TNL 27 – The First Command Part Three

Once again, Raidon visits the mayor. This time he has Morris with him. Once inside the mayor's office, Raidon immediately starts:

"The previous commander of the garrison fired everyone who worked in the garrison. We need those people and those people probably need their jobs. Can you tell us who worked at the garrison? Like the cooks?"

The mayor denies this:

"No, I don't have that information. That is something that is arranged within the garrison. I have nothing to do with that."

"But you probably know who they are. This city is not that big that no one knows those people," Raidon insists.

The mayor capitulates.

"Some of my people may know who worked for the garrison. I'll check."

Raidon settles for this answer for now. Even with small steps you can advance. Then he shows his maps to the mayor. The mayor studies them and is very clear with his opinion afterwards.

"This older map seems to be the most correct. That new map isn’t right in any way. The coast is not drawn correctly and this lake is about twenty kilometers away. The province is also almost twice as large. How did you get that map?"

"This is the map we got with our orders. It comes directly from General Colling," Raidon replies.

"Hmm, I think that I have a fairly recent county map here somewhere."

The mayor searches in his office.

"Ah, there he is."

The mayor takes another map out of a drawer of his desk.

"As you can see, this map is almost identical to that older map of yours. A few things are different because this map is a bit newer, but the big picture is right."

"So another way to put us in a bad light. That General Colling is starting to annoy me now," Raidon told Morris.

"That's how he's always been, don't worry," Morris responds. "Let's hope there aren't any more surprises."

The mayor is quite surprised. Since he does not know the situation, he looks questionably at both men. To explain, Raidon and Morris tell what was going on with the date on the order.

After this, the mayor is a little more willing to cooperate. He gives the names of the people who helped at the garrison. He also offers to send them to the garrison. Then he tells about the past, when there was half a garrison and the patrolling was done by the watch.

Armed with this information, Raidon and Morris return to the garrison. Together they look at the area and how to fill it in.

"I think we can operate partly from Fort Alpha. If we station one platoon there and the other here, we can send patrols from both points. From here there are more villages to go, but there is more wilderness there. We may have to temporarily add one or two squads from the second to the first, but we'll have to see that later," Morris said.

"Seems good to me. Tomorrow I will start going to these villages. It seems that there will be an overnight stay for the furthest villages. We won’t manage to travel there and back in one day."

"That's what it looks like. But I don't think you should leave the city. Someone has to take command here."

"True, but I want to become familiar with the inhabitants of those villages. Then they should be more likely to ask for our help if they need it. I don't want our soldiers to do that. These residents have had no help for a long time, so ordinary soldiers will not be believed by them."

Morris agrees.

"But someone has to be here and it can’t be me. Who are you going to have command here while you are on the road for several days going to the villages?"

"Good question. Maybe we should leave the distant villages for a while and only go there at a later time. We can start with visiting the closer villages."

The next day Raidon sends the two squads of the second platoon back to Fort Alpha led by Lenn. He also gives them the orders for Brandon. Together with Morris, Raidon has created a new map, showing the two patrol areas centered around Fort Alpha and Aran. He also has a few clerks come to town along with the recruits they already have. In the city he can use them better than in Fort Alpha.

That same evening they have normal food for the first time in a long while. The food at Fort Alpha wasn't bad, but there was also no resupply, so everything was rationed.

Then when they arrived in Aran, there was supply again, but no one knew how to prepare the food.

Fortunately, that time is now over. This afternoon the support staff that the mayor would send have arrived. Almost everyone returned immediately when it became known that the garrison still needed them.

Tonight there is a delicious stew made of mutton and various vegetables. According to the cook, that was the only thing he could prepare at such a short notice. Fortunately, he did make fresh bread to soak everything up.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

For Raidon and the others, that doesn't matter at all. This is much better than that dried meat they've had to eat lately. And to top it all off, it is also served to them, while they can stay seated.

"I can get used to this!" shouts John after taking his first few bites. Of course without first emptying his mouth, so the men opposite him are sprayed with pieces of the meal. Fortunately, the riot that follows does not last long, because everyone wants to enjoy the delicious food.

A few days later, the recruits and clerks enter the city. The recruits will function as a sixth squad for first platoon, once the mayor has delivered the last seven men. This happens less than a day later.

The small group is led by a skinny priest in a brown robe. Raidon, however, counts more than seven men walking behind the priest. They are with twice as many.

"Welcome, priest, I assume the mayor sent you?"

"That's right, boy. I have been asked to perform a ritual for you. An initiation ceremony? I know a lot about those, which ritual did you have in mind?"

"I’m afraid that you will not have used this ceremony all that often. You will have to bless the new recruits of ours to adopt a different faith."

"How do you mean a different faith? You deny our gods?"

"Rest assured. We worship another god, who is even older than the present faith. At the time of the ancient empire, the god Mithras was worshipped. That faith has been restored by us. All our soldiers have been blessed by a priest to put our souls in his hands."

"I still have to think about it. I haven't been told anything about this."

