In which we see Allen at work

“Go on in, Lieutenant.” The guard nodded to Allen and stepped out of the way. Allen didn’t recognize him, which bothered him for a moment, but he returned the nod on his way past and said nothing. New troops were quickly filling the city as well as surrounding towns as the old legions were reorganized, but he hadn’t expected they would be assigned to guard the palace.

The morning promotion ceremony had not taken long, and he still had work to do before the celebration that evening. Kilin had been released from their duty assignment following his promotion, or he would have been walking into the guard station with Allen.

The station was an offshoot of the guard quarters, attached to one wing of the king’s palace at the center of town and concealed from a casual glance by the curvature of the palace walls. It had its own entrances, kitchens, and training areas, and the guards who worked there rarely crossed paths with any of the nobles or ministers who frequented the palace proper, which didn’t bother the guards at all.

He entered Senior Captain Felim’s office and knocked his fist against his chest in salute.

“Morning, Lieutenant,” Felim’s rough voice grated out from behind a table stacked with ledgers and loose paper. “Keep working on the logistic requisitions.”

“Yes, sir.”

Allen sat down at the slanted writing desk across from Felim and began to sort through the order forms he’d stacked on the table beside it the day before.

“The other one’s gone on to better things, eh?”

“Yes, sir. Kilin was promoted this morning. I don’t know where he’s been reassigned.”

“He’s probably heading to one of these legions, you know. Most of the new reassignments are.” Felim tapped one of the ledgers next to him. “I have the whole list of them here, but the orders for the newest ones won’t come in for a couple of days.”

That seemed hopeful. If Kilin were reassigned to the 9^th, Allen would be able to keep track of him, at least if Felim were willing to let him check. “I’d like to know where he’s sent, if possible.”

“You can flip through it when you take a break from those forms.” Felim shrugged and went back to his stacks of paper, his curiosity apparently satisfied. Other than on topics directly related to supply, it was perhaps the longest conversation that Allen had ever had with him.

The forms were requisitions for arms and armor from the King’s armory, as well as for leather, iron, tents, blankets, dry rations like beans, oats, and dried meat, wet rations that could be preserved like cheeses and barrels of pickles, shovels, infantry packs, bandages, horses, mules, wagons, fodder, and the countless other details that made up the requirements of a fully supplied legion. Day by day new requests trickled in from the 9^th, more of them as more officers were assigned to it, and as much as he worked on completing the forms and sending them along to the proper supply officer it seemed they were growing twice as fast.

The 9^th Foot would have approximately five thousand men at full strength, with a fifth of them an attached longbow corps, but so far only six hundred veterans and twice that in newly trained recruits had been assigned to the 9^th’s temporary barracks in Iliera, just to the north of Rylar. Their permanent barracks had not yet been announced.

He gave a mental shrug and got to work completing the requisition forms. The requests from the 9^th were mostly written by scribes attached to the legion, as not many of the officers could write. That Allen could was probably the reason he was here, rather than still on patrol along the northern marches. Six weeks before, he and Kilin had been recalled to Rylar to help with the refurbishing of the legions.

It was a break from the long days of riding that he had been doing, and it was easy by comparison, but he preferred the north. There was a sense of freedom in the wind there, when it blew across the grasses. Here he was surrounded by stone walls and carefully sculpted gardens, and there was little that was wild.

Completing the forms didn’t require much thought, so he occupied his time these mornings by studying the material requested by the legion and trying to improve his understanding of all that went into the support of it. In the afternoons, he joined the other young officers for training in arms, riding, and tactics. There was a sort of constant school at the capital that every unoccupied officer assigned to Rylar was expected to attend. Given the rotation of officers and troops, most officers passed through the capital at least once every six or seven years, and the courses served as refreshers for the older officers even as they instructed the newest. The lecturers were senior officers and sometimes specialists in various areas. Scholars and priests lectured on cultures and religions, and discussed the military and social habits of the various nations. Officers who were newly commissioned were assigned to the capital for a period of months and then sent to various regions of the kingdom for more in-depth experience.

The kingdom wasn’t a particularly dangerous place at the moment, but it still had its share of bandits to put down, feuds between noble families to defuse, incursions by various foreign powers who were testing the borders to throw back, religious cults and mad prophets to keep an eye on, and the usual taxes to collect, merchants to protect, roads to repair, and caravans crossing the borders to inspect.

The Guard mostly stayed out of towns, patrolling the roads and areas between them and leaving domestic affairs to the city guards, but they were expected to help if the mayor or a specific noble requested it.

