135. At Winter Camp
“Eádulf, my horse! It’s time to move. Where’s Derian?”
“Sheriff Chapman is inspecting the
wagons, sir.” Eádulf brought Milo’s
mount through the mud. It was raining,
and had been for two days. The boots of
armsmen and the melting of snow had long since reduced the spaces between
Winter Camp’s buildings to mud pits.
Rain only compounded the mess.
Milo’s new destrier, given to him by
Assemblyman Ham Roweson shortly after Milo became Commander of the Guard, stood
quietly with Eádulf patting the magnificent animal’s nose. The unimaginative Eádulf called him “Gray
Boy,” which understated the creature’s size and strength, but Milo hadn’t
objected. Gray Boy had a heavy black
mane and tail that accented his silvery gray horsehair. Milo had ridden Gray Boy weekly from Citadel
to Winter Camp and back to accustom the horse to his weight and manner, but in
truth Eádulf had been the creature’s most regular companion for many weeks. In battle knight and mount needed to act as
one, and Milo regretted not spending more time in the saddle. We’ll
have some days together before Down’s End, Milo thought. An army
can only move as fast as infantry and supply wagons. There should be opportunity to take Gray Boy
for a gallop or two.
Milo stepped on a sawn block with
his right foot so he could raise his left to the stirrup and then launch
himself into the saddle. Weeks before,
Felix Abrecan had teased Milo about using a mounting block like a woman or an
old man. Milo had responded by laying
aside his sword, stripping to an under tunic, and then leaping onto the
horse. Gray Boy had reared and nearly
thrown him. After that, Felix and Eádulf
insisted Milo use the mounting block, especially when he wore armor or weapons. Today, with the army setting out, he wore a
boiled leather jerkin over his clothes and carried his sword.
Other
than the great horse, the Commander of the Guard was distinguished mainly by a
pale yellow felt hat. It was exactly the
color of globum domini auctoritate the
day Milo had bonded with Hyacintho Flumen,
and he bought it the moment he saw it in a Stonebridge shop. “Gods!
Why that?” Tilde asked when she
saw it. “You look like a mushroom or a
peasant, not a general.” He replied: “It
will keep the rain off. And if an archer
sees lots of ugly hats, he might shoot at others rather than me.” Privately, Milo resolved that if he returned
victorious to Stonebridge, he would have a new sigil invented for his shield
and armor, and that sigil would in some way feature just this shade of yellow.
Felix and Derian rode up before Milo
could go looking for them. Their mounts
were considerably shorter than Gray Boy and flecked with mud that reached the
riders’ knees; either man could have been a boy looking up at his father.
“Do we have everything?” Milo directed his question to Derian.
“Of course not.” Derian wore a misshapen leather hat that
drained water to the side. “If there is
anything I’ve learned since you pressed me into fulltime service as a sheriff,
it’s that officers of the Guard never have enough. Hrodgar Wigt, Aidan Fleming, Acwel Kent, and
Ifing Redhair all have insatiable desires for more men, more food, more
weapons, more horses, more fodder, and on and on. And of course there needs be more wagons to
carry everything. You may be absolutely
sure that should anything go wrong
your captains will complain that it would have been prevented had I provided
them with more.”
Milo tossed his head, mimicking
Amicia’s habit and throwing rainwater on his pommel. Grinning: “I take it that we are ready.”
Derian saluted, his fist on his
chest.
“We
move, then. Spread the word, Felix. Easy march for the first day, twelve
miles. The men will want tents and
campfires at the end of the day.”
“Easy march” proved to be anything
but. The only sustained marching the
Stonebridge recruits had experienced was from the city over the ring of hills
to Winter Camp. Some companies had
reversed the journey, but not nearly all.
And the practice marches had been in good weather and on firm frozen
ground. Now they marched in the rain,
with full packs, in mud. They marched
not in lone squads of twenty, but in units of fifty in a long line; the groups
behind had to wait for the groups ahead.
Consequently, the army moved like a caterpillar, each section impeded at
some point by comrades before or behind.
The road from Stonebridge to Down’s
End was only a dirt track. Some of the
infantry abandoned the road to trample the prairie on both sides, which meant
that the last third of the army either marched in mud or widened the track
further. Besides Milo and his
commanders, the army included fifty mounted scouts; some rode ahead of the main
body while others paralleled the infantry on either side. The wagons came behind the swordsmen, knife
fighters and archers, their draft horses plodding in the mud. Fortunately, the first day’s terrain sloped
gently down for the most part; the animals would have struggled mightily going
uphill.
After twelve miles Milo’s men were
tired, thoroughly wet, and filthy to their waists. They wanted tents and campfires, but had
little practice erecting camp in the wild.
It took three hours of confusion, frustration and shouting before
everything was properly set. At last,
after dark, the rain stopped, and men could dry themselves and sup.
Derian and the captains—Hrodgar
Wigt, Aidan Fleming, Acwel Kent, and Ifing Redhair—came to Milo once the scouts
had come in and sentries were in place. They
sat dispirited on logs around a campfire.
Milo listened as each listed frustrations of the day. The commanders complained about the weather, about
the road, about their men, and about stupid decisions made by each other. After half an hour, Milo finally signaled for
silence.
“I promised these men that they
would be an army. Today we discovered
they are not. I promised more than I
knew. True, I know how to fight. I can handle sword and shield and fight on
horseback or afoot. You men, my
commanders, are accomplished fighters, and we’ve trained our men as
fighters. But we have not trained them
to march, and without marching they can’t be an army. This is not their fault. We failed. I failed.”
Wigt, Fleming, Kent and Redhair
didn’t answer.
