You lie to the dying. Knuckles prided himself on telling the truth but his sergeant had told him, what seemed like a hundred years ago You lie to the dying.
So when Teeth asked him to watch after Wisp Knuckles promised he would. Knuckles had come across her before finding Teeth, a footman's hatchet embedded in her skull. Her face frozen in a look of surprise, her eyes wide- he closed them gently, a well practiced act, and made a note to come back to her.
Teeth's face broke into strained grin, blood spilling out from between the large gap in the front of his mouth, when Knuckles promised. People were funny. To the best of Knuckle's knowledge there had never been even one moment where Wisp had ever shown any affection towards Teeth and yet in his last moments. Something on the horizon caught Knuckle's eye, he tried to peer through the smoke to see it but it was gone lost into the haze.
Teeth's face broke into strained grin, blood spilling out from between the large gap in the front of his mouth, when Knuckles promised. People were funny. To the best of Knuckle's knowledge there had never been even one moment where Wisp had ever shown any affection towards Teeth and yet in his last moments. Something on the horizon caught Knuckle's eye, he tried to peer through the smoke to see it but it was gone lost into the haze.
He felt Teeth's hand go limp. He looked down at his face one last time, stared hard- to try to remember it -but knew all the same that eventually he wouldn't be able to. He closed Teeth's eyes just like he had closed Wisp's and thought then that perhaps that the only real intimate connection between the two was his hand closing their eyes.
Knuckles worked over Teeth's gear. His hauberk was in tatters but his boots were in good shape. Knuckles pulled them off and unstrapped the vambraces from Teeth's arms, Teeth had taken them from a corpse himself half a dozen years ago. A few coins and a woman's ring from a pouch at his belt and a long knife. Knuckles cut the dead man's belt off and pulled the knife and its scabbard free of the corpse.
A sad collection, but despite the fact their work always brought in coin, no one would ever be able to recover much more than that from any of their remains.
A sad collection, but despite the fact their work always brought in coin, no one would ever be able to recover much more than that from any of their remains.
A mercenary's life dangled a few delusional hopes before them, longevity wasn't one of them.
Knuckles returned to where Wisp lay, knelt to harvest what he could. Her pockets produced only a few valueless sentimental keepsakes. He pulled her leather breastplate off and left them - a string tied to a feather, a ceramic coin without markings, a thin silk chord with a pewter figuring attached to it- laying there across her chest.
As he stood Tapper knelt, dirt trapped in the heavy creases of his forehead, sweat had carried the grime off his completely bald pate. Tapper held a syringe in his claw like hands and looked up at him as if to ask permission. Knuckles had liked Wisp but she wasn't anything to him, and after all the dead were dead. He shrugged and left Tapper to his business.
He trudged towards the cart, the terrain a mess of blood and mud. He threw what he had found, except the coins, onto the dishearteningly large pile and sat on the cart's edge.
He was tired. That was to be expected, the fight-doomed from the start- had taken the whole morning. The days preceding it had been riddled with skirmishes and preparations and little sleep. He imagined that everyone was as tired as he was. Everyone who wasn't dead.
One by one the sergeants started to collect near the cart. A few leaned on the cart, a few sat, unbothered, in the mud. Almost as a rule they only fought when they had to, despite the job description of being soldiers for hire. At the end of any major engagement, which was not exactly their specialty, they did the Count. So they gathered slowly to number the dead. Knuckles felt sure that number would be high.
He was rubbing his palms into to his eyes while Mule and Faint approached. Faint sat down beside him, the cart creaking under her weight and Mule stayed standing.
'How many did you lose?' Faint asked. Knuckles answered with two fingers. Mule cursed in wonder, Knuckles knew his loses would be fewer than the others - they almost always were.
'You always were a lucky bastard' Faint said, then spat, mostly blood. Knuckles knew better though. Some part of it was the training, another part was his constant conscious efforts to keep his unit alive. But the last part, the undeniable part for anyone who had been in enough to battles, wasn't some divine luck, it was just stupid chance.
