“You mean we have to drag it?” cried another.
“Just the job for strong young backs,” Darius said judiciously, the sadistic pleasure of both a Sergeant and/or a Training Master in his voice. “Besides, you’ll only have to keep the back end from dragging after we finish pulling out the wheels.
“Only keep it from dragging, he says,” one protested sarcastically, until Darius barked angrily and was over to the young man’s side like a shot, his ear in an unforgiving Sergeant’s hand.
“Since you like the idea so much, you’ll be our first volunteer, Ivor!” Darius declared, dragging the man by his ear until he was beside the broken down wagon.
“That’s not fair,” cried the gape-toothed lad.
“And by-the-Horns, you’ll keep being the first one to volunteer until after you’ve learned that in this Swan’s Army we don’t repeat our orders; we ask just how long we have to get the blessed things carried out,” Darius snapped.
“Ouch!” exclaimed Ivor, his head cocked at a crazy angle as he tried to relieve the pressure on his ear.
“What?” Darius said dangerously.
“I volunteer. I volunteer!” cried the hapless young man, and if it didn’t look so painful Falon would have had to try and hide a smile. Then Darius must have twisted harder because Ivor yelled and added, “How, uh, long. How long we have?!”
“That’s how long ‘do’ we have, ‘Sergeant’,” Darius snorted but then seemed to let it pass and released the young man’s ear.
Falon waited until he was closer before releasing her smile.
“Motivating the men, eh, Darius,” she said slyly.
The Imperial looked at her coolly. “I saw a small hobby anvil in a shack at the side of the barn,” he told her, “why don’t you go back and explain to the distressed farm wife that while we didn’t get any of her food back, we’ll be staying and making ourselves at home for the rest of the day trying to repair this wagon.”
Falon’s urge to smirk at the suffering of others abandoned her, and her budding smile drooped. “That’s not going to make her happy,” she said dully.
Darius looked at her reprovingly. “The Swan Battalion and our part of it aren’t here to make people like distressed farm wives happy; we’re here to keep them alive,” he said strictly. “And it’s an Officer’s job to deal with the local land owners. So go and ‘Officer’,” he made a shooing motion in the direction of the no doubt still irate woman’s farm.
“Oh joy,” Falon said sullenly and then shaking off her mood turned her horses head. “I’ll take Ernest and a couple of the lads with me.”
“Excellent decision,” the Sergeant said absently as he turned away to deal with the wagon-moving portion of the operation. “Oh, and see if they have any metal we can confiscate for the cause. I’d hate to try and rebuild the back end support structure just out of wood.”
Falon winced, as now not only was she going back with empty hands, but they were going to take whatever metal they could find as well. She wanted to count her few remaining coins again but knew it was futile. She could pay the farmer for what had been taken and have nothing left, or she could save it and hope to pay back the men someday.
She was probably going to have to write a script, she winced again. Her ear was going to be numb and gnawed on before the day was over. She just hoped they didn’t have to spend the night at this farm.
Smythe had said to listen to the Sergeants and learn. Well, she was learning more than she ever wanted to about foraging operations, as well as learning of maneuvering over trails and back road paths.
Falon took a deep breath. She reminded herself that she could do this; she just had to keep a level head and imitate a sponge. Then she briefly wondered why she didn’t believe herself.
Chapter 20: Bandit Ravens!
Days of marching and requisitioning food from the backwoods farms and villages of the Kingdom turned into a week and more. It got to where even Falon, at her most sympathetic, had heard enough cries of oncoming winter suffering and starvation to numb her ears and harden her heart.
“I swear,” she complained to Ernest, “if I hear one more farmer, who was only asked to donate two hundred weight sacks of wheat and a bushel of squash, complaining that we’ve taken the seed corn I’m going to lose my temper.”
“In fairness,” Ernest pointed out, armed with his own farmers heritage of working and living off the fields, “no farmer is going to be pleased giving up his stocks with winter fast closing in.”
