As we walked to the city, the population on the roads increased. People walked by with carts, and the occasional horse. Farmers toiled in the fields, harvesting long, stringy crops, hard at work even in the early hours of the morning. The roads became more consistently cobbled, worn stones covering up the majority of the road.
Soldiers occasionally patrolled past, spears in hand. After the incident leaving Rivish, we made sure to steer well clear of them. My companions were understandably wary.
As for myself, I was dead tired. I had slept a few hours earlier, but the exertion took a toll on me. Add the several hours of walking over rough stones in shoes that were frankly getting far too warn out and were covered in far too much blood, and I was just about ready to collapse on the road there and then. If you had asked me, when I was walking with Rycress back when I first got here that I would soon be having far worse days, I’m not sure I would have believed you. Certainly, I would have had my doubts.
Now, though? I just wanted to be done with it. Get to the city, get a warm meal to ward off the persistent chill, and veg out in 8th bed for the next three days while the immensity of what just happened hit me.
Wallstreet of walking, far longer than it should have on account of the injured and sickly. What should have been a 4 hour walk turned into a 9 hour one, and it was further 76 as we ran out of energy.
But the wall6s were distantly in sight, lit by the torch glows of the patrols and towers, and the sun would soon be peaking up on the horizon to cast its glow down on the city.
It was a little after dawn by the time we finally arrived. The city was huge, several times larger than Rivish (which I learned had about 3x the people I thought it would). The walls were nearly a hundred feet high, made of huge blocks of granite taller than a man.
I learned from the others (during what little time they were willing to speak) that this was the city of Arges, the premier border city of the West. It served as the economic and military hub of the region. It was also close to the estate of the ruling family, making it of prime strategic importance as well.
Despite it being so early, the line to get to the gate was long. It stretched back down a line of people, seemingly a hundred through, if not more. Many of them were farmers taking produce to market, but there were also merchants, travelers, and even a few soldiers.
We settled into line and began to wait. It didn’t exactly move quickly, but it wasn’t the slowest queue I had ever been in. The DMV could have certainly learned a thing or two. It took another hour for us to make it close to the gates of the city. Unlike Rivish, Arges didn’t have a guard. Instead, the garrison within the city supplied soldiers for the defense of the walls. They stood there, helmets gleaming, boots polished. They looked bored, but I saw them scan the crowds attentively.
It took us about 20 more minutes to get to the front of the line. A man in front of us was arguing with the inspectors. He was wearing a tweed hat, with long, flowing locks of golden hair spilling out. His clothing was unusual, a flowing robe made of a fine purple fabric. He seemed far too rich to be a farmer.
The man was getting increasingly agitated. He kept gesturing to his cart, which was filled with cabbages. Unusually photogenic cabbages. In fact, they looked suspiciously like cabbages that you would see in a commercial, carefully selected from a pool of cabbages to find ones with the perfect shapes, painted and dyed and trimmed to the right size, put under perfect lighting and filmed with a camera worth tens of thousands of dollars, and then digitally edited to further enhance their aesthetics. It was almost shocking how much they stood out from everything else going on. This world, while by no means dull, wasn’t nearly as colorful as Earth, and even at home these would easily stand out from the rest.
The man, seemingly reaching his limits, waved his hand, and his cart, cabbages and all, vanished into thin air, before walking right past the gate.
What???
Was I hallucinating from the tiredness? The guards seemed exasperated, but definitely weren’t reacting as if someone had just preformed genuine magic right in front of them. Could farmers just do that here?
I decided to attribute it to mental stress, as nobody else reacted to it. With the man's departure, it was finally our turn at the gate. The soldiers fixed their stares on us as stepped forwards.
“Name, and purpose of entry?”
Instead of saying anything, the captain limped forward, and handed him a letter. The soldier took a moment to open it, before carefully scanning it, eyes roving up and down the page several times. Once he had confirmed that it had whatever he was looking for, he waved our group through, not bothering to question us individually. As we walked, he turned, and called out to a soldier behind the gate.
“Hey, those refugees are here. Someone bring them to get processed”.
With his duty done, he turned, resuming his inspections on the people next in line. Another soldier stepped out from behind the gate, ushering our group down a large cobbled street. He didn’t take us far, leading us between two buildings, to a stone and wood construction that seemed almost attached to the wall.
We walked through the open door, before being herded into a long queue that lead to a wooden desk with a bored looking receptionist. With a long-suffering sigh that could be seen across the room, he pulled out a series of documents and started questioning the first person in line. I wasn’t able to discern what they were talking about.
The line moved slowly. Some people, normally people with a group, took several minutes to be processed. On the other end of the spectrum, men ranging from the ages of 18-45 were sent to another line within seconds.
