona. Cori wanted to bathe and wash off her boots after walking around in the slop that had accumulated below decks in the ship. She walked across the deck of the ship and down the gangplank into the town. It had to be a town and not the capital city of Veron. The place wasn’t any bigger than Westgate Town. She saw Captain McAffrey talking with the sergeants on the dock nearby. She walked up and asked him where they were.

“This is a town called Felton. It lies near the mouth of the Rhen River,” the captain told her and the rest of the assembled company. “The Imperial forces have surrounded the capital city of Veron and have patrols out along the both banks of the Veron river to the east, so we have landed here. We walk from here to where the rest of the assembled allied armies are camped.”

He turned to the assembled sergeants. “Organize your platoons and then assemble a squad from each at the ship carrying our additional supplies. I want every legionnaire carrying an additional quiver of thirty arrows at all times so have the work squads carry enough extra arrows back from the supply ship for your entire platoon. The rest of our supplies will be transported by cart to the assembly area, but we aren’t going to wait, we travel with what we carry and head north and east. We’ll leave at first light.”

Cori watched as Captain McAffrey strode off towards the center of town and then saw Sergeant Neale coming towards them. “First squad, follow me back to the dockside, we’ve got supplies to retrieve. The rest of the platoon will follow Sergeant Verell with the rest of the company to the eastern edge of town where we’ll make a temporary camp.”

Cori’s first squad formed up and followed their platoon sergeant to get the platoon’s essential supplies and weapons unloaded. When they arrived at the side of the ship that was unloading crates and tied bundles of arrows on the dockside, Sergeant Neale appropriated a horse cart parked on the dock. There was no horse, but he had four of the squad members lift the traces and haul it over to the growing pile of arrow bundles.

“Purvis, open that crate marked ‘quivers’ and start handing out extra quivers,” Sergeant Neale ordered. “We need sixty of them. Then load up eighteen of those hundred arrow bundles. Our platoon is not gonna run out of arrows if I can help it.”

The group started working on loading the bundles and the quivers into the cart then with four of them lifting the traces and the rest of them pushing from the side and behind, the two-wheeled cart rumbled off to the eastern edge of town. The rest of the platoon had a small camp area set up for them when they arrived an hour later. Sergeant Neale ordered each of them to fill an additional two quivers with thirty arrows and be prepared to carry them on the march. Then he detailed the first squad to return the cart to the dock where they originally retrieved it. By the time Cori and the rest returned if was nearly midnight. They settled in their tents, half of them standing guard while the others slept. It was good to sleep in the open again and breathe some fresh night air after three days on that God-forsaken ship. She fell asleep right away.

Cori’s early morning night watch shift meant she was responsible for rousing the platoon as the first hint of dawn light showed on the eastern horizon. They were all awake and packed up by the time the sun first peeked above the trees to the east. Sergeant Neale walked past them, checking their gear and occasionally checking the edge on a legionnaire’s blade or tomahawk.  He turned and addressed them when he was finished.

“We are in enemy territory from here on out,” he began. “This is where is starts to be real. The real danger, real killing, real dying. You need to keep that in the front of your mind from now on. Once we start marching, we could encounter the enemy at any time. Remember your standing orders. Remember your training and drills, and keep your eyes open and you might just make it back home alive. Let’s move out. Captain McAffrey wants us on the point of the company, so we spread out and break trail to the northeast.”

Sergeant Neale led them to the road the Legion would be marching on to meet up the rest of the Free Kingdoms’ forces. The second platoon spread out on either side of the road and ahead of the main march to scout ahead of the Legion. Cori knew as she reached the tree line nearby that other platoons from the companies spread out to the right and left and rear just as the standing orders said. They marched to join the war.

———

The Legion of Solon Princess’ Own Regiment marched for three days to reach the army. After the first day, they moved off the road to march to either side of it because it was choked with carts and wagons from refugees fleeing the conflict to the east. It was then that they heard the first stories of the brutality of the Imperial forces during the invasion. They were taking slaves from among the women and children and sending them back to the Empire. Any men or women caught bearing a weapon bigger than a belt knife was put to death on the spot. If weapons were found in a household, there were reports that the entire family who lived there was locked inside, and the house burned down around them. The haunted, hollow look in the eyes of the people who trudged by on the road spoke volumes of the brutality they had each seen.

In camp on the second night of the march, the platoon sat and talked about what they had all heard about the Imperial forces from the fleeing people on the road. They were not accepting surrender from any troops, slaughtering entire companies and regiments of the Veronan army rather than take them prisoner. Sergeant Neale sat and listened to them talking for a long time without saying a word. Cori wondered what he thought of this. He finally stopped puffing on his clay pipe and spoke in a quiet voice to the rest of the assembled platoon.

“This is real war people,” he began. “There are women, children, soldiers and animals dying out there because war doesn’t care who it kills in its sweep across a land. You should know of harsh treatment of prisoners and learn from it. Don’t let yourself get captured. Fight hard, fight smart and when the time comes, run away if you have to in order to live to fight another day. I’m not telling you to leave your comrades but if the time comes that you are separated from the group, remember your standing orders and try to make it back to the rendezvous. If you can’t do that, strike west and eventually you should make contact with allied forces. Pay attention to what you see and be ready to report it to any units you encounter while you make your way back to the nearest Legion company. They’ll make sure you get back to us.”

“What do we do if some Imperial wants to surrender to us?” Erin Sparrow asked. “It seems like we should give them the same treatment they offer us, right?”

“Two wrongs don’t make it right, Erin,” Neale said. “Besides, we need to know what that Imperial soldier knows. It might save our lives or the lives of other allied troops later on. So, no, we won’t be killing Imperial soldiers we capture. It’s important that we hold on to our humanity in the midst of this conflict, so when we return home, we don’t bring too many of the demons of war back with us. We’ll all bring some, but let’s not borrow trouble and turn into the monsters we are fighting.” He tapped out the dottle from his pipe and looked around. Better get some sleep. Make sure you know who is to relieve the sentries on the perimeter and double check your gear before you turn in. Good night.”

The other members of the platoon murmured their good nights in return and began to see to their sleeping arrangements with their tent mates. Cori reflected that Sergeant Neale sounded something like the Uncle Vernon she had grown up knowing and not the tyrant of a drill master he had become during the march so far. She liked that he seemed to change, but she also knew it meant that he was concerned for all of their safety, especially hers.

Morning came quickly, and they had one more day of marching by Captain McAffrey’s estimation to join the allied forces in their main encampment. First platoon of Stag Company was on the point today leading off the Legion’s march along the road north. Cori shouldered her pack and triple arrow load and started the march paralleling the road. It was late in the afternoon when a runner from first platoon came back to report to Captain McAffrey and Lord Logan at the head of the column that they had encountered sentries from the main camp. An officer had requested that Lord Logan come forward to be taken to report into the commander of the army. Cori saw her brother beckon to a squad from Wolf Company to join him, and he and Jonathan set off at a trot, following the first platoon legionnaire off up the road. Captain McAffrey called out to the company to set up camp to the north of the road along a streambed that ran through a stand of trees there. He sent a runner back to the other company commanders to tell them to do the same.

Cori found a spot beneath a large oak tree and worked with Shelby to assemble their tent. She laid out her blanket roll inside the tent and set her pack and gear down next to it. Shelby was inspecting her long knife’s blade and then sheathed it.

“Are you as nervous as I am, Shelby?” Cori asked.

“Probably more, Cori,” The former tavern girl replied. “I don’t have the training you had growing up. The training and drilling worked. I’m better at fighting than I was, and I grew up on a farm near Gladestown so I know how to shoot a bow, but I have to wonder if I’m going to be good enough.”

“I think we all fear the same thing,” Cori responded. “I know I do. What if I run? What if I get somebody killed because of a mistake I made? I don’t think I could bear it.”

“You won’t run, Cori. You’re the among the best with a bow, and you are a whirling dervish when you fight with a long knife and tomahawk,” Shelby reassured her. “You lead the squad as much as Geb does, and that was going on before we knew who you were. I don’t think Lady Corinne Westgate has any retreat in her bones.”

Cori laughed. “My mother would probably agree with you. She always said I was as stubborn as a badger guarding its burrow.” She sighed. “I wonder what she’s doing. You know my parents, and I didn’t part on the best of terms.”

“Yet you also know they still love you,” Shelby answered. “They sent Sergeant Neale to watch over you and train the platoon. We are the best platoon in the whole Legion because of him. That is because of your parents. I don’t even have parents anymore. Our farm was raided and burned down when I was young. I was forced to move to town and was taken in by the innkeeper’s wife to earn my keep as a maid and then working in the tavern.”

“Well, when we return to Rhodes, I’ll bring you to Westgate and introduce you to my parents as the sister I never had,” Cori said. “They’ll adopt you on the spot. I promise.”

They were interrupted by a legionnaire from Wolf Company. He bowed to Cori and said, “Lady Corinne, Lord Logan requests your presence in the main camp. I’m to take you to him there.”

Cori looked at Shelby, shrugged and gathered her gear. “Let’s go legionnaire, and if you bow to me or call me ‘Lady Corinne’ again, I’ll box your ears. I’m just another member of Stag Company and a legionnaire just like you.”

He smiled, started to bow, then stopped himself and trotted off to the road north with Cori close behind. She hoped this wasn’t a ploy by her brother to separate her from the company and ship her back home. He was in for a fight if that was his plan. She continued to think about it as she approached the main camp a mile up the road. It was already starting to get dark, and she couldn’t believe all the tents and campfires she saw. There must be thousands of them. The legionnaire, who she learned was named Berk, led her in a winding path among the tents and regiments camped there towards the center of the camp.  When he arrived at a large pavilion tent flying the royal banner of Rhodes he stopped and told her that Lord Logan was inside.

Cori pushed past the tent flap and entered the finely appointed interior. Inside she saw her brother Rad first and then the youngest of her older brothers, Hartmann. She rushed over and gave them both a hug. She had not seen either of them for a long time. Logan and Jonathan stood by and watched the reunion. She stopped hugging them and stepped back warily as she thought of the reasons for this reunion.

“What is up, brothers?” She asked. “You aren’t planning on ganging up on me and trying to get me to return home, are you?”

Rad held up a hand. “Peace sister. Logan has assured us that you are resolute in your determination to stay with the Legion.”

Hartmann jumped into the conversation, “We thought this might be the last chance for a Westgate family dinner for a while, and Logan agreed to send for you to make it complete. Mother and Father can’t be here, but at least we siblings can share a meal and good company together before we all go our separate ways.”

Cori relaxed as she understood the reason for the summons. A dinner with her brothers would be nice. It had been a long time since she had talked to any of them. Logan and Jonathan had kept their distance in the Legion. She knew they were watching her from afar, but that wasn’t the same. The Westgates were a close family, and she missed her older brothers. She also wanted their approval.

“I think that a dinner with you all would be a nice way to spend the evening,” Cori announced. “I want to hear the news of the war so far and learn more of what is going on.”

There was a table set up already in the tent and the five Westgate siblings sat around it with Rad at the head. He was an officer in the Royal Heavy Horse, second only to Prince Welby, Alvina’s twin. Rad clapped his hands, and two servants appeared, bringing wine and a platter of bread and cheese. Her mouth was watering. She had been eating camp rations for too long. Cori sat down and joined her brothers in a meal. They talked of home and of happier times growing up together. It was a good way to pass the evening after all the hard work leading up to this point.

As they enjoyed some fruit for dessert, Cori noticed Rad looking her way as if appraising her from afar. “What is it you see, Brother?” She asked.

“I’m remembering you crying the first time you killed a rabbit with an arrow,” he said. “I’m trying to match it up with seeing you as my sister the warrior maiden.”

Logan finished his mouthful of apple and came to her defense. “I have been talking to Uncle Vernon. He tried his darnedest to get her to give up her decision to enlist. He grudgingly admits that she is, and I quote, ‘Fierce little mountain cat who I’d hate to run into on a battlefield.’ I suspect he’s more than a little proud that he taught you to fight like that, Sister.”

“It’s good to hear that from you,” Cori admitted. “I was beginning to think he is mad at me for enlisting and is taking it out on me by trying to kill us in training.”

“Trying to kill you with training is the way to keep soldiers alive on the battlefield,” Hartmann said. “The King has said that many times in the course of the last few months of preparations for war.” Hartmann was a personal squire and knight in training with King Edgard of Rhodes.

