The Radiant War

Chapter 10b

     The barracks house had been built to house a hundred men and was easily large enough for all of them and their horses as well, once some of the bunks had been pushed up against the walls. The Carrowmen had been all through it scavenging everything of value, but the walls and ceiling were in good condition and there was glass in the windows. Once they were inside, the men all picked a bunk and Teena hung some blankets from the ceiling beams to create a private space for the Princess. Ardria found the presence of the men comforting, though, and decided to sit among them for a while. Tamwell selected two men to take Darniss to the other side of the room and keep an eye on her. "I don't think she's likely to try anything since we're already taking her back home," he said to the Princess, "but I don't like to take chances."

     “I don't like this,” he grumbled later. “It's a little too like a prison for my liking.”

     “It's what’s waiting for us in Charnox,” replied Ardria, “and look on the bright side. We're all together, and you've still got your weapons. What would you have done if they'd tried to disarm us?”

     Brailsford answered for him. “Refused,” he said. “And woe betide them if they'd tried to make an issue of it. We would have taken it as an assault upon us.”

     “I'd like to repeat my words of gratitude to you for doing this, Captain,” said the Princess. “You saved us from death or capture just by being here. When this is over, the whole Kingdom of Helberion will owe you a debt of gratitude.”

     “If there is still a Kingdom of Helberion,” muttered one of the men sitting nearby.

     Tamwell rounded on him angrily. “I'll hear none of that defeatist talk!” he snapped. “I firmly believe that we are going to win this war. If you think otherwise, keep your thoughts to yourself.” The man mumbled an apology and moved to another bunk further away.

     The incident caused an awkward silence to fall across the room and the Princess found herself wishing the Captain hasn't been quite so severe. This was not the time to be building tensions and fuelling resentments, she thought. There was nothing she could do to amend the situation without damaging his authority, though, so she decided to change the subject instead and inject a little humour into the room.

     “That Captain is going to have a story to tell his grandchildren,” she said. “The time the future Queen of Helberion turned up on his doorstep and posed him the deepest dilemma of his life. He'll probably tell it so many times they'll be heartily sick of it! What's the strangest thing that's ever happened to you, Captain?”

     “Well," said Tamwell, smiling gratefully. "There was this time doing the last war. I was just a raw recruit then, less than six months in the army and still hadn't seen any real action. The actual fighting was all over by then and I'd joined my unit just in time to chase the enemy over the border and back into their own country. We'd bunked for the night just outside this little town called Pokby, a few miles south of Salford. Twelve of us in a leaky little stable that let the rain in in half a dozen places. One of the men, Austin I think his name was, decided to go see if he could find something to supplement our trail rations and came back leading this huge pig by a rope he'd tied around its neck. It was gigantic! Way bigger than he was, at least double his weight. It would have fed an entire village for a week!”

     There was a slight chuckle from some of the men, all of whom were listening. Good, thought the Princess. And it was clever of the Captain to choose an anecdote that reminded the men of their former victories.

     “It was way more food than we could eat," Tamwell continued. "More than we could even cook. I've no idea what he had in mind. Some kind of giant spit with a couple of men to turn it over a roaring fire, perhaps, like something from a Royal banquet. We would have had to just cut bits of meat from the carcass, stew them in a cook pot and leave the rest to go back into the ground. We never got the chance, though. Before we could do anything the door opens and in comes one of the lads the Corporal had left on guard. Said there's a man anxious to see us. So Corp goes see what he wants and there's this Carrow farmer, completely naked, saying one of our men had kidnapped his son.”