Demontech: Gulf Run

by David Sherman

  “Right!” Haft’s eyes lit up as soon as Spinner said “training commander.” He was almost bouncing with excitement on his stool. “We don’t expect you to turn them into Marines, of course, that would be asking too much of any one man. But, yes, training commander! That’s what we need, and you could really do it. Why, I remember how you drilled us on the Sea Horse.”

  Rammer removed his fists from the desks and straightened. “Training commander.” He turned and looked at the others. The sergeants were grinning. They agreed that training commander was a serious need, and they thought a Frangerian Marine sergeant was an excellent choice to fill it. Fletcher looked relieved and Silent amused. Wolf sat on his haunches with his tongue lolling out of his mouth. “Yes, I can see proper training is needed here.” He nodded. “I did a tour on the training field at Camp Gray,” the Frangerian Marine recruit training base. He looked at them sharply. “What makes you think I can’t turn these—these men into Marines?”

  “Can you?” Haft did jump this time. “Is it possible to turn regular soldiers and half-trained fighting men into Marines?”

  Spinner closed his eyes, but managed not to shake his head. “If anyone can, Sergeant Rammer can,” he muttered.

  Haft turned to him. “I do believe you’re right!” he said.

  Rammer laughed at Haft’s enthusiasm. “Not while we’re on the move, I can’t.” He shook his head. “I’ll be hard pressed to do any training at all.”

  “But if anybody can do it, you can,” Haft said.

  “I glory in your confidence,” Rammer said dryly. Sitting again, he leaned forward and folded his arms on the desks. “Now, how are you organized? Who needs training the most?”

  “We’ve mostly got squads and some platoons. We’re keeping the soldiers together according to the type of unit they came from. For example, all the Bloody Axes are under Sergeant Phard, and the Prince’s Swords under Sergeant Geatwe.” Spinner shook his head. “We use the veterans and half-trained men to fill in where needed.”

  “What! You don’t have companies organized? Gods, you’ve got more than enough to make a full battalion, almost enough for a paper regiment, and you don’t even have companies?” He looked at them, astonished.

  “Ah, well …” Spinner stammered.

  “We didn’t think of that,” Haft said weakly. The sergeants started laughing, which they hid behind their hands when he flashed an angry glance at them.

  Rammer snorted. “And you’re the commanders. I’m not so sure I want to put my men under you. Look, get me a roster—you do have a roster, don’t you?—and I’ll start getting a battalion organized. What’s this,” he asked when Zweepee pushed a sheaf of paper into his hands. “Oh, thank you,” he said when he saw it was a roster. He looked around at Fletcher and the three sergeants. “We’ll do this together—you know these people, I don’t.”

  Moments later Rammer, Fletcher, and the three sergeants had gone outside and runners were dispatched to summon all the squad and platoon leaders.

  Haft and Spinner looked at each other.

  “Is he taking over?” Haft asked, stunned by the way Rammer had taken charge of organizing their makeshift army.

  Alyline burst out laughing. Doli and Zweepee immediately joined in. A noise that might have been laughter rumbled out from somewhere deep in Silent’s chest. Wolf huffed; they could swear he was laughing too.

  “Tell us about him,” Fletcher said to Spinner and Haft when he and the sergeants returned a bit later.

  So they did. Rammer listened, and pitched in a couple of times himself.

  Sergeant Rammer was a grizzled veteran of a decade and a half as a Frangerian Marine. The men who served under him may have loved him or hated him, but they all believed he knew everything there was to know about fighting and being a Marine. Rammer could have been an officer if he’d wanted, but he didn’t want to be an officer.

  “I’m a sergeant, so no officer expects me to kowtow to him in proper courtly manner,” he said about it. “If I was an officer, every officer of higher rank would expect me to kowtow in proper courtly manner. I know more about leading Marines and fighting than any lieutenant or captain who never served in the ranks, and more than most field grade officers.” He paused in reflection, then continued, “I know more about fighting and handling junior Marines than any officer who never served in the ranks. What officers know that I don’t won’t help them get a frightened Marine to go over the side or win fights. Officers have to put too much time and effort into courtly matters. It doesn’t matter how courtly you are, there’s nothing courtly about fighting.”