Her other brothers agreed with the statement. She thought about it and realized it made sense. The second platoon of Stag Company was the one that trained the hardest, and it was now one of the hardest and prepared units in the Legion. She looked at her brothers around the table. They were all actively involved in the war effort now. Rad was second in command of the Rhodian Royal Heavy Horse Regiment and best friends with Prince Welby, the commander of that regiment. Hartmann, as a squire to the King of Rhodes, was also part of his primary honor guard and would protect him in battle. Logan and Jonathan had roles as the Leader of the Legion and principal healer and spiritual guide for the Legion respectively. And she was a lowly recruit in that Legion. She preferred her place in the Legion now. If her father had permitted her to join from the outset, she might have been given an officer’s position as a Lieutenant to her brother or as a platoon leader alongside one of the sergeants. She preferred earning her own way in the world, and that included finding her own place in the Legion.

“What news do you have of the war, Rad?” She asked her eldest brother.

He leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Not well, Cori. Not well at all. The Imperials swarmed into Verona across the border in dozens of places. The defense of the kingdom is set up much like our own. It takes time to assemble the levies and militias and organize a defense in the midst of a surprise attack. The Imperial army surrounded the capital at Veron within weeks of the invasion. We fear the city will fall if we cannot get to them. The problem is that we have numerous imperial forces between us and the city. They are enslaving the populace and marching them back into the Empire and those they don’t enslave they are killing in the most brutal ways imaginable.”

“We’d heard that from the refugees on the road we encountered on the way here from the ships,” Cori said. “The stories were awful.”

“War is awful, little sister,” Rad said. “There are no winners in a war. Even if we win this conflict, it will be years until Verona is the same, and they may never recover.”

“What caused the conflict to start?” Cori asked.

“It started when the Imperial Crown Prince, Vashima, His Amazing Godliness,” Rad rolled his eyes as he said the last. “He decided that Princess Kalila should be his latest bride. He already had a wife from every province in the Empire but he met her on a state visit to Verona to discuss a trade agreement, and he wanted her added to the deal.”

“As if she were property?” Cori asked in disgust.

“Exactly,” Rad continued. “When King Aran of Verona politely refused, the Imperial Prince supposedly stamped his foot and demanded the princess be brought to him immediately. He said that Free Kingdoms had played as if they were independent long enough and it was time they admitted they were still part of the Empire. At that point, King Aran called off the negotiations and politely asked the Prince to leave the city. He returned to the Phutan Empire’s capital at Imperial City and his father sent the imperial forces streaming across the border with Verona little more than a month later.”

“So this whole war started because of a temper tantrum from a spoiled imperial prince?” Cori asked.

“That was a the match that lit the tinder, but the fire has been smoldering beneath the surface for a long time, probably since the war a hundred years ago when the four Free Kingdoms kicked the Empire out the first time. They were embroiled in revolutions in their eastern provinces and didn’t have the energy to put their full force into a fight with us on the western frontiers, so they eventually conceded. But I’ve long thought that the Empire has wanted us back in their borders. I think Prince Vashima’s demands were a set up from the beginning to give the Empire a reason for offense and a pretense to start a war. It makes sense. If King Aran had conceded and given his daughter to Vashima in marriage, then her children would have been in line for the throne of Verona. If she refuses, he offends the God-Emperor of the Phutan Empire. There was not a right answer, or at least, not an answer that wouldn’t lead to war eventually.”

“So, what of the Legion, Brother? Do you know how they mean to deploy us given the way the Empire’s forces are spread in front of the allied armies of the Free Kingdoms?” Logan asked Rad.

“Prince Welby, as the representative of Rhodes here has the final decision. I believe he is going to divide the Legion into two forces and deploy them to the north and south in an effort to secure the flanks from Imperial raiding parties and to scout for large concentrations of enemy forces that will signify a battle line was forming.” Rad looked at Logan and asked, “How would you split your forces if that were the case, Logan?”

“I’d send two companies to the north and two to the south,” Logan said, thinking on the problem. “Archard McAffrey is my second in command so he would take control of one group, probably the northern one. I’d take the southern force and sweep along the river banks of the River Veron to secure that geographical boundary. I’d like some cavalry to help us with any large forces we encounter, especially to the south where there is a lot of open country. In the north, where it is more mountainous and forested, they won’t be as much help.”

“I can assign a few squadrons of the Rhodian heavy horse to you in the south. That should give you the support you need to cover your operations.”

Cori sat back and listened as her brothers continued to discuss the finer points of the Legion’s disposition on the battle line. It sounded like Stag Company and Panther Company were to be sent north. She started thinking on that and on what she would do when battle was joined while they continued their planning. She looked at her brothers and realized this might be the last time she saw one or more of them. She sipped her wine and thought of them in better times and wished the war would be quick, and they could all join again in Westgate soon.

—-

Disclaimer: This is a work in progress as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). You are reading the work product of a first draft writing session and not a finished product. Comments are welcome, but bear the first draft nature of the work in mind. Thank you and enjoy!

The post Chapter 13 – Cori Travels To War With The Legion appeared first on Jamie Davis Books Author Page.

Chapter 12 – The Legion of Solon Becomes the Princess’s Own Regiment

Disclaimer: This is a work in progress as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). You are reading the work product of a first draft writing session and not a finished product. Comments are welcome, but bear the first draft nature of the work in mind. Thank you and enjoy!

Start with Chapter 1 here.

Chapter 12

The next few weeks were a blur for Cori and the rest of the members of second platoon of Stag Company. It seemed that they never stopped running, drilling, or shooting. The were the first legionnaires up each morning, before dawn, and the last to return to camp, well after dark, if they returned to their tents at all. More often than not, the entire platoon spent the nights on the cold ground huddled inside their cloaks. The whole time, Sergeant Neale never let them forget that it was Cori’s fault that they were being singled out for this treatment. Cori knew that he hoped the pressure from the others would convince her to quit. And it was working. She was nearing her breaking point.

Then, an interesting thing happened. Cori stumbled on one of their forest runs and as she was struggling to stand on her own, Geb and Kieran, who were behind her, lifted her back to her feet and helped her regain her footing to keep going.

Kieran whispered in her ear, “Don’t give up. Don’t let him beat you.”

She caught a nod from Geb as she looked at him. The platoon didn’t hate her for what was happening to them. They were mad at Uncle Vernon for inflicting this on them in her name. They would help her through this, and the platoon would make it through the punishing training as a group or not at all. That was the turning point for them all, she later realized. While the rest of the platoons in the Legion were resting, they were working harder and getting better at nearly every aspect of their practiced warfare on the march. When the companies assembled for archery drills, it was the second platoon of Stag Company that excelled. When they practiced sneaking up on each other’s groups in camp on the road south, it was second platoon that was successful more often than the others. Second platoon members were more successful on foraging parties, and so they ate better than the others. It was all coming to a different conclusion than Cori had expected when the new Sergeant took over the platoon’s training.

Sergeant Verell moved up to become the company’s senior sergeant, leaving Vernon Neale to command all of second platoon on his own. The platoon members started out as angry at Cori, then angry at Sergeant Neale, but as they saw the success of their stepped-up training, they began to push themselves to be better. They began to anticipate the challenges their sergeant placed in front of them and to innovate in the ways they overcame those challenges. They became harder, stronger, and tougher because of it. Cori knew she had found an inner strength she didn’t know she had in the midst of all this training. Her arms no longer ached from holding her practice weapons during extended melee drills. Her archery, already among the best in the Legion, sharpened and she was able to make shots while winded from exertion she would never have made before. And the rest of the Legion stepped up to try and catch the progress made by Stag Company’s second platoon. They were already good and getting better, but now it had become a contest between the companies, and within the companies, between the platoons. By the time they arrived on the outskirts of Rhodes City, the capital, the Legion was ready for war in a way they hadn’t been just a few weeks before.

A place had been made on the green next to one of the outlying villages near the capital for the Legion to camp while they waited for their ships to be ready to embark on the journey to Verona. The legionnaires made camp and settled in to wait for their embarkation orders to arrive when a stir went through the camp. Princess Alvina was coming to review the troops who had arrived. She had requested, in particular, to see the Legion of Solon troops when they had settled in camp. As the crown princess, the eldest of the twins who were the King and Queen’s first-born, she was held in the same regard as her parents by the people of the Kingdom of Rhodes. The younger subjects, especially, held a fondness for her since she would be their Queen someday. Cori knew her as a friend, and almost as an older sister, the one she never had.

The Legion’s sergeants went through and made sure that each legionnaire was wearing their cloaks and company clasp pins. They made sure their clothes were as clean as possible and that they were all presentable to meet royalty. Cori found it all a little amusing. Alvina was not one to stand on pomp and circumstance, and she often told Cori on their visits that she envied her the ability to go out hunting alone or nearly alone. Cori lined up with the rest of Stag Company in the front line of two ranks. The other companies, Panther, Wolf, and Hawk, were arrayed to their left. The company captains and their sergeants stood just in front of each assembled company and watched with the rest as the royal party approached accompanied by Lord Logan. The princess was tall with long flowing brown hair and a fur-trimmed cloak over a black and gold dress. She wore a silver circlet around her brow as a sign of her position. She was trailed by her brother, Prince Kyle, her twin brother, younger by only eight minutes. He was her protector and eventual military commander when she became the queen. He was in the Royal Heavy Horse Regiment now, with Cori’s brother Rad. The royal party passed down the line of soldiers, Princess Alvina looking them over as she walked by. Then the party turned and returned to the center of the parade ground, where she turned and addressed the assembled legionnaires.

“My fellow Rhodians,” the princess began. “I am proud to know that you all have come forward to serve your kingdom in this time of war. I know from your commander of the sacrifices you have already made to prepare for the coming battles. I am even more proud to know that I have a friend among your number. Lady Corinne Westgate has seen fit to join the Legion of Solon as a trooper just like each of you. I know of her bravery and dedication to the kingdom and know that her dedication carries over to each of you as well.” Cori shuffled a little in place, uncomfortable with the royal attention, even from a friend.

“I wish to take this opportunity to announce an additional commitment from me to all of you since I cannot go to war as my friend has done,” Alvina continued. “I here, and forever forward, name the Legion of Solon to be the Princess’s Own Regiment. I will personally see to your outfitting and armoring, and will count myself fortunate to be the eventual ruler of such heroes as yourselves.”

A cheer went up from the assembled troops of the Princess’s Own Legion of Solon. Their new designation gave them a recognition that would put them among the elite of the troops from the Kingdom of Rhodes. It also meant that they would someday become the Queen’s Own Regiment when she eventually assumed the throne in her own right. The royal backing also came with an additional small pension for them upon completion of their service that would make a nice addition to many of these soldiers and their families after the war. Cori was glad for the appellation and for her comrades. They deserved it for their hard work in preparation for war. Now it would be up to them to live up to that recognition. Each would be allowed to wear a crown insignia on their cloaks that showed them to be a royal regiment, a badge that would lend to the already high esprit de corps among the legionnaires. The assembled troops cheered again as the princess and her group turned to leave the field and leave the troops to return to their preparations.

Those preparations included outfitting with the wagon loads of material that Princess Alvina had brought along with her announcement. Each member of the Legion received a lightweight leather and chainmail armor jerkin on which was affixed the royal regimental crown. The all also received new soft leather boots as well as uniform brown leather breeches and green cotton shirts. Cori knew the armor was most appreciated. They all knew how lightly armored they were. As a scout unit, they couldn’t utilize much in the way of armor without giving up their biggest advantage of secrecy and surprise. The added expense was also something to consider, so the provision of the armor by the crown was a huge advantage, and Cori knew that Logan was already making arrangements to funnel the funds previously earmarked for armor into other resources for them all.

When the time came to get fitted for their armor, the members of second platoon of Stag Company were positively giddy. They slapped each other on the back and laughed about the way they felt invincible in their new armor. Cori had to admit the weight of the chainmail sandwiched between stiffened leather felt formidable. Cori wondered how the mail would sound when a group of them moved through the forest but when she jumped in place, she didn’t hear any of the metal-on-metal sounds that would carry and sound out of place in the woods. Her fingers lingered over the embroidered crown patch on the left breast that was the symbol of the princess’s favor. The Legion was already considered an elite unit by the people of the frontiers and northern province of Solon. The addition of the crown insignia would raise their worth in the eyes of allied regular units as well. It was a shrewd move on the part of her friend and future liege lady.

