Chapter 5

Mark thanked the staff sergeant, and then took us to one of the larger tents in the camp. There was another old and grizzled veteran inside. He was even older than the staff sergeant, in his mid-50s grey haired. He was hunched over his desk with a quill in his hand. Mark seemed scared of the man. “Sergeant Bernard, Corporal Mark reporting with the recruits from the Border Creek hamlet.” Mark said in a loud and clear voice.

“Stop shouting corporal” he said without looking up. “How many, corporal?”

“uh, 6 men between the ages of 16 and 30, but two of them had 10 years of prior service and were exempted, sergeant” Mark replied, slightly less loudly

“So four new soldiers, names of the exempted.” Still without looking up

“Ian and Mathew, from border creek village, sergeant”

The sergeant finally looked up, obviously recognising the names. “Good men, even better soldiers” he nodded with approval and then opened up a new bound book. “Names of the new recruits.”

Mark pointed at each of us, and we each said our names to the sergeant

“Isiah”

“Josiah”

“Emris”

We waited for Fred to say his name, about 5 seconds passed, nothing, by this point everyone including the sergeant was looking at Fred. Nothing, the gormless braindead idiot was looking at the tent wall behind the sergeant, a vacant look in his eyes

Mark finally got fed up and walked behind Fred. He smacked him on the back of the head (careful there is already not much there) then said directly into Fred’s ear “say your name to the sergeant”

It still took him another 3 seconds to process that “huh, umm, Fred”

The sergeant sighed, shook his head and made a note. He then looked up at us and said “My name is Sergeant Bernard, I am the quartermaster at this camp, I will be letting you BORROW MY equipment, if you return my equipment and I find that it has been damaged in any way, you will answer to me. Is that clear?”

Isiah and Josiah gulped. I didn’t care. Fred, Fred was back to looking at the tent walls. Fred, wasn’t stupid or mentally challenged, he just didn’t pay any attention to anything not farming related. Talk to him about something like weather affecting crop yield and Fred could wax lyrical about the effect that year’s rainfall had had on the wheat farming for hours. But talk to him about anything else, he was vacant to the point of driving anyone around him crazy.

The sergeant gave each of us two sets of uniforms, a tent and pack to carry our equipment. He looked at us and said “you will be given your practice weapons tomorrow; you will not get your real weapons until I know that you will be able to look after my weapons”

Mark took us to one of the clear areas around the edge of the camp and told us to put up our tents and settle in. “Be sure to get your rest, tomorrow is going to be the longest day of your lives.”

Isiah and I decided to check out the town after putting up our tents and stowing our stuff. Jo followed behind; the town was full of the old Roman buildings. Isiah and I ended up at a pub enjoying drinks with people who were also joining up tomorrow, border creek being one of the villages on the outskirts of Mercia we were one of the last batches of recruits to arrive. Josiah had disappeared into the local whorehouse. Isiah and I got to know some of the new recruits and even some of the veteran soldiers here to instruct us. We spent the evening drinking honey mead, and funnily Ian’s beer which I had helped to create. We called it a night pretty early heeding Mark’s warning about tomorrow being a very long day.

After the Romans left and the Pendragons conquered the throne, England had been split into many grand duchies by the Pendragons. These duchies were regarded as their own kingdoms within their territories, but the ducal kings all bent their knees to Uther. Mercia was one of these “kingdoms” ruled over by its own ducal king, but this war against the Witch’s uprising was being led directly by king Uther. So we were conscripted by the king’s army and not the ducal militia.

Our platoon was recruiting in eastern Mercia; the platoon was made up of 40 soldiers led by a lieutenant. They were to conscript able bodied men from the nearby villages, train us and then lead the resulting company to join up with the division command at the capital. Where we would be given our orders for the upcoming war.

