Chapter
2
After about ten minutes of
walking they arrived at one of the squad campfires. The men were all listening to someone
speaking to them, giving the occasional comment and laughing uproariously every
couple minutes. This was just like
Keth… Watching this for about five
minutes Jett stepped into the circle. All of the men stood up immediately and
saluted.
The man who had been telling the
story looked up from the campfire, “Hello Jett, It has been a while.” Keth was
not a young man, he looked to be around 70, though he had aged very well. He had short white hair. He was wearing light leather armor and had a
beautiful walking stick set across his lap.
Jet turned to his men, “At ease,
men.” He then turned to the visitor, “Hello Mr. Seventhor, what did you want to
tell me so much that you were sent all the way out here from the capital?”
“Oh, I was just dropping in to
say hello.” Keth said.
“Oh, I’m sure…” Jet said while
walking over to talk to him, “Why don’t we go back and talk in the command
tent.”
“But,” Keth said, “I was just
going to tell these fine men another story!” He winked at the men in the squad,
“Ahh well, I suppose I best follow you.
Have a good evening.” He nodded formally to the men and a couple of them
snickered. Keth smiled, then walked off following Jett. Jett chuckled to himself. Knowing Keth;
everyone in the camp would probably know him personally within the week…
After chatting for a while, Keth
said, “Jett, I’ve been talking to your soldiers. They all respect you, but they wish that you
would let them actually do things that are challenging for them.”
Confused Jett said, “What, do
they want more work?”
“No, they have plenty of work,
but most of it doesn’t take skill. It’s
just manual labor. They joined this army
because it’s the most elite. You train some of the most skilled fighters this
country has, but they haven’t seen any of that.
They haven’t seen any brilliant leadership; just control. They want you to believe in them enough to
let them actually be productive.”
“…Okay,” Jett said, “But I’m not
going to risk their necks just because they’re bored.”
Keth sighed, “Jett, this is why I
was sent. You have the most skilled troops ANYWHERE, but you have to make use
of them or they are not going to be of any use.”
“Right,” Jett said, “I’ll think
on that. We should probably get some
sleep. It’s late.” Earlier, Jett told a
few men to set up a tent for Keth. Now,
he led Keth there and told him where everything in the camp was, then walked
back to the tent. “Ahhhh,” He sighed, “It’s
been a long day.” He undressed and went
to sleep.
The next morning Jett woke up
early, as he always did. The sun was
still hours from coming up… It didn’t rise until around 9:30, because of the
mountains. Jett walked out and began to inspect the men and see what they were
up too. He then went around and checked
on each of the things that he had assigned the other day; a new watch tower, a
supply of grain coming into the camp from the capital and some new hidden
bunkers in the pass. He could have waited for the reports, but it was better
this way. He could tweak some things. He really expected the men would mess up
from time to time and there was a certain way one had to do these sorts of
things.
The sun came up over the
mountains just as Jett got back to camp and the view was breathtaking. The
green mountains still had traces of fog on them, though it would be a totally
clear day. There was a nice breeze
blowing. On the way back to the camp, Jett had met Dan. When he saw Keth he said, “You’ve been
micromanaging again, haven’t you.”
“You like that word way too
much…” Keth said, “Besides, it’s not micromanaging, it’s called ‘giving them
instructions and knowing what’s going on.’ ”
“…Right.” Dan said, obviously not
convinced, “Alright them, did you hear any news from the towers?”
“Oh! Right…” Jett said, “You
distracted me… It looks as if there’s an advance force of men coming to test
out our defenses. They should be here in maybe four to five hours.”
“What?” Dan said, “How many men
are there?”
“They were too far away to really
tell.” Jett said, “But it looked like there were close to five hundred. My men
will send a message once they find out how many there are.”
“Alright,” Dan said, nodding,
“I’ll tell my men then and get them ready.”
A few hours later, they were marching out of the pass, each
with three hundred men. They had received word that the advance force had
400 men. So they had sent overwhelming force. Anymore and it would
have just been inefficient. It was kind of confusing as to why there were
so few men, the enemy had to have some idea of the number of forces they were
against, it seemed like a suicide mission. Regardless, they would have to stop
them, or else they’d just start killing, this way would result in a lot less
casualties. They entered the plane at around two in the afternoon. Jett
rode a horse, for while it made him a more obvious target, the ability to
communicate quickly outweighed any disadvantage like that. They got in a
triangular formation with each man having a ten foot long spear. While
these weren’t as long as SOME which were used, they were long enough to work.
Sometime later, after having waited at the mouth of the pass
for a while, they saw the enemy crest a hill in front of them. While there may
have only been around four hundred men, it seemed like thousands, they were
screaming, waiving swords, spears and bows in the air, it was an unorganized
mess of bodies waiving sharp deadly objects. Jett raised a certain
colored flag from the front of his small army. They all straightened up, rolled
their shoulders, and in general got ready to move. Jett waited for one more
minute, he wanted his men to have to run as short of a distance as possible.
Finally, he dropped the flag, his men rushed forward in a spear of sharp steel
while the other two armies went at the approaching force at an angle from each
side of him. The enemy line, such as it was, was instantly broken.
Jett noted that this force was nothing like the trained, ruthless,
brutally efficient force that he had been expecting. In fact, he couldn’t
figure out how an army like this broke through the front lines...
Suddenly a shout from behind him made Jett turn around. There were
hundreds of men running up the slope behind him! Jett rode to the back of his
military formation and shouted, at the top of his lungs, “company two, turn
about enemies in the rear!!!” The back third turned around to engage the enemy
and while they were outnumbered they should have been able to take this
force, it was only perhaps two hundred men… But what if they couldn’t, they
hadn’t been in a battle for months… There were just too many things that could
go wrong. Jett pulled out the white and red striped flag, waving it in
the air signaled that his men were to make an orderly retreat. Jett
figured that he could draw the attacking men away while retreating letting the
other armies deal with the big one.
His men pulled back while still fighting. They pulled about
two thirds of the rear attacking force back but the other third attacked Dan’s
army, inflicting some casualties, though not many, since he had seen them in
time. Jett then realized, if this had been a Major battle, that could
have lost the entire thing, that one move right there… “Oh, blast it…” Jet
muttered. A few more minutes passing by was enough to finish the battle,
after the enemy had all ran off or were killed Jett’s army searched the
battleground for the living, once all those had been found and helped they
gathered all their dead soldiers and carried them back to their camp, the enemy
soldiers were all put in a pile and burned, it would have been nice to bury
them… but It’s hard to spend days on end working to honor someone who died
trying to kill you.
No comments:
Post a Comment