Cori was still considering the patch when Vernon Neale arrived back with the platoon from a meeting with the other sergeants from the company. “I see you all have your armor on. Good, I’m curious if you can run as fast with the extra thirty pounds of weight on your backs. Grab your weapons and packs. Let’s see how far we can quick march with this new gear.”

A groan went up from the someone in the platoon.

“I heard that, Sami,” Sergeant Neale said to the recruit in the back of the group. “Folks, you can thank Sami for the fact that we are sleeping in a cold camp on the road tonight. You’ll find out how the metal in your armor takes the cold night air and channels it right into your bones.”

Cori shouldered her pack and quiver, grabbed her bow and took off at a run after the departing sergeant. She was glad to see that she was not the last in the group to leave the camp. Some had been in various states of undress after trying on their new armor. They were going to have to sprint to catch up with what would already be a punishing pace.

Second platoon arrived back in camp at mid-morning on the following day to find the Legion was striking camp. Their orders to disembark on their ships bound for the coast of Verona had come, and they were to load on the ships that afternoon to leave on the evening tide. Cori and her platoon mates were exhausted from their long march and the cold night in the forest, but they had to set immediately to tearing down their tents and limited gear to pack for the march to the harbor in Rhodes City. The excitement of finally getting on the road was evident in the lack of complaining she heard from the other members of the platoon. The aches and pains of breaking in the new armor with a long march and run through the forests surrounding the capital were forgotten. They were going off to do what they had enlisted to do. They were bound for the war in the east.

There wasn’t very much work to do, the Legion was meant to travel light, and the camp was packed up and ready for the march to the harbor in less than an hour after the platoon’s return. Wolf Company took the lead, followed by Panther, Hawk, and Stag Companies. The Legion of Solon, nearly four hundred strong, headed to the boats that would take them to the war for which they had been waiting.

—-

Disclaimer: This is a work in progress as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). You are reading the work product of a first draft writing session and not a finished product. Comments are welcome, but bear the first draft nature of the work in mind. Thank you and enjoy!

The post Chapter 12 – The Legion of Solon Becomes the Princess’s Own Regiment appeared first on Jamie Davis Books Author Page.

Chapter 11 – Cori’s Platoon Trains Harder Than the Rest

Disclaimer: This is a work in progress as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). You are reading the work product of a first draft writing session and not a finished product. Comments are welcome, but bear the first draft nature of the work in mind. Thank you and enjoy!

Start with Chapter 1 here.

Chapter 11

The rest of the company was sent off to set up their camp on the eastern edge of the Legion’s encampment. Cori did not join them. Her father beckoned to her to follow him, and he and Lady Elena returned to the command tent’s interior. Logan and Jonathan followed her inside. Her brothers walked around her to stand on either side of her parents while they sat in folding camp chairs set up next to a pair of bunks. Cori knew that her brother Logan liked to camp with the troops so clearly this tent set up was for her parents, signifying to her they had been here for a few days. They all stood silently in the tent’s meager illumination from a pair of lanterns hung from tent poles above them. The four others stared at her as if they were daring her to speak. Cori pressed her lips together, determined not to be the first to speak.

“Corinne, what could you possibly have been thinking, traipsing off to join the Legion like that?” He mother finally asked. “Anything could have happened to you out in the forest on your own. We all feared the worst when no one could find any trace of you after you left the Chapter House.”

Cori remained silent and then her father spoke. “Cori, you have been asked a question by your mother. She and I deserve an answer regarding your disobeying our direct wishes.”

“Father, Mother,” Cori began choosing her words with care. “I made my wishes to join the Legion known to you. It is my right to go to war and defend the Kingdom, just as it is with my brothers.” She looked to Logan and Jonathan, but their hard looks told her they would be of no help in this. “You could have let me march off with them to the Legion Muster, but you chose to take that right from me. I had no choice but to enlist on my own. I have signed my name in the ledger and taken the King’s silver crown coin as my enlistment bonus. I’m a member of Stag Company in the Legion of Solon now, under the rules you set up so many years ago.” She stood there, meeting her father’s steady gaze and her mother’s glare and said nothing more.

Jonathan produced a ledger book that Cori realized must have come from Captain McAffrey before he left to set up the company’s camp. He opened it and looked at it for a moment. “Her name is on the list here in the company ledger. She enlisted in Gladestown as reported.”

“Well, that doesn’t mean anything, Radnor,” Elena said to her husband. “Just scratch her name out of the book and let me take her home.”

Cori’s father looked at his wife, at the book in Jonathan’s hands and then at Cori again. He stood silently for a long time.

“Surely you’re not considering this madness of following some rule and letting her stay here?” Her mother said, the incredulous look on her face said it all. “You made that rule, and you can change it again.”

“It’s not that simple, Elena,” her father said eventually. “If I break the rules for my daughter then what do I say to the petitioners who want me to do the same for their wayward sons and daughters?”

“Tell them you are the lord of the province and you have the right.”

“But, Elena, I don’t have the right,” he countered. “The law is only as good as the strength when it is tested against the strong and the weak. I cannot keep my children from harm’s way in the coming fight and not let other parents do the same. At what age should I let the enlistment stand? Eighteen? Twenty? No, I may not be happy about it, but I’ll not break the law merely because it is convenient to me or you to do so. That is the tyranny of privilege that rules in the Empire. I’ll not have it take hold here.”

“But we’re sending all our sons off to this war, and you are going, too, Radnor,” Elena pleaded with her husband. “You can leave me Corinne safe here at home, can’t you?” Her voice seemed to quaver at the end.

“I endeavored to do so, but your daughter had other things in mind,” Cori’s father said. “It is not my decision that breaks your heart but hers. If she decides to renege on her pledge to join the Legion, I’ll have her name stricken from the rolls. Otherwise, I have no choice but to let her join the cause and march off with the rest of the recruits.” Lord Radnor Westgate held his daughter’s gaze as he said this. He was speaking in his official capacity now. It was her decision that had made this problem for the family, and it would fall on her shoulders to either carry forward or to acquiesce and follow her parent’s wishes. He would not intervene, no matter what his personal feelings were. Cori had won, but she didn’t feel victorious as she looked to her mother, whose eyes were brimming with tears.

Lord Westgate turned to the elder of his sons. “I suppose that the disposition of this particular recruit falls to you, Logan. Treat her as you would any other recruit under your command. We must assume the responsibilities of our decisions, and that goes for her as well. Perhaps you and Jonathan would give your mother and I some time to ourselves.”

Logan nodded and looked at Cori. “Recruit Westgate, you will accompany me outside now. Jonathan, would you please join us?”

Jonathan nodded and followed his two siblings from the tent. Cori followed Logan, glancing back over her shoulder seeing her mother’s tearstained cheeks glistening in the lamplight. She wanted to run and hug her one last time, but she had given up that right when she enlisted. She must follow orders now. To do otherwise would break her enlistment and they would take her away from all that for which that she had worked. After they had left the confines of the tent, Logan continued walking but talked to her over his shoulder as he left the circle of firelight around the central tent.

“Cori, this is a deadly serious business you’ve gotten yourself tied up in,” he said. “I have been ordered by Father to treat you as any recruit in the Legion. You have not only put yourself in this position but myself, Jonathan, Captain McAffrey, and even your platoon sergeant as well. I don’t think you understand what is going on here and where all this might lead. None of us may return from this upcoming war. The battles will be long and hard, like nothing you’ve ever experienced. You will be expected to fight alongside all the others with no special treatment just because you’re my sister or our father’s daughter.”

Cori felt the ire rising inside of her again now that they were out from under Mother’s tear-filled eyes. “I don’t want special treatment. I want to do my job. I’m the second best shot in my platoon and the best tracker. I’ve been training with the weapons of the Legion since I was a little girl. I can hold my own in a stand-up fight with everyone but Captain McAffrey and the sergeants. I know what I’m doing.”

“I don’t doubt that you think that you know, but I also know that you don’t,” Logan said spinning in place and confronting her. “No recruit knows what a real battle is like. It’s not like a drill, despite our pains to make it as real as possible. There’ll be blood and shit and real tears because the dying and pain will all be real. I know you. You have made friends in your platoon and company. Well, don’t get too attached to any of them because any or all of them could die in our first battle if the tide turns the wrong way. That is war.” He stared at her, and Cori realized that there were tears in his eyes as well. She could see his eyes glistening in the moonlight. She knew that he meant that she could die as well. He was considering that very thought at that moment, and she knew he was right, but she would not give in.

“May I return to join my company?”

Logan straightened up and looked at her one last time. He looked away. “You may go but know that the next time you address me, it will be followed by a ‘Sir’ or ‘My Lord’ as is befitting a recruit speaking to her commanding officer. Do you understand? I cannot treat you as my sister or others will try and use you to curry favor with me. You must be seen as just another recruit.”

“Yes, sir,” Cori said. “By your leave, My Lord.” She delivered a small bow and turned off in the direction they had been heading to find the rest of her company.

She found the company and platoon on the eastern side of camp. When she entered the light of the company’s campfires, she could feel all eyes upon her as she walked to the area where the second platoon had set up. Shelby couldn’t set up her tent because Cori wasn’t there with her half of the two-person tent again. The two of them started setting up the joined tarps in silence until Cori handed Shelby one of the tent pegs and the replied with a “Thank you, My Lady.”

Cori stood up and addressed the platoon who were all watching her, and Shelby set up their tent. She saw Sergeant Verell off to one side with Captain McAffrey. “I’m not “My Lady, Lady Corinne, Lady Westgate or any other nonsense,” She said, her voice as firm as she could make it. “I’m Cori. I’m the same Cori who’s been living and marching with you for nearly two weeks. Nothing has changed.”

When no one said anything and Shelby just looked at her, she continued. “My brother just told me that I’m just another recruit to him, and he’ll treat me no different than any other. That is what Captain McAffrey and Sergeant Verell have been doing, and I’ll thank you all to do the same.”

“As you wish, My Lady,” came Kieran’s voice behind her and he laughed and dodged out of the way when she spun and threw a tent peg at him.

“Alright, that’s entirely enough drama for the evening,” Captain McAffrey said, striding into the midst of the second platoon. “We have sentry duty for this entire sector of the camp’s perimeter. Get yourself something to eat recruit Cori, and then you can take first watch along with your half of the platoon. The rest of you get some sleep. The commander’s going to be in a mood come morning, and we’d better be ready to prove that we’re up to any challenge he throws our way come daylight.”

———

The night on guard was quiet, and Cori used the time to reflect on the events of the evening. When the time came to change the guard, she welcomed the sleep that came once she reached her tent. Her dreams were of her parents and family, but she slept soundly enough.

Cori woke the next morning to the sound of a familiar voice outside her small tent. She peeked out from under the blanket and looked up. Vernon Neale looked down at her from his position standing outside the small two-person tent.

“Good morning, Buttercup. You certainly found yourself a mess to get into this time,” He turned his head and spat on the ground. “If I didn’t know better, I’d have guessed you were a Westgate from the amount of trouble your stir up.”

Cori climbed out from under the tent and stood up. What was Uncle Vernon doing here? Well, she knew he had come down with Father and Mother, but what was he doing here, outside her tent? She saw Sergeant Verell standing next to the family retainer, and she looked at him quizzically.

“Sergeant Neale will be taking on the job of platoon leader for the second platoon, Recruit Cori,” the platoon sergeant said. “It is a job for which he is grossly overqualified but which I have been assured he wants despite his abilities and rank otherwise. You will all obey him and, if you know what is good for you, learn from him. He can teach you more than I ever could. Count yourselves lucky to have him in the squad and platoon.” He turned to his fellow sergeant. “Vernon, I’ll leave you to handle the niceties as you see fit.”

“Thank you, Ath,” Sergeant Neale replied. He waited until the newly promoted company first sergeant had left and then looked at the rest of the squad. The dozen legionnaires looked back at him, and he scanned their ranks for a moment then spoke to them. “You might be wondering why I’m here and if you guessed that it is because of the high company that you’ve all discovered in your midst you’d be right. While I’m not exactly a bodyguard for little missy here, I am here to make sure that none of you screws up and gets her killed by your mistakes. Until we get to an enemy you can hate and fight, I suspect you are going to grow to hate me because we are going to work harder and longer than any other squad in the platoon. And the platoon is going to drill harder than any other in the company. And, yes, if you haven’t figured out, Captain McAffrey has been told to do the same with the whole company. Lord Logan can’t treat his little sister any different than the rest of you so he’s going to make sure that each of you is the best you can be so that she is in the safest place in the entire army.”

