The Soldier's Tale

THE SOLDIER'S TALE

Jonathan Moeller

***

The plague took Camorak's family, and all
that remains to him is duty.

He is a man-at-arms in service to the Dux
of Durandis, fighting to defend the realm from the savage orcs of
the wilderness.

A duty that might lead him to his
death...

***

The Soldier's Tale

Copyright 2015 by Jonathan Moeller.

Smashwords Edition.

Cover image copyright catiamadio |
Dreamstime.com & © Aleksminyaylo1 | Dreamstime.com - Knight
Holding Sword On A Sky Background Photo.

Ebook edition published September
2015.

All Rights Reserved.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents are either the product of the
author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of
this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the
express written permission of the author or publisher, except where
permitted by law.

***

I woke up with a hangover and a headache so
sharp it felt as if someone had pounded nails into my head.

I usually did, these days.

It was a fine bright day in the summer of
the Year of Our Lord 1471. The sun rose over the plains and hills
of Durandis, and one of those damned rosy rays of dawn came through
the arrow slit that served as my window and hit me right in the
face.

It annoyed me, but I didn’t care that it
annoyed me, and I didn’t care that it made my headache worse.

I had to get up anyway. I had yet to miss a
day of duty because of a hangover, and I would be damned if I was
going to start now.

So I got up. As an Optio of the Dux’s
men-at-arms, I had my own room in the barracks of Castra Durius,
albeit one that was little more than a stone closet. One of the
halfling servants had refilled the water basin while I had been
dead drunk, and I lifted it and drank about half of the contents. I
used the rest of the water to shave, watching myself in the little
mirror of cloudy glass as I scraped away last night’s stubble. I
looked terrible, my gray eyes bloodshot, my brown hair marked with
gray streaks, the lines on my face deeper than they had been
yesterday.

I looked like hell. Of course, those lines
and those gray hairs hadn’t been there until three years ago,
hadn’t been there until…

If I dwelled on that too long, I would
start drinking again, and that was not going to happen while I had
duty. I was a man-at-arms of the Dux Kors Durius of Durandis, and I
would be damned before I showed up for duty drunk. Even after
everything, I was still an Optio of the Dux’s men-at-arms, and I
suspected I would die that way.

I wondered if drinking myself to death
counted.

By the time I finished shaving, the water
had a chance to work its way through me, so I relieved myself and
got dressed, pulling on my tabard over my chain mail. The Dux’s
colors are green, and his badge is a gray tower upon that field of
green. Sometimes the new men grumbled that the colors looked drab,
but they soon changed their minds. They were easy to clean, for one
thing.

And when the Mhorites came down from the
Kothluuskan mountains to make trouble, the colors made it easy to
hide in the hills.

I left the barracks and strode into the
courtyard of Castra Durius, my scabbard tapping a little against my
left leg with every step. The castra occupied a hill at the edge of
the Kothluuskan foothills themselves, its walls tall and strong,
its octagonal towers topped with war engines, its keep a massive
block of stone. Long ago, a knight named Sir Durius had claimed the
hill, driving the Mhorites into their mountain valleys. The High
King had granted him the land as Dux, and Durius had given the name
Durandis to the plain between Kothluusk and the River Cintarra in
honor of his father, who had fallen fighting the Mhorites. Ever
since, Durandis and Castra Durius had stood as guardians, defending
the rest of Andomhaim from the malice of the Mhorite orcs and the
creatures that dwelled in the Deeps below the mountains.

I remembered my wife telling my daughter
that story, the last time I had seen them. Before…

I thought of the whiskey waiting underneath
my cot.

I pushed the thought out of my head and
walked to the gate.

Sir Primus Tulvan stood there. He looked
the way I always thought the Romans must have looked upon Old Earth
in ancient days, with his graying hair close-cropped, his face
stern, his nose like the beak of a proud bird of prey. He was the
youngest son of a prominent noble family of Tarlion, and so had
come to take service with Dux Kors. He had risen to the rank of
Decurion, commanding a company of men-at-arms, and I served as his
Optio, his second-in-command.

