Tactics and Fortifications at Rylar’s Guard Academy

Ferril’s course was an interesting one, despite being a lecture. The senior captain appreciated discussion and would pace around the room snapping questions at the lieutenants while he spoke. If the response gave him fodder to elaborate on or nonsense to correct, the lecture would wander in that direction. Many of the scenarios he discussed were ones he had taken part in himself or about which he had first-hand accounts, since the continual low-grade warfare between Aciel and Karn gave him plenty to work with without delving into the history books. Historical Tactics was another class entirely. Ferril’s course focused on only what was of immediate concern to his students, the common obstacles that the young officers might encounter once they left the capital. This stay in Rylar was the first time Allen had been in Ferril’s course; he had taken Tactics with Captain Kepor during his first stay in Rylar.

“…a force three times the size of the enemy forces. That’s what you want to have, to have a reasonable guarantee of victory in a fight with similar terrain and weaponry. If you are on enemy territory and fighting by their rules, not a situation you ever want to be in, then gods help you because after that it’s in the hands of Yoneth himself—and the god of death and fate has no favorites. You’ll have to do your best to make it work to your advantage instead of theirs. At every point in an attack or defense, try to be stronger than your enemy, even if you have the weaker forces overall. Try to choose the terrain for a battle to your advantage, and bring the enemy to you. You always want to break them on a strong defense, rather than attack a fortified position yourself. So when you get to an area, establish fortifications. If you can’t, then establish a five-deep shield wall and start the inner ranks digging an encampment. You never know how long a battle will last.” Ferril paced between the long benches were the lieutenants sat. He had short blond hair that he kept out of his eyes with a leather cord, and alert dark brown eyes. His face was barely lined with age, despite that he was a senior captain.

The benches were hard and backless, probably specifically designed to keep students awake, but there was little need for it in Ferril’s course.

“…reminds me of the time I was on patrol with Captain Heurin, about twenty years ago, back when I was not long from sitting in those same benches as you are now. We’d been assigned to keep an eye on the border with the Leusi in the far north, and those white-furred demons laid a trap for us. It was snowing—if you have the misfortune to go there, you’ll find it’s always snowing in the north—and we could barely see the tail of the horse in front of us. We were riding that patrol, since if you’ve ever tried slogging through a snowstorm you’ll find that it drains the energy out of you even faster than healing…and, allow me to note there…don’t heal yourself trying to fix general fatigue. You’re already tired, and the best thing to do is sleep. If you try healing yourself in a snowstorm like that, after you’re already exhausted, you’ll fall on your face and you’ll never wake up.”

“Lieutenant Oppel, what are you going to do if you have to lead a patrol through a snowstorm?” Ferril asked, turning suddenly to one of the junior lieutenants in the front row.

“Ride, sir?” Oppel replied, a bit hesitantly.

“You could, if you had horses, like we did. But what if your horses have all been scattered by enemy scouts, who have cut through your stake lines in the night, and now your wagons are useless and you have to leave behind the supplies that are on them?”

“Ahh, couldn’t we have the men pull the wagons instead of the horses, sir?”

“Lieutenant,” Ferril said, “if you ever try that, I will personally come along and break your sword over my knee. One, you’re in a snowstorm, and I’ve already told you about the exhaustion that causes. Dragging wagons isn’t going to help. Two, what if you’re attacked? Your men will be holding wagon ropes and divided by trying to drag the damn things. You’d need Kaisa’s own luck to get into formation in time to repel the attackers.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry.” Oppel looked abash.

“Lieutenant Jeuri, what are you going to do in this situation?” Ferril directed his question this time to one of the female lieutenants who was sitting near the middle of the room.

“Leave the wagons, sir, take as much as we can carry, and try to make it to the nearest town or camp?”

“Better than having your men drag the wagons, but still not good enough. All that extra food is going to weigh you down and tire the men out quickly. The more food you carry, the more it weighs and the harder it is to carry it. That means you’ll move more slowly, eat it at a faster rate, and have to stop more frequently for rest. If you’re attacked, you’ll already be tired and you might not survive.”