'Who?' Faint asked. His unit and hers had worked together frequently in the last few weeks.
'Teeth, Wisp,' Knuckles answered. Mule cursed again, this one of another tone. Wisp was well liked, but Knuckles suspected Mule cursed for Teeth, who had been around for more than a decade. A long life even in a company as careful as theirs.
'Did you tell him about Wisp?' Faint followed. Knuckles shook as his head. 'Good. Stupid fool. Stupid fool with that ridiculous gap.' Knuckles could tell she was upset as well.
'Never made much sense to me.' Mule said unprompted. Faint gave him an inquisitive look. 'His name. We don't usual do that, name someone ironically.' Teeth front two teeth had been missing, it had been as Faint had suggested, a ridiculous gap. Faint grunted in agreement.
'It wasn't ironic,' Knuckles started, he didn't know why. He didn't often feel the need to talk about the dead, it was one thing to remember their faces, but in general he didn't much care to talk about them. 'When Teeth first signed up, he had these two huge horse teeth.' Knuckles motioned in front of his face with his hand to size them up dramatically. 'They were these pearly white shovel sized.'
'That explains the gap,' Faint interjected
'Yeah,' Knuckles continued, 'Got his name for them and then got them knocked both out of his head the first scuffle he ever saw. By then.' Knuckles shrugged.'You get your name, its your name'.
Both Mule and Faint shook their heads. It was that slow head shake people only ever seemed to make when remembering the dead. Knuckles couldn't quite think of why he had decided to share that story. There was no purpose in defending Teeth. But then, for a moment he thought perhaps he was just defending the company once again.
That sat there in the silence for awhile.
After some time, two lieutenants arrived. One, his, female tall and lean, the other Squats - short, seemed to be almost as wide as he was tall, his eye was swollen shut and there were fingers missing from his left hand, both things were new.
Knuckles stood, and with his rising so did too the other sergeants.
"Hammer?" Mule asked after the missing lieutenant. Squats shook his head. Mule cursed, he and Hammer had been friends. One would assume that brothers-in-arms would be close, but forced company fostered true friends with no more frequency than did circumstance in a normal life. Mule had few friends, Hammer had had only one.
Knuckles asked though he already knew the answer, about waiting for the Captain. Frosty gave him the hand signal for 'negative', Knuckles answered her with a head nod. Knuckles had known and still it stung. He hadn't liked the Captain, the position did not foster intimate connections but in the twenty years Knuckles had been with the company he had only known two Captains. Continuity bred its own sort of affection.
Whaler spoke next, the thumbs of his huge ham sized fists, tucked into his belt, 'Well, we should settle that issue first.' He postured for a fight. Knuckles groaned internally. Plenty of elections had ended in fights according the stories that made up their history, he could not imagine though mustering up the energy to do so at the moment. He suspected that was what Whaler was counting on, exhausted disinterest.
'No, let's do the count first.' Ribbons spoke up, which was unusual- Sickles, hand on her namesake weapons, inched up behind her, which was not. Ribbons must have picked up on Whaler's intentions. Knuckles suspect most of the sergeants were too exhausted to notice, or too dumb- Mule for one had not received his name because of his robust intellect.
'Makes no sense to do the Count if there isn't somebody to decide what to do with the number,' injected Faint, though her voice sounded bitter to concede the point to Whaler. He was not a favourite. Knuckles echoed his agreement.
'Fine.' Ribbons submitted, backed up a step but not into Sickles, who had felt the tide shift before Ribbons concession and anticipated her retreat. The company did not have strict rules on succession. It had a history and precedents but no rules. Generally sergeants nominated, nominees accepted or decline, sergeants, lieutenants, mages, and the historian voted. All the mages were absent, tending the wounded. Several sergeants were dead. Knuckles hadn't seen the historian. The vote would go ahead, there were no rules to dictate otherwise.