Cori heard the speech, and as it went on, her ears started burning and she knew they were turning red. She was quivering with anger when Uncle Vernon finished his speech. He had never treated her this way before. He had always acted proud of her skills and the way she learned the lessons he taught her. Now he was treating her like a spoiled brat and calling her out in front of her comrades was doing exactly what she didn’t want.

“Sergeant Neale,” she heard her voice say in a level tone. “May I have a word with you in private?”

“No, you may not,” he said laughing. “There is no privacy in a unit like this. If you have something to say, you can say it in front of all of us or don’t say anything at all.”

She shook her head, and he cocked his head as if listening. “I didn’t hear you, princess.”

“I would rather not say anything,” she said. Dammit, she was going to start crying. Why was he treating her this way?

“That is probably for the best,” Vernon said, and then he looked up to the rest of the squad and the nearby platoon members who were listening in. “The good news is, if you listen to me, we might just make it through this war alive, and I would like nothing better than showing up back here in Rhodes at the end of this campaign being able to name all of you comrades and legionnaires. Until then, though, I’m going to work you, and when you can’t do any more, I’m going to work you again. The only way to beat the enemy is to be harder than they are. We are going to be the hardest sons, and daughters, of bitches the Imperial army has ever seen. When they hear that Stag Company is nearby, I want them to crap their pants and be afraid to go into the woods to take a leak by themselves. The only way to accomplish that is to work you. That starts right now. Sergeant Verell has said that he would like me to take the whole platoon out on a little march. We are going to see how far you all can run in a day. If you’re lucky, you’ll make it back to camp in time for dinner. If not, it’ll be a long cold night on the trail. Load up your packs, we leave in five minutes.”

Cori stood there as Vernon walked away from her without even looking her way. She looked around that the rest of the squad and platoon were casting glances in her direction while they gathered their gear. She could hear them muttering and knew they were muttering about her. She wiped away a few stray tears leaking from the corners of her eyes with the back of her hand and started packing up her gear. This was ruining everything, and there was nothing she could do about it. She had no power here. She was just a recruit. It was obvious that Uncle Vernon had been assigned to this job by her father and brother. She also knew that the old soldier would take the task to heart and do his damnedest to make her quit if he could. She was sure that was part of it. He wanted her to quit when her platoon turned against her, but she wouldn’t give any of them the satisfaction. She was going to tough it out, and she’d show them all how wrong they were about “little Cori” and her mixed up notions of going off to war.

She was tightening the straps on her shoulders where the backpack rested and settled her quiver on her shoulder next to it when the new sergeant returned with his pack and gear. He didn’t stop as he strode quickly through the camp, just uttered a loud “Second Platoon, follow me.” He picked up the pace and moved off at a jog towards the woods. The entire platoon fell in behind him, already struggling to keep up with his pace. The last of them disappeared into the forest’s edge knowing they wouldn’t make it back to camp that night. This sergeant would never make it that easy.

—-

Disclaimer: This is a work in progress as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). You are reading the work product of a first draft writing session and not a finished product. Comments are welcome, but bear the first draft nature of the work in mind. Thank you and enjoy!

The post Chapter 11 – Cori’s Platoon Trains Harder Than the Rest appeared first on Jamie Davis Books Author Page.

Chapter 10 – Cori’s Parents Catch Up With Her

Disclaimer: This is a work in progress as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). You are reading the work product of a first draft writing session and not a finished product. Comments are welcome, but bear the first draft nature of the work in mind. Thank you and enjoy!

Start with Chapter 1 here.

Chapter 10

Stag Company of the Legion of Solon stayed in camp for two more days before they disembarked for the full Legion mustering point just north of Rhodes City, the Kingdom’s capital. During those two days, the second platoon, with whom Cori had arrived, was integrated into the company. Captain McAffrey, Sergeant Verell, and the other platoon leaders kept Cori’s secret for the time being. She was relieved because they all needed to focus on the continued training. The platoons learned the march and archery commands used at the company level to drill the unit on how they would operate once they arrived in Verona and began fighting the Imperial forces. One of the things they learned was how to stage an L-shaped ambush on a road or trail in the forest. When scouts determined that an enemy’s route of march would bring them down a certain road or path, the company would place two platoons hidden on one side of the path with the third platoon forming a blocking force at the base of the path across the enemy’s intended path of travel. As they engaged the blocking force in front of them, the hidden platoons would reveal themselves with an arrow-storm into the enemy’s exposed flanks. All the Legion platoons would then charge home to finish the attack on the surprised enemy force.

The company practiced the maneuver with each platoon at different points of the ambush so they could each understand the needs of each position. Cori had seen the effects of the company’s combined archery attack on the target posts in the meadow encampment by the river and wondered aloud how any enemy could withstand such a ferocious rain of arrows and not run away. Sergeant Verell heard her comment.

“Cori, you must remember that many of the forces we face will be wearing much more armor than we do,” the sergeant said. “The Legion opts for speed and stealth in our operations, but that comes at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to wearing armor to protect ourselves. We hope to outfit most of you with light chainmail bound by leather jerkins to minimize the sound the metal armor might make, but that means that you will be very lightly armored when compared to Imperial regular troops who wear a splinted mail of overlapping metal plates. Many of our arrows will bounce off such armor leaving the wearer uninjured but aware of our presence and able to counter-attack.”

The sergeant looked around at the rest of the platoon who had gathered to hear what he had to say. “That is why we drill in our hand-to-hand combat to go for the weak spots in any armor. We target the neck, armpits, groin, and the hamstrings at the back of the knee to teach you to attack the points where your efforts will be most effective. The same is true when you have the chance at an aimed shot with your bows. Aim for these weak points in your attacks and you will stop, kill, or incapacitate your foes before they can reach you with their advantage of armor and heavier weapons.”

“What business do we have tangling with them if they are better armored and able to withstand our attacks?” Get asked.

“We won’t tangle with them unless we have a clear advantage,” Sergeant Verell explained. “Our job will be to move undetected in small groups to find the enemy and their route of march and then let the rest of the army do the job of pinning them in place and hammering away at them. Once that is done, we’ll worry at the edges of the enemy force and route any stragglers so that they keep running away.”

He looked at each of the members of the platoon that was gathered around him. “Don’t get me wrong,” he explained. “We’ll have our share of scrapes and likely end up worse off because of our light armor and weapons. When in doubt we’ll back off and hit them from a distance, then run away and turn and hit them again. Hit and run will be our tactical advantage. That is the reason for our Standing Orders and why you must memorize them. Each of you will know where to meet up with the rest of your group should you become separated by enemy forces. You’ll also all know your orders and the job expected of us. That is so that if anything happens to me or Captain McAffrey, or any of the sergeants, you’ll be able to carry on and get the job done.”

He looked at them all for a moment more and then clapped his hands. “Now it’s time to show off all the things you’ve been practicing on the road here. We are prepared to move off toward the full Legion mustering grounds to the south. Second platoon has been chosen to scout ahead of the company march tomorrow. It’ll be our job to try and work our way past any sentries we encounter from other units mustering, learn what we can of them and report back to Captain McAffrey. This is a perfect opportunity to try and learn our jobs. The goal is to get Stag Company to the mustering ground without being detected by a single farmer or mustering unit until Captain McAffrey reports in to Lord Logan at the Legion mustering grounds five days march to the south. Let’s show them that we can do this as well as the rest of them can. Get to bed and remember to post your guard. We’ll rise and be ready to leave an hour ahead of sunrise.”

The platoon members groaned at the early hour, but Cori was excited as well as apprehensive. She still had to face her brothers at the Legion muster. In the meantime, though, she could show off her tracking and stalking skills to the rest of the company. She returned to their camp and flipped a coin with Shelby on who got first round in the tent while the other stood watch. Shelby won, so Cori took out her whetstone and her long knife and began honing the blade while her comrade settled in to get some sleep for half the night.

———

The next five days were a whirlwind of training exercises and drills, all completed while on the march. Captain McAffrey seemed to be everywhere at once, and he knew every one of them by first name by the second day of the march. He told them when he appraised their efforts that they might be good enough for here and now but would your stake your life upon it, or the life of the legionnaire standing next to you? It was a sobering question to ask them. They found that they began to work even harder, often because Captain McAffrey was there doing everything alongside them. He told them that he wanted them to be the best company in the whole Legion of Solon, but he would never ask them to do something he was unwilling to do himself.

In camp each night, after sentries were posted, the captain would roam around to the weapons drills, offering pointers and occasionally sparring with them himself. He always beat them and then told them why they lost and how they could counter the move he beat them with. Cori and the others discovered they expected the best of themselves and each other and pushed each other to do better and better. Each of them helped where they could to improve the others in much the same way Captain McAffrey did. Cori helped some of the others with their stalking skills and taught them how to move more silently on the march. Kat and Lissa worked hard to drill the hard lessons of close weapons combat into them when Sergeant Verell wasn’t there to do it himself.

Some of the other sergeants took their turn teaching the platoon things. Cori learned that Sergeant Ivette Spender was a former palace guardswoman to the royal family of Verona, who had left their service after some sort of scandal. She had found refuge on the frontiers of Solon and in the Legion. She taught them geography and of the political fine points of the different Free Kingdoms. Each offered its own advantages to the fight they had coming up. Verona was known for its navy and its merchant sailors. The Kingdom of Padon to the north was known for its heavy infantry that Sergeant Spender called the finest heavy infantry shock troops in the world. Theron had their crossbow regiments and their heavy cavalry. Rhodes was known for the Legion and their regiments of Pike infantry. Each kingdom had some of every type of unit, but those were the ones for which they were each best known.

The march south continued, and they worked and drilled and learned along the way. When they were about a day’s travel from the Legion mustering grounds, Captain McAffrey drew the company together on that final night and addressed them.

“We are about to meet up with the companies from the other parts of the province. I would like to sneak into their camp and assemble in front of the command tent and announce our presence to the camp.” He looked around at each of them as if daring them to say it couldn’t be done. “We’ll do it by playing a little trick on our fellow legionnaires. He took a bag from his pack and spilled a few items from it’s contents on the ground. It held pins much like their Stag cloak clasps except there were other symbols embossed on them.

Cori saw a hawk, a wolf, and a panther symbol. She realized that she meant for them to pretend to be members of the other companies when they approached. She couldn’t help herself and blurted out, “Isn’t that cheating?”

Captain McAffrey turned and looked at her with a feral grin on his face and a glint of humor in his eyes. “Cori, my dear, this is war. If you are not cheating, you are not doing it right.” He glanced around at the assembled company members. “You never, ever, get in a fair fight. Do you know why?”

A member of first platoon blurted out an answer. “Because you’ve got a fair chance to lose.”

“Wrong,” the Captain responded. “It is because there is no such thing as a fair fight. There’s no honor in war and fighting for your life. You either kill or be killed. You don’t have the luxury of offering anything like a fair fight. The minute you start thinking that way, you’ll be on your backs with a sword in your belly, calling for your momma. Your only chance is to fight as dirty as you can, and that means you cheat any chance you get. Do you all understand?”

“Yes sir,” Stag Company responded.

“Good, because tomorrow we will cheat our way past all the sentries and surprise our Legion’s commander with our arrival.”

———

The deception started with the Stag Company platoons dividing up into their independent squads of ten to twelve legionnaires. The goal was to have each squad come in from a separate direction, essentially dividing and surrounding the Legion encampment. Cory’s squad, composed mostly of the recruits from Gladestown, was tasked to split off to the west and hunt for some game. The hope was they would get enough that they could pose as a returning hunting party from Wolf Company. They all switched out their clasp pins on their cloaks for the new ones embossed with the wolf’s head insignia. They were to enter the camp in time to reach the center of the camp and arrive at the command tent near sundown. With each squad operating independently, it was necessary for Sergeant Verell and the other platoon sergeants to select a squad leader from each group. In their squad from second platoon, Geb was selected, probably because he was the eldest of the group. He tended to be the most even-tempered of the group and Cori thought he was a good choice to fill the job. Lissa and Kat both seemed to take issue, at least at first. Cori suspected that each of them wanted the job for their experience with weapons and combat. For this task of hunting and foraging, however, Geb was the perfect choice. His life growing up on an isolated farmstead in the north was perfect training for the job at hand.