“Now, we can go back to Stonebridge
as failures. That would be honest. We could spend the summer training these men
to march, and they would probably be a real army by harvest. But that is not what we’re going to do.”
Derian and the captains stared at
him, waiting.
“Tomorrow we will break camp at the
sound of a horn. We will march a mile—or
two, or three—and then we will set camp at the sound of the horn. I will inspect the camp. Then we will do it all again: break camp,
march, set camp. If there is still
daylight, I may order it all yet again.
We will do this every day until we are an army. When the morning horn sounds, we must be
moving in half an hour. When the evening
horn sounds, we must set camp in half an hour.”
Milo stood and pulled on his yellow
cap.
“Where are you going?” Derian asked.
“I’m going to visit every campfire
and tell the men what I’ve told you. I
will apologize for my failure and promise them that they will yet be an army. I would appreciate it if you five would
spread out among the men and tell them to keep their fires burning until I come
by.”
The practice regimen worked. In the next three days, the Stonebridge army
advanced only fifteen miles total, striking and setting camp seven times. Efficiency improved with repetition, and the
spirit of the men improved with it. They
could see for themselves how much more quickly tasks were accomplished, and
they acknowledged the way efficiency reduced the discomforts of
campaigning. Shared experiences of
improvement generated feelings of competence.
On the fourth day, the fifth from
Winter Camp, Milo rode Gray Boy up and down the marching column announcing the
end of practice. Today we march like a
real army! By nightfall they had covered
sixteen miles, and they set camp without complaint in the rain in half an
hour. In the evening, the captains
congratulated Milo that his army had a sense of pride. He replied that they had overcome a
preliminary hurdle only; an army’s real worth had to be proved in battle.
Six more days brought the army to Crossroads. They camped on the prairie north of the Crossroads Inn for two nights, and the
intervening day permitted rest for footsore armsmen. It also afforded a bonanza to Idonea Fatman,
owner of the inn. She rented no rooms to
the Stonebridge men, but she sold gallons of ale and as much meat as her
kitchen could cook.
At Crossroads, Milo and Derian interviewed Rage Hildebeorht, the
sheriff appointed by the Stonebridge Assembly to rid the country of
highwaymen. Hildebeorht had a regular
room in the inn since he stayed there much of the time. He remembered Derian and Milo’s faces from
their appearances in Crossroads the
previous year, but he was taken aback that Milo Mortane, refugee from Hyacintho Flumen, was now Commander of
the City Guard.
Derian corrected Hildebeorht, “We
are not in Stonebridge. Here, Milo is General Mortane, general of the
Stonebridge army. This should not be a surprise to you; surely
you’ve received news from Stonebridge of the Assembly’s doings.”
“Not like you’d think.” Hildebeorht signaled to Erna Fatman, Idonea’s
daughter, to bring more drink to their table.
“I sent reports to Frideric Bardolf twice a month last summer, either
sending them with some trusty teamster or taking them myself. But in winter wagons get scarce on the road,
and Speaker Bardolf stopped sending messengers—and Ibertus Tibb stopped sending
my pay, I should add. The truth is, I’d
about decided to quit sheriffing and marry widow Fatman. Now you’ve turned up; if I get paid, I just
might continue.”
“Last summer I delivered you a
highwayman and you hanged him,” said Milo.
“What have you done since? Have
you earned your pay?”
Hildebeorht crossed his arms,
scowling. “Bardolf and Dans gave me
fifty golds to hire under-sheriffs. I
sent Bardolf and Tondbert a report, detailing how I used it.”
Milo accepted a mug of ale from
Erna. “I don’t need the whole
report. Give me the short version.”
“I hired twenty under-sheriffs for
three months each. We hanged three
thieves, including the one you brought in.”
“With twenty men you caught two
bandits? In three months?” Derian was incredulous.
Hildebeorht was fifty years old, not
ready to be intimidated by men as young as Derian and Milo. “That’s right. Traders like you, Master Chapman, see
highwaymen behind every tree, and you complain to the Down’s End Council or the
Stonebridge Assembly that the road isn’t safe.
Teamsters, too, howl all the time.
I don’t really blame them or you.
But the truth is, the road is not that dangerous. We hanged three and put the fear of the gods
in others. I earned my pay until it
stopped.”
Milo leaned sideways to unsheathe
his sword. He laid the weapon on the
table between him and Hildebeorht, where its castle steel reflected the inn’s
candles, lit already, though sup was an hour away. He leaned forward and saw Hildebeorht
swallow. “Things have changed in
Stonebridge. Speaker Bardolf stopped
sending you pay because he has been accused of defrauding the city. He is in a cell in the Citadel, as is Ody
Dans. Tondbert is dead. Kingsley Averill is now the Speaker, and I am
the Commander of the Guard—your
commander, Sheriff Hildebeorht. I find
your service barely acceptable, and I am of a mind to replace you.”
Hildebeorht looked long at the
sword. He swallowed again.
“However,” Milo continued, “I think
you may yet repay the trust Stonebridge placed in you.”
“How can I do that, Lord Commander?”
“You will sup with me and my
captains tonight. And Idonea’s son
Beowulf, he will sup with us. You are
not stupid, Sheriff, only lazy. You and
Bee will tell us every scrap of rumor you have heard from Down’s End and about
the siege of Hyacintho Flumen.”
Derian raised an eyebrow. “Rumors, Milo?”
“It’s up to us to sort out truth
from fiction,” Milo said. “Bee Fatman is
an intelligent youth. I promise you
we’ll know more in the morning than we do now.”
Copyright © 2014 by Philip D. Smith.
All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
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