'I nominate Whaler,' Buckle started, though Whaler might has well as just said it himself. Buckle was his longtime companion.
'Accepted'. Whaler responded. The informality of the nomination process caused a lull. No one spoke. Knuckles realized that more than three quarters of the staff had never partaken in the process before, they knew of it only through story. An unease passed through the soldiers. Knuckles was sure he could feel Whaler grinning.
'I nominate Knuckles,' Faint finally broke the silence. Knuckles could hear the relief, saw Ribbons and Sickle shuffle their frames in non-verbal support.
'Declined.' Knuckles answer. Ribbons face was one of disbelief, Faint just shook her head- Knuckles could tell in her reaction that she had expected nothing else.
'I nominate Frosty.' Knuckles countered. Frosty shot him daggers with her eyes, her perfect face featuring identical vertical ritual scars up both cheeks showed nothing. She was every bit her namesake. He had worked with her for years, she was capable, analytical and had the necessary viciousness that he felt their last captain had lacked. She did not want the position, he wasn't sure anyone ever wanted to be Captain, he could tell as she stared back at him. After a few lingering seconds she signaled her hands 'confirmation'. Knuckles felt himself unintentionally smile as he conceded to himself that her social skills would need some work.
He surveyed the crowd. They were obviously processing. Frosty was not particularly beloved, nor did she have any enemies, other than the one she had just made in Whaler. While not everyone had worked with her, she was a lieutenant and Whaler was only a sergeant. Rank always seemed to suggest capability to the newer sergeants. Those who had been around for a while knew that the correlation between leadership and aptitude was not always absolute, being good at one thing did not always translate at being good at another.
Across the divide Faint give him a begrudged smile. Knuckles knew she had always been trying to devise a way for the issue to be settled without conflict. Knuckles had provided her that. There was no foreseeable scenario where Whaler would choose to settle the debate through violence now. Frosty was one of the most terrifyingly dangerous people Knuckles had ever fought with.
Again, there was a lull after waiting through Knuckles question if it was time to vote. Grunts and shoulder shrugs, and he remembered again that most of them had never done this before.
'We'll vote by show of hands.' Faint offered up, then turned to Knuckles, 'Do the candidates vote?' Knuckles told her he had no idea.
'Of course we do,' Whaler huffed. Fainted turned to Frosty, she shrugged coolly.
'Okay, sergeants, lieutenants, we got any mages here?' She looked around. From that back Tapper squawked. 'Is Book here?' Everyone looked around. Some how he had snuck up on them, and was perched like some over-sized crow on the railing of the cart. The historian's yellow skin framed his smile, that looked always a little crazed. He held out his hands, coated in blood to the elbow and responded, 'I abstain, I'm done participating today.'
Whaler glared at him. Book's grin grew wider. 'The word abstain means I'm not voting.'
While Knuckles was sure more than a few people there didn't know the word, the comment was for Whaler, who reddened with anger.
'Fine. Sergeants, lieutenants, and Tapper, who will have to vote for all the mages I suppose...' Faint's voice trailed off. She was worried that they might need the votes. She looked to him, he shrugged at her. It was going to be what it was going to be.
'For Whaler?' A few hands went up immediately, Whalers was one of them, he glared into the crowd. Two more hands raised reluctantly under his gaze.
'For Frosty?' Somehow Tapper had moved his way through the front of the crowd. His hand shot up before Faint could finish her words. Knuckles was not surprised that he, as he suspect the other mages, would much prefer Frosty. Squats' arm raised nearly as quickly and Knuckles was unsure if he was as assured over her qualifications, also disinclined to have Whaler as his superior, or just grateful that Frosty had accepted the nominate, had she declined as Knuckles had, likely he would have been nominated next. Knuckles, Faint, Ribbons, Sickles, Mule raised theirs was well. A few other sergeants followed suit. Frosty stood there, arms crossed.