The Decurion and I had been in a lot of
rough spots together, but we had survived. Sir Primus knew how to
keep his head in a battle. Both in the literal and the metaphorical
sense.

“Sir,” I said.

“Optio Camorak,” said Primus. He glanced to
the east, checking the position of the sun. I was still early.
“Feeling the worse for wear, are we?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “My cot is a bit stiff,
sir.”

Primus snorted. “A stiff drink, you mean.
Maybe nine or ten of them?”

I straightened up. “Have I ever been
derelict in my duty, sir?”

Primus sighed. “On the contrary. There are
other things in a man’s life than his duty, though.”

“Not for me, sir,” I said.

Primus said nothing for a while, and then
nodded.

“So,” said the knight at last, “we’ve new
lads to turn into men-at-arms. Up for the task, Optio?”

“Always, sir,” I said.

“Good man,” said Primus. We waited as the
sun rose, and a short time later the first of our new recruits
marched into the castra from the town below the hill.

Every man of fighting age in Durandis could
be mobilized as militia in time of war, but the Dux always kept a
standing force of men-at-arms to garrison his fortresses and
respond to any raids from Kothluusk or the Deeps. Sir Primus’s
company of men-at-arms had suffered losses lately. Some men had
retired of old age. A few had fallen in a skirmish with the
Mhorites a month past, and had been buried with honors.

Either way, we needed replacements, and I
watched those replacements walk into the castra, looking at the
towers and battlements with wide eyes. Twenty young men between the
ages of sixteen and twenty filed through the gate, accompanied by
Optio Murcius, a squat, scowling man with an oft-broken nose and a
missing left ear who traveled up and down Durandis seeking recruits
for the Dux. Despite his intimidating appearance, he had a knack
for finding recruits.

“Sir Primus,” said Murcius. “These lads
wish to swear to the Dux’s service.”

“Very good, Optio,” said Primus, turning
his sternest look upon the recruits. “The Dux of Durandis charged
with defending both his lands and the realm of Andomhaim from all
enemies. Every man of Andomhaim is called to serve in times of
campaign, but the dangers around us require the Dux to maintain
soldiers at all times. Only the worthiest men are permitted to
serve as men-at-arms in Castra Durius, and over the next few weeks
we shall see if you are worthy.”

I listened with half an ear as Primus
continued his oration, his Latin soaring to formal heights he
rarely used in everyday speech. While he talked, I looked over the
recruits. I thought perhaps I could turn half of them into
men-at-arms. The recruits would have differing motivations for
coming here. Some of them wanted to serve and defend Durandis.
Likely some of them wanted to get away from their families’
freeholds, or just their families. Others might have lost kinsmen
to the Mhorites and wished to avenge them.

“This is Optio Camorak,” said Primus,
gesturing at me, and I turned my full attention back to the
Decurion. “You already know Optio Murcius. Optio Camorak will take
charge of your training, and Optio Murcius will assist him. For the
next two months, as far as you are concerned Optio Camorak speaks
with the voice of the Dux, the High King, and the Dominus Christus
himself. Am I understood?”

Some of the men murmured their assent.

“Am I understood?” boomed Sir Primus, using
his field voice.

The young men answered more
enthusiastically this time.

“Optio, be about your work,” said Primus. I
bowed to him, and the knight strode off, leaving twenty young men
watching me with trepidation.

I set about justifying their
discomfort.

I had been a man-at-arms for twelve years,
ever since I had joined the Dux’s service at fifteen, and when I
had first joined I had hated my training and had thought my Optio a
cruel tyrant. Later I realized that his training had saved my life
again and again. In battle, following orders and knowing how to use
your weapons was the margin between life and death, and discipline
offered the men of Durandis an edge over the savage orcs of
Kothluusk or bands of kobolds raiding from 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, but the boy had the unusual gift of
humility. There was no arrogance to him, and the other recruits
seemed to like him, even the troublemakers.