He had the whole group march off to the west a good ways off the main southern road and then swing south in a line abreast their line of march. Each squad member was to stay just in sight of the person to their left and right. Cori was placed on the extreme left of the group, anchoring that side of the line while Kieran was put on the right end. Geb explained his thought process saying that the two of them were the best shots, and hopefully the whole line moving through the woods would cause the game animals to move away from the group to the edges where Cori and Kieran could get clean shots. He instructed the others to keep their eyes open and move as silently as possible since it would be good training for when they started encountering the enemy in Verona.

Geb’s plan worked surprisingly well, and Cori suspected that they would use this tactic often when marching and foraging on their own. She told Geb as much later on, suggesting that he share the squad’s tactic for flushing out game on the march with Sergeant Verell. The group was able to flush out four rabbits, two pheasants, and a large buck who Kieran brought down with a single shot as it bounded across in front of him, escaping the rest of the squad. After they had snagged the buck, around noon that day, Geb decided they had enough, and they worked to quickly field dress the game they had shot. He had the day’s catch tied to a pole they cut from a sapling growing nearby and carried slung between Declan and Keiran with the ends of the pole resting on their shoulders. They looked like the successful hunting party now and with Geb and the two carrying their catch between them in the lead, followed by the rest of the group, they angled back east towards where the Legion muster grounds were supposed to be located based on Geb’s best reckoning.

It was late afternoon when the first legion sentries saw them approaching and challenged them. They quickly backed down when they saw the amount of game they were carrying and hearing them announce they were a returning hunting party. The sentries here were from Panther Company based on their embossed clasps holding their cloaks. Their Wolf Company disguise was working. One of the Panther Company sentries even asked them if they had seen any sign of Stag Company on their hunting trip. Get laughed and said that he hadn’t but that they were due any time now. The rest of them followed Geb and load bearing boys into the camp of the Legion of Solon. With each Company comprising approximately one hundred legionnaires, there were already three hundred or more in the encampment. The sun was starting to set in the west, and they needed to head toward the command tent to meet up with the rest of Stag Company. Cori wondered how many of the other squads were successful. It was a pretty audacious plan that Captain McAffrey had to sneak into the camp without Logan being notified of their arrival. She liked the idea of pulling a trick like this on her brother. It moved the Captain up another notch in her book. She had a mischievous streak herself.

As they marched in they saw other members of the company standing around. Geb looked around and saw the others as well. He told the group to pause for a moment and swap out their cloak pins for their Stag Company clasps. It took only a moment, and they proceeded towards the large command tent in the center of the camp. Other squads fell in behind them, and as Cori looked around, she saw other groups converging from all directions. It looked as if all had been able to make their way into the camp undetected. As they drew near the command area, she saw both her brothers, Logan and Jonathan bent over a table with papers and maps spread on it. She tucked herself into the rear of their small group, getting behind Declan as they walked so she wouldn’t be seen by her brothers. She knew that they had been apprised of her presence in Stag Company, but it wouldn’t do for one of them to spot her and ruin Captain McAffrey’s plan. Declan and Kieran set down their load next to the cook fire closest to the command area and moved on with the rest of the group. Cori peeked around Declan’s shoulder and watched as Logan finally looked up and noticed the legionnaires around the command tent.

The Legion’s commander stood up from where he was leaning on the table and asked, “What can I do for you soldiers? I don’t believe I sent for any of you?”

A voice from behind him caused him to turn around. “Stag Company presents for muster as requested, Lord Logan,” Captain McAffrey said, stepping out from the shadows next to the large tent.

“Archard, you trickster,” Logan shouted. The two men clasped hands and then pulled each other into an embrace. “I told the sentries to alert me to your arrival.”

“I decided to see how good your other company sentries are,” Captain McAffrey said to Logan, and to the group assembled from Stag Company around them. “We wanted to see if we could get into camp without our arrival being announced. It appears we were successful, ladies and lads. Well done.”

“Well done indeed, Arch,” Logan said. “It seems that the other captains will have to buy you a drink or two at the next officer’s call.”

“I’ll never turn down a free drink,” Stag Company’s commander said. “Especially if it’s bought for me by my fellow officers. While I’m waiting for that drink, I should get my company set up in camp and then I can come back and bring you a full report of the recruiting muster and other news. Did you receive the dispatch I sent ahead of us?”

“I did,” Logan said. He started looking around at the faces of the legionnaires surrounding the tent. “I don’t see my missing sister, did you lose her along the way?”

“Recruit Cori, step forward,” Sergeant Verell called out.

Cori knew that her time in hiding was done, and she stepped out from behind Declan and into the circle of firelight in the gathering dusk. Logan’s eyes keyed to the movement and bored into her as she stepped forward. Jonathan rushed forward and pulled her into an embarrassing embrace in front of her colleagues. A gasp went up when the assembled company realized who she was in relation to their commander. When Jonathan released her and held her out at arms-length to look her over, Cori shrugged free from his hold on her shoulders. She turned and faced Logan, doing her best to look determined and defiant.

Logan took one look at her and laughed aloud. “You always were the fiercest of us all, Cori, but I fear your little escapade has run its course. There are two people here who would like to have words with you.”

Cori looked around, wondering who he could mean, but just then two other figures came through the tent’s opening behind Logan and her heart sank.

“Corinne, this really is the last straw,” Lady Elena said as she entered the firelight clasping the arm of her husband, Lord Westgate. The assembled legionnaires followed their captain’s lead when he knelt down and bowed his head. Cori was left standing there with her mother, father and two of her brothers wondering if she was going to be able to continue with her plans after all.

—-

Disclaimer: This is a work in progress as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). You are reading the work product of a first draft writing session and not a finished product. Comments are welcome, but bear the first draft nature of the work in mind. Thank you and enjoy!

The post Chapter 10 – Cori’s Parents Catch Up With Her appeared first on Jamie Davis Books Author Page.

Chapter 9 – Cori is Discovered in Stag Company

Disclaimer: This is a work in progress as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). You are reading the work product of a first draft writing session and not a finished product. Comments are welcome, but bear the first draft nature of the work in mind. Thank you and enjoy!

Start with Chapter 1 here.

Chapter 9

It was another week of travel through the woods paralleling the southern road to the capital before they met up with Captain McAffrey and other two platoons of Stag Company. Along the way, the platoon became better at navigating the forest quietly and in addition to what the scouts were able to shoot along the march, Sergeant Verell sent out advance hunting parties an hour or so ahead of their route of march to scare up bigger game. This was all an essential part of how the Legion was to operate when it arrived at the war-torn lands in Verona. They would have to live off the land and make do on their own. They would also have to be able to move through the countryside with as little trace as possible to avoid detection by Imperial scouts and units.

All of that was part of the training on the march, the silent movement through the forest and the trailing scouts from each squad removing as much trace of their passage as possible. They still stopped at the mid-afternoon hour to begin weapons and archery drills. The members of the platoon learned to shoot in unison for maximum shock effect on charging troops and also how to stagger shots individually in their squads to keep a constant rain of arrows flowing towards a target down range. The practiced how to throw their tomahawks and Lissa was enlisted to help teach them the basics of knife throwing though most of their blades were too large to be thrown effectively. A few of them had boot knives that she said could be used as a throwing weapon in a pinch.

Bram taught each of them how to fletch their own arrows on the march. During target practice, several of their arrows broke each time, and if they hadn’t a way to replace them, the platoon would soon run out of good arrows. They were taught to find, and in some cases carve, their steel arrowheads from the trees they used as targets each day. The following day, the Bran would take the bundles of extra arrow stock they all carried and help them select a few shafts for fletching and reattach the heads for fresh arrows. None of them were as good at it as he was, but they became passable at the task that helped them resupply their arrows on the march.

They pushed through the final day’s march and arrived at the company’s main camp on the banks of a swift-flowing river. Theirs was the northern-most recruiting party, and they expected to be the last ones into camp. The other two platoons were already there and were in the midst of an archery drill when Sergeant Verell led them from the woods’ edge. Cori and the others stopped at the edge of the tree line and watched the other Legion recruits firing their bows. She knew that their sergeant was very pleased with his platoon. Their scouts had spotted the sentries from the first platoon set out on their side of the encampment, and Sergeant Verell had snuck up on them himself and ordered them to come with him and not report to their own sergeants. He told them they had been captured by an opposing force.

Their arrival at the tree line was a surprise to the assembled Legionnaires, especially the sergeants and Captain McAffrey. They came over as soon as Verell’s platoon appeared. The captain was all grins, but the other sergeants seemed annoyed at being bested by another platoon member.

“Athelstan, leave it to you to make an entrance,” Captain Archard McAffrey said extending a hand to the sergeant. He was dressed all in buckskins, his green Legionnaire’s cloak flowing out behind him as he walked. His dark hair was pulled back and braided into two tails that hung between his shoulder blades. His belt held a long knife on one side, and when he turned, Cori caught a glimpse of the tomahawk handle peeking from beneath his cloak where it was tucked into his belt at the small of his back.

“Thank you, sir,” Sergeant Verell responded. “I found these stragglers from the other platoons lallygagging around in the woods and thought I’d bring them home.” He motioned over his shoulder, and the sentries were pushed to the front of the group. “Go on back to your sergeants, now boys. No hard feelings.”

Cori watched as Captain McAffrey scanned the line of second platoon recruits brought in by Sergeant Verell until his eyes met hers and his eyes went wide for a moment. She knew at that moment that she had been discovered even though she was sure she had never met the captain before. He immediately took the sergeant by the shoulder and turned him away whispering in his ear. At one point, Sergeant Verell jerked his head around and shot her a startled glance then looked back at his captain. He shook his head and said something she couldn’t make out. The captain nodded, looked her way again and then clapped the sergeant on the shoulder one last time and then turned and addressed the newly arrived Legion recruits.

“I welcome all the new recruits, both lowborn and high,” Captain McAffrey said to them with a bow, his gaze lingering again on Cori for a moment. The other recruits looked at each other, not understanding the unusual form greeting. “I understand all of you have signed your names into the Legion’s ledger and taken the King’s silver crown. That makes you recruits all Legionnaires until the day you die or until you do something that gets you kicked out of the unit. Come in and join the camp and we’ll get you all settled. We can add you all to the official roster, too, once your ledgers are read in.”

“You heard the Captain,” Sergeant Verell said. “Fall in, march order. Let’s join the rest Stag Company.”

———

Once in camp, they were issued additional supplies as Brother Jerald read their names from his ledger and they were copied into the company’s official roster. Each got a new Legion green cloak with a hood and a clasp embossed with the shape of an antlered stag’s head. They also each got a rectangular tarp that, when joined with another’s, could be used as a two-person tent in the field. In the Legion, your tent mate would be awake while you are sleeping, keeping the rule of half of the party stays awake at all times. She was teamed up with Shelby Tozer. The former tavern girl from Gladestown had come a long way since they left the village. She had a natural quickness that lent her unusual ability at the type of hand-to-hand combat for which they trained. She was also had a positive nature that was infectious and her addition to a conversation usually left a smile on your face. Of course she came with her own camp follower, Gil, the tavern boy who had followed her to the recruiting line over a week ago.

Once she had gotten her newly issued items, Cori stepped away looking at the Legionnaire’s cloak. It was dyed multiple shades of green and brown that served to help conceal the legionnaires in the forest. Her fingers stroked the stag’s head pin clasp on the cloak that marked her company affiliation. This was the last piece of the puzzle. Nothing could take this away from her.

“Recruit Cori,” a female voice said behind her.

Cori spun around and saw an auburn haired woman wearing a complete set of mottled green leather hunter’s gear. The hilt of a short sword extended over each shoulder. She wore the silver clasp pin embossed with a stag just like hers but with the green chevron below it that marked her as a sergeant.

Cori stood up straight in her best stance of attention and replied, “Yes, Sergeant.”

“Come with me, recruit. Captain McAffrey would like to see you,” she said.

