Vaelin’s chin with a mock punch. “You’d think the cares of the Realm were on your shoulders. Brother sour-face they call you.”
“ Are you really sure you want a healer attached to the regiment?” Nortah had asked.
Sister Gilma laughed. “Oh I see I’m going to like you!” she said in her thick Nilsaelin brogue, giving a Nortah a punch on the arm that was less playful.
Vaelin had concealed his disappointment that Aspect Elera hadn’t seen fit to appoint Sister Sherin in answer to his request, although he was hardly surprised. “Whatever you require will be provided, sister.”
“ It better be.” She laughed. In the month since he noticed she tended to laugh when she was being serious, employing a humourless tone when indulging her weakness for gentle but effective mockery.
“ Another two broken arms today,” she told him with a chuckle and wry shake of her head as he entered the large tent that served as her treatment room. Four men were lying abed, bandaged and sleeping. Another two were being tended by the assistants she had insisted on recruiting from the ranks. To Vaelin’s surprise she had chosen two of the pressed men from the dungeons, slight fellows with quick minds and careful hands who would probably have made poor soldiers in any case.
“ Keep driving these men so hard and there’ll be few left to face a battle a month from now.” She was smiling her bright smile, blue eyes twinkling.
“ Battle is a hard business, sister. Soft training will make for soft soldiers who will in turn become soft corpses.”
Her smile faded a little. “Battle is coming then? There will be a war?”
War. The question was on everyone’s lips. It had been four weeks since the King had summoned the Fief Lord of Cumbrael and no answer had come. The Realm Guard had been confined to barracks and leave cancelled. Rumours flew with alarming speed. Cumbraelins were massing on the border. Cumbraelin archers had been seen in the Urlish. Hidden Denier sects were plotting all manner of hideous Dark fuelled villainy. Everywhere the air was thick with expectation and uncertainty, making Vaelin drive the men as hard as he dared. If the storm broke they had to be ready.
“ I know no more than you, sister,” he assured her. “Any more pox cases?”
“ Not since my visit to the ladies’ encampment.”
An outbreak of pox amongst the men had been traced to a camp of enterprising whores recently established in the woods a scant two miles away. Fearing the Aspect’s reaction to the news of a nest of whores so close to the Order House he ordered Sergeant Krelnik to put together a squad of the more trustworthy men to evict the women and send them back to the city. However, the old soldier had surprised him by hesitating. “Are you sure about this, my lord?”
“ I’ve got twenty men too poxed to train, sergeant. This regiment is under the command of the Order, can’t have the men sneaking off to… indulge their lust in this way.”
The Sergeant blinked, his grizzled, scarred face impassive but Vaelin felt sure he was suppressing a grin. There were times when talking to the sergeant he felt himself a child giving orders to his grandfather. “Erm, with respect, my lord. The regiment may belong to the Order but the men don’t. They ain’t brothers, they’re soldiers, and soldiers expect to be shown a woman now and again. Take away their… indulgence and there could be trouble. Not saying the men don’t respect you, my lord, they surely do, never seen a bunch as terrified of their commander as this lot, but these fellows ain’t exactly the cream of the Realm and we’ve been working them pretty hard. They get too hacked off they could start taking to their heels, hanging or no.”
“ What about the pox?”
“ Oh the Fifth Order’s got remedies aplenty for that. Sister Gilma’ll sort it, get her to pay a visit to these women, sort them in no time she will.”
So they had gone to Sister Gilma and Vaelin had stammered out a request whilst she regarded him with an icy visage.
“ You want me to go into a camp full of whores to cure them of the pox?” she said coldly.
“ Under guard of course, sister.”
She looked away, closing her eyes whilst Vaelin fought the desire to flee.
“ Five years training at the Order House,” she said softly. “Four more on the northern border assailed by savages and ice storms. And what is my reward? To live amongst the dregs of the Realm and tend to their doxies.” She shook her head. “Truly the Departed have cursed me.”
“ Sister, I meant no offence..!”
