Chapter 13: Speech Writers and Bandit Crusnik

“Good, your squad may just be able to survive the next few months.” He said looking me in the eyes.

I raised one eyebrow up in a questioning manner. I had spent countless hours as a kid trying to do the Rock’s eyebrows but only managed to perfect the questioning dad eyebrows (it was the slight lean down ... and that charisma). It was weird, I had thought the raised eyebrow was a modern thing but somehow body language transcended time. And my current body language was saying {the hell you talkin’ bout?}.

“You have said enough Corporal alexander” came the voice of the lieutenant.

The Corporal realised he had said too much and came to attention, as did the rest of us.

“Line up” boomed the commanding voice of the staff sergeant from my right.

We quickly formed into two lines separated into our squads. “That was a most impressive performance.” The lieutenant said as he looked at us, his eyes trailing on me just a hair longer than everyone else. “You all worked well as a team and showed an impressive amount of coordination against a much more experienced group of fighters. Most impressive” he said.

“Line back up with the rest of the platoon, so that you all may receive your orders.” The sergeant commanded.

We lined up as before. Waiting for the lieutenant to speak, on our way back we were quietly congratulated by the other recruits as our victory raised the stock of the entire recruit class and not just squad nine.

The lieutenant took a step forward and the battalion quieted down. You could have heard our nails grow, that’s how silent we were; barely daring to take quiet shallow breaths. What came next would be the most important commands we had heard so far and would determine our lives for the next few months and for the unlucky maybe forever.

“This is one of the finest recruitment classes I have ever seen, and I am especially proud of the job done by my platoon in training you. Most of you will be following the sergeant and I back to the capital for further training and your reassignments.” The sergeant didn’t seem happy when the lieutenant mentioned that he would be going back with the rest of the recruit battalion, he wanted to stay behind and fight. “Unfortunately we are at the precipice of war. This war is against the foul magical abominations and those who seek to gain power from the unholy curse of magic. War is brutal, and it is cruel. You will lose people; some of them will be your friends, your brothers in arms. But know this; this is a just war. This is a war to protect; not conquer. To protect those you left at home: your families; your wives; your sisters; your parents and for some even your children. We must stop the scourge of magic or humanity may be reduced to slaves or even livestock for the monsters.

The witch’s powers grow stronger every day, the tales you have heard of the undying are true. They are abominations that keep fighting, well past their deaths. The Duke of Galwydel has turned traitor, after King Uther so generously allowed him to establish himself there after he fled Ynys Manau (isle of Mann). The traitor Tutgwal Theodovellaunus has turned his back on the king and is now assisting the witch. He has sent a portion of his forces into the woods to act as bandits, raiding villages and disrupting supply lines. They have taken control of all of the bandit forces from kingdoms of Rheged down to the Fens.

We will win this fight, because we have to win this fight. We fight on the side of good, protecting the innocent against the cruelties of magic. They may have magic but our armies outnumber theirs by 50 to 1, which is why they have resorted to raiding and banditry like the common criminal thugs they are. We fight a just war and the gods will ensure our victory.“ The lieutenant raised up his fist and the rest of us followed.

Over the next few weeks the training became even more intense, the words of the lieutenant had raised the tension levels in the camp, and everyone seemed to be on a razor’s edge. There were more fights and scrapes in one week than there had been in the past 2 months. Everyone was anxious about the war. One morning squad nine was taken aside along with 25 of the Corporals and Privates.

“You have been assembled here as you are the best fighters we have at the camp, your missions for the next year is to hunt bandits. You will go out into the woods and ambush and kill as many bandits as possible in the next year. You will finance yourselves by reclaiming what the bandits robbed, of course that money will have to be returned to the crown.” That last line was a lie. He knew it, we knew it, but we were trying to maintain the façade that we were the good guys.

So we had our orders, we went from cannon fodder to bandit killers. We were small teams of people who go around the countryside hunting and robbing bandits. We were bandits who banditted bandits, we were bandit squared. I didn’t know how to feel about that ... it was one thing to kill people as part of an army in battle; but this was murder. The people we were going to kill were also murderers, but I was still made uncomfortable by the orders.

I asked Mark about my inner conflictions, we talked for what seemed like hours; Mark was stoic about what had to happen. He boiled it down to the fact that these were bad men; these people were tasked with hunting the innocent traders, and disrupting the trade of goods. They raided local villages and burned down farms. They needed to be stopped.

So it began.

We departed the camp the next day. Squad nine was a group of 6, led by Mark. We were the biggest squad of bandit hunters, most of the other squads were only 5 people. We headed into the countryside, living off the land, scrounging what we could, buying what we couldn’t scrounge. We were given a pittance, our money source was hunting the bandits and the lack of money was supposed to “motivate” us, the truth of it was that the quarter master was a cheapskate.

We looked like a bunch of poor travellers, not soldiers. This was by design, as we didn’t want anyone to know what we were doing. We were wearing hardy but cheap travelling clothes, we didn’t have shields as travellers didn’t carry shields, and our swords were wrapped in our bed rolls with just the tip of the hilt sticking out. We had spears, but they were disguised. We had a long “walking stick” and a knife which just so happened to slot into the stick and was held in place by a peg. Also the bottom of our walking sticks had a thick metal cap, to make it more durable; also it made it a more effective weapon. Isiah still carried his bow, but it was a hunting bow rather than a war bow.

Actually it wasn’t even a hunting bow anymore. I had a new bow made for him using laminated tempered steel, basically like an old leaf spring suspension, to make a bow. I had added an outer layer of flexible wood to make it look like a hunting bow. The thing was a beast, it had a draw weight of around 150 pounds which was monstrous, but it also caused the arrows to shatter after launch, so I had to reduce the draw weight down to 120 pounds and some more expensive thicker tapered arrows had to be commissioned from the town fletcher, not the battalion fletcher.

The bow was completed at the perfect time. Isiah had the conversation with Amelia. He had explained that he was going on this mission with the squad, and then if he survived he would have to go to the capital. That there was a war on the horizon, and there were going to be lot of casualties. He also explained that war changes people, especially the type of wars we were going to be waging and he didn’t want to burden her. It had been an exhausting conversation, she had cried, gotten angry, turned violent, cried again, then kissed him. Isiah was also upset, he had accepted that this was the right thing but, he was still hurt.

He spent that night in the woods as a cat, hunting. There were screams, mournful howls, and savage shouts only audible to me due to my enhanced hearing. I made my way into the woods about half an hour before dawn and found him curled into a ball on the ground transformed into a house cat. There were tear streaks on his little cat face.