You order the squadron to a halt as you wheel Thunderer about. The first duty of any King's Officer is the maintenance of discipline within his command. It is an obligation which supercedes even your battle orders.
"Dragoons!" you shout. "Back in ranks!"
For some of the fugitives, your attention is enough to get them back in the saddle. As for the remainder, it seems clear that words will not work.
"Staff!" you shout, summoning Hernandes to your side. "I want those looters brought back into ranks," you command. "Drag them back, if need be."
Rounding up a few other NCOs, your Staff-sergeant quickly begins returning the would-be plunderers back into your ranks. Faced with the scowling faces and ready fists of half a dozen sergeants, the fugitives do not resist, but they scowl and mutter amongst themselves as they are led back into formation. Some of the other men scowl, too. After all, is it not the right of a poor soldier to fill his pockets with the belongings of his enemies?
Your heavy-handed response may lead to problems down the line, but dealing with those can wait; you still have orders to carry out.
-
You burst out of the Antari camp onto the riverbank at full gallop, but it is too late. The Antari ferry barges are already floating slowly away. The peasant bargemen, their work done, flee as the last mooring line snaps under the force of the river's current and the inertia of the other barges chained to it.
Now, you and your dragoons can only watch as the precious cargo that you had been ordered to seize floats further away from the riverbank.
In the distance, you hear a great triumphal roar; the main body of the Antari force is breaking apart, dissolving into knots of men fleeing the advancing ranks of Tierran Line Infantry.
The enemy is broken. The battle is won. At least today has not been all bad.
-
You and your men are not allowed a victory celebration. Before the day is out, orders come down from the King's headquarters demanding that your dragoons strike out along the River Kharan to recover the drifting ferries and their contents.
With every step you take, your men grow more dispirited. With every hour they spend away from the comforts of newly seized Mhillanovil, they grumble more and more. The initial sting of failure was bad enough, but to be subject to days more of hard riding and danger because of it compounds the damage even further.
Some of the men blame you for their predicament. Why shouldn't they, when it was your decisions which led them to it?
It takes you three days to find the first remains of the barges. Left uncrewed and at the mercy of the river current, they had been dashed against the rocks and scattered along the length of the river. The shattered shells of the crates which they had carried are strewn along the riverbank. Of the cargo, there are few signs, save for a handful of unrecognisable lumps of wrought iron fished out from the shallows.
By the time you return to Mhillanovil four days later, the news of your failure has spread to the whole body of the army. While none of your brother officers insult you openly, you feel their looks of disapproval upon your back as you lead your demoralised squadron into the town and see to the process of billeting your men and horses.
It has not been, by any means, your best week.
-
Your stay in Mhillanovil proves significantly more comfortable than the weeks you spent in Solokovil. For one thing, the King's new base had been a considerably larger town before the war, and serving as Prince Khorobirit's field headquarters for two years had only caused it to grow further.
The summer heat is significantly less tiresome as well, not because of any matter of location, for Mhillanovil is barely thirty kilometres to the north of Solokovil, but because the town is bounded on three sides by the cool waters of the River Kharan, and on the fourth by a not-insubstantial belt of trees, perhaps the last northern vestige of the Great Forest.
It is the presence of this forest which seems to be the new focus of the army's efforts, for every day, companies of foot march out into the trees armed with hatchets and saws. They return with carts full of newly felled logs, to be piled in the town square, cut into planks by yet more companies of infantry, and set to dry in the hot summer air.
Though your dragoons are still required to patrol in search of any approaching enemy force, no longer are they required to keep the obsessive watch that had so fatigued them earlier in the summer. Now, it is a rare occasion when any more than one out of eight of your men are posted as vedettes at any given time. To your dragoons, it is practically a vacation. Liberty in a well-provisioned and well-established town does nothing but good for their spirits.
You too are no longer worked to exhaustion every day. Your duties seem to have been pared back to handling one or two patrols a week and dealing with the occasional breaches of discipline which come almost naturally to any group of young, fit, and courageous men with too much time on their hands.
In fact, once the patrols are cut back further with the end of the campaigning season and the onset of the autumn rains, you find yourself with barely any work at all and a great deal of free time.
How do you plan to spend it?
1) I shall finally get around to learning the Antari language.
2) I think I shall continue working on my memoirs.
3) I'll use the time to oversee the development of one of my lieutenants.
4) I shall call upon and spend time with a personal acquaintance.
Personal Information
As of the Summer of the 610th year of the Old Imperial Era.
Age: 22
Rank: Captain
Wealth: 408
Income: 15
Soldiering: 75%
Charisma: 43%
Intellect: 5%
Reputation: 21%
Health: 65%
Idealism: 65%; Cynicism: 35%
Ruthlessness: 39%; Mercy: 61%
You are a Knight of the Red, having the right to wear bane-hardened armour and wield a bane-runed sword.
You have no decorations as of yet.
Unit Information
Sixth Squadron, Royal Dragoons
Senior NCO: Staff-sergeant Hernandes
Discipline: 39%
Morale: 38%
Loyalty: 41%
Strength: 82%