Cori followed her, feeling a bit of dread. The captain had seemed to recognize her at the edge of the woods but had not said anything else, and it had been nearly two hours since then with no further reaction. She had hoped it had been her imagination. Now she wasn’t so sure. The two of them marched through the encampment. The female sergeant didn’t say a word, nor did she turn back to confirm Cori was following her. She led Cori to a cleared area at the center of the smaller two-person tents that dotted the meadow by the river. There was a larger tent with all four sides rolled up to form a small pavilion. In it was Captain McAffrey, Sergeant Verell and another Sergeant she didn’t know. These must the be three platoon sergeant of Stag Company plus the company commander. This didn’t bode well, Cori thought.

“Lady Westgate, so gracious of you to join us,” Captain McAffrey said as she followed her escort under the shade of the tent. “You’ve caused quite a stir in the province since your disappearance.”

“Captain McAffrey,” Cori said coming to a pose approximating attention as much as she could when carrying a folded cloak and tent tarp. “I went to enlist in the Legion, as is my right as a citizen of the Kingdom of Rhodes past their sixteenth birthday.”

“That may be your right,” he said with a wry smile. “But your little escapade nearly caused your father to suspend the Legion’s mustering so that the border Rangers could look for you instead of forming the core of officers and sergeants for the Legion. Luckily, there’s a war on, and his sense of duty to King and country overcame his fear for his daughter’s safety. He did send out a detailed description of you, and you look enough like your brother that I recognized you instantly.”

He walked around her and looked out from under the tent’s sloped canvas roof at the platoons still practicing archery drills across the meadow. “The question is what to do with you now that you have turned up in my little corner of the Legion. Athelstan says you mustered in with the rest of the group in Gladestown and that you signed your name and took the silver crown like everyone else, so I’m inclined not to send you back to your father right away.” He turned and looked at her, meeting her gaze. “I think I’ll leave that task to your brother when we meet up with the rest of the Legion to the south. I dare say he’ll have a few words for you that I cannot bring myself say to a spoiled noble girl who wants to play at war and not listen to her father and overlord.”

Cori opened her mouth about to utter a torrent of defiant words, but Sergeant Verell caught her eye and shook his head slightly. She snapped her mouth shut, not saying anything. She was furious and given her noble station; she had every right to put him in his place for his words. But, she realized, she was not here in her noble station. She had chosen to relinquish that part of her life to become a simple Legion recruit. They did not shout at their captains. She stood and directed her gaze out of the tent at the platoons practicing in the field.

“You wanted to say something, my Lady?” McAffrey asked her.

“No, Captain,” she replied in a level tone, her voice quavering only slightly.

“A wise move, recruit,” He said. “I will have to send a few messengers from the company to notify your mother in Westgate and your father and brother at the Legion mustering point just north of Rhodes City that you have been located. That is all. You are dismissed for now.”

She stood for a moment until Sergeant Verell nodded his head away from the tent, back the way she had come. She realized she was to leave, and she turned and walked from the Captain’s tent. He had stopped calling her my Lady at the end and called her a recruit. That had to be a good sign, didn’t it? She walked back through the tents to where the second platoon was setting up their part of camp. She found Shelby, who couldn’t set up her half of the tent without Cori.

“Where have you been, Cori?” Shelby asked. “Someone said you’d been summoned to the Captain’s tent. Did you do something wrong?”

“No, I may have finally done something right,” she responded. “It doesn’t matter now. Let’s get this tent set up and try on our new cloaks.”

The post Chapter 9 – Cori is Discovered in Stag Company appeared first on Jamie Davis Books Author Page.

Chapter 8 – Cori Learns The Legion Standing Orders

Disclaimer: This is a work in progress as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). You are reading the work product of a first draft writing session and not a finished product. Comments are welcome, but bear the first draft nature of the work in mind. Thank you and enjoy!

Start with Chapter 1 here.

Chapter 8

The march south from Gladestown began on the rutted road south for the first several hours. Then Sergeant Verell called a halt and explained the way they would forage for food on the march. It was also the first time he explained the Legion’s standing orders to the group. The standing orders were important to a group of scouts who would be operating separately from the rest of the army. Because of their frequent separation, they would have to be more self-reliant than the forces that usually had large supply trains supporting them. The standing orders were to be memorized, and there would be penalties for those who could not recall one of the standing orders when requested by an officer or sergeant. The Legion of Solon Standing Orders* were:

1. Don’t forget nothing.
2. Keep your weapons clean, sharpened, thirty arrows in your quiver and be ready to march at a minute’s warning.
3. When you march, act the way you would if you were sneaking up on a deer. See the enemy first.
4. Tell the truth about what you see and what you do. There is an army depending on us for correct information. You can lie as you please when you tell other folks about the Legion but don’t never lie to a Legionnaire or officer.
5. Don’t never take a chance you don’t have to.
6. When we march we march single file, far enough apart, so it is difficult to gauge our numbers when tracking.
7. If we strike swamps or soft ground, we spread out abreast, so it is hard to track us.
8. When we march, we keep moving till dark, so as to give the enemy the least possible chance at us.
9. When we camp, half the party stays awake while the other half sleeps.
10. If we take prisoners, we keep them separate until we have time to question them so they can’t compare stories and deceive us.
11. Don’t ever march home the same way. Take a different route so you won’t be ambushed.
12. No matter whether we travel in big parties or little ones, each party has to keep a scout twenty yards ahead, twenty yards on each flank, and twenty yards to the rear, so the main body can’t be surprised and wiped out.
13. Every night you’ll be told where to meet if surrounded by a superior force.
14. Don’t sit down to eat without posting sentries.
15. Don’t sleep beyond dawn. Dawn is when the enemy is likely to attack.
16. Don’t cross a river at a regular ford.
17. If someone is trailing you, make a circle, come back onto your own tracks, and ambush the folks that aim to ambush you.
18. Don’t stand up in the open when the enemy’s coming against you. Kneel down, hide behind a tree or rock.
19. Let the enemy come till he’s almost close enough to touch. Then let him have it and jump out and finish him with your tomahawk, knife or sword.

Cori knew the standing orders for the most part. She didn’t know them to memorize them but as concepts her father and brother Logan talked about as the best way for a scouting unit to fight on the frontier and borderlands. Now she had to remember them, or she could be singled out for extra duty.

“You all will be shooting and gathering your own food for the group on the march from here on out,” Sergeant Verell announced. “We all eat what the scouts at the front, flanks and rear of the party manage to shoot while we’re on the march. That means that we all need to move as quietly as possible on the march. No talking amongst yourselves unless you want to scare away your dinner. This is the way we move, hunt and find the enemy before they find us.” He looked over the recruits as they sat on the ground on the side of the road. “We’ll be moving off the road and start marching parallel to the road while Brother Marras takes the cart to the next village and prepares for the Legion muster of recruits there. You all will be living in the forest, off the land for the rest of this march until we connect with the rest of the Legion and Lord Logan to the south.”

“Cori, Gebhard, Shelby, and Declan, you will be our scouts for the day,” Sergeant Verell ordered. “You’ll stay twenty yards ahead, to the left, right, and rear, respectively, of the main group just as our standing orders dictate. Keep your bows ready and an arrow nocked. You’ll also be hunting our dinners. We will march until mid-afternoon, contrary to standing orders. This is only so we can train you all to use those weapons against other men and women we are likely to encounter once we start off to this war.”

Cori looked around at the small group of recruits. Many of them were from farms and should be able to move silently in the forest, but a group this large was not likely to move quietly enough not to scare all the game away for hundreds of yards around. They were likely to spend the next few nights hungry. She stood and strung her bow. She was determined to make sure that she’d not miss her chance to feed the group if an opportunity presented. The other scouts stood and did the same. Sergeant Verell nodded in approval.

“Okay, Legionnaires, let’s move out.” The sergeant led the way to the left of the road and into the woods. He pointed to Cori and told her to take the lead. She jogged ahead of the group, trying to pick their path while still paralleling the road to the right. She was also intent to the forest ahead of her. She figured she was the best chance to catch any game unawares at the lead of the group. She was painfully aware of the noise of the group behind her on the march. If they didn’t get better at this, they’d never sneak up on the enemy or their dinner.

By the time the group stopped for the day, Cori had managed only to shoot two scrawny squirrels. There wasn’t much meat on those bones, and she hoped that the other scouts for the group had managed to get something more substantial. When she returned to the selected campsite with her meager catch, she discovered that only Geb had managed to shoot anything. He had a single rabbit. They were going to be hungry tonight.

Sergeant Verell detailed Lissa, Shelby, Kieran and Katina to take up sentry positions around the small clearing they would use for their camp. He told them to listen to what he was saying in the training but not to take their eyes off the perimeter areas they were watching for anything. “If I catch any of you turned to look in towards the camp to see what is going on, you’ll regret it,” he said.

Then the sergeant pulled some items from his large pack that looked like children’s toys. There was a two wooden short swords, two wooden tomahawks, a two wooden long knives, resembling the ones he and Cori carried, and a two wooden daggers. He spread them out on the ground. We are going to drill in close weapon combat. Most of you have demonstrated you’re a decent shot with the bow or another ranged weapon. That’s to be expected for people raised on the frontier. But fighting another person, face to face with weapons in hand is something else. We are going to prepare you for that. I’ll select each of you to come against me with a pair of weapons of your choice. I’ll teach you how to hold them and block with them and then we’ll each spar. If any of you get a strike in on me, You’ll be excused from nighttime sentry duty and can sleep through the night. But that is not going to happen.”

“Recruit Declan, you first,” The sergeant said, selecting the apprentice blacksmith with the hammer at his belt. “You can use that hammer since it doesn’t have a blade edge but select another weapon for your off-hand. Declan looked over the wooden practice weapons laying on the ground and selected on of the long knives. Sergeant Verell picked up a wooden tomahawk and long knife. “That hammer is heavy, but I suspect you’ve got the strength to control it. The most difficult thing will be to control the over-swing with that heavy weapon. It will carry your arm away from your body and leave you open to a strike. When blocking a bladed weapon, use the flat of the blade to block the other person’s weapons and sweep them to the side then counterstrike to the center while their weapon is out of the way. Of course they are going to try and do the same thing to you.” He gave a grim smile after saying that last bit.

He and Declan squared off in the center of the clearing, and he showed the boy some basic blocks and attacks with each of his weapons. Then they began sparring. Each time Declan attacked, the blows were nocked aside by the sergeant. After each attack was blocked, the sergeant’s other hand weapon would strike home on Declan’s body, arms and legs. Eventually, Declan started getting the rhythm of strike, block, strike, block that the sergeant was teaching, and fewer of the counter-strikes from the more experienced soldier were landing. After a few minutes of the drill, the sergeant selected Geb to step forward and repeated the drill. Each of them took a turn learning what the sergeant taught them. Cori, Katina, and Lissa did the best of them, but each of them had previous weapons training. Katina was an experienced merchant caravan guard, Lissa had her years as a bandit and whatever preceded that and Cori had been trained by Uncle Vernon, her father, and her brothers. When Cori was finished her turn, the sergeant looked her over with a raised eyebrow.

“Still want us to believe you’re a simple farm girl whose father used to be a Legionnaire?” He asked.

“I am who I am, Sergeant,” She replied, still breathing hard after the sparring session with the more experienced soldier. “I am a Legionnaire who wants to serve the Kingdom.”

None of the group landed a single blow on the sergeant though Katina came closest. He detailed Katina, Lissa, and Cori to work with the others for the rest of the evening while those who weren’t drilling or on sentry duty set to boiling up a stew of their meager catch from the day’s hunting. Once the stew was done, they each got a single mug of the stew with a few pieces of meat, broth, and some root vegetables, Shelby, and Gil found around their campsite. Gil was the boy from the town who followed her from the inn to the recruit test. Cori had learned that he was considered the town layabout and his mother was infamous for being very friendly with many of the men in the town.

As darkness fell, they settled down, with half their number awake and on sentry duty for half the night. Cori got to sleep first and would be awakened halfway through the night with the others to take their turn on sentry duty. She was sore from the hard blows landed by Sergeant Verell with the wooden practice weapons, she was sore from the march, she was tired and knew that the coming days held more of the same. Still, she would have it no other way. She had done it. She had joined the Legion, and she would not let the training get her down. She would persevere and learn the things she needed to become a true Legionnaire. She fell asleep with that thought in her mind in the center of their small Legion camp on the road to the next town.