“Lieutenant Tereil, what are you going to do if you have taken Lieutenant Jeuri’s advice?” Ferril questioned one of the male lieutenants sitting near Jeuri.

“Ahh, locate the nearest camp on the maps, send out scouts, and start marching as quickly as possible, sir? We could abandon the gear and try to travel as light as possible except for food and weapons.”

“Not bad, lieutenant, but you’ve forgotten something.”

“Lieutenant Delais, what did he forget?” Ferril turned to Allen. Most of the lieutenants went by their personal names in the guard, and left their family names to more formal situations and record-keeping, but Allen had given his full name to the Guard scribe when he arrived and it had been “Lieutenant Delais” ever since. His name was the little he had left of his history and hearing it time and again was satisfying to him.

“It’s snowing, sir,” he answered. “Visibility is poor. The scouts would probably be lost in it, and it might be better to string ropes to tie the men together, so that if anyone falls the others will know and be able to help.” Allen had been in the north himself, and he’d been thinking about the snow since the captain mentioned it. But he’d never been in that situation, and the tactics manual for the course didn’t include anything about how to overcome it. He’d been lucky, he supposed. His captain on the patrol, Riosa, would have known what to do.

“Not a bad idea. But what if you’re attacked while tied together?”

“Ahh, perhaps we could string one rope for each squad, sir, and let each squad form its own wall in an attack. Would the snow work against the enemy as well?”

“That might work, lieutenant. The snow would impede your efforts to form a complete wall anyway. You’d have to play it and see. And it depends on who’s attacking you. If it’s a large force, you’d be dead or captured. If it’s a small force, your plan might work, assuming the snow blinded them enough that they couldn’t make you out in it and flank your squads. If you’re up against Leusi scouts in a snowstorm, you won’t even know what hit you. They wait for conditions like this to attack; they live in the snow.”

“Lieutenant Iruol, any other suggestions?” Ferril asked a senior lieutenant in the front row.

“Yes, sir. What if we set up camp where we were and waited for the snow to stop? We could rip apart the wagons and use them for crude fortifications, along with dirt embankments. And we could pack the snow into walls to break the wind.”

“Now that’s the best idea I’ve heard yet, lieutenant. A strong defense, you keep all the supplies, and maybe the horses will come back in the morning.” Ferril turned back to face the rest of the class. “And I suggest, if any of you end up in a situation like this, that you take Lieutenant Iruol’s advice. It’s sensible, you have a good foothold against any attack, you won’t lose men to the weather, and you have enough supplies to sit it out. So sit tight and don’t do anything that will get your people killed.”

“If you’re short on supplies,” he continued, “then take the chance of marching through the storm. You’d be rolling the dice to sit there waiting for your supplies to run out, and doing something is better than nothing. Remember though, if you’re sitting in that cozy little camp of yours in a snowstorm, to keep the men occupied. Nothing’s worse for morale in a spot like this than boredom. Don’t let your people have enough time to think about what might be out there in the snow, or whether the snow will end, or where the horses went, or if any reinforcements will arrive before the Leusi scouts come to kill you. Keep them building the fortifications; keep them training. Make them clear the snow out of the camp every hour, so you have a clear ground to fight on.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he finished. “Think on what you’d do if you were attacked on horse patrol in the middle of a snowstorm.”

Allen saluted the captain along with the rest of the class, and then joined Tereil, Jeuri, and another lieutenant that hadn’t spoken that day, Yeren, on the way out. The four of them were assigned to the same team for the field exercise on defensive emplacements, and they had just enough time between this course and the next to get there. He’d worked with them since he’d arrived in the capital from patrol, since classes were formed on a first-come, first-serve basis. The three of them had not yet left Rylar for their first patrol, and were still in the basic stage of their training. Since he’d been on patrol and returned already, Allen found himself their de-facto leader whenever they were together. He hadn’t talked to them outside of the courses much, but he wondered if he should ask them to the celebration with Kilin that night. It wouldn’t hurt him to be more social, and he needed a new roommate.

“Whew, Ferril’s rough…” Tereil complained. “I’d forgotten about the snow.”

