Captains Marthi and Seema were both already in their saddles as Vac Fadric walked up to the picket with his new pack over his shoulder, and his head swiveling about to look for Sergeant Aberna. He wasn’t familiar with Corporal Klee, but there was a man in dirty cavalry at the edge of the clearing tending to another picket of horses that must have arrived at the scouting camp overnight, or possibly just around dawn as he and his fellows were finishing up their task of digging the trench that surrounded the camp. Vac Fadric wasn’t certain, and having not slept yet, didn’t see much reason to care.
Throwing a precise salute, right palm slapping his chest, to the two captains on their mounts, he had been about to address them as a strident voice shouted behind him.
“PRIVATE!” It was Aberna. And she was mad, the sinuous scar that bisected her right eyebrow bunching as her face contorted around itself in rage. “You were told to come to the gate, not through it. WHAT do you think you are doing?”
Spinning in place while remaining at attention, replying with simply “Sergeant!” He knew if he offered any reason for his deviating from orders, he would be dressed down further.
Coming within a hand’s width to him, the sergeant looked intently into his face, making an uncomfortable amount of eye contact. He thought the sergeant may have been daring him to speak; looking for any excuse to yell at him again.
When she finally did speak, he was shocked by her quietly hissed orders. “You will comport yourself to these fucking centaur wannabe cavalry shits like a proper Army. You hear me?” He nodded, surprise scrawled across his face. From her sneer, he thought he had reacted wrong. But then Aberna winked at him, her scowl never lifting.
“You have the makings of a good officer. You have the makings of a REAL leader,” She poked his chest angrily to emphasize her point. “You were specifically named for this little picnic, VAC FADRIC.” She poked him again, emphasizing his family name.
She then shoved a cased bow and double quiver that would ride to either side of his saddle, and a lance he would be expected to keep couched as he rode. “Those two captains probably know who you are, and know what your cavalry qualifications are, I expect. Be certain to carry the HONOR of your Army Unit forward as you take on your duties over the next ten day or so of your new deployment. Corporal Klee is a tracker, and most likely only knows the mission.” He eyes bored into his.
“YOU are to return, no matter what. Is that CLEAR?”
“YES, SERGEANT!” He almost shouted, now staring over her shoulder to see the four other privates being sent on this unexpected detachment.
She gave him a hard shove that moved him back several stumbling feet and pointed to the dirty uniformed man who was checking each horse’s saddle and hooves. No longer hiss-whispering in his face, “Now get over there and help Klee with those mounts, Private!”
Before he caught his barings, the sergeant spun with a dirty look at the officers of the cavalry as she spun back to the thick hewn planks of the little bridge that led back into the camp.
Gods help me, I’m tired… he thought, picking up his pack and settling it again on his shoulder as he juggled the archery equipment and the lance, trying to not drop any of it as he made his way over to the far side of the clearing to introduce himself to Klee and offer the Corporal what little he could of his services.
Treading his way across the tough, springy moss of the clearing, Vac Fadric wondered exactly what Aberna had been trying to tell him.
A part of his thoughts, the part that often sounded in his mind like the deep, dry, measured voice of his mentor and tutor, Lord Ashe, told him that Aberna warned him that the captains may be officers who owed their commissions to his uncle, and may try to harm Vac Fadric either to gain favor with the man, or even directly at his orders. Aberna had told him he was requested on this diversion by name, so that idea withstood what Lord Ashe occasionally called the sniff test.
Another part of his thoughts, a voice that was childish, higher in pitch, and sounded much like what he feared his own voice sounded like to others, told him that this was probably just a chance being offered to him by the Commander of the garrison at Jibiril Keep to distinguish himself. The chance to gain a promotion.
The voice that was Lord Ashe’s proxy in his thoughts interjected, …promotions are a trap. And enticement to stay in the Army. An offer that was meant to keep Vac Fadric from leaving the safety of an officer’s quarters in an out of the way post, rather than attempting to lay claim to his inheritance once he reached his age of majority in a few years.
He frowned at that idea as he reached where Corporal Klee worked on the hooves of a brown and black mottled gelding.
