Chapter three
Jett walked out of Dan’s command tent, they had just finished
the post battle debrief. They had, of course, talked of Jett’s retreat,
both Naphe and Dan agreed that it had caused more casualties than it had saved.
Reluctantly, he had to agree with them. It wasn’t necessary and it had
cost lives… And yet, what if his men hadn’t been up for it? With a sigh,
Jett forced the issue out of his mind, he’d think about it later. For
now, he was going to meet Keth, who wanted to look at the area where the
commanders had decided they should fight the enemies. Jett went to Keth’s
tent to meet him, when he got there, Keth was ready to go. They walked
off towards to outer watch towers. On the way they talked of what had
happened in the recant days, Jett trusted Keth quite a lot so he asked for his
opinion on some things that had been going on.
After a while they reached
a point in the path when the person taking the path had to move aside some
branches. Jett had always thought that it would be the perfect place for an
ambush since the target couldn’t hear, see, or move very well while going
through that area. But he hadn’t ever encountered anyone else around
here, so Jett started moving through. As soon as he started pushing
through the branches he heard the sound of people behind him start to run, it
sounded as if there were perhaps three of them. He looked back, and his
suspicions were confirmed. For a moment Jett worried that Keth might be
injured, but then remembered that Keth could probably still take him in a
fight, he’d be fine. Jett kept trying to push through the brush as a
distraction. At the last second before the would-be assassins reached him
Jett ducked and fell backwards, so he was lying on the ground. The people
running behind him were confused for a moment as to where he had gone. And a
moment was all that was necessary. Down where Jett was lying on his back there
were no branches, so he had about two and a half feet to work with, while the
other men were still entangled in the branches. Quickly rolling and then
turning, Jett brought his leg into contact with the first man’s ankle. The man fell to the ground and a quick hit to
the head from a thick branch Jett had found knocked the man out cold.
The second man tried to jump out into the open but didn’t
make it before being tripped and knocked out as well. But the third man
had plenty of time to work his way out and into the open clearing. Where had
Keth gone, Jett wondered? Jett grabbed a stone off the ground, threw it
at the standing man’s head and then dashed out into the open. Suddenly
from his left a man stood up, a man with a fully drawn bow. Jett turned,
knowing that there wasn’t really anything he could do, other than take the
arrow and hope that it wouldn’t do too much damage. But, he decided just
in case, he would duck down to the ground, which he did. Suddenly the
archer went stiff, and then fell over, his bow and arrow falling useless to the
ground. Distracted Jett almost didn’t see the sword swing of the third
man, but drew his dagger and parried it in time, then spun and stabbed the man
right in the shoulder. Apparently the rock
hadn’t knocked him out… After dealing
with this, Jett turned to try to process what had happened, and saw Keth
standing behind where the archer had stood. “You got him?” Jett asked.
“Yes,” Keth said, “I did, did you think that I wouldn’t? I
saw him early, I’m surprised you didn’t”
Calming himself down Jett said, “I was sort of preoccupied at
the moment thinking about my troops…”
Keth responded, “Ahh yes, your troops. I suppose that this
could be a lesson…”
“Another lesson?” Keth said, reminded of his years as a
student of Keth’s
“Hmm, yes.” Keth gave a small chuckle, then went totally
serious. “You have to trust people, if you hadn’t trusted me then you wouldn’t
have been as efficient, you would have been worried about something like the
archer happening. By trusting me you were able to focus on what you
needed to focus on, and by you not trying to tell me what to do, by trusting me
to do my job, you allowed me to do it well.”
Jett thought about that… Perhaps he would try it tomorrow…
But for now, they needed to go to that watch tower.
Once they got to the watch tower Jett looked around before
revealing himself and he realized that the men were doing just fine… There
really wasn’t anything that he needed to fix. Usually there was, so he
was confused. As soon as Jett stepped out and his men saw him the place
went crazy, everyone was rushing to do their jobs faster than was really
possible, they were messing up, and in general doing a mediocre job of it.
He then realized, perhaps they were not doing their best BECAUSE of the
micromanaging rather than in spite of it. With a little prodding from
Keth… he decided to test this theory.
Going to sleep that night he resolved, he wouldn’t try to
tell any solder what to do the next day, in fact he would make an effort to not
even think about them.
The next morning he got up and rather than checking on a
watch tower he took three of his strategy advisors and spent the day climbing a
close mountain and figuring out exactly where they were going to make a stand
against the enemy force. They found a great place; it was right at the
bottom of a steep straight slope, which, they figured could be used to form
some kind of trap. They got back just as the sun set behind the
mountains, so around four or five. Jett went to his tent to check the reports,
as he read through he was pleasantly surprised, they had had record efficiency
today. They had cleared more ground than they had since the first few
days when EVERYONE was working on it, and they had not made any mistakes.
This was truly enlightening… Keth walked is while Jett was thinking about this.
“Well? How did it go?” He asked.
Jett sighed, then said, “I hate to admit this… but it went
excellently, perfectly even! I don’t know that I could do this every day,
there are some things that I do have to take care of… but I guess I’ll
need to stop breathing down their necks.”
Keth smiled, “Ahh, now we see progress. Good luck.”
“Heh,” Jett said, “Thanks, I’ll
need it I bet…”He trailed off as his eye caught movement. HE turned to see one
of the messengers running towards him.
When the man reached Jett he said,
“Sir, there’s an emergency meeting of the generals.”
“Thank you” Jett said, nodding to
the messenger. He then stood up and
walked to the meeting tent.
When Jett arrived the whole place
was a flurry of activity. There were men
going in and out of the tent, presumable receiving orders as to what to do. Jett walked in the tent to see Dan talking to
a captain about fortifying some bit of border or some such thing. The man gave a salute and walked out, and Jett
said, “What’s going on?”
“Ahh, Jett!” Dan said happily,
“We were just looking for you.”
“So I was told,” Jett said,
“Where’s Naphe?”
“Oh, well…” Dan said, “You were
taking a while so he went back to his camp to make some preparations…”
“Ahh, okay,” Jett said, nodding,
then, confusedly, “Wait, preparations for what?”
“Right,” Dan said, “we’ve had
word from our spies that there is rumor of an attack tonight.”
“Oh, that’s fantastic!” Jett said
sarcastically, “When?”
“They don’t know,” Dan said, “Though
they expect either early morning or late evening… By the way, do you think that
you could spare any troops for this evening? I don’t have many experienced men,
and I’m worried that if they’re attacked while they’re asleep they’ll panic.”
Jett really didn’t want to give
troops away… that was like breaking part of a wall to fix another one. “Look,
I’ll check, but I don’t think I can. I want to not change anything or it might
throw them off… Sorry.”
“No, that’s fine, I’ll manage.”
Dan said. “Anyhow, I’m going to go change up a couple of patrols, good luck.”
“To you as well.” Jett said, then
he went back to prepare his soldiers for what was to come.
Late that night Jett finally
returned to his tent. He lay down and,
with his sword out next to his bed, fell into a light sleep.
And that's it for now! Perhaps I'll post more later today.
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