“Ferril never forgets anything,” Jeuri said, “I’ve heard he remembers the wrong answers from students he had a decade ago.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Allen said, “I’ve seen him ask students a question they got wrong before, just to see if they’d come up with anything better since. I’ve heard he’ll even do it outside of class.”

“Ahh, that would be terrible,” Tereil said, “Imagine him coming in while you were in the pub, and embarrassing you in front of all your friends.”

“I think Ferril is sufficiently intimidating that they would understand.” Allen chuckled.

The four of them shortly arrived at the large courtyard attached to the guard quarters where a mock defensive camp was arranged. One of its walls was currently damaged from an exercise that had taken place earlier that day, but in its complete state the camp was a one-tenth scale version of an infantry legion’s temporary defensive emplacement, erected every night on the march. A regular camp could hold two full infantry legions, approximately 8,400 foot with 600 horse plus that number again in allies or auxiliaries—such as longbow divisions, engineering battalions, pikemen, or attached cavalry units—and it was slightly less than two thousand feet to a side. It was surrounded by a defensive ditch.

The mock camp here in the guard quarters served as a training exercise for the officers and senior sergeants and was continually being damaged and rebuilt. The interior of the camp was empty, with scale floor plans laid out, since to erect all the tents on a one-tenth scale would have been a waste of time. Every legion’s permanent quarters had a similar one for practice, which let the trainees get a good overall idea of the camp and how to construct it. Then on the march the legions got plenty more practice. The temporary quarters were not quite as solid as the permanent quarters, but while a legion sat in its camp, it was very difficult for an attacker to peel it out of its shell. Iruol’s answer in Tactics had been a good one, provided the patrol had been large enough to erect a strong camp.

The exercise for that evening was a lecture on the design of the camp and then everyone who had been assigned to the field exercise would repair the encircling ditch that had been partially filled in by the attackers and rebuild the palisade behind it. The infantry would usually have carried four-and-a-half-foot long stakes with them, hammering them a foot and a half deep into the top of the palisade, and they would cut new ones as necessary from materials on hand. But since it was a training exercise there was a pile of stakes and shovels waiting for them.

Allen had helped construct several of the camps when he’d been with the 15^th in the north, moving from one strategic location to another with the legion while spending the interim on a detached patrol. The full legion only moved when it was on the march, and when it was a new camp was erected every night and taken down every morning.

Every camp was built to the exact same standard, except that half-camps or quarter-camps were built depending on the number of men. Each camp was begun with a defensive ditch at least six feet deep and five feet wide, and the dirt from the ditch was thrown into an encircling berm on the inside. The berm would be made eight feet wide and as high as possible; then the men would pack it down and plant the palisade stakes in it at the front. The extra area on the berm behind the stakes served for battlements. To the man standing on the battlement, the palisade was only waist-high, but the full drop to the bottom of the ditch was twelve feet or more.

Nearly a hundred men had gathered in the area for the field exercise, and Senior Captain Solres oversaw their efforts. Allen sweated along with the other men, sergeants and officers alike, as they dug out the old ditch. Then they rebuilt and repacked the wall and hammered in the new stakes for the palisade. It was hard work, and doing it every day on the march was one reason the Guards were perpetually in top shape and ready to fight. The captain spent the time meanwhile lecturing on aspects of setting up a camp and how to dig a proper ditch.

“…you can have both walls of the ditch slanted, making a wedge,” she said, “or you can leave the front wall perpendicular. You need to leave the back wall a wedge so that the berm is properly supported. If you dig it out perpendicular, and there’s too much weight on the top, you’ll fall into the ditch.”

When they were finished with the palisade, she led the entire group on a tour of the mini-camp, naming the various roads, walls, tent emplacements, ditches, marketplace, officer’s quarters, cavalry quarters, and auxiliaries’ quarters that made up the inner part of the camp.

