Disclaimer: This is a work in progress as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). You are reading the work product of a first draft writing session and not a finished product. Comments are welcome, but bear the first draft nature of the work in mind. Thank you and enjoy!
Chapter 10
Stag Company of the Legion of Solon stayed in camp for two more days before they disembarked for the full Legion mustering point just north of Rhodes City, the Kingdom’s capital. During those two days, the second platoon, with whom Cori had arrived, was integrated into the company. Captain McAffrey, Sergeant Verell, and the other platoon leaders kept Cori’s secret for the time being. She was relieved because they all needed to focus on the continued training. The platoons learned the march and archery commands used at the company level to drill the unit on how they would operate once they arrived in Verona and began fighting the Imperial forces. One of the things they learned was how to stage an L-shaped ambush on a road or trail in the forest. When scouts determined that an enemy’s route of march would bring them down a certain road or path, the company would place two platoons hidden on one side of the path with the third platoon forming a blocking force at the base of the path across the enemy’s intended path of travel. As they engaged the blocking force in front of them, the hidden platoons would reveal themselves with an arrow-storm into the enemy’s exposed flanks. All the Legion platoons would then charge home to finish the attack on the surprised enemy force.
The company practiced the maneuver with each platoon at different points of the ambush so they could each understand the needs of each position. Cori had seen the effects of the company’s combined archery attack on the target posts in the meadow encampment by the river and wondered aloud how any enemy could withstand such a ferocious rain of arrows and not run away. Sergeant Verell heard her comment.
“Cori, you must remember that many of the forces we face will be wearing much more armor than we do,” the sergeant said. “The Legion opts for speed and stealth in our operations, but that comes at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to wearing armor to protect ourselves. We hope to outfit most of you with light chainmail bound by leather jerkins to minimize the sound the metal armor might make, but that means that you will be very lightly armored when compared to Imperial regular troops who wear a splinted mail of overlapping metal plates. Many of our arrows will bounce off such armor leaving the wearer uninjured but aware of our presence and able to counter-attack.”
The sergeant looked around at the rest of the platoon who had gathered to hear what he had to say. “That is why we drill in our hand-to-hand combat to go for the weak spots in any armor. We target the neck, armpits, groin, and the hamstrings at the back of the knee to teach you to attack the points where your efforts will be most effective. The same is true when you have the chance at an aimed shot with your bows. Aim for these weak points in your attacks and you will stop, kill, or incapacitate your foes before they can reach you with their advantage of armor and heavier weapons.”
“What business do we have tangling with them if they are better armored and able to withstand our attacks?” Get asked.
“We won’t tangle with them unless we have a clear advantage,” Sergeant Verell explained. “Our job will be to move undetected in small groups to find the enemy and their route of march and then let the rest of the army do the job of pinning them in place and hammering away at them. Once that is done, we’ll worry at the edges of the enemy force and route any stragglers so that they keep running away.”
He looked at each of the members of the platoon that was gathered around him. “Don’t get me wrong,” he explained. “We’ll have our share of scrapes and likely end up worse off because of our light armor and weapons. When in doubt we’ll back off and hit them from a distance, then run away and turn and hit them again. Hit and run will be our tactical advantage. That is the reason for our Standing Orders and why you must memorize them. Each of you will know where to meet up with the rest of your group should you become separated by enemy forces. You’ll also all know your orders and the job expected of us. That is so that if anything happens to me or Captain McAffrey, or any of the sergeants, you’ll be able to carry on and get the job done.”
He looked at them all for a moment more and then clapped his hands. “Now it’s time to show off all the things you’ve been practicing on the road here. We are prepared to move off toward the full Legion mustering grounds to the south. Second platoon has been chosen to scout ahead of the company march tomorrow. It’ll be our job to try and work our way past any sentries we encounter from other units mustering, learn what we can of them and report back to Captain McAffrey. This is a perfect opportunity to try and learn our jobs. The goal is to get Stag Company to the mustering ground without being detected by a single farmer or mustering unit until Captain McAffrey reports in to Lord Logan at the Legion mustering grounds five days march to the south. Let’s show them that we can do this as well as the rest of them can. Get to bed and remember to post your guard. We’ll rise and be ready to leave an hour ahead of sunrise.”
The platoon members groaned at the early hour, but Cori was excited as well as apprehensive. She still had to face her brothers at the Legion muster. In the meantime, though, she could show off her tracking and stalking skills to the rest of the company. She returned to their camp and flipped a coin with Shelby on who got first round in the tent while the other stood watch. Shelby won, so Cori took out her whetstone and her long knife and began honing the blade while her comrade settled in to get some sleep for half the night.
———
The next five days were a whirlwind of training exercises and drills, all completed while on the march. Captain McAffrey seemed to be everywhere at once, and he knew every one of them by first name by the second day of the march. He told them when he appraised their efforts that they might be good enough for here and now but would your stake your life upon it, or the life of the legionnaire standing next to you? It was a sobering question to ask them. They found that they began to work even harder, often because Captain McAffrey was there doing everything alongside them. He told them that he wanted them to be the best company in the whole Legion of Solon, but he would never ask them to do something he was unwilling to do himself.