Knuckles could see Whaler counting, slowly, and on his face well before Faint confirmed it, he saw the outcome. Faint announced it. No one grumbled, though Whaler glowered.
'Who will take your spot as lieutenant?' Whaler perked up and asked, realizing there were still opportunities to be had. Faint audibly groaned.
The Captain spoke immediately, 'I will be re-organizing the units. I will organize them and promote or demote as I see necessary.' Whaler's head sunk. 'Right now we will deal with the count. Sergeants stand at attention and straighten out in a line.' The Captains voice was cold and hard but rather than shirking away from it Knuckles found himself grinning, he had guessed right. The Captain pointed at Tapper. 'You are dismissed. Check in with the other Talents. Returned me with expectations of imminent loss of life and estimations on when we can get out of this hell hole.' Tapper scurried off.
'Report fatalities and your name' the Captain order before they could start. 'You're keeping records i assume?' That was directed at Book. His audible gulp was his acknowledgement. She turned to the staff of sergeants who we none to glad to be standing at attention but none yet found the voice to complain.
'8, Faint' started. Every unit had a sergeant and ten soldiers.
'7, Mule"
'8 Sickles'
'7 Ribbons'
'5 Whaler'
'9 Buckle'
'2 Knuckles'. Again, under-breathes he heard a few curses. Nine more voices reported their loses none too different than the counts offered by other voices, and then four spoke again to inform for sergeants that had not survive. Knuckles stared off in the distance after a few reports. Seven out of every ten men and women he had known this morning were dead. He could recall no story about the company having ever suffered such loses.
The smell of smoke was in his nose, he blew it twice but could not shake it. It would linger for a few days he suspected, which was a better smell than would take these fields in a day. Nothing smelled so awful as a battlefield. The Captain spoke again, and Knuckles refocused.
'Fallow,' she used the former Captain's name, Knuckles would not have guessed she had known it, ' and Hammer's regiment are dead. All.' A few people gasped, even Knuckles felt himself involuntarily flinch.
'How?' someone asked.
'They were assigned to watch our contract's collection of magic users. Everyone in the area of them was killed in the struggle, where they stood.' Half a dozen of the sergeants spat on the ground, no soldier liked to hear of one of their own dying without getting to defend themselves.
'Do we go on?' there was a broken uncertainty in Whaler's voice that seemed impossible to expect a few minutes before. It was an impossible suggestion, that they might quit, Knuckles knew what the answer would be but he saw in the faces of some of those officers a level of doubt he could not have predicted.
'Of course.' The Captain's voice was so flat one could serve dinner on it. 'Gather you soldiers. We'll reorganize later. Pack supplies on carts, put the injured who can't walk on top. I don't care what Tapper reports. We're leaving. Move.' The last word snaped like a whip. A few spines straightened and as if they had been taken orders from her forever everyone turned to leave with purpose.
'Knuckles. A moment.'
He stopped in his tracks. Turned around and approached her. 'Walk with me sergeant to the hill.'
They had fought on the plain outside March. The hill they walked up was a little thing but it would allow them to look over the doomed field. The plain was not the where their former captain would have preferred to have fought but their company was just one of many, and having taken the contract, they followed orders and died there.
'It was a shitty contract.' she said, almost as if she read his mind. He was not sure how to respond, so he didn't. Once she became aware he was not going to she spoke again, 'When we are away from the others you may speak freely with me Knuckles.'
He couldn't recall ever seeing anyone speak freely with the other Captain and while he could not imagine that she would care, it did then occur to him that being Captain was lonely position.
'It's easier to say in hindsight. Outcomes, despite what Rats says, aren't always obvious.' Rats was their resident would-be seer, his powers at divination were a point of humor in the company.
'Of course, no one ever knows the outcome, can predict the cost.' she spoke as they crested. 'The problem wasn't the outcome, it was the contract itself.'