  Most of the junior men who served under Rammer in ship’s detachments believed the officers gave him command of those small units that went far away from Frangeria for long periods of time just so he wouldn’t be in any of their units, where it would be obvious to everybody that this sergeant knew more than they did about the important things. Privately, though he’d never admit it, Rammer thought the same thing. He didn’t mind. He got extra pay for being a detachment commander—and he hadn’t had to put up with officers when he was in command of a detachment on a cruise.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  Spinner and Haft tried to make it look like the decisions had been theirs, but in reality all they did was sign off on the decisions the sergeants made. By morning Captain—formerly Sergeant—Phard, was in command of Company A, which consisted of most of the Skraglander units, and Captain—formerly Sergeant—Geatwe commanded most of the Zobrans in Company B. Company C consisted of the soldiers, formerly sailors, who had escaped from New Bally with Rammer, the half-trained fighting men, and the rustiest of the veterans, under the command of Captain—formerly Sergeant—Mearh. Sergeant Rammer—he refused to accept an officer’s rank—had Company D, the training company. Veduci and his surviving men were also placed in Company D, where they would be secure under Rammer’s watchful eye. The sea soldiers who had escaped New Bally with Rammer were the company’s other officers, though they didn’t call themselves officers—they called themselves drill instructors. As soon as Rammer thought his men were trained well enough, he and his officers would hand command to someone else and form a new company of untrained men. The Border Warders and Borderers were combined into a reconnaissance/sniper platoon commanded by Lieutenant—formerly civilian hunter—Jatke. Each company had a lancer platoon, although most of the Skraglander lancers were variously armed with swords, axes, and spears rather than proper lances. Lieutenant—formerly Corporal—Armana retained command of the Dartmutter Earl’s Guards platoon, which was placed in Company A. The Earl’s Guardsmen appeared to seriously dislike the arrangement, but were wise enough not to object loudly. The odds and ends of other sea soldiers in the caravan were appointed lieutenants, commanding platoons in the newly formed companies. The Bostians who came with Rammer became a platoon within Company B, while the Penston Conquestors went into Company C.

  Sergeant Rammer somehow became the battalion Chief of Staff as well as training company commander. Captain—formerly civilian—Zweepee was in charge of logistics; Lieutenant—formerly civilian—Doli was personnel; and Captain—formerly veteran—Fletcher had intelligence, which meant Jatke reported to him.

  Silent flatly refused to accept any rank or formal position within the battalion. And Alyline considered herself above such things.

  Spinner and Haft didn’t adopt new ranks. Neither felt comfortable about calling themselves “General,” or even “Colonel.” Besides, nearly everybody in the caravan called them “Lord"—except for the Bloody Axes, who continued to call Haft “sir.”

  The caravan, by now nearly seven thousand strong—of whom more than a thousand were men under arms—got moving an hour after sunrise, more quickly than the previous two mornings. The effect the new military organization had on the time it took to begin moving wasn’t lost on Spinner and Haft.

  “Do you think he’s trying to take over?” Haft asked softly as he sat astride his mare next to Spinner before
heading out with the point squad.

  “The better question is,” Spinner replied, just as quietly, “do you think they’re letting him take over?” Spinner asked his question with relief; he always felt on the verge of being overwhelmed by being commander.

  Haft looked back at where Sergeant Rammer was, in the best tradition of Marine sergeants, barking and berating a group of untrained men into something that could generously be called a military route-march formation. His and Spinner’s former detail commander certainly gave every impression he was taking command of their small army, unit by unit. While Haft liked having someone who truly knew what he was doing handling the training, he himself liked being called “Lord,” and was uncomfortable with the possibility that he was losing his position to Rammer.