“…the first two-thirds of the camp, facing the enemy, are for the men, the back third is for the officer’s tents, the counsel areas, the market-place…. And remember to ditch your jakes deeper than the defensive wall. You don’t want that leaking into your ditch, even if it will be your enemy who has the joy of swimming in it. To leave that muck in the open air causes disease, even if you’ll only be there for a day, and the smell is bad for morale. And on the topic of sewage, always make sure your jakes are well covered with lime…”

“…there’s approximately two hundred feet in a full camp between the tents and the palisade, and that’s for your troop movements…. The main road through camp is a hundred feet wide, connecting the side gates and dividing the troop area from the officers’ area. The second widest road, dividing the troop area in half and parallel to the main road, is fifty feet wide. The roads between the main tent areas are also fifty feet wide, and the doors of the tents always face these roads. Keep at least two feet between any tent walls, for air flow. ”

“…you have four gates in the camp. One in the center of each wall.…When you dig the ditcg, set the dirt on the inside to make the berm. Leave a twelve foot gap for the gate. Out of the extra dirt that should have been in that gap, build walls for the gate that stretch into the camp at a right angle to the regular berm and create an entrance tunnel for the gate itself. You can get more dirt by digging the ditch deeper right in front of the gate, since you’ll need more dirt to make that gate palisade and that will make the ditch in front of the gate more defensible…. You can use the angle created in the battlements there to build towers to defend the gate, and you can place a gate at both the front edge near the ditch and at the end of the tunnel to create a murder zone for the attackers. If you don’t have time to build a solid gate, then make sure to leave a strong guard on it at all times, at least a hundred men, and keep in contact with the rings of defense that make up your sentry lines.”

“…you keep the infantry tents on the outer edge of the camp here, and the cavalry on the inside, since the infantry will be defending the walls and it takes the cavalry longer to ready for battle–if you even use them. The infantry will fight until the cavalry can sally out.”

“In front of each gate, you can throw a plank walkway to serve as a bridge if you have one. If not, then you leave it as a ditch and you never fill it in unless the entire legion is leaving the camp…. If you have a bridge, you can also use it as a drawbridge and door for the front gate. …Remember that the appearance of a strong defense is sometimes as useful as the actual thing…. In a temporary camp, you might not have time to build complete towers and fortify the gates, but try to get a plank up to give at least the appearance of a front gate. And besides, it keeps the wind out…. Make sure to fortify the gates and towers if you stay longer than one night.

“…you’ll have guards posted at the gates, plus your sentry lines outside the camp, your sentries on the walls, and the guards at the towers above the gate. If anyone gets close enough to just waltz through your gate, you deserve it. Keep longbowmen stationed along the walls and on the towers, and make sure they and the sentries have a few signal arrows…whistlers or fire arrows.”

“Once you’re in your camp, don’t move. Only the pickets or scouts should be out of the camp at night. No one else. Stay in your camp, and you’re safe. Leave it, and you’re fresh meat for whatever is out there.”

“Keep your cavalry inside at night; you need good light for a cavalry charge. If it’s too dark, the horses won’t be able to see and they’ll trip if they have to go faster than a walk…and then you’ll have a pile of lamed horses to put down.”

“In the day, if you want a cavalry charge, send them forth from one of the side walls or around the back, whichever side the enemy isn’t on. If the enemy is surrounding your camp, keep the cavalry inside; they need too much room to organize for a charge and it takes time to get through your own gates.”

Eventually she finished the tour of the camp and dismissed the tired and sweat-stained Guards for the night.

With that finished, Allen located the three lieutenants he’d arrived with and invited them along to the pub where he was going to meet Kilin. He was looking forward to the celebration and he wanted to find out if Kilin had heard about his new assignment yet, and see what the lieutenant had been doing all day. Maybe it had been a change of pace. Kilin wouldn’t mind the extra company. In fact, he probably already knew the three younger lieutenants…and if he didn’t it would have only been a matter of time.

“Meet me at the King’s Mead after you change,” Allen told them. “I’ll be looking for you. First round is on Kilin.” He grinned. “It’s the least he can do for getting promoted ahead of me.”

“Sounds good. See you in a bit.” Jeuri waved, and the three of them tramped off to the quarters for the officers who were still in their first round of training at the capital.

Allen headed back to his room alone slightly bemused. Perhaps he should have invited them out earlier. It would have been nice to have other people around.

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