While I waited, I ended up reflecting on the events of the previous day. It was too soon to step back and look at it from an objective point of view, but that didn’t stop my mind from analyzing it, over fixating on everything. I surely could have done more. I was truly useless. Had I not been there, nothing would have changed, except maybe less people would have died. Would Tom have run, instead of stalling? Did he do that for my sake? Did that make me responsible for his death?
What of the group at the start? Could I have intervened? Perhaps with the first group I was in, I could have distracted the construct long enough that the guards could have seized the upper hand. More realistically, I could have pulled people out of the way when Davinda was fighting. If I had gotten them far enough away, she wouldn’t have had to protect them, and thus wouldn’t have died. This countless storm of what-ifs stayed with me till I reached the head of the line, where I forcefully pushed them away with a flex of my will and a shake of my head.
As the person in front of me stepped away from the counter, heading towards the largest group of refugees, I approached the desk. The secretary scanned me up and down, before glancing back at my face.
“Age?”
He asked, his bored tone somehow carrying both disinterest and disdain.
I was too tired to respond with any level of snark.
“24”
He made a mhm sound upon hearing confirmation of my age, as if validating a previously held belief, before directing me to the queue with all the other men who weren’t children, seniors, or cripples.
Stepping into this new line, I saw Merchant Ryan up near the front, clenching his fists, face red with anger. It didn’t take much waiting for a new secretary to arrive and begin processing us.
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Whatever he was saying, it must have been grim news, because the first person in line did a double take upon hearing it, before rechecking with the secretary, briefly trying to argue. When that failed, his face went pale, and his posture vanished, leaving him slumping in line. He mutely signed the paperwork put in front of him, not bothering to read it, seemingly out of objections. After it was over, he had to be coerced to walk out of the queue and through a side door by several verbal commands from the man processing his paperwork.
Although not as dramatic as the first, similar reactions occurred several times as the men in line stepped up to the counter. Sometimes it was anger, others shock, mostly a mix of the two. Whatever they felt, though, they would be told something that stilled them, stopping even the worst of their anger.
Ryan got to the front of the line rather quickly. Upon hearing whatever had sent the men before him into such a tizzy, he grew even redder, and with a flexed neck and fists clenched so hard I was surprised he wasn’t bleeding, he set about with an angry yell.
“I have a family. After everything I’ve been through, you can’t separate me from them. I won’t have it. I refuse to let it happen, and may the gods take the man who tries. You won’t be able to drag me over there with ten brutes, I tell you”.
The secretary, upon hearing this, calmly spoke the magic words that seemed to pacify so many others. Ryan slammed his first down on the table, but whatever was said had him walking out the door less than a minute later, all the fight drained from him.
As more and more men left, seemingly broken, my apprehension grew. Just what was being said up there, to break people who had just gone through so much. Was it the casualties? Was there a food shortage? And why was Ryan shouting about being separated from his family?
This line moved far faster than the previous one, and had far fewer people in it in the first place, only about 1/4th of the original group. I was moving forwards over once a minute, by my estimations. It didn’t take long for me to stagger up to the desk.
The receptionist looked far less bored than the other one. He had a long scar running down his cheek, and from what little exposed skin I could see, was packed with wiry muscle. He was older than I was, probably in his late 20’s or early 30’s, and he watched me like a hawk.
I stood in silence for a second before he spoke.
“A draft has been imposed on the Western Province. Due to your status as a refugee and your age and gender, you are being called to serve the empire. I’ll need you to sign a document stating that you understand your duty and that you will be responsible for any damages or disruption you cause while you are enlisted in the armies”.
I was left there, blanking staring at him, while my mouth dropped open into a dumb expression of surprise. This couldn’t be happening. I had just survived such a haunting ordeal, something that nobody should ever have to go through in their lives, and before even the day had passed I was being swept away to go fight in the Army? This wasn’t how this was supposed to happen. I was supposed to come here and live in peace, using my skills to make a comfortable life for myself, not be swept away to die in some mud covered field over a dispute involving a percentage of a Baron’s land.
They couldn’t even do this to me, could they? It’s not like I was a citizen. I was just someone who ended up here. What legal authority did they have over me.
I opened my mouth, babbling out excuses and counterarguments, stumbling over my own words.
The man at the desk didn’t let it go on for long, humoring me for 10 or so seconds before cutting with off with a brutal rebuttal.
“Service is mandatory for you. Refusal to fight, or abandonment of duty, is an act of treason against the empire and will result in your execution. If that’s all, please join the rest of your group outside and wait to be taken to your training area”.
I tried to muster up the will to argue further, but something about his tone, and the sharp look on his face told me that would be a poor idea, so like the rest of the men, I wandered out of the building, head down, a thousand fears and sorrows in my heart.
