Free 03 - Call to Arms by Mitchel Scanlon - (ebook by Undead)

bedded down. It was difficult to tell much after such a short acquaintance, but
for the most part they had seemed welcoming enough. There was a natural
reticence against being too friendly or too forthcoming; Helmut had warned him
about that.
    “Remember, you will be the new man,” Helmut had told him. “Don’t expect too
much in the way of friendship when you first join the barracks. They will wait
to get the measure of you first. One day, their lives may depend on you and your
character. They’ll want to know what kind of man you are before they welcome
you.”
    In common with many other regiments in the army of Hochland, the 3rd was
divided into a series of ten-man sub-units called files. Dieter had been
assigned to the file commanded by Sergeant Bohlen, alongside Gerhardt, Rieger
and Hoist. He had learned the names of the other men of the file were Kuranski,
Breitmeyer, Rosen, Krug and Febel. It was hard to tell too much about them after
such brief acquaintance, but Dieter supposed he would get to know each of them
in time.
    Behind them, lost in the mists, the rest of the camp was waking up. Dieter
heard sounds drift towards him, muffled by the fog. There was the clatter of
pans as the cooks saw to breakfast, the noise of voices as the sentries changed
watch and orders were shouted back-and-forth.
    Somewhere, Dieter heard a woman’s voice singing. A camp follower no doubt,
giving voice to a sarcastic song as she taunted one or more of her lovers.
    Oh sailors they get all the money,
    Soldiers they get none but brass.
    I do love a jolly sailor,
    Soldiers they can kiss my arse.
    The song raised a smile from Dieter, easing the mood of nervousness that had
settled upon him. He realised it was a trick which might stand him in good stead
in years to come. It was better to laugh and think thoughts of good humour,
rather than dwell on his anxieties. Blinded by the fog, it was easy to fall prey
to unreasoning fear.
    Abruptly, he heard a rolling series of drumbeats. Captain Harkner had told
the regimental drummer to give the signal to advance. Keeping pace with the
other men around him, Dieter moved forward as the Scarlets entered the forest.
     
    * * *
     
    “Keep close,” Gerhardt had told him as they prepared for the expedition.
“It’s your first time out and you haven’t drilled with us, so stay within sight
of me, Hoist and Rieger. Follow what we do. As long as you’ve got one of us in
view you’ll be all right.”
    It was good advice, but Dieter quickly found it was easier said than done.
From the moment they entered the forest, the mist seemed to swallow them.
    Within a few paces, it was so thick the men around him were reduced to little
more than amorphous silhouettes. He could no longer tell one from another, much
less follow any particular shape and know it was Gerhardt, Hoist or Rieger.
Instead, the most he could do was to stick close to one of the silhouettes and
hope for the best.
    The Scarlets had not entered the woods alone. A group of local huntsmen had
been assigned to them as guides.
    They reminded Dieter of the professional huntsmen he had known in his home
village of Bromstadt: hard-faced, gimlet-eyed men in black cloaks, armed with
bows. Such men could spend weeks at a time living in the deep forests, foraging
to survive as they tracked their prey—whether that prey was wolves, bears,
orcs or beastmen. Sometimes, if he possessed a particularly mercenary
disposition, a huntsman might even hire on to track his fellow man—hunting
fugitive criminals and bandits in return for a bounty.
    There were four huntsmen in total with the Scarlets. Two of them had
disappeared into the forest, scouting ahead of the expedition, while the other
two accompanied the Scarlets to make sure they didn’t get lost.
    Dieter only hoped the huntsmen knew the forest as well as they claimed.
Otherwise, in the current conditions, far from scouting the area he had no doubt
they could be