'The pay?'
'No, the role.' He didn't quite get what she meant. He forgot to question her as he stopped to take in the battlefield. He could see over the expanse across the area of the battle they had not fought on. The ground seemed to move slightly, the field was littered almost completely with bodies, and while many were dead, many more were simply dying- a process that would taken many of them days to complete. It was impossible to distinguish the dying from the dead not because the distance but because of the quantity.
A horn blew. On the far ridge there was movement. He fished into the pocket at his belt, retrieved the individual parts of his spyglass. Through it he looked to the movement. A stream of figures moved out into the field, they were uniform in appearance- their faces concealed by red sallet helmets wearing matching robes, they moved in pairs; some carrying a thurible which swung back and forth as they walked, the others carried silver spears that seemed impractically thin. Though armed nothing about their movements or the way they carried themselves convey to him that they were militarily trained. Each pair pausing whenever they found one of the dying only long enough for the spear wielder to kill them.
When he pulled the spyglass from his eye he found the Captains hand waiting patiently for it. She surveyed the scene then handed it back to him.
'Lets get out this shit hole now.' She turned and walked backed the way they came.
While he repacked his spyglass Knuckles watched as the red robed figures moved over the plain, working over it like a slow wave. Many years later some poet or historian would write about this battle, about the valor of the vanquished and courage of the conqueror and would tell some lie about how the king of March surrendered his sword in defeat amongst a sea of streaming flags. Knuckles had heard stories and songs his whole life about battles but he knew the truth about conquest, that it always ended the same way, with slaughter.
* * *
One by one the sergeants started to collect near the cart. A few leaned on the cart, a few sat, unbothered, in the mud. Almost as a rule they only fought when they had to, despite the job description of being soldiers for hire. At the end of any major engagement, which was not exactly their specialty, they did the Count. So they gathered slowly to number the dead. Knuckles felt sure that number would be high.
He was rubbing his palms into to his eyes while Mule and Faint approached. Faint sat down beside him, the cart creaking under her weight and Mule stayed standing.
'How many did you lose?' Faint asked. Knuckles answered with two fingers. Mule cursed in wonder, Knuckles knew his loses would be fewer than the others - they almost always were.
'You always were a lucky bastard' Faint said, then spat, mostly blood. Knuckles knew better though. Some part of it was the training, another part was his constant conscious efforts to keep his unit alive. But the last part, the undeniable part for anyone who had been in enough to battles, wasn't some divine luck, it was just stupid chance.
'Who?' Faint asked. His unit and hers had worked together frequently in the last few weeks.
'Teeth, Wisp,' Knuckles answered. Mule cursed again, this one of another tone. Wisp was well liked, but Knuckles suspected Mule cursed for Teeth, who had been around for more than a decade. A long life even in a company as careful as theirs.
'Did you tell him about Wisp?' Faint followed. Knuckles shook as his head. 'Good. Stupid fool. Stupid fool with that ridiculous gap.' Knuckles could tell she was upset as well.
'Never made much sense to me.' Mule said unprompted. Faint gave him an inquisitive look. 'His name. We don't usual do that, name someone ironically.' Teeth front two teeth had been missing, it had been as Faint had suggested, a ridiculous gap. Faint grunted in agreement.
'It wasn't ironic,' Knuckles started, he didn't know why. He didn't often feel the need to talk about the dead, it was one thing to remember their faces, but in general he didn't much care to talk about them. 'When Teeth first signed up, he had these two huge horse teeth.' Knuckles motioned in front of his face with his hand to size them up dramatically. 'They were these pearly white shovel sized.'
'That explains the gap,' Faint interjected
'Yeah,' Knuckles continued, 'Got his name for them and then got them knocked both out of his head the first scuffle he ever saw. By then.' Knuckles shrugged.'You get your name, its your name'.
