The light, misting rain fell apathetically on the heads of the four boys as they shoveled the slurry of gravel riddled dirt from the trench on the outer edge of the camp while dawn slowly approached from the east. All of the young men digging the trench were tired, and wished they had been allowed to go to their tents to sleep the night before.

  The rain, too, was now falling with such a lack of interest that calling it rain was a kindness and frankly doing so bordered on flattery.

  “This is all your fault, Vac Fadric.” Wilmon said, his voice as drippy and sodden as the rest of him while he twisted to throw another sloshing shovel of soil up to the top of the small rampart the boys had been tasked with building. Due to Wilmon’s lack of vigilance, or possibly due to his sulky, grudging compliance with his orders, half of the soil he had just thrown out slid back down the bank, returning once more to the grimy hole from whence it had come.

  Private Vac Fadric said nothing in response, but continued to dig at the same pace he had been using for the past hour. The young man dug with determination and rhythm, if not invested vigor. The two remaining young men also continued to dig, ignoring Wilmon’s words, but also, tellingly, refusing to defend the newest Private Vac Fadric.

  Another shovel filled with gritty labour flew from where Vac Fadric stood in the long round trench that almost, but not quite, surrounded the small forward scouting camp. The notion of this little training excursion being an actual “forward scouting camp” made Vac Fadric laugh to himself as he dug the blade of his shovel into the moist, root-filled earth.

  On a map of the western continent, called Dhuthaich, of the world of Thach, the kingdom of Rhiadia occupied the furthest westernmost points of that landmass. Its borders were made up by the oceans on three sides, and a chain of five mountain ranges that sounded the country on the east, north, west, and part of its southern coast. The center of Rhiadia was made up of gently rolling plains that were excellent for farming, and some small forest lands. The outer edges of the country were high, inhospitable mountains on three sides, and a coastal beach with one real harbor in the south.

  It was as naturally protected a country could be, before their army was ever involved, and the idea that his little group of soldiers-in-training were doing anything more than make-work was, to Vac Fadric’s thinking, mildly amusing.

  But Lord Ashe, his mentor and guardian, had insisted that he be treated by the local garrison like any other child of 13 years who had been enrolled in service to the Crown’s Army for the traditional three year term. It was a tradition started by one of his ancestors. It had allowed the less fortunate youths of the kingdom to learn some trades and skills, gain three years of (very low) wages, and gave the kingdom, specifically the Army, a cheap source of labor and a robust military, as many of those three year terms ended with the now sixteen year old privates signing on for another standard term.

  Second and third sons and daughters often brought their families’ skill sets with them to the Army, as they cannot inherit their parents’ positions in the trades ahead of their older siblings. It wasn’t a mandatory service that some other kingdoms had, it was completely voluntary. It drew in hundreds of teens every year around the kingdom, and released 80 to 90 percent back into civilian life every year. Vac Fadric guessed his ancestor knew what they were doing when they had instituted this policy.

  Now Vac Fadric was in the northern foothills to the east of Gibiril Keep starting his second year of service by digging a ditch during a training exercise. He had thought he would be given duties closer to Command in the keep, as he was able to read, and had passed all of his basic competency tests his first year with both grace and, well, competence.

  But his mentor had insisted to command that he be given all of the duty assignments that ANY other recruit would be given during his term, and Command had agreed. It was galling, but Vac Fadric would be damned if he would complain to anyone about the treatment. He knew he was made of better fabric than every other recruit, but pointing that out would prove him wrong. He wasn’t going to be one of the shaking whiners who always wailed and screeched when given a job to do.

  He had noticed these last few months that the other Privates who were in his training year who did complain and sought intervention for themselves were fewer and fewer. Many were shipped out to other posts, and some were given a tan, civilians’ tunic and a final pay pouch and sent out the front gate from the keep.

  Another shovel, another twist of his torso sending more earth to the top of the growing rampart, another hand step to his left. Exhale.

  Some of those whinging whiners that remained, like Wilmon, were given fewer opportunities to lead their training units, and even fewer chances to lead their full platoons. Wilmon was constantly telling any other trainee who would listen the many ways that HE would do better than the Corporals and Sergeants who gave them their orders.

  Wilmon was the son of a local count who held land for the Crown just south of Gibiril Keep, in the Duchy of Toodveldt. He thought he should have been given a commission by Command when he had been enlisted by his father. His father, in a stunning turn of good sense, had not bought the boy such a commission. Count Wilmon had, according to rumor, told his son “You will start at the bottom, just as I did at your age. You will learn discipline, or you will learn what it is to fail on your own merits. If you come home before your term is up, I may let you back into the house. Or, I may hire you as a fruit picker in our fields.”