In camp each night, after sentries were posted, the captain would roam around to the weapons drills, offering pointers and occasionally sparring with them himself. He always beat them and then told them why they lost and how they could counter the move he beat them with. Cori and the others discovered they expected the best of themselves and each other and pushed each other to do better and better. Each of them helped where they could to improve the others in much the same way Captain McAffrey did. Cori helped some of the others with their stalking skills and taught them how to move more silently on the march. Kat and Lissa worked hard to drill the hard lessons of close weapons combat into them when Sergeant Verell wasn’t there to do it himself.
Some of the other sergeants took their turn teaching the platoon things. Cori learned that Sergeant Ivette Spender was a former palace guardswoman to the royal family of Verona, who had left their service after some sort of scandal. She had found refuge on the frontiers of Solon and in the Legion. She taught them geography and of the political fine points of the different Free Kingdoms. Each offered its own advantages to the fight they had coming up. Verona was known for its navy and its merchant sailors. The Kingdom of Padon to the north was known for its heavy infantry that Sergeant Spender called the finest heavy infantry shock troops in the world. Theron had their crossbow regiments and their heavy cavalry. Rhodes was known for the Legion and their regiments of Pike infantry. Each kingdom had some of every type of unit, but those were the ones for which they were each best known.
The march south continued, and they worked and drilled and learned along the way. When they were about a day’s travel from the Legion mustering grounds, Captain McAffrey drew the company together on that final night and addressed them.
“We are about to meet up with the companies from the other parts of the province. I would like to sneak into their camp and assemble in front of the command tent and announce our presence to the camp.” He looked around at each of them as if daring them to say it couldn’t be done. “We’ll do it by playing a little trick on our fellow legionnaires. He took a bag from his pack and spilled a few items from it’s contents on the ground. It held pins much like their Stag cloak clasps except there were other symbols embossed on them.
Cori saw a hawk, a wolf, and a panther symbol. She realized that she meant for them to pretend to be members of the other companies when they approached. She couldn’t help herself and blurted out, “Isn’t that cheating?”
Captain McAffrey turned and looked at her with a feral grin on his face and a glint of humor in his eyes. “Cori, my dear, this is war. If you are not cheating, you are not doing it right.” He glanced around at the assembled company members. “You never, ever, get in a fair fight. Do you know why?”
A member of first platoon blurted out an answer. “Because you’ve got a fair chance to lose.”
“Wrong,” the Captain responded. “It is because there is no such thing as a fair fight. There’s no honor in war and fighting for your life. You either kill or be killed. You don’t have the luxury of offering anything like a fair fight. The minute you start thinking that way, you’ll be on your backs with a sword in your belly, calling for your momma. Your only chance is to fight as dirty as you can, and that means you cheat any chance you get. Do you all understand?”
“Yes sir,” Stag Company responded.
“Good, because tomorrow we will cheat our way past all the sentries and surprise our Legion’s commander with our arrival.”
———
The deception started with the Stag Company platoons dividing up into their independent squads of ten to twelve legionnaires. The goal was to have each squad come in from a separate direction, essentially dividing and surrounding the Legion encampment. Cory’s squad, composed mostly of the recruits from Gladestown, was tasked to split off to the west and hunt for some game. The hope was they would get enough that they could pose as a returning hunting party from Wolf Company. They all switched out their clasp pins on their cloaks for the new ones embossed with the wolf’s head insignia. They were to enter the camp in time to reach the center of the camp and arrive at the command tent near sundown. With each squad operating independently, it was necessary for Sergeant Verell and the other platoon sergeants to select a squad leader from each group. In their squad from second platoon, Geb was selected, probably because he was the eldest of the group. He tended to be the most even-tempered of the group and Cori thought he was a good choice to fill the job. Lissa and Kat both seemed to take issue, at least at first. Cori suspected that each of them wanted the job for their experience with weapons and combat. For this task of hunting and foraging, however, Geb was the perfect choice. His life growing up on an isolated farmstead in the north was perfect training for the job at hand.
He had the whole group march off to the west a good ways off the main southern road and then swing south in a line abreast their line of march. Each squad member was to stay just in sight of the person to their left and right. Cori was placed on the extreme left of the group, anchoring that side of the line while Kieran was put on the right end. Geb explained his thought process saying that the two of them were the best shots, and hopefully the whole line moving through the woods would cause the game animals to move away from the group to the edges where Cori and Kieran could get clean shots. He instructed the others to keep their eyes open and move as silently as possible since it would be good training for when they started encountering the enemy in Verona.
