Breaking Ranks

Grant: A Hundred Strangers

Deck B2

Starboard Agricultural Section of the Tranquility

The fighting had begun all of a sudden, a distant clamor of clanking metal that spread its way up to those of us just reaching the ridgeline. We were at least a kilometer away, the starboard bulkhead just beyond. The enemy must have thought to sneak past us on that side, but there was only so much room to maneuver. My eyes weren't as sharp as they had been in my youth, but I had been in enough battles to read its progress at a glance.

The raiders had run into our right flank and pressed them hard. The baron had arranged both his flanks with levies, men and boys like the ones around me, the ones gasping and sitting down after a brief day's stroll up a hill. I snorted at the thought, my own aches and pains forgotten as I stood and gazed outward.

Weren't many of them farmers? Shouldn't they be used to physical labor?

The Rune Reader seemed fine, and she'd walked her mount for the past hour. She was holding the chained tome up high and I caught a twisted, distorted glimpse of the view mirrored in the tome's depths as if from a murky stream.

I looked away.

My standard bearer had joined me by now and inexpertly stuck the pointed end into the ground, swiveling it back and forth by degrees until he let he let it settle. He held the pole lightly, frowning up at the loose banner as it began tilting over.

"Stick that in deeper," I boomed at the man. "Come on now. Pretend you're fucking the dirt. That isn't all you've got, is it?"

There was a chorus of rowdy laughs at this, dirty jokes being one of the primary ingredients in binding together groups of unfamiliar men. The standard bearer flushed and rammed the pole deeper into the ground. The grins faded as I looked around in open disdain at the rabble that had joined me.

This was still unfamiliar to me. As a veteran of the Guard I had a certain familiarity with my fellow soldiers, most of them men I had known for years. There was a closer bond even with the men and women-at-arms that served under neighboring foremen and crew chiefs. Here I was expected to command a hundred strangers, and though I knew they couldn't tell behind my scowling hatchet face there was something about it that terrified me more than battle itself.

And so I scowled until they fell into silence, and then I turned and scowled even more at the distant battle. It could just as easily have been us taking the brunt of it, but we were far on the left instead of the right. It was simple things like this, administrative quirks or lordly prerogatives or marching arrangements, that meant levies from the port section of Sandstone rather than levies from the aft section of Sandstone were currently being massacred. I had never gotten comfortable with that idea of sheer randomness.

I squinted at a banner, seeing its progress as it moved through the barren plains to join the fight. The banner could have been a dozen kilometers away and I still would have recognized it in an instant, having fought under the snarling boar standard of the Salazar family for over twenty years. I would have known the standard bearer as well, one of many in a grayish block streaming towards the fight.

More than likely that was Egrick, unless the Superintendent had named someone else to the position. He was a good soldier, one of the best, but he was getting on in age. We all were.

I glanced to the side at my standard bearer. Six hours I had known him, since we left Sandstone just after the dawn cycle, and I had already forgotten his name. He was a tall lad with blond hair that jutted up like wild-grown wheat.

"What's your name, boy?" I asked.

"Er, Alek, sir." He paused for a moment. "From the Varendedge Farms."

I shrugged. It meant nothing to me, even as a landmark. Plenty of folk braved the chemical rains to scratch out a living growing crops but I was a man of Sandstone to the core, my berthing almost in the very shadow of the hydroponics facility. I looked over the banner that streamed down from the tall lad's lance, a rough-sewn ragged thing that was equally unfamiliar to me.

The Rune Reader had not yet offered her name, and I hadn't bothered to ask, but she did inform me earlier that the standard read 7th Company of Foot.

But these lot were more like foot draggers. We were part of the 4th Infantry Regiment under the Superintendent's cousin Samander, though the Twelve only knew where the rest of them were. I grimaced even more just to think of the thought of these lollygaggers being considered infantry. I had been infantry all my life, infantry through and through, and it meant a hell of a lot more than a mere lack of horses and bows. You couldn't just give something a title and have it mean something else.

Like giving that little runt Samander the title of Chief and commander of the 4th Infantry and have it mean...

But no. I shouldn't even think these things. Thoughts like this get a man killed, and not even in the many cruel ways you might die in battle. Tortured and killed, and I don't plan on going that way. Oh, but by the Twelve, I wish I had someone to talk to. Instead I sit here on this hill and frown at the dust of distant fighting and try not to think of my son in the Superintendent's personal guard... he'd be near the standard there, and look how it plunges now into their lines... they have spears, it looks like, though it is hard to make out...

"Um, sir?"

I found myself strangely gratified at this unexpected distraction. I looked at the standard bearer who had spoken.

"What?" I snapped.

"Er, shouldn't we be helping them? Joining in the fight I mean."

I stared at him for a moment and Alek seemed to quail under my gaze. "They said to move to this hill. So we're on this hill. We'll move when we get another order. Do you see a messenger, boy?"

"Well, no, but..." he pointed a finger down the other side of the ridge line. I turned, and sure enough the Rune Reader was setting her tome away. From the set of her jaw and the way she strode through the resting figures it was clear she had bad news of some kind. Without another word I began walking over to meet her.

Even after all this time the last of the stragglers in this company... in my company, were just now joining us. Two of those figures carried shovels and panted as they struggled up the hill.

"Boy!" I yelled down as I approached. "Get to work on that latrine!" I patted my stomach. "Better hurry, boy. I've been saving up all day."