Chapter 12

There was much left to still do, but it was not needful that she must accomplish it all by herself, as she had a squad of her own forces in readiness just across the border. First though, she made a quick search of the captain’s command tent and then his private quarters, to gather up all of his official and private papers and stash them away in a satchel for careful review later. Even the small chest with the scout company’s pay was of little interest for the moment, and others could collect this and any other useful matériel of war later on. This plunder most definitely included the sixteen rather above average quality horses in the stables ... alas, none of which were of a suitable grey coloration.

After finding a suitable military unit flag, Lucie then tossed the body of Herman over the back of her saddle and rode out west towards the border and once she had crossed it, she planted the flag upon the top of the nearest large hill, lit a lantern and then waited. Her own scouts nearby should easily spot this signal and report back to her lurking hunter-killer group about a mile or two further away that the mission had been completed and naught was left to do now but the careful cleanup afterwards, leaving no trace behind that anyone from Baad had been there.

About twenty minutes later, Gerulf rode up with his hunter-killer squad of eight cut-throats and paused to see if Lucie had any fresh orders. She mostly didn’t.

“No change of orders, everything went about as planned and expected. The camp is right where we thought it was, about two miles due west of here, across the border. There are sixteen rather nice mounts that could use a new home, so take them first, and also the pay chest, and there is quite a bit of decent quality arms to be gathered too. There’s a wagon behind the barracks near the stable, probably used to haul in feed, so fill it up ... especially with any feed or other sacks of grain you can find. Then clean the site cleaner than the wind-driven snow, per previous orders. Bury the bodies in the usual place, except for this one ... I’ll attend to him personally. He died with unusual honor and dignity, and now I’d like to see that he is buried with equal respect. Another squad will be returning to that camp in about two days but I’d prefer to ambush them somewhere around here, on our side of the border. A third squad should be returning to their main camp in about another five or six days, but I think we’ll need to clear them out in a more traditional manner this next time, probably with a late night ambush, when most of them will be unarmed in their beds. There were complications taking this group out that I’d prefer not to repeat again.”

Gerulf nodded, and a few moments later the troop was heading toward the camp to attend to their assigned tasks. The #2 man in Dietta’s organization of bandits, cutthroats and rogues was competent enough and tended to follow very specific instructions quite to the letter. It was when he was given hasty or incomplete orders that he tended to try and improvise ... and this was not her underling’s forte. Gerulf was a good fighter and an adequate small unit leader, assuming that he was given very clear and exact instructions first.

Walter couldn’t be everywhere, doing everything else that Lucie couldn’t handle by herself, so having a few loyal sergeants available to help pick up the slack was of immeasurable benefit.

Once Herman had been given a proper and respectful burial, facing south and his corpse draped with the captured military colors, Lucie smoothed over the ground on the hillside and even planted a few wildflowers over the grave, but she left it unmarked, without a marked headstone or wooden plank. She then rode with some haste towards the crossroads near the town bridge to find a message rider that could locate Walter’s whereabouts and ride off to deliver off a quick message to him, warning him that a dozen man squad was somewhere on their own side of the border but was scheduled to return to their home base within two days. Walter didn’t require specific written orders and he could improvise more than adequately on his own.

The message sent off by rider, Lucie decided that her own tasks for the day (and now late into the night) were completed and she rode with some deliberation home to the waiting comforts of her bed ... after first stopping downstairs to visit the warlock, to guzzle down a freshly brewed healing potion to tend to her wounds. If she was lucky, she’d get three or perhaps nearly four hours of sleep tonight before Ben would arise to attend the morning exercise, as was usual, before attending to his own endless tasks of the day.

The two of them had been burning the candle at both ends for months now, the count dealing with an endless parade of local problems while his arms-maiden was riding out nearly every single night to join the scouts, inspect their watch-posts or lead the hunter-killer teams in an endless series of ambushes and violent small unit clashes in the darkness, often never returning home before the first light of dawn had appeared.

Living and working on little or no sleep, for endless days and sometimes weeks on end, was exhausting every tiny little feelings of pleasure she felt in her life, and Count Ben was loudly complaining to anyone that would listen that he was looking forward to making his return to the High-King’s court in just a few short weeks, since at least there (if he didn’t end up in facing the headsman) he could hope to get some small amount of rest then, while assuming his annual military duties there.

Mostly unlikely, he had to admit as he climbed into bed ... once he thought about all of dozens, or even hundreds of things that he needed to do there at court or in Kaisburg. He could catch up on his rest later, he wearily decided ... either when he was dead or after Lord Egner was!