“Each according to his means and no more,” Falon said irritably. “I don’t allow our men to take more than any given farm can afford but instead of thanks, or even a grudging silence, all I get are complains and cries to theft,” she threw her hands in the air. “Lord of Field’s ugly nose, it’s only been a little over a month since the last harvest came in. No one is going hungry yet!”
“A farmer must save against the future,” Ernest said cautiously and hesitated before adding, “and I suppose that the louder they complain at being robbed the less they think you’ll take.”
“Nothing but a bunch of whiny children,” she fumed, “what they need is to be sobered up with a darned good spanking! Ye-gods, all we’re trying to do here is race north to deal with the threat of an occupation by the northern fiefs. It’s not like what we’re attempting is anything important,” she ground out.
“The North is a long way,” Ernest said and when Falon’s face started to turn red, he raised his hands deferentially, “not that I disagree with you. You’re right, of course.”
“It’s getting closer with every farm we pass,” Falon said, gripping the reins of her horse angrily.
“The North,” Ernest made hand motions to emphasize the word ‘North’, “is not these people’s community, it’s not their neighbors’ community, and their Lord hasn’t told them that their fief is under dire threat. To them the ‘North’,” again with the hand gestures, “is only an idea. I doubt they give the northern border more than two pairs of thoughts except that it’s something for Lord and Kings to worry about. To their minds, the empty bellies of their families or lack of surplus to sell at market are vastly more important.”
“Short-sighted small holders,” Falon said damningly. Her caring attitude had been used and abused too many times in the past week without the mere appearance of understanding by even one, single, farmer along the way.
“I suspect they have more vision than ye give them, despite their loud complaints,” Ernest said with a shrug.
Falon made a rude gesture that caused Ernest to smirk and shake his head at her antics.
“Well at least the rain stopped,” she said sourly.
“Yes the rain is always a…” Ernest trailed off something up head of the column and down the road catching his attention.
Ahead of them, a man came running down the hard-packed earth of the trail waving his arms and crying. From his coarse-woven clothing and straw hat, Falon took him to be yet another small plot farmer and sighed.
“What do you want to bet it’s another farmer crying over his lost ‘seed corn’,” Falon sighed dejectedly.
Ernest snickered and then looked slightly ashamed. No doubt his farming roots coming back to haunt him over the levity of someone losing a significant fraction of their food storage. Falon grinned at his discomfort, if not at the impact to the farmers.
“No bet,” Ernest finally said shaking his head, “you think Gearalt’s men stole the march on us again?”
Falon scowled and shook her head in negation, “They’d better not. We made sure to swing wide of the main army to avoid them.”
Then, before he could let them settle what exactly he’d been yelling, the farmer suddenly stopped running and began jumping in place as he stared at the column. He then inexplicably dove off the side of the road.
“Now that’s unusual, Fal,” Ernest said.
Falon reluctantly nodded. “I suppose I’d better investigate,” she said the idea quickly taking hold, and
the prospect of something different than the usual run of the mill inspections and script writing lifting her attitude.
“Come on, Cloud Breaker,” Falon urged, using her heels to encourage her horse, “yah!”
“Fal,” Ernest jerked as her horse broke into a quick trot and then a canter, “Lieutenant! Wait!”
The wind blowing in her face and the gait of her warhorse still as smooth as a dream, Falon willfully ignored Ernest’s cries as she sped away.
“I should have named you Cloud Dancer,” she yelled at her horse in exhilaration. Unfortunately the ride ended far too soon, as the farmer really hadn’t been that far away.
“Ho!” she ordered Cloud Breaker in a loud carrying voice, scanning the bushes beside the road as soon as he had.
A pair of terrified eyes looked up at her from a poorly chosen hiding place under some bushes not two feet from the road and into the foliage. Falon shook her head in disgust. If she was trying to avoid an army she wouldn’t have stopped until her legs collapsed.