Both Mule and Faint shook their heads. It was that slow head shake people only ever seemed to make when remembering the dead. Knuckles couldn't quite think of why he had decided to share that story. There was no purpose in defending Teeth. But then, for a moment he thought perhaps he was just defending the company once again.
That sat there in the silence for awhile.
After some time, two lieutenants arrived. One, his, female tall and lean, the other Squats - short, seemed to be almost as wide as he was tall, his eye was swollen shut and there were fingers missing from his left hand, both things were new.
Knuckles stood, and with his rising so did too the other sergeants.
"Hammer?" Mule asked after the missing lieutenant. Squats shook his head. Mule cursed, he and Hammer had been friends. One would assume that brothers-in-arms would be close, but forced company fostered true friends with no more frequency than did circumstance in a normal life. Mule had few friends, Hammer had had only one.
Knuckles asked though he already knew the answer, about waiting for the Captain. Frosty gave him the hand signal for 'negative', Knuckles answered her with a head nod. Knuckles had known and still it stung. He hadn't liked the Captain, the position did not foster intimate connections but in the twenty years Knuckles had been with the company he had only known two Captains. Continuity bred its own sort of affection.
Whaler spoke next, the thumbs of his huge ham sized fists, tucked into his belt, 'Well, we should settle that issue first.' He postured for a fight. Knuckles groaned internally. Plenty of elections had ended in fights according the stories that made up their history, he could not imagine though mustering up the energy to do so at the moment. He suspected that was what Whaler was counting on, exhausted disinterest.
'No, let's do the count first.' Ribbons spoke up, which was unusual- Sickles, hand on her namesake weapons, inched up behind her, which was not. Ribbons must have picked up on Whaler's intentions. Knuckles suspect most of the sergeants were too exhausted to notice, or too dumb- Mule for one had not received his name because of his robust intellect.
'Makes no sense to do the Count if there isn't somebody to decide what to do with the number,' injected Faint, though her voice sounded bitter to concede the point to Whaler. He was not a favourite. Knuckles echoed his agreement.
'Fine.' Ribbons submitted, backed up a step but not into Sickles, who had felt the tide shift before Ribbons concession and anticipated her retreat. The company did not have strict rules on succession. It had a history and precedents but no rules. Generally sergeants nominated, nominees accepted or decline, sergeants, lieutenants, mages, and the historian voted. All the mages were absent, tending the wounded. Several sergeants were dead. Knuckles hadn't seen the historian. The vote would go ahead, there were no rules to dictate otherwise.
'I nominate Whaler,' Buckle started, though Whaler might has well as just said it himself. Buckle was his longtime companion.
'Accepted'. Whaler responded. The informality of the nomination process caused a lull. No one spoke. Knuckles realized that more than three quarters of the staff had never partaken in the process before, they knew of it only through story. An unease passed through the soldiers. Knuckles was sure he could feel Whaler grinning.
'I nominate Knuckles,' Faint finally broke the silence. Knuckles could hear the relief, saw Ribbons and Sickle shuffle their frames in non-verbal support.
'Declined.' Knuckles answer. Ribbons face was one of disbelief, Faint just shook her head- Knuckles could tell in her reaction that she had expected nothing else.
'I nominate Frosty.' Knuckles countered. Frosty shot him daggers with her eyes, her perfect face featuring identical vertical ritual scars up both cheeks showed nothing. She was every bit her namesake. He had worked with her for years, she was capable, analytical and had the necessary viciousness that he felt their last captain had lacked. She did not want the position, he wasn't sure anyone ever wanted to be Captain, he could tell as she stared back at him. After a few lingering seconds she signaled her hands 'confirmation'. Knuckles felt himself unintentionally smile as he conceded to himself that her social skills would need some work.
He surveyed the crowd. They were obviously processing. Frosty was not particularly beloved, nor did she have any enemies, other than the one she had just made in Whaler. While not everyone had worked with her, she was a lieutenant and Whaler was only a sergeant. Rank always seemed to suggest capability to the newer sergeants. Those who had been around for a while knew that the correlation between leadership and aptitude was not always absolute, being good at one thing did not always translate at being good at another.