“ Oh good!” She said, beaming suddenly. “I’ll get my bag. The guard won’t be necessary, though I’ll need someone to show me the way.” She arched an eyebrow at Vaelin. “You don’t know it do you, brother?”
He grimaced at the memory of his stuttering denial. Sergeant Krelnik had been right, the incidents of pox fell away quickly and the men stayed content, or as content as they could be after weeks of training under his brothers’ bruising tutelage. He opted to forget to appraise the Aspect of the incident and there was a tacit agreement it was not discussed amongst the brothers.
“ Is there anything you need?” he asked Gilma. “I can send a cart to your Order House for supplies.”
“ My stocks are sufficient for now. Master Smentil’s herb garden has been a great help. He’s such a dear. Been teaching me to sign, look.” She made a series of signs with her plump but nimble hands that roughly translated as: I am a bothersome sow. “It means ‘My name is Gilma.’”
Vaelin nodded, his face expressionless. “Master Smentil is a gifted teacher.”
He left her with the wounded and went outside. Everywhere men were training, clustered in companies around brothers struggling to impart skills learned over a lifetime in the space of a few months. It was an often frustrating task, their recruits seemed so slow and clumsy, ignorant of the most basic tenets of combat. So much so that his brothers had complained bitterly when Vaelin forbade use of the cane. “Can’t train a dog if you can’t whip it,” Dentos had pointed out.
“ They’re not dogs,” Vaelin replied. “Not boys either, most of them anyway. Punish them with extra training or menial duties, cut their rum ration if you think it appropriate. But no beatings.”
The regiment was now at full strength, numbers swelled by the pressed men from the dungeons and a steady flow of new recruits who, true to the king’s prediction, had been drawn to a soldier’s life by Vaelin’s legend, some having travelled great distances to enlist.
“ More times than not it’s the rumble in a man’s belly makes him enlist,” Sergeant Krelnik observed. “This lot seem hungry only for the glory of serving under the Young Hawk.”
As the weeks passed the training began to take hold, the men growing visibly stronger, aided by a healthy diet which many had never known before. They stood straighter and moved faster, handling their weapons with greater skill, although they still had much to learn. Gallis the climber soon recovered much of his physique, his spirits brightened by repeated visits to the whores’ camp. He became one of the regiment’s characters, ever-ready with a cynical quip to draw laughter from his comrades, although he was wise enough to curb his tongue during the training sessions. The brothers may have been forbidden the cane but they knew a thousand ways to hurt a man in the tumble of a sparring match. Most gratifying for Vaelin was their discipline, they rarely fought amongst themselves, never questioned an order and there had been no attempts at desertion. He was yet to order a flogging or a hanging and lived in dread of the day when he had no option. War will be the test, he decided, recalling the miserable months in the Martishe and the many men who had chosen to risk escape through the Cumbraelin infested forest rather than face another day in the stockade.
He found Nortah teaching the bow to a group of their more burly recruits. All newly enlisted soldiers had been tested at the butts and most found wanting, the more keen-eyed collected into a company of crossbowmen, but a few had shown sufficient skill and strength to warrant further tuition. They numbered only thirty or so, but even a small number of skilled bowmen would be a valuable asset to the regiment. Nortah again proved an able teacher; all his charges could now sink a shaft into the centre of the butt from forty paces and one or two could repeat the feat with the rapidity only usually displayed by brothers of the Order.
“ Don’t kiss the string,” Nortah told a student, a brawny fellow Vaelin recalled from his trip to the dungeons. His name was Brak or Brax, a renowned poacher before the King’s wardens had caught him quartering a freshly felled deer in the Urlish. “Get the arrow back behind your ear for every loosing.”
Brak or Brax forced the extra effort into his muscles and let fly, the shaft striking home a few inches higher than the bulls eye. “Not bad,” Nortah told him. “But you’re still letting the stave swing out after you loose. Remember this is a war bow, you’re not hunting game with it. Get that string back as quick as you can.” He noticed