  Vac Fadric didn’t know how much of that was real, and how much was just the rumor mill embellishing things, but it amused him either way. Looking to his right, Wilmon was leaning against the rampart ten paces or so away along the trench from where Vac Fadric and the other two privates continued to dig, with his shovel handle against his shoulder and his head beginning to loll.

  Their unit had been ordered to begin digging after the company had erected their camp the previous night. The sergeant, Aberna, had set the four the task of digging the trench and building the rampart just as they had finished their evening meal. Vac Fadric had sighed a little too loudly as he had stood from his place at the fire, and Sergeant Aberna had taken it as a challenge to her authority. Lieutenant Holl sat on a small camp chair by the front of his tent, the centrally located “Command Tent” and watched this all play out as he methodically cleaned and honed his sword.

  “Do you have a problem carrying out these orders, Private Vac Fadric?” she had said loudly as she stepped in front of him.

  “No, Sergeant Aberna!” He had replied, as he snapped to attention at being singled out.

  “I don’t believe you, Private. Is your uniform too good for digging ditches with your squad?”

  “No, Sergeant Aberna!” He knew she was pushing him to make a point to the other members of the platoon. If he was here, he was one of them. And if he wasn’t “One of them,” maybe he shouldn’t be here.

  “Good.” She smiled then. “Then grab your spades, and get moving. I want that wall up before dawn. MOVE!”

  He and the other members of his unit, two squads of ten each, had “moved.” Private Coyne, the private who was currently their Lead had divided the units up and sent each unit to a section of ground around the perimeter of the camp to dig a circular trench, depositing the displaced earth on the inside of that ring to serve as a rampart.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Wilmon had huffed and chuffed and moaned the second they were far enough from Aberna to be sure she wouldn’t hear his complaints. Once furthest away from authority as he could get, Wilmon began his constant attempts to belittle Vac Fadric, and to get the other members of his unit to join him in doing the same. With dawn finally approaching, he had let himself fall to fatigue, and now could be heard to snore as the other three dug the last bits of their assigned section of the trench and rampart.

  Billars, the short, wiry private to Vac Fadric’s immediate right, asked in a near whisper, “Should we wake him?”

  “Not on your life, Billo.” Said Chorn in a soft voice. The tall, rangy private had been a thorn in Billars’ side when they had joined the service, but within a month of hard work, and a knocked out tooth, Chorn had grown out of his need to bully the smaller lad. “He’s moved one spade of dirt for every ten of yours, Vaccy’s, and mine. He gets caught sleeping, he gets extra duty.”

  Vac Fadric hated the nickname Chorn had given him, but never said anything about it. That would have made everyone in the Keep start using it. He chuckled, and confirmed to the other two privates. “To hear Wilmon tell it, he does all the duty anyway.”

  The snorting sounds of two young men suppressing their laughter didn’t carry far enough, luckily, to wake the sleeping Wilmon where he leaned against the muddy wall in the heavy mist.

  Chorn leaned toward him and gave him a companionable push to his shoulder. “Truth Vaccy. You don’t say a word half the night, but when you do, it's the Holy Truth of Rhoona herself!” the tall private whispered. He didn't fully make the sign of the Temple of Rhoona with his right hand, which was something new Chorn, who came from a very faithful family, was trying. Older soldiers and trainers had been attempting to get the more ardent followers of various faiths to stop making gestures of their piety. Enemies rarely gave one the time to show one's devotion during a fight.

  When the youths had finished their section of the defensive trench, they climbed from the hip deep channel they had plowed through the sodden earth that circled the camp just before the sun rose high enough to count as dawn here in the deep northern forests. They then walked slowly back to the agreed upon “opening” of the ramparts they had erected through the night. Someone had already laid the heavy wooden “bridge” across the gap they had burrowed through the soil and roots around the camp.

  The three stood stretching and attempted to pull themselves back into human shaped soldiers, Vac Fadric noticed all of the other soldiers appearing out of the mist from where their own efforts had taken them throughout the night. As their Lead, Private Coyne had approached through the misty morning with Sergeant Aberna following along in his wake, an ill-mannered sea serpent ready to strike.

  While Aberna looked clean, dressed in a fresh uniform, Coyne had been digging with the rest of the unit and looked just as mud covered and hollow-eyed with fatigue as everyone else who had worked through the night.

  “Set!” Coyne then called out.

  The unit scrambled into four lines, as usual. Coyne’s own place in this formation was blank as he stood with their sergeant. And, as Vac Fadric had predicted, another blank space gaped open in the line as well. Wilmon’s.

  Sergeant Aberna narrowed her eyes at Coyne. Coyne then stepped over to the two lines that made up Second Squad. They could all see him count, and check off names in his head before he looked at Chorn, Billars, and Vac Fadric.

  All three young men glanced to their right, along the trough in the earth. They could all see, just around the bend of the furrow, the top of Wilmon’s head where he still leaned and slept. Before any words left any mouths could utter a single word, Aberna strode toward the man.