Geb’s plan worked surprisingly well, and Cori suspected that they would use this tactic often when marching and foraging on their own. She told Geb as much later on, suggesting that he share the squad’s tactic for flushing out game on the march with Sergeant Verell. The group was able to flush out four rabbits, two pheasants, and a large buck who Kieran brought down with a single shot as it bounded across in front of him, escaping the rest of the squad. After they had snagged the buck, around noon that day, Geb decided they had enough, and they worked to quickly field dress the game they had shot. He had the day’s catch tied to a pole they cut from a sapling growing nearby and carried slung between Declan and Keiran with the ends of the pole resting on their shoulders. They looked like the successful hunting party now and with Geb and the two carrying their catch between them in the lead, followed by the rest of the group, they angled back east towards where the Legion muster grounds were supposed to be located based on Geb’s best reckoning.
It was late afternoon when the first legion sentries saw them approaching and challenged them. They quickly backed down when they saw the amount of game they were carrying and hearing them announce they were a returning hunting party. The sentries here were from Panther Company based on their embossed clasps holding their cloaks. Their Wolf Company disguise was working. One of the Panther Company sentries even asked them if they had seen any sign of Stag Company on their hunting trip. Get laughed and said that he hadn’t but that they were due any time now. The rest of them followed Geb and load bearing boys into the camp of the Legion of Solon. With each Company comprising approximately one hundred legionnaires, there were already three hundred or more in the encampment. The sun was starting to set in the west, and they needed to head toward the command tent to meet up with the rest of Stag Company. Cori wondered how many of the other squads were successful. It was a pretty audacious plan that Captain McAffrey had to sneak into the camp without Logan being notified of their arrival. She liked the idea of pulling a trick like this on her brother. It moved the Captain up another notch in her book. She had a mischievous streak herself.
As they marched in they saw other members of the company standing around. Geb looked around and saw the others as well. He told the group to pause for a moment and swap out their cloak pins for their Stag Company clasps. It took only a moment, and they proceeded towards the large command tent in the center of the camp. Other squads fell in behind them, and as Cori looked around, she saw other groups converging from all directions. It looked as if all had been able to make their way into the camp undetected. As they drew near the command area, she saw both her brothers, Logan and Jonathan bent over a table with papers and maps spread on it. She tucked herself into the rear of their small group, getting behind Declan as they walked so she wouldn’t be seen by her brothers. She knew that they had been apprised of her presence in Stag Company, but it wouldn’t do for one of them to spot her and ruin Captain McAffrey’s plan. Declan and Kieran set down their load next to the cook fire closest to the command area and moved on with the rest of the group. Cori peeked around Declan’s shoulder and watched as Logan finally looked up and noticed the legionnaires around the command tent.
The Legion’s commander stood up from where he was leaning on the table and asked, “What can I do for you soldiers? I don’t believe I sent for any of you?”
A voice from behind him caused him to turn around. “Stag Company presents for muster as requested, Lord Logan,” Captain McAffrey said, stepping out from the shadows next to the large tent.
“Archard, you trickster,” Logan shouted. The two men clasped hands and then pulled each other into an embrace. “I told the sentries to alert me to your arrival.”
“I decided to see how good your other company sentries are,” Captain McAffrey said to Logan, and to the group assembled from Stag Company around them. “We wanted to see if we could get into camp without our arrival being announced. It appears we were successful, ladies and lads. Well done.”
“Well done indeed, Arch,” Logan said. “It seems that the other captains will have to buy you a drink or two at the next officer’s call.”
“I’ll never turn down a free drink,” Stag Company’s commander said. “Especially if it’s bought for me by my fellow officers. While I’m waiting for that drink, I should get my company set up in camp and then I can come back and bring you a full report of the recruiting muster and other news. Did you receive the dispatch I sent ahead of us?”
“I did,” Logan said. He started looking around at the faces of the legionnaires surrounding the tent. “I don’t see my missing sister, did you lose her along the way?”
“Recruit Cori, step forward,” Sergeant Verell called out.
Cori knew that her time in hiding was done, and she stepped out from behind Declan and into the circle of firelight in the gathering dusk. Logan’s eyes keyed to the movement and bored into her as she stepped forward. Jonathan rushed forward and pulled her into an embarrassing embrace in front of her colleagues. A gasp went up when the assembled company realized who she was in relation to their commander. When Jonathan released her and held her out at arms-length to look her over, Cori shrugged free from his hold on her shoulders. She turned and faced Logan, doing her best to look determined and defiant.
Logan took one look at her and laughed aloud. “You always were the fiercest of us all, Cori, but I fear your little escapade has run its course. There are two people here who would like to have words with you.”
Cori looked around, wondering who he could mean, but just then two other figures came through the tent’s opening behind Logan and her heart sank.
“Corinne, this really is the last straw,” Lady Elena said as she entered the firelight clasping the arm of her husband, Lord Westgate. The assembled legionnaires followed their captain’s lead when he knelt down and bowed his head. Cori was left standing there with her mother, father and two of her brothers wondering if she was going to be able to continue with her plans after all.
—-
Disclaimer: This is a work in progress as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). You are reading the work product of a first draft writing session and not a finished product. Comments are welcome, but bear the first draft nature of the work in mind. Thank you and enjoy!