Across the divide Faint give him a begrudged smile. Knuckles knew she had always been trying to devise a way for the issue to be settled without conflict. Knuckles had provided her that. There was no foreseeable scenario where Whaler would choose to settle the debate through violence now. Frosty was one of the most terrifyingly dangerous people Knuckles had ever fought with.
Again, there was a lull after waiting through Knuckles question if it was time to vote. Grunts and shoulder shrugs, and he remembered again that most of them had never done this before.
'We'll vote by show of hands.' Faint offered up, then turned to Knuckles, 'Do the candidates vote?' Knuckles told her he had no idea.
'Of course we do,' Whaler huffed. Fainted turned to Frosty, she shrugged coolly.
'Okay, sergeants, lieutenants, we got any mages here?' She looked around. From that back Tapper squawked. 'Is Book here?' Everyone looked around. Some how he had snuck up on them, and was perched like some over-sized crow on the railing of the cart. The historian's yellow skin framed his smile, that looked always a little crazed. He held out his hands, coated in blood to the elbow and responded, 'I abstain, I'm done participating today.'
Whaler glared at him. Book's grin grew wider. 'The word abstain means I'm not voting.'
While Knuckles was sure more than a few people there didn't know the word, the comment was for Whaler, who reddened with anger.
'Fine. Sergeants, lieutenants, and Tapper, who will have to vote for all the mages I suppose...' Faint's voice trailed off. She was worried that they might need the votes. She looked to him, he shrugged at her. It was going to be what it was going to be.
'For Whaler?' A few hands went up immediately, Whalers was one of them, he glared into the crowd. Two more hands raised reluctantly under his gaze.
'For Frosty?' Somehow Tapper had moved his way through the front of the crowd. His hand shot up before Faint could finish her words. Knuckles was not surprised that he, as he suspect the other mages, would much prefer Frosty. Squats' arm raised nearly as quickly and Knuckles was unsure if he was as assured over her qualifications, also disinclined to have Whaler as his superior, or just grateful that Frosty had accepted the nominate, had she declined as Knuckles had, likely he would have been nominated next. Knuckles, Faint, Ribbons, Sickles, Mule raised theirs was well. A few other sergeants followed suit. Frosty stood there, arms crossed.
Knuckles could see Whaler counting, slowly, and on his face well before Faint confirmed it, he saw the outcome. Faint announced it. No one grumbled, though Whaler glowered.
'Who will take your spot as lieutenant?' Whaler perked up and asked, realizing there were still opportunities to be had. Faint audibly groaned.
The Captain spoke immediately, 'I will be re-organizing the units. I will organize them and promote or demote as I see necessary.' Whaler's head sunk. 'Right now we will deal with the count. Sergeants stand at attention and straighten out in a line.' The Captains voice was cold and hard but rather than shirking away from it Knuckles found himself grinning, he had guessed right. The Captain pointed at Tapper. 'You are dismissed. Check in with the other Talents. Returned me with expectations of imminent loss of life and estimations on when we can get out of this hell hole.' Tapper scurried off.
'Report fatalities and your name' the Captain order before they could start. 'You're keeping records i assume?' That was directed at Book. His audible gulp was his acknowledgement. She turned to the staff of sergeants who we none to glad to be standing at attention but none yet found the voice to complain.
'8, Faint' started. Every unit had a sergeant and ten soldiers.
'7, Mule"
'8 Sickles'
'7 Ribbons'
'5 Whaler'
'9 Buckle'
'2 Knuckles'. Again, under-breathes he heard a few curses. Nine more voices reported their loses none too different than the counts offered by other voices, and then four spoke again to inform for sergeants that had not survive. Knuckles stared off in the distance after a few reports. Seven out of every ten men and women he had known this morning were dead. He could recall no story about the company having ever suffered such loses.