  Instead of expressing his misgivings, though, he shook his head to the question about whether the men were letting Rammer take over and said, “I don’t know.” Then he heeled the mare and led a squad of Zobran Royal Lancers from Company B east to scout the way. As soon as he was gone, Spinner signaled Lieutenant Jatke to send out the designated squad of Border Warders to make sure the right front of the caravan’s movement was clear of ambush or approaching Jokapcul.

  The caravan covered a dozen uneventful miles that day. The escarpment the road roughly paralleled continued the entire distance, with nowhere a break that allowed passage to the north. They stopped an hour before sunset, and Rammer used the last of the daylight to put the men of Company D through sword drills.

  “They’re worse than a platoon of recruits,” Rammer complained when he joined Spinner, Haft, and the other leaders when the sun finally set and they sat down to an evening meal of stew and stale bread. “The recruits who come to Frangeria to join the Marines come willingly. Most of them want to prove something, or have some other reason for wanting to be Marines. These people?” He shook his head. “They’re trapped in a situation not of their own making, that they don’t want to be in—and most of them don’t want to become soldiers.”

  He complained, but Spinner and Haft couldn’t miss a glint in his eye that they recognized—Rammer was enjoying himself.

  And so it went for a week. Each day the caravan set out a few minutes faster than the morning before. Every day the men under training marched in better formations under Rammer’s unrelenting guidance. At the end of each day’s march, Rammer put his “recruits” of Company D through fighting drills. And every evening Rammer complained about their unwillingness to learn and their poor quality as would-be soldiers. Alyline, Zweepee, Doli, and Maid Marigold listened to his complaints with varying degrees of belief, ranging from disbelief from the Golden Girl to naive and fearful acceptance from Maid Marigold. The men—Spinner, Haft, Fletcher, and Xundoe, along with the other company commanders—kept their peace. This was nothing they hadn’t heard from every drill sergeant they’d ever encountered in whatever army.

  Until the evening Haft leaned toward Spinner and whispered, sotto voce, “You know, Spinner, he sounds exactly like Sergeant Thunder did when I was in Boot Camp.”

  Spinner nodded and replied equally softly “Sergeant Blunt was always saying the same things to my recruit platoon too. I think that’s a required part of the training regimen.”

  Rammer scowled at them for a moment, then burst out in laughter. When he got himself under control, he told them, “All right. From now on I’ll only complain about how poorly the recruits are doing when I’m yelling at them.” He laughed again, then looked over his shoulder in the direction of his company’s bivouac before adding calmly, “Most of them are in good shape from their long march, so I don’t have to put them through physical conditioning. Maybe they don’t want to be here, and maybe they don’t want to be soldiers, but they understand that they need to be able to fight and that what I teach them can keep them and their families alive.” He nodded to himself. “They’re learning fast—a lot faster than any platoon I put through the drill field in Frangeria.”

  Dust rose from the passage of the near seven thousand people who trundled along the road. Wheels rumbled and axles squeaked on tired wagons and carts. Oxen lowed their displeasure at hauling their loads for so long, men cursed at having to heave stuck wagons out of ruts or soft dirt, women shrilled at straying children, dogs barked at strange or interesting things they passed. Pigs grumbled and snorted, chickens and geese cackled in their cages, not aware of their fate as dinner.

  With all that, the caravan was strangely, almost eerily, quiet. Missing from the other sounds of travel was the casual conversation of a multitude on the move, and no one got into heated arguments when a wagon lost way and slowed its followers. The soldiers who walked along the column saw to the quiet, their sergeants and officers—all just promoted and taking their new ranks and responsibilities seriously—saw to it that they did. And Spinner, in his endless ride from the van of the caravan to its tail and back, constantly checked on the officers and sergeants.

  Even Sergeant Rammer, marching and drilling his recruit company along the northern flank of the caravan, marched and drilled them with less bellowing and roaring than a Marine drill instructor was want to use.