Seeing he was spotted, the farmer tried to scramble to his feet, only to bump his head into the bushes not one foot over his head and get himself entangled.
Falon sighed. “Stop in the name of the Prince Marshal and the Swan Battalion,” she said, trying to for loud and carrying voice. She felt like the worst sort of imposter, the words like over salted mush in her mouth but from the way the farmer’s eyes widened with terror before realization dawned on his face, she either mustn’t have done that terrible a job or he was simply made of more cowardly stuff than she was used to.
“The Prince!” the farmer declared stopping his heroic battle with the bushes and calming down, “heavens be praised; they’ve stolen the seed corn and—”
Falon’s ears timed out as her vision flashed red. Not more of this ‘seed corn’ nonsense, she fumed silently. But she tuned back just in time to hear him say.
“And they fired the outbuilding!” he cried with the beginnings of the indignance she was becoming used to from the local famers.
“They fired your…barn?” Falon asked, genuinely surprised that even Gearalt would go so far. “Did you resist them perhaps?”
“Resist them? Why, of course we did,” the farmer said indignantly, “they were after the seed corn and the honey preserves!”
Falon took a deep breath and silently counted from one to ten. Gearalt and his men had gone too far this time, but after some two weeks of foraging duty and meeting this man, she could understand why! The small-minded, belligerent attitude of the locals was quite simply— “And done Lord knows what to my women,” the farmer continued as his blathering finally penetrated Falon’s haze of annoyance.
“What?” Falon asked, startled out of her own misery at having to deal with the craven, poorly dressed, farmer. “Repeat that!”
“I said,” the farmer repeated impatiently, “when I saw the outbuilding go up, I sent my sons into the woods and came out here.”
“No, the other part—about your womenfolk,” Falon snapped.
“Oh,” the farmer nodded rapidly, “there was no way to get to them; who knows what those bandits have done to them by now,” he said resignedly.
“You didn’t even try to save your women from a bunch of armed men invading your farm?” Falon asked him, her eyes widening with disbelief and anger. Even if it was just Gearalt and his happy squad of hoodlums and poachers, the man was a coward!
“I had to raise up a posse of the local militia,” he cried, his voice and words heavy with righteous self-justification, “but now that you’re here we can trounce those seed corn steeling—”
“Strange men come to your farm to, in your words, ‘do Lord knows what to your women,’ and the only thing you can go on and on about is your bloody seed corn?” Falon asked in a low, dangerous voice.
“Bah,” the farmer spat off to the side, “my wife is so fat and ugly no one would want to keep her and as for my daughter,” he spat again, “she’s no daughter of mine; I’m all but certain I’ve been cuckolded. But even if they take them both, so what?” he looked up at her with genuine confusion. “It’s easier to replace a wife than a burnt-out and seedless farm!”
Rage swelled up inside her; this man cared more for vegetables than a wife and daughter! Pressing her heels to her horse Falon urged Cloud Danger forward and let loose a shriek of pure rage. While the man ducked and staggered back in surprise, she drew back her boot and kicked him squarely in the face.
“Ah!” the man cried, spitting out bloody teeth. “My chompers; you’ve broken them.”
“Stay here and be ready to lead my men to your farm, or I’ll do worse when I finish riding you down,” she snarled.
The farmer stared at her looking dumfounded and fearful.
“Yah!” Falon urged her horse into a half rearing turn before thundering back to her column before she did something she would regret—like drawing forth her sword and teaching him he should have valued his family all along.
“Trouble?” Ernest asked anxiously as she rode by him.
Falon just shook her head angrily and pressed on. She was fed up with Gearalt and all these stupid farmers. It was past time they learned better than to mess with a Lieutenant in the Fighting Swans.
“Darius,” she called out, bringing her horse to a stop beside him.
“What are your orders, Lieutenant Falon?” Darius asked her, looking and sounding like every bit the stone-faced Sergeant. She was so grateful not to have to deal with any questions or wrangling over whether she was going too far and exceeding her authority as designated by Captain Smythe that she could have kissed him.