Before he could introduce himself to the man who was crouched over the hoof he held on his knee, Klee’s arm whipped back to Vac Fadric, and a gruff voice demanded, “Gimme your hook knife, boy!”
Dropping his weapons, Vac Fadric riffled through his pack, looking for a currying kit that he knew should have been included in a cavalry traveling pack. After a frantic shuffle, he realized the pack he had been given by Lieutenant Holl, while heavy on blanket, firestarter, canteen, and dried rations, was completely lacking that distinct bundle containing horse brush, hoof knives, and rasp, and nippers.
“Are ye deaf, ye slack gobbie?” The man asked, his wide fingered hand still extended. “I need that knife… This shilee has a stone deep in his frog, any deeper, and it might hit his cushion. That’ll lame him as fast as chopping his leg off, and be just as effective.” The hand was now shaken for emphasis.
“Apologies, Corporal, my pack doesn't seem to have a currying kit.” Vac Fadric said, giving up.
The man slowly put down the hoof, allowing the horse to extend its leg as far to the ground as it was willing to do, which wasn’t much. Turning to face Vac Fadric as he stood and stretched, the look on the man’s craggy and lined face said clearly that the private had failed an important test.
Stepping back along the horse’s body while never breaking eye contact with the newly shamed younger man, the corporal reached into the saddlebag that hung from the rear of the old, but well cared for saddle.
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“We don’t send any horse out from the stables without its own kit, boy.” The kit came out of the leather bag like a grovelhog pulled by a festival mage from his big, floppy hat. He then dropped the bag, which only fell a handspan before the tether that tied it twanged taught, and turned the roll of tools out along the beast’s flank.
“And each kit is tied to the saddle, inside the left saddlebag. If one of the Crown’s horses has a saddle, it has the tools to care for it along for the ride as well.”
The man’s red rimmed gray eyes looked deeply into Vac Fadric’s own muddy hazel eyes. The two men were about the same height, though Klee was maybe a thumb width taller. HIs graying hair had decided to stage a strategic retreat from its former front line, leaving a large expanse of real estate available for both sun and wind burn. To make up for his lack of forward hairline, Klee had grown out his hair, and braided most of it into a series of plaits that started over each ear and met at the base of his skull, was then braided again into a wrist-thick tail that trailed down the back of his uniform tunic.
Whipping out the hook knife, he then turned back to the brown and black gelding, telling the private, “Check the hooves and health of Molly.” With that, he pointed at the next horse in the picket line.
The golden coated mare turned a baleful eye on Vac Fadric, and snorted.
“Molly…” He set all of his various packs, and weapons down a few strides away before turning back to the golden coated horse and set to work. Molly was older, had some scarring around her withers, but sturdy and aside from a tendency to vocalize, was entirely cooperative with being seen to by the young Private.
By the time he had checked and tended to Molly, and another horse, a bay Klee had called Hoyde, the Corporal had checked and tended to the other six horses tied together, another hour had passed. Vac Fadric hadn’t noticed how long it had taken, but he did notice, once he and Klee had finished that the other four privates had assembled in a line in front of captains Marthi and Seema.
Klee motioned for him to take his place at the end of the line of Privates standing at attention, and ambled in a rolling gate to stand between the captains and their new, small unit.
“Glad you could join us, private.” The taller, very pale skinned captain said, her voice not quite flirting with sarcasm and scorn.
The second captain, an Ocre man, his voice calm to the point of apathy said, “Now, we have been asked to ride out to a small settlement and render aid. I expect that we will arrive in Oscillia, and find the bulk of their breeding stocks have been either taken by brigands, or that we will have to hunt down a large pack of beasts down from the mountains looking for easy meals. Either way, we will ride out, solve this issue, and be back in no more than ten days.”
He then turned to the female captain next to him and nodded, she nodded in return. She then said to Klee, “Corporal, see this unit saddled up and ready to ride in the next ten minutes.”
The tow captains turned back to walk to their own horses and begin checking their packs were secure before mounting up themselves.