———

In all, the platoon stopped at three more villages on their road south and picked up new recruits at each one. By the time they had finished at the last of the three villages, their number was just over thirty, and the sergeant declared the platoon muster filled. The rest of the gear was parceled out to the remaining recruits who needed it and the empty cart was left behind. Her squad in the platoon was filled out with two more members. Bram Fletcher joined them in the second stop on the way south. He was a bowyer and fletcher by trade, living up to his surname. He was also the only recruit to best Cori in archery. He was a tall man with a bushy mustache above and a small patch of a beard below his mouth. His long brown hair hung just below his shoulders and was pulled back and tied with a spare bowstring. Purvis Kitson was a forester and logger who wore a large broad-headed ax across his back. His blond hair was cropped short, and he had a sour look on his face most of the time.

There were three squads in the platoon, each with about a dozen recruits. Sergeant Verell found other experienced fighters among the other groups of recruits, as he had in their squad. He divided his time at each stop in the afternoons. Shifting between each squad to train them in weapons combat, leaving the others to spar with each other while he worked with one group at a time. Cori saw that they were getting better. She was impressed that when she sparred against Katina or Lissa that she landed as many touches as she received and the other recruits were improving as well. Katina, or Kat as she said most people called her, brought in some of her own tricks to the sparring that taught Cori things she hadn’t learned before and Kat told her that she was learning from Cori and Lissa as well. Lissa didn’t say much about it either way when Cori asked her. She just grunted and went off to be by herself like she usually did.

During one break in the sparring after they’d been together on the road for nearly a week, Kat pulled Cori aside and asked her which man in the platoon she wanted to claim for her own. Cori snorted in a laugh until she saw that the former caravan guard was serious. She remembered Kat’s romp with Kieran on the last night in the stable loft back in Gladestown. Kat looked out at the rest of the platoon sparring amongst the trees at their latest camp and then back at Cori.

“I don’t want to cause problems, and we ladies need to stick together,” the scar-faced legionnaire said.

“I don’t want any of them, Kat. I’m not interested in any of them that way, I assure you,” Cori replied. “Have you asked the others in the group?”

“Shelby and Gil are clearly an item,” Kat replied. “Lissa didn’t say much, but I’m not sure she has eyes for the boys anyway. She’s been eyeing up a woman in second squad. Erin answered as you did. I’m not sure what that means, but I don’t want to cause problems in the group when it comes time to be fighting the enemy. We shouldn’t be fighting among ourselves over which guy we’re sleeping with.”

“Seriously, Kat, take your pick of the men. I’m just interested in getting this training over with and making it to the company muster then to the Legion meet-up north of Rhodes,” Cori said.

“Good, then I think I’ll start with Declan and work my way down to the monk. He’s the strong, quiet type and pretends he’s not interested, but I will just have to change his mind.” She strode off calling to Declan to pick up some sparring gear, telling him she had something she wanted to teach him.

Cori shook her head, the woman’s libido clearly took precedence in her life which was something Cori didn’t want to deal with especially since she was virgin. Tackling that life milestone in the midst of a camp of soldiers was not something she wished to do. There were cute boys and men in the camp, and she caught some of them casting an eye her way, but she did not want to get entangled in anything like that right now. She settled on wiping her bow with some linseed oil to keep the moisture out of it. Then she rubbed both her primary and back-up bowstrings with beeswax to keep them supple and dry.

Bram Fletcher walked by and stopped to look at her bow. He reached out a hand for it asking, “May I?”

Cori nodded while she kept waxing her bowstring. He picked up the bow and turned it, admiring the workmanship. She knew it was a good bow. It had been given to her just a year earlier, after the master bowyer her father had brought in measured her arm span and the strength of her pull on a few sample bows brought in for the purpose. She watched as Bram traced a finger along the lamination between the belly, core, and backwoods of the bow. Three different types of wood have been laminated together to compose the three different parts of the bow based on what function each performed. The belly, closest to the archer had to withstand compression forces as the bow was bent to the center, while the backwood, farthest from the archer, had to withstand tension or being stretched as the bow was bent away from it. She knew her father commissioned the bow to be made from some of the exotic woods from the east along with a core of the finest yew wood found in the northern parts of the province.

“I’ve never seen the like of this workmanship, and I can’t identify the wood used in the back. The belly appears to be yew laminated to purpleheart but the blond backwood is something new to me,” Bram said looking along the length of the bow. “Do you know its name?”

“It is called bamboo,” Cori said carefully. Lying to the bowyer would serve no purpose but she also knew the wood to be a rare and expensive option from the Empire to the far east.

“I’ve heard of it but never seen it,” He said. “It is said to be extremely flexible and resistant to cracking.” He handed the bow back to her. “That is the work of a master bowyer the like of which I have never seen. I could only dream that my workmanship could live up to that type of craftsmanship. Thank you for letting me examine it.”

“You’re welcome,” Cori replied. “I’ve seen your workmanship as well, Bram. You are a fine craftsman yourself. You work with what wood you have to use and turn out a fine product any man or woman would be proud to have.”

“Where did you come by such a fine weapon?” Bram asked.

“My father gave it to me,” Cori said. “I never question him on his gifts; it would be impolite.” She hedged her answer, concealing the truth within her answer.

“Perhaps someday I will be able to meet your father, and I can inquire where he found such a magnificent weapon.”

“Perhaps, when this war is over I will be able to do that,” Cori answered. She knew that the other had noticed the superior quality of her weapons and the fine tailoring of her cloak and other clothing. It was unlikely that anyone was buying her story of being a farm girl anymore, but the others didn’t press her for answers beyond what she was willing to share. The Legion had a code of sanctuary that pardoned past crimes and allowed any recruit to start fresh, and they all had things in their past that they wanted to keep secret in one way or another. She knew that secret would be kept until the platoon, and the rest of Stag company joined the Legion muster. Then Logan would see Logan or Jonathan would see her among the recruits, and that would be that.

—-

* Adapted from Robert Rogers Rangers Standing Orders from the French and Indian War era of American History.

—-

Disclaimer: This is a work in progress as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). You are reading the work product of a first draft writing session and not a finished product. Comments are welcome, but bear the first draft nature of the work in mind. Thank you and enjoy!

The post Chapter 8 – Cori Learns The Legion Standing Orders appeared first on Jamie Davis Books Author Page.

Chapter 7 – Cori Joins The Legion of Solon

Disclaimer: This is a work in progress as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). You are reading the work product of a first draft writing session and not a finished product. Comments are welcome, but bear the first draft nature of the work in mind. Thank you and enjoy!

Start with Chapter 1 here.

Chapter 7

A shout jolted Cori awake the next morning. She sat up and looked around, disoriented for a moment until she remembered where she was. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and saw the source of the noise. Kieran was standing halfway up the ladder calling to the rest of the group of recruits who were all in various states of being awake.

“He’s here,” he called out, the excitement causing his voice to crack. “The sergeant arrived late last night. He’s out in the village square setting up the testing course.” He dropped out of sight for a moment and then popped back up. “Well, are you coming?” He disappeared again, this time for good. Cori rolled out of her blankets and stood up. She saw Kieran bouncing on the balls of his feet in anticipation, waiting for them all to come down and join him. She had a sour taste in her mouth and felt disgusting. She had hoped to have a room with a washbasin to clean up a little bit. She hadn’t been really clean since she left the Chapter House of the Sisters of the Lake days before. She supposed she’d have to settle for the well and bucket to freshen up before meeting the sergeant. She rolled up her blanket and tied it back to the top of her pack, then folded the inn’s blanket and placed it back by the wall at the top of the ladder.

“C’mon, C’mon, C’mon.” Kieran looked like he was going to die waiting for them down below. Katina was stretching and limbering up, also ignoring the boy below. Erin placed her blanket on the pile Cori had started and smiled at her.

“Did you have a good night’s sleep?” the ginger-haired girl asked.

“It was better than the sleeping on the ground in the forest with nothing but my cloak and this blanket,” Cori replied.

“You didn’t stay at an inn on the road here?” Erin asked. “I assumed by the cut of your clothes that you would have the resources to do so.”

“Um, I decided to cut across country to get her from the south. I didn’t connect with the great northern road until yesterday.” Cori explained. “I like the forest and wanted some time to myself, I guess.”

“Wow,” Erin exclaimed. “I wouldn’t want to sleep out in the woods by myself. It would be so frightening.”

“Toughen up, city girl,” Katina chimed in from the other side of the loft. “What do you think you’re going to be doing in the Legion if you get in? They don’t stay in inns or even tents most of the time.” She gestured to the stable’s sloped roof just a few feet over their heads. “This will probably be the last roof you look up at before you go to sleep for a long, long time.”

Both Erin and Cori looked up at the roof for a moment and then at each other before smiling. “It’ll be an adventure, I guess,” Erin said shrugging.

Cori nodded in agreement. Both Geb and Declan were silently watching the byplay with the females. They had packed up and were waiting for Erin and Cori to descend before they could head down themselves. Cori grabbed her pack, weapons belt, quiver, and bow and started to climb down. She nearly fell off the ladder a few times, feeling stupid for trying to carry everything down in one trip without wearing the weapons and pack. She made it to the stable floor and set everything down, taking the time to put on her weapons belt, settling the blade of the long knife on one her right hip and the tomahawk in its loop on at the small of her back. She slipped the quiver strap over her head and settled it behind her diagonally from shoulder left shoulder to right hip. She picked up her pack and bow, and she was ready to head out.

Kieran was still bouncing back and forth from foot to foot. “Don’t you want to go out and see what he’s doing?”

Geb, the older farmer, came down, and he looked at the eager boy in front of him. “I’m getting breakfast first. I paid for it, and it might be the last home-cooked meal we get for a while. I suspect this sergeant is going to want us marching off for the next stop on his schedule as soon as he signs us up.” He headed out the door to the inn.

Cori was just as eager to see the sergeant as Kieran was but what the farmer said made sense. She remembered something her Uncle Vernon said about the two things old soldiers never turned down, free food and opportunity to sleep. “I’ll come with you, Geb.” She followed him, and when she got to the door, she saw Erin, Katina and Declan right behind her. Kieran stood there with a quizzical look on his face and then he kicked at some straw on the packed dirt floor and then followed them all out to catch up to Geb.

———

The breakfast was hearty and filling, and Cori was sure she had eaten too much. She blinked in the bright sunshine when she went outside. Kieran led the way to the village common just outside the inn’s courtyard. There, about one hundred yards away, there was a small table set up on the grass with a bench behind it. As Cori approached, she saw a brown-robed monk seated behind the table on which he had set out an ink pot, several quill pens and a leather bound book opened to a blank page. Behind the cleric stood a solid rock of a man. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back. He wore all green and brown, and he had a forest green ranger cloak, much like Cori’s. The ranger also had at his belt, was a long knife and tomahawk, much like hers, as well. As she looked at her new friends, she realized that she was a little too well equipped. She slowed and let Katina pass her by. It was best not to be the first in this little test.

As they were walking towards the enlistment table, she looked behind her and saw the waitress, Shelby, from the previous evening standing at the end of the inn’s courtyard. She looked back over her shoulder and then stepped onto the green to follow them. As she crossed to follow the rest of them, a figure detached from the shadows next to the stable and stepped out into the sunlight. It was a lanky boy of fifteen or sixteen who settled after Shelby, about six paces back, following her. A few others people came over to join the line. And even more village folk came to watch as the line of prospects lined up in single file behind Kieran at the table.

When the group had stopped, and it didn’t look like any more would join them from the crowd of onlookers, the grizzled ranger sergeant stepped out from behind the table and walked down the line of them, eyeing each in turn. He paused when he got to Katina nodded and continued to Cori. He stopped and looked her over. She felt very self-conscious under his gaze. He then continued to the others in line behind her. She dared not turn to look at him. She didn’t want to draw his attention. He finished looking over his prospects for the Legion and then stepped out to the side of the line before calling out to them.