“I’ll finish dealing with that farmer later,” Falon spat, “but Gearalt’s Squad has gone too far this time. I was willing to put up with a little bit of boyish ‘I got there first’ rivalry, even if it force us to travel farther just about each and every day, but setting fire to outbuildings is where I’m drawing the line,” she declared with cold determination. “The fun and games are over and I’ll clap him in irons and drag him back to Sir Smythe, if that’s what it takes to put an end to this foolishness.”
Darius’s right eye narrowed but he nodded and when he spoke, there wasn’t a trace of dispute or disagreement for anyone to hear. “Your heard it, lads,” Darius barked, “it’s forward at the double time, and be ready to fall out and teach the F-Squad the difference between foraging and preying upon our own people.”
“Yes, Sarge,” said a file leader with a familiar voice and when Falon looked she saw that it was talented Goodman Aonghus, “we’ll learn them boys a lesson real good, we will.”
Far from being repulsed that a man with such disgusting habits was now a file leader, Falon was grimly satisfied that his words were followed by murmurs of agreement among the men around him.
“Let’s go, men,” Falon ordered, wheeling her horse around and leading the way to the lonely looking farmer.
Chapter 21: Mistaken Assumptions and not being told what to do
Then men of the Swan Battalion jogged around the bend and burst out of the thick brush and woodlands onto the lush green fields of a Farm.
Falon estimated the man had something like twenty or thirty acres of farm, if she counted his fallow fields as well as those under cultivation.
A small column of smoke slightly back and off to the side of the main buildings indicated that they had indeed come to the very place they were looking for—unless there were two such farms in the area with burning outbuildings.
“Sergeant Darius, why don’t we spread the men out from column to line,” Falon called out, maliciously ignoring the stricken look the vegetable-loving farmer sent her way. If the man cared nothing for his responsibilities, then she could care less if they trampled an entire acre of his produce!
“Century!” cried Darius waving his right arm one way and then his left the other. “Deploy into line formation, two ranks deep, at the double time.”
Beside the Sergeant, someone pulled out a large drum and started an
offbeat rhythm obviously intended to help with coordinating the movement of the formation. But the poorly timed drum beats would have done more to hinder the men than not, if anyone had actually been paying attention.
She saw Darius curse and tear the drumsticks out of the new drummer’s hands and shove them into his pack before giving the would-be drummer a swift kick in the rear to rejoin his formation.
Suppressing a grin, Falon urged Cloud Breaker closer to the Sergeant. “Someone decided we could use a little martial music, eh?” she asked with a sly look, and for the first time she could remember since knowing him, the Imperial started to color—which caused Falon to swell with delight.
“I made a comment earlier about how the Regiments march to the beat of the bull, both in bull-hide drums and horns,” Darius cursed, glaring at the man who had rapidly rejoined his file. “That’s the last time I let a man who scrounged up a drum and ‘claimed’ he could produce a marching beat do so without listening to him play first.”
Falon laughed aloud. “Well, no harm done,” she chuckled.
“If this had really been bandits it could have thrown the men into confusion; it was a pure fool stunt,” Darius said looking disgusted with himself.
Falon nodded without really agreeing. From the craning necks and smiles of her fellow Swan Warriors, it was plain to see that much like her, they found it quite amusing to see their Sergeant lose his temper and play the fool for once.
Finally, the men had shaken out into a ragged formation and Darius forgot his embarrassment long enough to stride, cursing and yelling, down the right wing of the company as he straightened and adjusted the line.
“A sorrier, more miserable excuse for a line of fighting men I’ve yet to see,” Darius bellowed, using a short rod of flexible wood to hurry along anyone to slow to heed his commands.
Falon glanced over at the left and urged her horse down the left wing.
“Alright, you lot, better straighten up now before the Sergeant gets here,” she growled as Cloud Breaker pranced up and down the line.
The Painting (Rise of the Witch Guard Book 2) Page 15