When I left the building, I saw my group of fellow draftees. Many of them had regained some of their composure, but the mood was still extremely dejected. That bore an ill omen. They surely knew far more about what we had been committed to them, I did, and if they found it so horrifying then I should probably follow suit.
I sat down on the ground, elbows on my knees, with my head tucked below my hands. I took a nice, long moment to stare at the dirt, absorbing every detail of it. From the small rocks that dotted it, to its conspicuous lack of grass. It had a pale, sandy color, poorly suited for growing anything, but perfect to despair on.
I didn’t get long to wallow on the ground. The secretary stepped outside. His face was guarded. I took a moment to look him up and down, notching details that had been hidden behind the desk.
He was wearing the uniform of a soldier, a red gambison, pants hewn of a thick material, also red, with stained and scuffed leather boots on his feet. He was sans helmet, and his uniform was covered with faded stains and marks, dotted around with multiple stitches sticking through, repairing slashes or cuts it had endured.
It was far from the clean and prim uniforms of the soldiers by the gates, cut neatly and seemingly often replaced, but they did have many things in common. For example, the long spear he must have grabbed on his way out, carried easily over his shoulder, its wooden handle dented, but clearly well cared for.
He stopped in front of us, pausing, waiting for our attention to naturally fall on him. It took some of our group a while, still trying to process their situation, but he simply sat there and waited, patience never seeming to thin or fray.
Once he was confident we were paying attention, he spoke.
“I’ll be the one in charge of you. You can call me Captain Harker. We’ll be proceeding to the place you’ll be training for the next two months, before I integrate you into my unit. I expect you all to work hard. I expect you to do this not just for yourselves, but for the people standing next to you, for if you don’t, you will die, and likely enough they’ll die with you. I know you lot are tired, so when we arrive at the camp you can choose a bedroll and tent and get to sleep. We’ll be starting bright and early tomorrow, before the sun's up, so I expect you to be there and be ready unless you have some condition that prevents you from performing, in which case I expect you to report it to me tonight”.
Captain Harker turned, and started walking off, not bothering to glance back at us. After sharing a glance around the group, we hurried to catch up, the message of treason and death still sticking strongly with us. I certainly didn’t want to risk being executed because I lagged behind and was flagged as a deserter, and I strongly suspected the others felt the same.
The walk wound us through the city, generally taking back roads, but passing through bigger streets frequently enough that I started to get the feel of the city, at least to an extent. The buildings were taller here than in Rivesh, frequently being three stories or higher. The city was also in a better state of repair, with the roads having far less missing cobbles and the buildings being in better states of repair. The streets we passed weren’t overly crowded, but even in the middle of the afternoon there were many people milling about, shopping in markets or going to meet for businesses. There was also a much greater variety of shops present, as evidenced when I passed by a Tailors shop, with a big glass window in front, proudly displaying the clothing inside.
I didn’t have long to stop and stare, however, as Harker set a brutal pace. It surely wouldn’t have been so bad had I not spent many of the past hours walking already. The stones were not kind to my sore feet, and my tennis shoes, which were already getting up there in mileage before I came to this world, were on their very last legs.
I would guess that the walk took nearly an hour. After we had finished our trek through the city, we went through a much smaller gate than we had entered in through. There were no civilians coming through it, seemingly in use only by soldiers (or perspective soldiers). It was quickly opened, and we were waved through.
The land on the other side differed from the flat fields of the Southern entrance. It was covered with trees, leafy and green. As we walked through a cleared path, I saw flashes of tents, wooden obstacles, and other new recruits, drilling and training. I pushed the images from my mind, trying to ignore my surroundings. I didn’t have the ability to deal with this right now.
We didn’t go deep into the forest before we reached our destination. An array of small tents, neatly laid out and organized into rows, stretched before us.
We stood there, unsure of what to do, remembering instructions to sleep but unwilling to be the one to make the first move. We stood like that, for several minutes, before, with a great scowl on his face, Harker stepped forwards.
“You lot better be asleep within five minutes, or I’ll have your assess running around the field till morrow”.
With that threat hanging over our head, we scrambled to find a tent. I rushed towards one, and my hand moved to draw back the flap, until I felt a tug from the opposite direction. I looked up, and saw another draftee with a similarly confused expression on his face, It seemed we had chosen the same tent.
In a determined effort to avoid punishment, I quickly dropped my claim and ran to another tent, two rows back.
It took me no time at all to pull my shoes off, leaving them outside (on account of being covered in blood and dirt), before sliding into the bedroll. It only took me a second of staring off at the ceiling before I nodded off. Perhaps if I knew what was to come during the following day I would have remained awake a little longer.