  Still, some people managed to quietly converse.

  Veduci had seen her before, of course, that woman who limped along on newly callused and still bleeding feet some yards in front of him. He’d seen her first when she was beautiful and haughty, and knew that beauty was still there under the dirt and dust of lengthy foot travel on an unimproved road. The haughtiness, if it was still there waiting its chance to resurface, didn’t bother him—he knew how to handle haughty, and turn it to his advantage. Now her face was streaked with the tracks of tears, her formerly well-coiffed hair bedraggled. Her once translucent gown was clotted enough with dirt to be opaque.

  He knew that the former favorite concubine of the Earl of Dartmutt was accustomed to pampering. Accustomed to having her every whim attended, to having people kowtow, to the finest clothing, to being clean. But she was dirty and footsore and humiliated. Her garment displayed more of her flesh than any other than her master and fellows on his bed should see. No one gave her succor; she received no more respect than a common ragamuffin. If she dropped down to sit in the dirt beside the road and wail out her need for aid, the people passing by would pay her no more attention than she had paid beggars in the streets of Dartmutt—Veduci knew this, he had seen her squat next to the north-south road on the first day she was made to walk, and had seen everyone ignore her pleas—those who hadn’t, pointed and laughed at her.

  She was now dirtier and more footsore than on that first day and, though the tracks of tears still stained her face, she no longer cried. Now her face was set in grim lines. When her eyes darted about, they weren’t furtive, but in search of advantage. Her face was reddened, but not much from the sun. She might not be accustomed to walking great distances, but she knew how to use patches of shade to avoid sunburn. In the first couple of days after that golden woman had made bel Yfir walk like a common refugee, her face had been red mostly from humiliation. Now it was red mostly from the fury that simmered within her.

  Yes, Veduci mused, she was ripe to ally with him. It wouldn’t take much effort to convince her that helping him attain his ends would be to her advantage. Then, when he left the caravan with the earl’s jewels and coins, he could take bel Yfir as well, and then truly live the life of an earl! He picked up his pace until he fell in step with her.

  “It is a shame, lady,” Veduci said sympathetically.

  She turned her head and looked him up and down. He dressed more roguishly than most in the caravan; an unbleached homespun shirt gathered by a fine leather belt, ill-fitting but well-made deep green trousers, a dandy’s tooled leather boots on his feet. The scabbarded sword and knife on his belt looked to be both quality and well-used.

  She sniffed and looked away without replying; she had little use for vagabond adventurers.

  “They think themselves too high and mighty,” he continued. “They don’t kno
w how to treat people of quality, they think you’re no better than anybody else.” He gave out a gentle snort. “They are ignorant commoners who don’t realize that some people, such as yourself, really are of a higher quality and deserve better treatment. It’s a disgrace, an absolute disgrace that people such as they,” he waved a hand in a vague manner that could indicate any of a number of wagons in the caravan, “should ride while you are made to walk.”

  “Then I shall ride in your wagon,” she said with a trace of her former haughtiness.

  “Alas! I am but a humble man, a proper man, who recognizes my betters—I have no wagon. I do, however, have a horse on the back of which you might ease your delicate feet.”

  Now she looked full at him. “Where?” she asked breathily.

  “Stand a moment and it will join us,” he said. His bow concealed a smile that stopped just short of a smirk.

  True to Veduci’s word, Zlokinech shortly reached them, leading a saddled horse.

  “I fear I do not have a sidesaddle,” Veduci told her, “but you may ride straddling this saddle, or I can have my man strip it off and you can ride directly on the horse’s blanket.”

  Bel Yfir was tired and her feet hurt. “I’ll ride astraddle.” She faced the horse’s side and gripped the saddle fore and aft. She lifted one foot, put it down, lifted the other, and put it down. She looked uncertain at the single stirrup on her side of the horse and murmured meekly, “I don’t know how to mount a saddle with only one stirrup on the side.” The red that suffused her face from her neck now was embarrassment.