The smell of smoke was in his nose, he blew it twice but could not shake it. It would linger for a few days he suspected, which was a better smell than would take these fields in a day. Nothing smelled so awful as a battlefield. The Captain spoke again, and Knuckles refocused.
'Fallow,' she used the former Captain's name, Knuckles would not have guessed she had known it, ' and Hammer's regiment are dead. All.' A few people gasped, even Knuckles felt himself involuntarily flinch.
'How?' someone asked.
'They were assigned to watch our contract's collection of magic users. Everyone in the area of them was killed in the struggle, where they stood.' Half a dozen of the sergeants spat on the ground, no soldier liked to hear of one of their own dying without getting to defend themselves.
'Do we go on?' there was a broken uncertainty in Whaler's voice that seemed impossible to expect a few minutes before. It was an impossible suggestion, that they might quit, Knuckles knew what the answer would be but he saw in the faces of some of those officers a level of doubt he could not have predicted.
'Of course.' The Captain's voice was so flat one could serve dinner on it. 'Gather you soldiers. We'll reorganize later. Pack supplies on carts, put the injured who can't walk on top. I don't care what Tapper reports. We're leaving. Move.' The last word snaped like a whip. A few spines straightened and as if they had been taken orders from her forever everyone turned to leave with purpose.
'Knuckles. A moment.'
He stopped in his tracks. Turned around and approached her. 'Walk with me sergeant to the hill.'
They had fought on the plain outside March. The hill they walked up was a little thing but it would allow them to look over the doomed field. The plain was not the where their former captain would have preferred to have fought but their company was just one of many, and having taken the contract, they followed orders and died there.
'It was a shitty contract.' she said, almost as if she read his mind. He was not sure how to respond, so he didn't. Once she became aware he was not going to she spoke again, 'When we are away from the others you may speak freely with me Knuckles.'
He couldn't recall ever seeing anyone speak freely with the other Captain and while he could not imagine that she would care, it did then occur to him that being Captain was lonely position.
'It's easier to say in hindsight. Outcomes, despite what Rats says, aren't always obvious.' Rats was their resident would-be seer, his powers at divination were a point of humor in the company.
'Of course, no one ever knows the outcome, can predict the cost.' she spoke as they crested. 'The problem wasn't the outcome, it was the contract itself.'
'The pay?'
'No, the role.' He didn't quite get what she meant. He forgot to question her as he stopped to take in the battlefield. He could see over the expanse across the area of the battle they had not fought on. The ground seemed to move slightly, the field was littered almost completely with bodies, and while many were dead, many more were simply dying- a process that would taken many of them days to complete. It was impossible to distinguish the dying from the dead not because the distance but because of the quantity.
A horn blew. On the far ridge there was movement. He fished into the pocket at his belt, retrieved the individual parts of his spyglass. Through it he looked to the movement. A stream of figures moved out into the field, they were uniform in appearance- their faces concealed by red sallet helmets wearing matching robes, they moved in pairs; some carrying a thurible which swung back and forth as they walked, the others carried silver spears that seemed impractically thin. Though armed nothing about their movements or the way they carried themselves convey to him that they were militarily trained. Each pair pausing whenever they found one of the dying only long enough for the spear wielder to kill them.
When he pulled the spyglass from his eye he found the Captains hand waiting patiently for it. She surveyed the scene then handed it back to him.
'Lets get out this shit hole now.' She turned and walked backed the way they came.
While he repacked his spyglass Knuckles watched as the red robed figures moved over the plain, working over it like a slow wave. Many years later some poet or historian would write about this battle, about the valor of the vanquished and courage of the conqueror and would tell some lie about how the king of March surrendered his sword in defeat amongst a sea of streaming flags. Knuckles had heard stories and songs his whole life about battles but he knew the truth about conquest, that it always ended the same way, with slaughter.
* * *
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