Requests by the nobles were the most difficult to answer, since some were inclined to serve their own interests rather than to keep the peace. The nobles’ political positions made dealing with them difficult; their influence at court and a sense of aristocratic entitlement made them think the Guards were their personal retainers. The Guard’s job was to keep an eye on the laws of the kingdom, to keep the peace, and to defend its people and borders, and it answered directly to the king. Nonetheless, many a promising officer’s career had been destroyed by a spiteful noble.

Allen finished filling out a form for helmets and set it in the stack of papers to take to the armory. They would either fill it there from current supplies or request new helmets from the Guard blacksmiths.

After that came forms for rope, reins and saddles, boots, tabards, tar, lamp oil, candles, laundry baskets, soap…then pitch, sulfur, lynch pins, wagon wheels, nails, arrows…an unending chain of form after form.

The morning passed eventually, and Felim looked up from his stacks. “Go to lunch, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir.” Allen pushed his stool back with a sense of relief. Despite that he’d been sitting all morning, he felt tired. Lunch would wake him up and he’d be on to the more interesting sessions of the afternoon.

“And drop those forms off on your way.”

“Yes, sir.” Allen gathered up the forms in a leather folder and tucked it under his arm, before he saluted and headed out the door.

He dropped the majority of the forms off at the armory, which adjoined the Guard quarters; then detoured through the castle proper on the way to the royal treasurer’s offices, where he dropped the rest of them. The treasury would have to approve the expenditures for the general supplies and would order them as necessary. The armory’s funds came directly from the royal mandate for the legions and the master armorer would submit bills for iron stock or contracted blacksmiths to the treasury himself.

The halls of the castle were relatively deserted, except for the occasional page running an errand or servant polishing something. The nobles tended not to appear around the court before the early evening, but they brought their retinues with them when they did arrive and made the wide corridors of the palace seem cramped. Most of them maintained residences in the city; the others took guest chambers in the castle or one of the city inns, depending on their current favor with the crown and their desire to be under the royal eye.

When he’d dropped the rest of the forms off to the treasury clerks, he took a shortcut through the palace gardens on his way to the Guard kitchens where he usually ate. His pay from the king was enough to afford meals in the inns in the city, if he had preferred, but he saw no reason to spend it unnecessarily. The food in the Guard kitchens was plain and robust, and perfectly adequate.

Kilin sometimes talked him into going into the city, but he rarely did it on his own initiative. He wondered what his friend was doing for lunch that day and if he would show up. Eating in the kitchens would at least mean that Kilin could find him, if he had the opportunity.

When he arrived at the refectory, he picked up a wooden tray from the cooks and took his customary seat against the far wall, with his back to one wall and a door to his left. The commons area was a large open area filled with long tables and benches, and the cooks’ alley was along one wall, fronting the doors to the kitchen.

The room was half-filled with guards in black and grey, and scattered here and there groups of some visiting nobles’ retainers sat in tight clusters, trying to appear nonchalant. The refectory was open to any friendly military presence near the palace, and most nobles foisted the bill for their guards’ meals off onto the royal treasury by sending them there to eat. The ones in Allen’s direct view didn’t seem particularly happy about it. They spoke only to each other and ate quickly, leaving as soon as they had finished.

He took his time about his meal, enjoying the fried slices of potatoes, sliced beef in gravy, aruel, and cheese that he had picked up. The aruel was a green vegetable sprout that grew all over the kingdom. Boiled, it was one of the staples of the Guards’ diet. It tasted something like a mix between a walnut and chewy sawdust, but it grew on you after a while. He washed it down with a diluted mug of the honey and apple mead that was popular all over the north.

The nobles’ retainers had good reason to be wary of the Guard, although more for political reasons than personal ones. The nobles of the kingdom were an unruly lot, and the Guard had more than once been ordered to repress their feuds with each other or attempts to declare their castles and lands sovereign city-states within the kingdom. And sometimes the Guard was sent out to collect overdue taxes…usually with overwhelming force. The Guard simply laid siege to the noble’s personal estate until the taxes were paid. There was in fact a tax-collecting legion specifically for the purpose, which doubled as the training legion for the Guard engineering corps. It specialized in siege weaponry and sapping, and it especially liked to build very large trebuchets as soon as it arrived.

It worked, and it kept the peace and ensured the kingdom remained whole, but it didn’t make for the best relations between the nobles’ retainers and the Guard.

Kilin didn’t show up throughout lunch, and Allen returned his tray to the cooks with some disappointment. He was used to having the other lieutenant around.

