The tent started to fill up. The next two to enter were older armsmen. Their gear was well maintained and their movements were sharp. Drake introduced them, “Derek, Tristan, these two are Captains Bayard and Norton. Bayard will act as our Paymaster and Norton will be our Quartermaster.”
The two young men saluted the newcomers, “Good morning, Captains.”
The other two saluted them back before Bayard spoke up, “In this camp, only call Drake ‘Captain’. You should address the two of us by our role instead of our rank. It will reduce confusion at important times. There are a few other captains as well in other roles in this force. You will want to address them by role or name as well. Most of these roles are normally handled by sergeants or lieutenants, but this unit is an ad hoc force and many elites were assigned to it to provide the optimal learning experience for you students.”
Derek nodded, “Thank you for your clarification Paymaster.”
Drake turned to Derek, “Derek, the Paymaster and Quartermaster can be said to be almost, if not more, important than the actual leader of a free company. The Paymaster ensures that everyone gets paid while the Quartermaster makes sure everyone is fed and equipped. Since the normal soldier of a free company or a mercenary unit usually expects to be paid on a weekly basis and fed daily, if either method of compensation gets cut off it can lead to catastrophic consequences.
“More precisely, the Paymaster keeps a role of all men and women in service to the company, and distributes rewards and punishments as determined by the leader of the company and the contract of the soldier. The Quartermaster, on the other hand, is in charge of procuring the food, fodder, and other resources necessary for the campaign. They both have their assistants in their roles. As they Paymaster’s chest is rather important to the company, his guard is usually made up of some of the most elite soldiers in the company.
“These two and you, along with some runners, are my command staff. They are both quite good at their roles, so I suggest you both spend some time learning from them during this campaign.”
Derek and Tristan both expressed their understanding as eight more people entered the room. Derek recognized two of them. Xavier Cortez came in and stood on the left with another man dressed in lighter armor. Five others moved to the right, with Marcus Riley standing along with three other students behind a one-eyed veteran. The last woman came to a stop in between both groups.
Drake looked first to the veteran, “How are your infantry, Commander Collin?”
The man shook his head, “Trash, Captain, these troops are trash. Many have never drilled before. They can’t maintain proper formations, they don’t know right from left. Each one boasts of a different weapon and fighting style. I almost want to request getting shifted to one of the regular units.”
Drake nodded his head, “We expected their coordination to be bad. That is why we mustered early. Begin drilling them now. This unit is to be used as a free company to make the most use of the students, so do what you can about grouping people with similar fighting styles, but do not sweat stronger formations. Also, make sure to work with Bayard to record assignments of your troops.”
He turned his eyes to the two men on the other side of the room, “Cortez, Royo, how are your light cavalry squadrons.”
The two men glanced at each other before Cortez spoke for them both. “Most of our people have done this before, it will probably take a few days to work the kinks out. We will be ready to move soon enough.”
Drake nodded again, “In this campaign, your squadrons’ primary role will be to act as scouts for our force. While it is less glamorous than harassing or attacking the enemy, making sure that we know where they are while they do not know our locations is far more important in this campaign.”
The two cavalrymen looked discouraged. Drake laughed, “Don’t be that way, there will definitely be plenty of opportunities to win honor and fame in spite of that this summer.”
Xavier flashed a smile, “Of course, we don’t doubt it.”
Finally, Drake turned to the woman across from him, “Morgana, how is your support team.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Morgana was a fifth tier mage in charge of the magical support team. Their role was to attack enemy forces, counteract enemy magic, and recover the wounded. A slight smile spread across her face, “We are ready. The size of our team is definitely out of sync with the size of this company, but I expect that will just mean that we will be used for more difficult missions in exchange. I am looking forward to it.”
Drake smiled after listening to her. “That is great. Everyone, work with the people of your units. Drill them. Prepare them. Do what you have to do. In two weeks we will begin our march north. With the personnel available to us, we can expect great things from the Windreach Academy Free Company.”