“All of you,” He bellowed. “Turn where you stand and look at me.” He waited while they all turned and looked his way. He waited in the mounting morning light while he scanned the line of recruits. “I am Athelstan Verell. You will call me Sergeant Verell or Sergeant, or if you are particularly stupid, Sarge. You will not call me ‘sir’ or anything else that might make someone think I’m an officer. I am not nobly born, and I don’t want anyone to think I have some sort of stick up my ass.” Kieran laughed out loud at the last. Sergeant Verell stared at him until he stopped and coughed a little then stood still again. The old soldier shook his head and returned to looking at the rest of them. “I am here to recruit the levy from this village for the Legion of Solon. Those who wish to enlist but don’t qualify for the Legion will be sent with the caravan in the village to the south to meet up with the pike levy forming between here and the capital in Rhodes City.” He started pacing back in forth in a line parallel to theirs. “Those of you who pass my tests for joining the Legion may be sorry you were good enough to join me because I will make your life as miserable as I possibly can in the next few weeks I have to train you up to being worthy of being called Legionnaires with me and the other veterans.”

He waited for a few heartbeats, and Cori again felt his gaze fall on her as he passed his eyes up and down the line. “Who wants to go first?”

Kieran jumped forward out of the line at the request, and Sergeant Verell shook his head. Cori knew that he was going to make an example of the boy.

“Ok, boy,” the man growled. “Come here and stand in front of me.” Kieran bounded over and stood as straight as he could in front of the Sergeant. “You have already failed the first test, boy, and you don’t even know why.” Cori watched from behind him as Kieran’s shoulders sagged.

“I hope you others are watching and learning,” Sergeant Verell shouted. “You never volunteer to do something without understanding what it is you’re volunteering to do.” He turned to Kieran again. “What if I have told you that you had to cut a finger off to prove you were fearless? Would you have done it?”

Cori could see Kieran’s wiry frame quivering, either from fear or anger; she couldn’t tell which. She decided it was fear when the Sergeant looked at him and threw his arms up in the air.

“Crying?” He said. “Really? What are you going to do when an imperial cavalryman is charging down on you or a soldier is cranking his crossbow to load and fire another volley at you? Are you going to cry or are you going to kill him?” He waited, and Kieran must have said something. “I didn’t hear that. When you answer me, you give me a straight answer and say it loud an clear enough for this whole village green to hear. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Cori heard the boy this time though it wasn’t as loud as the Sergeant wanted.

“I don’t think they all heard you, boy. What was that?”

“Yes,” Kieran shouted angrily, turning on the Sergeant. Cori could still see the tears streaming down his cheeks, but his face was red with anger now.

“That’s better,” Sergeant Verell said. “Now, would you like to know what the test is?”

“Yes, Sergeant Verell,” Kieran shouted.

“Ok, since you asked nicely, I’ll tell you. You are to go over to that pile of gear behind the table and select a bow and quiver of arrows from the pile behind it since you don’t have your own. Then you are to run as fast as you can to the inn’s stable doors and back. Once you’ve done that you are to hit that post at the far end of the green four times out of six shots or better.” You can get as close as you want to the post, but I’ll be timing each of you. The slowest will stay here. So you can either be a really good shot with a bow or fast enough to get close to the post and make your shots count before anyone else. Understood?”

“Yes, Sergeant Verell,” Kieran shouted again.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” The Sergeant bellowed in Kieran’s ear.

The boy ran for the pile of gear stacked behind the table, he selected a bow, strung it and grabbed a quiver of arrows slipping it over his head. He turned and sprinted for the inn’s stable doors, touching the doors and then returning at a run for the village green where the other recruits stood watching him. His breathing was heavy when he passed the group and started towards the post a hundred yards away. Cori understood now. The exertion of the run would disrupt the ability to calm the breathing and make an effective shot at the target.

Kieran stopped at 50 yards from the post, nocked an arrow, drew the string back and fired. He missed, the arrow flying to the right of the post, missing by about a foot. He drew again and fired, this time striking the target. He fired three more times in rapid succession and hit twice more. He had one more shot, and he had to make it count. Cori wondered if the others were cheering inside for him to succeed like she was. Kieran took his last shot and hit the post at head height. He turned and looked at he sergeant who returned his gaze for a moment. Then he nodded.

“Eighty-two heartbeats, four of six shots,” Sergeant Verell called to the monk, still seated behind the table. He picked up a quill pen, dipped it in the ink pot and scratched a few words in the ledger in front of him. The soldier turned to Kieran. “You may go and make your mark in the book, boy, and take your silver crown.”

“Yes, Sergeant.” Kieran’s voice was loud and clear this time as he jogged to the table.

“Your name?” the monk asked him.

“Kieran, Kieran Peal, sir,” the boy said.

The monk scratched the name in the ledger and then handed the quill pen to Kieran. “Make your mark.” Kieran took the quill pen and made an x next to the words written there. Cori knew that most of these farmers and peasants would not be able to read and write and that their witnessed mark would be their sign of enlistment. The monk opened a small box on the ground next to him and removed a single silver crown, handing it to the boy. Kieran looked at it as he held it up in front of his eyes as if it might disappear. It was likely the most valuable thing he had ever held in his hands before.

“Alright, the rest of you know what you need to do,” Sergeant Verell called out to the group. “We’ll take each of you in turn. The goal is to hit the target with as many shots out of six as fast as you can while winded from running. We will do more extensive training once we are on the road to the capital and final mustering point. This is the best way I can see what you’re made of here before we leave.”

Katina went next and achieved five out of six shots on target from about forty yards away from the target. Sergeant Verell nodded, called out her time and score and told her to make her mark in the book. She went to the monk and scratched her name, took her coin, flipped it in the air with her thumb, caught it in mid-air and slid in her pouch with a satisfied smile. The sergeant snorted at the last bit of flair but turned his gaze to Gebhard and the older farm took his turn. He had his own bow and didn’t need one from the pile of gear. He, too, completed the challenge landing four of six shots in the post in the allotted time and signed in. Declan, the smith’s apprentice took his turn and also made four of six shots with the bow, joining the growing group of new recruits. He smiled for the first time since Cori had met him when he took the silver coin from the monk. It was as if a burden were lifted from his shoulders.

Then it was Cori’s turn. The sergeant stood and appraised her again. “Where are you from, girl?”

“I came from a farmstead three days to the south,” Cori said. It was not technically a lie.

“You are surprisingly well equipped for a simple farm girl,” Sergeant Verell observed.

“My father served in the Legion during the border incursion twenty years ago,” Cori said, also not a lie.

“Do you know how to use all of those weapons?”

“I do, my father made sure I learned them,” Cori responded quickly. “May I take the test now?”

“By all means. Let’s see what you are made of, farm girl.”

Cori dropped her pack and cloak on the ground and strung her bow. She settled the strap of the quiver on her back and took off at a dead run to the stable doors. She was breathing heavily by the time she reached them. Turning and sprinting back to the group she stopped at 100 yards from the post took a moment to settle her breathing as best she could, then snapped off six quick shots. There first two landing on target while the final four were still in the air. When she let out her breath, the final of six arrows stood in the post a hands-breadth apart.

“Impressive, recruit. You’ve been trained well.” Sergeant Verell said. “What did you say your name was?”

“Cori,” she replied. Had word of her escape from the Chapter House reached up here already? “It’s just Cori, Sergeant.”

“Well, Cori, I’d like to meet this father of yours someday,” the old soldier said. “He has trained you well. Go make your mark.”

Cori was full of excitement as she strolled to the table where the monk sat with his ledger. She saw his tattoo of his holy symbol between his brows marking him as a brother of the order of the Bear, a northern monastery located on the border between Rhodes and Padon.

“Your full name, recruit?” He asked.

“I’m just Cori,” she repeated.

He looked up at her and then wrote her name in the book and handed her the quill pen. She signed her nickname in bold strokes next to where he had printed her name. He looked up in surprise at her ability to write in such handsome letters but did not say anything. He handed her a silver crown from the box at his feet and gestured for her to join the other recruits.

“That was amazing shooting, Cori,” Kieran said as she joined him, Katina and Geb in the line of passed recruits.

“Thank you, Kieran. I had a good teacher; that’s all.” The four of them watched the other recruits all take their turns at the course. Shelby, the waitress and the boy who followed her from the inn were successful and joined them. Erin, the red-haired girl who had slept in the loft with them, also passed the test. In all, their number was ten recruits when all had tested. They were soon finished, and Sergeant Verell had ordered them to run downrange and fetch the arrows shot at the target and beyond it. They were returning with the arrows that were recoverable when a woman in black leather armor and a black cloak stepped onto the green from the forest and approached the sergeant. A hissed intake of breath from Erin nearby drew Cori’s attention.

“What is it?” Cori asked.

“I think that is Lissa Rowland,” Erin replied.

Shelby looked over at the woman striding towards their sergeant. “The bandit? The Lissa?” She said.

“Yes, I was traveling with a merchant once when she set stopped him on the road and relieved him of his extra silver,” Erin said. “She has a lot of nerve showing up here. She has a price on her head.”

They hurried closer and overheard the end of the conversation with Sergeant Verell. “It is true. The King has offered a pardon for crimes short of murder for any who enlist in the king’s service for the coming war,” he said.

“Then I wish to enlist,” Lissa said. “I want to get this price off my head.”

“Fair enough, did you see the contest I had the others do or do you need me to explain it to you?”

“I saw,” the bandit woman said. “Run to the Inn and back. Kill the post.”

“That’s it,” Sergeant Verell said.

She took off for the inn immediately, the silver buckles on her supple leather armor gleaming in the sun under her black cloak. Cori marveled at her speed. She was nearly as fast as the fastest of the men who had made the run. When she dashed back past the group, Cori realized she didn’t have a bow or arrows. She didn’t slow down, though and ran straight at the post. When she was about fifty feet away, her hands began grabbing something from her belt and flinging them at the post. Thok, took, thok-thok-thok, came the sounds as knives seemed to sprout in a line down the front of the post. She still had two more of the small knives in her hands when she skidded to a stop in the turf just in front of the target. She turned and leaned against it, looking back at the sergeant and the rest of the recruits and onlookers with a satisfied smile.

“You’ll do,” was all the sergeant said before turning to the rest of them. “Well, go on, get those arrows back in their quivers and then line up. I don’t want to be standing here all day.”

Cori watched Lissa out of the corner of her eye as the former bandit pulled each knife from the post and stowed if somewhere on her person. She had not even seen all of them when she first saw the woman, just the long dagger and short sword at her belt. She then strode up to the monk and signed the book after giving her name. She joined the other ten recruits in a ragged line facing the table. Sergeant Verell looked over the eleven of them and shook his head.

“Welcome to the second platoon of Stag company, Legion of Solon. You will be joined by approximately twenty more recruits from nearby towns that we will gather on our way south to meet up with our company commander Captain Archard McAffrey and the rest of the company. On the way, we will train every day before, during and after our march. For those of you who do not have bows of your own, you may outfit yourself from the pile of supplies behind that table. You will also find additional tomahawks, short swords and daggers their for you if you don’t have your own. You should each have a blade, either a long knife or short sword as well as a hand ax, tomahawk or dagger as a secondary weapon. Once you have selected one, it will be your duty to maintain them and learn to use them. The same for your bows and arrows. You will be responsible for having a bow, primary and spare bowstring, and sixty arrows at all times. We’ll have a bowyer joining us in the next town to help with maintaining our supply and helping to teach you all to fletch your own arrows as well if you don’t already know how.” He continued to pace back and forth, looking at them as he talked. “Gather your things, say your goodbyes and meet back here in a half hour ready to march. We will continue our conversation on the road. Dismissed.”

Cori had all of her things packed already, so she sat on the grass of the green and watched the others. Shelby and the boy from the inn walked over and selected a few items each from the pile of weapons and supplies stashed behind the seated monk. He was still writing in his ledger and looking up occasionally at the group to gauge their progress she guessed. Cori saw Lissa go and select her own bow from the choices available and hoist a full quiver of arrows up over one shoulder before moving a short distance away from the others and organizing her gear. A few of the recruits had family to say goodbye to but most just stood around with their packs and blanket rolls waiting for the order to march. She watched Geb go over and hand his silver coin to Burton, the farmer who had brought her into Gladestown on his cart the night before. He must be planning to have Burton give the coin to his wife and children on their outlying farm until he could send them more.

It was almost too soon that Sergeant Verell returned with a small, two-wheeled horse-drawn cart. He ordered a few of the recruits to load the weapons and gear into it from the pile on the ground and then the monk, who had been introduced at Brother Jerrald Marras, climbed atop it and took the reins. The sergeant then rounded up the group, ordered them into a single file line behind the cart and started them marching to the south, out of the village of Gladestown, marching off to join the war.

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