It was nearly March, and almost the start of the spring court, before Ben could even consider leaving Baad and taking the road going south ... and keep going, without the fear of some fresh emergency. There had been something of an unusually early spring thaw in early February that allowed Lord Egner’s eastern regional field commander the ability to very suddenly decide to go on the offensive. He unleashing a full regiment of partial trained but inexperienced troops across the border into Baad, wrecking a great deal of havoc and no small loss of life, limbs and property before they could be encouraged to return home. Their commander had hoped that sudden bold audacity would prevail where subtle border incursions and endless raids had failed ... and it quite nearly did work.

Their goal had been to attack suddenly, without an unnecessary build-up of supplies beforehand, and overrun Baad within a few short days, moving fast and without a large supply train to slow them down. They planned to take from the captured stocks everything that was needed thereafter to support their forces. What their commander had not counted upon is that the tiny standing Baad army and the meager, ill-trained civilian Home Guard forces wouldn’t ever face the invaders in a direct, honest stand-up fight, which they would have been certain to lose. Instead, day and night, Ben shuffled his few available forces around constantly, surrounding the invading regiment and making endless harassing attacks both day and night with small bands of seemingly invisible archers lurking behind every bush, hill or ravine. This slowed the invaders to a near dead halt, as Ben willingly sacrificed small bits of territory for time. Nearly all of their supply wagons from the west were intercepted and either seized or destroyed, as were smaller scouting forces, company sized or smaller, the enemy sent off away from the main force. Scouting became impossible at any distance beyond bow range of the main regimental encampment and in barely a week, the under-provisioned invasion force soon became imperiled by the extreme lack of fresh supply.

Risking everything on a throw of the dice, and appealing in vain to lady luck, the remaining battalions launched a bold (and somewhat desperate) assault upon Baadholt itself only to find that the bridge crossing the river had been destroyed and that the so-called Home Guard, that supposedly lacked any training or meaningful armaments, had spent a great many exhaustive hours training exclusively with bows. Although still green, they possessed just enough deadly accuracy firing enmasse to make the three attempts to cross the river in small improvised boats something of a bloodbath, with the colonel of the regiment himself falling wounding on the shore while trying to spur on his forces for yet one more assault. His now hungry and thoroughly demoralized men felt quite otherwise, and they began a less than orderly retreat to return home just as perhaps the worst snowstorm of the entire winter suddenly again blanketed the entire county with several feet of fresh snow and bitter cold winds that plunged the temperatures far below zero. Those that survived the endless storm of arrows fired from constant ambush during that hard retreat then in turn had to deal with General Winter, who exacted an equal harvest. The survivors, perhaps one in four it was estimated, who survived this frozen death march to return home, possessed absolutely no further inclination to return anytime soon.

War, real war, is a matter of logistics and willpower.

Arrows and freezing winds had accomplished what a larger defensive field army or even trained cavalry could never have achieved. Everyone in Baad felt the relief of success earned by luck and the ill-fortune of their enemy, as much or equal to their achievements with aggressive small unit tactics. The victory had not been bloodless, but the costs to Lord Egner had been far heavier, as he was being bled dry of soldiers on both his eastern and northwestern borders, without any lasting success on either front. These losses were unsustainable and for at least the coming few seasons, irreplaceable, the captured regimental colonel truthfully admitted to Count Ben.

Lord Egner was certain to be highly displeased. Direct military invasions of neighboring counties were very much against the laws of the High-King, not that the rogue marcher king had ever cared much about the legalities of such things. A rather directly worded signed statement concerning the facts of this armed incursion was made by the wounded colonel, prior to his release and parole back home, would be certain to get the High-King’s full attention though. The good colonel’s mount, a rather exceptional dark dappled grey stallion, sufficed as an acceptable partial war reparation though, and Lucie was quick to claim it for her own. The fact that they had been able to capture the regimental pay chest as well, during the retreat, did make for a tidy little bonus for the exhausted but happy defenders, as well.

Mathilde’s training had progressed acceptably well and with further advanced training she would be near ready to act as Lucie’s double in the future, especially for times when Ben would be at the royal court in the years ahead. This spring, however, Ben was taking her along with him to court so that she could experience proper advanced arms training from the experienced regimental sergeants at the castle ... and then perhaps be fitted out properly at the tailors for her own fitted ‘Lucie de Mont’ costume, one that would better feature and accentuate her feminine charms. Two seasons of daily hard exercise had done wonders for the physique of Ben’s lazy cousin, firming her once soft breasts until they became quite nearly an equal to Bristol’s legendary chest.