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Over the next few weeks, each encampment went through its own training process. The Windreach Academy Free Company was no different from the others. They didn’t need to go through the effort of teaching the individuals to fight, but they did need to teach them to drill, pitch camp, break it down, stand sentry, etc. There were many important skills needed of a soldier that these powerful fighters did not yet have. The discipline of the students of the Academy helped rectify that quickly though. The Academy may never have drilled them like a cadet corps but the strictness of the instructors, whether on the training grounds or in the classrooms had prepared the students to take orders well. At the end of the two weeks, they could march in formation and even fight together without disrupting each other.
Derek was no different. Every day, Drake would have him join one of the four infantry platoons or one of the two cavalry squadrons to practice drilling. Some days Drake would send Derek to work with Team Leader Morgana to learn how to work in the support team and he would practice everything from working with others to cast large scale protective magic over the unit, large scale attacks, or even treating the wounded. This was on top of expecting him to participate and learn in all of the planning meetings and directly working with the Quartermaster and the Paymaster. Due to this, in the first week, Derek’s days were full.
The second week, his days grew much busier as their command team would have to go to one of the church’s encampments every day to begin going over the organization of the march. This specific encampment was in the center of the varied mustering grounds and all of the Company leaders were summoned to it.
The first time they arrived, they were ushered into a very large tent. There was one large table with a map placed on it and seats placed around it for the various Captains. Captain Drake took his place along with the Captains of the Windreach forces that had been assigned to this campaign. Windreach had dispatched two heavy infantry formations of a thousand soldiers each as well as one archer formation, one heavy cavalry formation, and one light cavalry formation of the same size. The combined force mustered by the House was over five thousand soldiers, with many elites.
On the opposite side of the table, as if not to be outdone, was the force of the Church. The local chapter of the Ardent Dawn had a single formation of over two thousand paladins and supporting cavalry. The Church also fielded five companies of a thousand crusaders. These forces were set up similarly to Windreach’s free company, with the crusaders forming mixed formations.
The biggest differences were size, quality of the troops, and the makeup of the support teams. These crusader forces were larger and of lower quality than the Academy’s free company and Academy’s support team was made up of a mixed group of mages, the Crusaders’ support teams were made up entirely of clergy. The encampment they had gathered in was the local headquarters of the Church’s mustered forces, a separate detachment of Paladins and clergy from the Cathedral itself. This force was an elite force numbering only two hundred crusaders.
While the church did field a larger force than the city, Windreach’s guards were of higher quality on average. This was somewhat mitigated by the absolute elite advantage that the Cathedral’s Defenders and the Order’s cavalry provided. Between the Church and the House there were over twelve thousand mustered troops from the city.
Along with those were roughly six mercenary free companies that had been contracted for the campaign, each ranging from a couple thousand to five hundred men. There were also several nearby hegemons that had fielded a force of crusaders to join them, though the quality and number of the troops differed greatly among them.
Each of these forces had a seat around this table. Derek stood quietly with the other staff officers behind Captain Drake. After all the other Captains had taken their places, the host, at the head of the table, finally stood up to address them. “Thank you all, I am Captain Kalne of the Cathedral’s Defenders. Until we join the main body of the Crusade, I will be in charge of the almost twenty thousand crusaders gathered here.”
Derek was blown away by that number. He had heard that they had gathered a rather large force and he even knew the sizes of most of the forces gathered there. He had just never really considered the scale of the campaign as a whole. If he thought about the various other forces participating, then it seemed like there would be a total of sixty and a hundred thousand people involved in this campaign.
How could the barbarians withstand them? How could the local populations not suffer disaster in the way of their food stuffs being consumed by this veritable swarm of soldiers that would descend upon them? How would they be able to transport this force across a dozen petty kingdoms to even begin their offensive against the barbarians that had taken the regions around the Shrine of the Light?
As he listened during these meetings, the questions in his head were answered and new ones replaced them.