When he turned to head out of the refectory, a commotion at one of the tables across the way got his attention. Most of the area had cleared out and only a few people remained. A group of noble’s retainers were huddled around someone sitting at one of the tables, and blocking the view of whoever was at the center from the rest of the room. Allen frowned, and wondered what they were doing there. Usually the retainers were too nervous to cause trouble.

The Guard’s job was to keep the peace though, and it was a mandate that Allen took to heart even beyond his oath to maintain it. If the retainers were up to no good, he could scatter them easily enough. A Guard officer—no matter how junior—served the king directly and outranked any private soldier or noble’s guard in the kingdom. And while he had no direct authority to command the soldiers, this was in the Guard quarters. Reminding them of the several thousand Guards in the building should solve any problem they might have.

He caught a glimpse of black and grey from between two of the retainers as he approached the group, and a familiar anger began to rise in him. They dared to harass a guard here? Retainers’ moral qualities were questionable at best, but he had thought they would have better sense.

The voices were too low to make out from outside the circle, and he stopped out of reach of any personal weapons the retainers might be carrying. He was unarmed, as was typical for guards in the palace not assigned to duties that required it, but retainers were entitled as honor guards to carry arms on the palace grounds, if not in the palace proper. Only bows were banned. Had he been out of the palace, his blade would have been on his hip.

He coughed and folded his arms across his chest.

The circle in front of him jostled about, and the murmur of voices died down. The two of them directly in front of him turned around, and looked him up and down with a sneer.

“None o’ yer business, lackey,” one of them said, and gave him a gap-toothed grin. His hair was long and lank. “Just havin’ a nice discussion with the lass here. If’n you want to join in later, you’ll haveta wait yer turn.”

Allen’s temper flared and he tried to rein it in. A fight here would only cause more trouble between the Guard and the nobles, and it would reflect badly on the Guard as a whole.

“Whatever you are doing,” he replied in a conversational tone, “I suggest you move on. This is not the place for it, and your master will be very displeased if your actions bring the king down on his head.”

While the retainers were allowed to carry weapons and had free access to most of the palace, it was because their lord was directly responsible for their actions. Typically any trouble they caused would result in a fine, but if the infraction were serious enough it could result in the noble being called before the court to explain the actions of his honor guard, which would result in a loss of face for him and the king’s displeasure.

The first retainer lost his grin and hesitated, half-turning to look behind him. He elbowed the one next to him and the two of them stepped out of the way, leaving a clear line of sight to the center of the group, where a young junior lieutenant in black and grey was sitting before a half-empty tray of food. Her face was expressionless. He didn’t recognize her.

“Come now, Lieutenant, all is fair in love and war, isn’t that the saying?” came a polished voice from the inside of the circle.

It took Allen a moment to pick out who had spoken, since the men were still partially blocking his view, but when he saw who it was his heart sank a bit. It was a younger man with his hair pulled back in a tail. He was wearing a high-collared blue vest with diagonal green slashes along each side and a long-sleeved shirt with gold embroidery above flaring breeches and knee-high boots.

He hadn’t realized one of the younger nobles had been in the refectory, but It explained where the retainers had found their courage–something he suspected most of them confused with what was found at the bottom of a bottle. What by all the gods was the noble doing here? He must have either come in as a joke or expressly to cause trouble: Allen didn’t see him appreciating the food.

“Sir,” he replied, though the word was bitter in his mouth, “with all due respect, there are eight of you surrounding the lieutenant. It hardly seems a fair number, and from where I am standing it appears to be duress.”

“Well, by all means men, stand back,” the noble replied, seemingly amused. “I didn’t realize you had gathered so close. Shame on you, for letting your curiosity drive you to ill-manners.”

Chuckles and a few snorts of laughter came from the men, but they backed up, leaving the noble standing alone. His hand was on the lieutenant’s shoulder, something Allen had missed before.

The lieutenant said nothing and continued to look straight ahead. It resulted in her gaze landing directly on Allen and he really looked at her for the first time. Her eyes were a vivid green and she had flawless features framed by a wave of long dark hair. His breath caught as his heart seemed to skip a beat.

“So you see, Lieutenant, all is well. Off with you now; scatter back to your little tasks or whatever it is you do around here and leave me to my wooing. Such a beautiful girl certainly will not stay in this place for long. One must pluck her while one can, before she disappears; before someone else takes her first. It’s a great game, you see, to collect the most beautiful. I do love your Guard here; it’s like a walking harem…so very delightful.”

---

---

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 24th, 2008 at 12:22 am and is filed under A Northern Heart. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.