It didn’t hurt that during the long trip south, back to court, that Mattie was a better than adequate bed companion as well! Ben’s formerly slutty cousin certainly did seem to know all of the arts and skills of night-work, an experience that young Ben’s education up until recently had been entirely lacking.

False dawn had come and gone when Ben and Mathilde rode through the city gates of Kaisburg and they reached the castle just as the first hint of proper daylight was approaching over the horizon. As the castle gates were opened for them, Ben could see that as usual the veteran castle guards along with the fresh recruits were just gathering in the armsman’s courtyard as usual for exercise. Ah, he noted with a smile, it was his old friend sergeant Johann leading the training, and he gave Mathilde a rather evil, Baadish sort of smile as he gave her a few last instructions.

“And now I’ll leave you to the very tender mercies of sergeant Johann, of whom I can attest is utterly merciless and a complete bastard from head to toe. He is also the arms-master who mostly trained me, so after a few months of his less than gentle guidance, your blade skills should improve from being merely adequate to that of an accomplished swordswoman. You remember your instructions that I gave you earlier at the gatehouse ... you feel no exhaustion and you will feel no pain, and you must never make a complaint. Your sole ambition is to learn from these new, much more skilled and demanding masters ... and make your mother, and myself of course, very proud of what you’ve accomplished.”

“Yes, Lord Baad,” the young woman agreed, her mind ensnared by a minor charm and the use of her code-phrase to become again utterly obedient to Ben’s (or Lady Lucie’s) wishes once more.

‘Good, now shut your eyes and rest for a moment, until I call out your name, after which you’ll feel refreshed as if you’d had a long sleep, and not ridden nearly all night long without rest, and ready for a long day of exercise and advanced weapons instruction. Now rest.”

“Sergeant Johann,” Ben then called out as he dismounted and went to greet the senior-most arms-master of the castle. “I have a new student for you! This is the Honorable Lady Mathilde de Baad, a cousin of mine, who needs all of the advanced weapon’s training that you can provide her. She’d had about six months experience with very basic arms training, but the level of instruction that I can provide there at Castle Baad from my own armsmen is certainly not to your standards. Maybe her skills are adequate enough for training with the younger veteran guards, but I’ll let you judge and train her accordingly ... she’s yours to tyrannize all spring, and perhaps much of the summer as well, unless Prince Carl has other plans, or none, for my service. Bend and bruise her all you wish, but I’ll be needing her trained skills in the years ahead.”

“That I can do, young Lord,” Johann laughed, “I’ll put her with the younger recruits that have just finished their first 30-days of training and gauge her skills with them after a week or two. Likely, that’ll be the best fit for her.”

“That was my thinking as well, as her instruction so far to date has been less than ideal. She especially needs more training at mounted combat than anyone I currently have working for me at Baad Castle can provide. We had a rough winter up there and I didn’t think it wise to throw a minimally trained lass into heavy Makee-Learnee, facing endless bandit and raider groups just yet. That’s been a major concern of mine over this last winter, as I’ve had to lead most of this sort of instruction myself lately, taking me away entirely too much from the dozens of other things I ought to have doing instead, as their lord.”

“Sounds then like you’ll be looking for a senior guard who’s ready to take stipend, but perhaps not quite ready to buy a farm somewhere and settle down. I think I can find you such a man ... and perhaps even two, if that would be helpful to you?”

“Beyond helpful,” Ben agreed with a loud sigh of satisfaction, “finding such experienced men with veteran instructional experience with blade, bow and horse would be nearly invaluable to me. My purse is perhaps slightly lean still at present, but I believe I can continue to offer the standard veteran pay for their service, and perhaps promise some sort of bonuses for the future, especially if there is more field work. Would such an inducement likely be acceptable?”

“Likely, for the two I have in mind, yes ... probably, but I can know for certain in perhaps a few hours, although in fact, one is not an armsman. Would a veteran swordswoman be acceptable?”

“Very much so,” Ben agreed, “such an experienced woman would make for a very suitable advanced instructor for Lady Mathilde. Currently, her most senior instructor is the Lady Lucie, one of my valued associates, but her many other duties prevent her from providing the extensive mentoring to this young lady that we would both prefer. What about the other armsman you had in mind?”