I woke up well before dawn, and got dressed. I also meditated for an hour. I wasn’t worried about today, 1850 years of walking builds stamina. The meditation also helped with my body, as my meridians strengthened and the energy started to form a small gaseous cloud in my core, the nourishment it gave to my body also improved my body. It wasn’t noticeable from the outside but after I was able to rotate the energy inside my body 10 times my physical strength had increased dramatically. I was now able to easily lift about 100kilos over my head, whereas before I would be struggling with about 50. Subsequent increases hadn’t been as dramatic but after reaching about 50 rotations I was able to easily lift about 200kilos. I completed my rotations for the day managing 58 rotations before not being able to continue. I was left mentally exhausted but my body felt as if it was filled to the brim with energy. I closed my eyes again and took 10 deep breaths and then opened my eyes. I remembered reading somewhere that at the core of all training was breathing, and I couldn’t help but wonder on its profoundness.

I was broken out of my reverie by a loud clanging noise outside. The clangs rang 10 times, and then someone said in a loud deep bass filled voice. “You have one quarter hour to get dressed and present yourself at the camp entrance. You are to arrange yourselves according to village; if one person is late the entire village will be punished.”

Telling time in 6^th century was an imprecise thing but it was possible using various methods such as sundials in the day time and using the rate of a candle burning during the night. Of course candles were expensive so not really used in the little farming villages. Candles were used mainly by the priest and monks in churches and monasteries who had to adhere to strict times for their vigils. There was bell at the church in Leicester, and that’s what the clanging was.

I was already dressed, so I got out of my tent and ambled over to camp entrance. I saw Mark standing there waiting, his demeanour completely different than before. He was much more buttoned up, serious looking, standing straighter, more like a soldier. His body language told me he was no longer Mark, Luke and Bess’ son from border creek, now he was Corporal Mark, soldier in the king’s army and our instructor.

He looked me over. “Good to see you so squared away, I hope you got a good night’s sleep you will need the energy”

I was there early so I helped the veteran soldiers setting up tables, moving racks of shields, moving barrels of water. Not drinking mead, water quality in the middle ages inside or near cities was fatally bad, cholera and other faecal waterborne diseases, but not in wells. The ground rock acts as a filter naturally filtering out the pollutants in water. So water from deep drinking wells was perfectly safe to drink, but not water from the rivers near or downstream from the towns.

By the time we finished setting up most of the people were lined up and nearly 15 minutes had passed. I lined up behind Isiah and Josiah and I asked if they had seen Fred. They both shook their heads. Sergeant Randel came to the front of the line-up and started doing a rollcall. The platoon of forty soldiers had managed to gather around 180 conscripts from the nearby area. 3 of the soldiers in the platoon were the staff sergeant who was in charge of training ALL of the groups, the quartermaster and the lieutenant (whom we hadn’t met yet), so that meant the 180 new soldiers were going to be trained by the 37 remaining veterans, that meant there were going to be 32 groups of 5 and 5 groups of 4 new soldiers. We were from a village group of 4 and one of the last arrivals so we were assigned to be a group of four.

By the time the rollcall got to our group Fred was still missing, Mark looked at us and said “where is Fred?”

“We don’t know” Isiah replied back

“Did you not hear that if one of you is late you ALL get punished?!” he glared at all of us “you are to be a team. You were supposed to wake him up and drag him here. Naked if necessary”

That’s exactly what happened, Mark asked one of the corporals to check inside Fred’s tent and drag the fool out. Fred was dragged out of his tent, naked as the day he was born, bleary eyed with drool hanging from his lips.

Mark looked at us angrily and said “you are going to pick up your practice equipment from the quarter master, and the run around the camp 20 times carrying your equipment, and since you all are to be punished equally, you will be dressed the same as Fred”

We were lined up single file and marched down to the quartermaster and given our equipment, a wooden shield, a dowel rod about two meters long and a wooden short sword. We were marched outside, made to strip down to our skin, and run around the camp 20 times. We ran around the camp, naked as the day we were born. Josiah tried to use the shield to cover up, but that made running impossible as his knees kept hitting the shield. This meant he wasn’t paying attention to his “spear”, which angled forward, got stuck in the ground, and made him topple over almost like a badly performed pole-vault.