Klee had assessed the best of the nine horses, and assigned a private to each one. Vac Fadric was securing his bow case to Hoyde’s saddle as Klee came around checking on each member of the unit. He nodded at Vac Fadric, and then moved on to check the progress of the others.
By noon, two of the other members of the unit were wincing in pain every time the pace was increased to a trot. The two officers up at the head of the little column not looking to Vac Fadric’s eye like they cared if the unit fell behind, or even had they died he didn’t know if they would notice or care. Corporal Klee, at the rear, made certain no one “got lost,” or fell too far behind. Klee was the left to see that everyone kept pace with command, and Marthi and Seema rode boldly ahead in a haze of mildly smiling apathy.
By midday of their second day of riding, the small unit had all got more familiar with one another, to the point where nicknames had been attached to each young rider.
Lissara, a Private so short and wiry that Vac Fadric wondered if the lad had Jheddo blood if not for his vibrantly blue skin tone proclaiming him as a Ghorma, had been labeled “Lisk” after the fearsome saurian cavalry mounts often used in more southerly climes. His wide mouth and wide spaced eyes made Vac Fadric think that was why the appellation had been chosen, though it could have just as easily been his family name’s similarity to lisk and lizard.
Private Abuna was quickly named “Bonny,” and how quickly the name stuck made Vac Fadric think the name predated this little jaunt. The tall, thin young Ocre man calmly accepted the name without comment while taking his turn with Klee at tending the horses.
The teen they all started calling “Arrow” was, Vac Fadric thought, an ironic tag, as the boy was absolutely not “sharp” in any way. Slow of thought, but a competent horseman, Arrow was the kind of young soldier who would never get bored while on a watch shift. He just didn’t have the cognitive ability. Vac Fadric had a small hope that Arrow was named because of a prodigious talent with the bow, but after a little observation, he let that hope die alone in the dark.
“Brick,” born Curdy Daunan, however, earned his new name by both being a mason’s son, and by being a terrifyingly over-muscled wall of meat with broad, calloused hands that looked like he still did masonry work when no one was looking, just to keep up the family pride. Slightly taller than average, but wildly more broad, the young Ocre man looked like a stone statue may have been his real father.
As for Vac Fadric himself… well, it took time for him to warm up to his new unit members, and so being generally quiet, but sounding elegant and educated in those moments when he did speak, several names had been tried, until the jovial and humorous consensus had finally landed on “Thug.”
Hearing all of the names the unit had assigned to each other had made Klee wonder aloud with a sad shake of his head, “Rhoona, save us all from the humor of young men.”
As the third day’s ride ended, and the party set up a very small camp for the evening, they were greeted by a hail from the treeline just to their south. A robed man waved his arms over his head and was slowly walking out from the forest toward them, asking permission to come to greet the heavily armed group of riders.
From a distance, the newly dubbed Thug watched as the man stumbled forward, his long, thin arms in the air. He waved in broad, sweeping motions at them as he walked forward, repeating the word “Peace!” in a pleasant tenor voice.
Captain Marthi, the taller and thoroughly female of the two captains, gestured at Vac Fadric and Daunan. “You two men, with me. Captain Seema and Corporal Klee, see to our safety, if you please.”
She turned then, and began walking toward the man in the distance who continued to advance, and continued to call out “Peace!” over and over again. Vac Fadric dropped the bundle of firewood he had gathered, and grabbed his short sword from his gear, strapping it to his waist as he scurried after the long legged captain. Behind him, he could hear as Brick followed along as his boots thudded heavily in the tough, matted grass of the wide open field on which they had stopped for the night. Vac Fadric assumed Brick had grabbed his sword as well, but as the larger lad had strode up to parallel his own pace, he saw that the more heavy muscled boy carried his cavalry lance like a pike at his side.
Nearing the middle of the open field, he thought the old man in the robes was an elderly Ocre man, but nearing him, it became clear to Vac Fadric, Captain Marthi, and Daunan that he was one of the People of the Forest. It was the graceful curling of a pair of handsome ram’s horns on either side of the man’s head within the cowl of his robe that gave it away.
“Pease, please!” He said again as Marthi slowly drew her sword.
