Free The Soldier's Tale by Jonathan Moeller Page B

the Deeps.
    I was going to teach the recruits to fight
and survive, whether they liked it or not.
    The first day we spent getting them to
march in an orderly fashion. Whenever they failed, I made them run
a lap around the courtyard, and then we tried again. Bit by bit
they started to get it through their heads. The day after that the
castra’s master of arms Sir Corlust joined us and began instructing
the recruits in the use of sword and spear and mace and javelin and
shield, showing them the proper way to hold the weapons and the
correct way to catch a blow upon a shield. The next day, in
addition to the other drills the master of horses began to teach
them to ride. Knights had their own horses and provided their own
weapons, but the men-at-arms used weapons from the Dux’s armories
and rode the Dux’s horses into battle when necessary. The recruits
also learned to clean and maintain their weapons and armor and how
to care for the horses.
    The exercises and training had been done
this way for centuries. Back on Old Earth, in the Empire of the
Romans, there had been a man named Vegetius, and he had written a
book called “Concerning Military Matters.” Malahan Pendragon and
the other survivors of Arthur Pendragon’s realm had brought the
book with them. I knew how to read (which was one of the reasons I
had become an Optio), and so had read the book. The Romans had
trained their legions this way, and they had conquered most of Old
Earth, so the men of Andomhaim followed suit.
    “You might hate this now, lads,” I said as
they went through their spear and shield drills, Sir Corlust
calling out the movements. I scowled at a man holding his spear
wrong, grabbed his hands, and adjusted his grip. “But in battle
there is no time to think, and what you learn now will save your
life. As Vegetius wrote, ‘A handful of men, inured to war, proceed
to certain victory, while on the contrary numerous armies of raw
and undisciplined troops are but multitudes of men dragged to
slaughter.’”
    I remembered my old Optio quoting Vegetius
at me when I had been a recruit, and I had hated the stern old
bastard for it. Likely the recruits hated me now for it.
    But my old Optio had been right to do
it.
    I observed the recruits as I shouted
orders. In every group of ten men, I have found, there are six
competent men who are content to obey orders, one sluggard, one
troublemaker, and two natural leaders. Our new recruits followed
the pattern. We had troublemakers – one lad decided he didn’t feel
like checking his horse’s hooves for stones, and when I pressed
him, he tried to punch me. He made a botch of it, and I gave him a
sound thrashing. After that I had him flogged, and he was dismissed
from the Dux’s service.
    The other troublemakers fell in line after
that. A salutary example can work wonders.
    After the first week I thought most of them
would eventually make solid men-at-arms. Sir Primus would have to
dismiss a few of them – one lad was too nearsighted to do anything
right, but had the wits to make a good clerk, and if another ever
held a real sword he would slice his own damn foot off. A few of
them were natural leaders. They could keep their heads, and the
other recruits began to look to them for guidance. Likely Sir
Primus would make a few of them into Tessarios, the leaders of ten
men each, and some of them would become Optios or even Decurions in
time.
    One recruit, though, was exceptional.
    His name was Romilius, and he looked like a
rural young man from a prosperous freehold, strong and well-fed. He
was an orphan from the village of St. Matthew to the south, and he
had been raised by the monks of the village’s monastery. The lad
was pious enough to become a monk, but his nature was too vigorous
for a contemplative life. He took to weapons like a fish to the
waters, and he had the potential to become one of the best
swordsmen I had ever seen. That sort of aptitude could have turned
the other recruits against him,