"I get that. Nor will you be the first priest to refuse his cooperation. But now another question. We asked for seven men, but I think I see about fifteen men here."

"When these men were entrusted to my care, I was told that there were far too few of you. That's why the mayor has sent you some more men to help."

Raidon lets out a deep sigh. That mayor might want to help, but he does it in a clumsy way.

"Ahh well, let's see which of these men are best suited to become soldiers."

A little later, the new recruits are ready for their initiation. Raidon has looked it up in his manuals, but there is nothing in it about rejecting recruits if they would like to join. Apparently Mithras decides who is a good candidate to worship him.

That Mithras does indeed decide, becomes clear when the men get their branding. Everything is going well until the white hot branding iron touches the first man.

Instead of giving a nice sign like all the other soldiers of the New Legion got, it continues to burn long after the startled priest has removed the branding iron. The whole shoulder of the man has become one big burn.

"Gods! What is this?" The priest seems to be in shock.

"Well, I don't think Mithras thought that this was the right man to join the New Legion." Raidon looks at the other men sternly. "If you want to change your mind, this is the moment. Rest assured, if you really want it, there is nothing to worry about. But if you have bad intentions, you better walk away now."

Three men decide they have to be somewhere else, but the remaining twelve men take the gamble.

For another four men, the burning hurts a lot, but all of them pass Mithras' inspection.

Now that that’s done, Raidon can start sending out patrols. With six squads at his disposal, he can use two as patrols inside the city, two outside the city and one to guard the gates. Meanwhile, the last squad can take a rest day. On the rest day, of course, they have to train for half a day under Morris.

In the days that he was waiting for the extra squad, Raidon himself has already supervised some patrols and visited some villages. These villages are the only ones where the patrols are allowed to show themselves for now. In the coming days, Raidon plans to visit the other villages as well. Brandon will do the same from Fort Alpha.

On the same day that the recruits have arrived, Raidon receives a report in which he reads that one of the smaller fishing villages has been raided. Also, an angry businessman who has lost his entire caravan and wants to sue the legion comes to the garrison.

Raidon has checked the complaints of the past few weeks. When he sees how many there are, it is clear to him why the area here is poorer than other places in the empire. There are several bandit raids per week, always in a different place. He is surprised that there are still people living in this area at all.

The next day he receives another message, this time from a somewhat larger village right in the middle of the province. Apparently, no place in the province is safe from the raids.

This appears to be the pattern of the messages. Almost every day there is at least one message of a raid.

A few days later, Raidon marches at the head of a patrol. They are on their way to one of the more distant villages. Once there, they see a village that seems to have been raided.

"The residents don't look very happy either," says John, because today it is first squad to accompany Raidon.

"I can understand that, with three burned-down houses," Raidon replies.

He has the patrol stop in the middle of the village. Then he walks towards a man who he has seen looking from the moment they entered the village.

"Can you tell me who the mayor of this village is?" he asks the man.

"That's nobody at the moment. He died when his house was burned down."

The man points to one of the burned-down houses.

"And who will take over his duties?" The man shrugs.

"That will probably be Erland. He is the blacksmith, there you can see his forge further on."

Then the man turns around and walks away.

Raidon takes James and Gareth to the forge. John and the rest are instructed to look around the village.

At the forge, the blacksmith is just busy shoeing a horse. Raidon decides to wait till the man’s done. After a few minutes, the blacksmith is ready. Raidon speaks to him.

"Dear man, can you tell us what happened here? It looks like the village has been raided, but nobody wants to talk about it."

The man watches Raidon from head to toe.

"How do you get that iron suit? It seems properly made. I've never seen anything like it before."

"We are soldiers of the New Legion. A new unit of the Empress. I am Sergeant Raidon, the new commander of the garrison in Aran," Raidon patiently explains.

"Hmm, well I can tell you what happened here. The taxes have been collected. The chaos you see is what happens every year when those hyenas come along and someone can't pay. As soon as someone cannot pay personally or the village itself can’t cough up its own taxes, retaliatory actions are carried out by the tax collectors."

"The village as well as everybody personally?" asks Raidon.

"Yes, since about ten years it has been decided that every village of more than five houses has to pay to be a village. The inhabitants must ensure that they also pay something on top of their normal taxes to pay for the village. This year, most of them didn't succeed because we were raided a while ago. Now no one has anything left. This horse is the only animal that the village still has. Even the dogs have been taken to compensate the horse. It had lost a horseshoe, forcing us to pay for it."

"How is it that we in Aran have not heard anything about this yet?" asks Raidon to the blacksmith.

"The tax collectors often come first to villages like this one, that are further away from the city. This way they can visit the other villages from Aran at a leisure pace. If you don't mind, I'll move on now. There is still a lot to do to ensure that we don’t starve this winter."

Raidon then leaves the forge again. He tries to make some more small talk in the village, but has little success. The residents have started to really dislike the government.

"I've seen enough, men. We are going back to Aran," Raidon reports to his soldiers, after which they leave.