  Stepping out over the hole, she allowed the right heel of her boot to dig into the side of the trench as she allowed her body to drop down, her right foot creating a small channel down the side of the cut as her body dropped and her left foot never missing a beat as she took that second step in the bottom of the cut.

  In unison, the members of the Unit all flinched silently as they saw, from their vantage point, the sergeant’s baton rise in the air.

  Then the screaming began.

  An hour later, washed, and fed, Vac Fadric had his boots off, and was sitting at the edge of his bedroll. Two of the other three young men with whom he shared a small tent were already asleep on their own bedrolls, though Chorn had washed and eaten, still wore his dirty pants, and Billars had eaten, but not washed, and wore nothing but the contented smile of a Private who knew he wasn’t being forced to do chores like chopping wood for fires and whatever else the sergeant could think of for him to do while the rest of his unit was relieved unto evening mess. Billars, Chorn, and Vac Fadric had never been given Arrow Counting duty.

  “Counting Arrows and Polishing Buttons” was a common term for the extra make-work that shirkers were given.

  Just as he had begun to lower himself down to enjoy some blissful oblivion, a head popped into the small, low, canvas tent. Coyne, his long face looking more bereft of joy than usual, said in a quiet voice as he surveyed the tent, flinching as he saw the sprawled, naked form of Billars. “Vac Fadric, Lieutenant wants a word.”

  “Now?” he asked, his voice straining as he halted his fall onto his blanket.

  “Oh, no… I’m his secretary, and he would like to schedule a time with your Lordship for this coming Parnet’s Eve.” It was said with such a lack of emotion or inflection, that Vac Fadric almost laughed in spite of the deadpan delivery.

  Letting his abdominal muscles relax, he collapsed onto his bedroll and said simply, “On my way, Lead.”

  Not long after, Private Vac Fadric stood at attention outside of the Command Tent in the center of the established camp while Lieutenant Holl stared at the young man, his pale green eyes a bright contrast to his dusky, dark brown complexion. The older man had what Vac Fadric considered a silly mustache, his hair rich auburn shot through heavily with pure white, curled up in precise arcs at their ends.

  The man took from his head the beak-billed helmet he wore, exposing a head covered with a fitted cap of lurid red that was not a part of any officer’s uniform. The infantry helmets could get very stuffy, and wore uncomfortably on most heads, and so most experienced soldiers wore an extra padded cap to supplement the scant padding the helmets came with from the quartermasters.

  This red cap had a symbol on its brow of a golden candle crossed with a delicate apple blossom. The mark of his wife, or his betrothed. Possibly a woman with whom he just “had an understanding.” The man was well turned out, even for a junior officer, but Vac Fadric didn’t think he was married.

  “Do you ride, Private Vac Fadric?” He asked in a slow drawl. “We have been tasked with investigating an incident, and I need riders.”

  Vac Fadric didn’t know they had access to horses, as they had done a three day hard march to reach this location. But, that wasn’t the question, and officers could be sticklers for questions asked and answered versus sense made.

  “I am trained to ride, yes Lieutenant Holl. Passed my cavalry test, but have not received that shoulder knot as yet.”

  The Ocre man looked closer at the private. “You passed in the Spring?”

  “Yessir.”

  The Colonel usually has those knots given out by mid Summer at the latest.” The lieutenant’s slow voice rolled out with all due skepticism and little prickly thorns.

  “Politics, sir.” Vac Fadric refused to change his stance, or even allow his eyes to wander in any other direction than the center of the taller, older man’s forehead, just below the edge of his red cap.

  Holl’s eyes narrowed a moment, and then they widened slightly with realization. “Ah, yes. That.” He mulled his options a moment before he turned from the young recruit and reached into his tent’s door flap, pulling out a very different pack than the one every private had marched out to this remote site carrying.

  It was a cavalry pack, and included a saber, rather than the wide shortsword they infantry all carried.

  “See Sergeant Aberna at the west gate, she will have a lance and a bow with a pair of full quivers for you. The mission is to ride to Oscilla, it’s the settlement a day’s ride west of here. Reports say they have lost a substantial number of cattle, sheep, and pigs. Corporal Klee will be your immediate. Four other privates who also have their cavalry knots will be your unit. There are two cav officers leading, Captains Marthi and Seema, they will be ready to ride within the hour.” He then turned back to his camp chair, and sat down as though he was very sore of leg and lower back.

  Vac Fadric stood holding the new pack. Waiting. This was a very odd situation, and he wasn’t sure what to do next. He hadn’t even been asked if he had any questions or concerns about being sent off on this cavalry mission.

  Holl finally looked up at the boy in irritation, cocking his head. “Well? Be about it! Go!”

  Taking the dismissal, Vac Fadric turned smartly with a “Sir.” and headed to the western gate of the little camp to meet his new unit.