13th of Petrarium, 1019 N.F (e.y.)
“Filth!” the grizzled capitán spat. “All of you. I’ve never been saddled with a more pitiful excuse of conscripts in all my years. You!” He pointed at a man down the line. “Stand up straight.
“You!” He pointed at another. “Spit out what you’re chewing! You’re in Si Don’s army now, not pissing around in whatever gutter they dragged you out of.”
Necrem shifted his weight, struggling to keep his shoulders from slumping and his eyes open. He wanted to find some place out of the Easterly Sun and sit. He wouldn’t need a bed or to lay down. After the previous night and being marched over ten miles north of Manosete, he could sleep anywhere.
Please don’t take long. His back and legs ached, and his breathing flared every now and then if his focus slipped, both from exhaustion and nerves. You hate us, and we don’t like you. But we’ll do as you say, or we’re punished. Or worse.
He’d heard these kinds of speeches before, back when he was a union member, but he never thought he would be one of the poor souls to be on the receiving end of one. He blessedly stood in the center of the ranks of two hundred smelly, raggedy men. Their ages varied from middle-aged, like him, to boys who hadn’t had their first shave yet. All of them were tired, and most were scared, especially the younger lads.
Necrem spotted one off to his right, shaking and drenched in sweat. He sweated, too. He wasn’t in the frontlines, yet he stood head and shoulders above most of the other men. Knowing his luck, he expected to be noticed at any time.
“I am Capitán Gonzel.” The capitán put his gauntleted fists on his hips, the metal striking against the sides of his breastplate. He grimaced at the men up front, making his pockmarks stand out under his patchy, gray beard. From standing on his small stool, he could stare down the men up there and gaze back on the ranks, right at Necrem.
“Capitán Fidal Gonzel,” he continued. “But just Capitán to the likes of you. I don’t need to know a single one of your slum-scum names. If I even hear one of your names, that means you must be a problem.” His eyes narrowed, glaring at them. “And I won’t hesitate to rid my company of a problem. Do I make myself clear?”
Men shuffled about, nervously glancing at one another and shrugging. Necrem just stared back.
He means the sioneros reserve.
He worked his jaw and felt a prick his right cheek. His dried-out scars were chaffing against his mask from not having fresh salve applied to them since last night. He had to be careful. One false move could crack a scar open and start bleeding.
“Well?” the man left of the capitán, holding a halberd, roared. “Answer the capitán when he speaks to you, filth! Say aye!”
“Aye,” Necrem said, not risking tearing a scar while everyone else yelled.
“Louder!” the man demanded.
“Aye!”
The man sneered at them, missing several teeth. He looked no better than the men he sneered at. His scraggly beard gave him a look of a man freshly conscripted himself, despite his polished breastplate over his clean clothes and the shiny helm on his head. He could easily have been a soldier who had spent his pay on a freshly made kit, but Necrem doubted it.
He remembered men like him from when he’d been a union smith. Men like that would rather spend their pay on liquor or women, not their arms. They spent other people’s money for that.
“It’s just as you say, Capitán,” the soldier said, shaking his head at the officer. “Pitiful. But me and the boys will straighten them up.”
“See to it, Master Sergeant,” Capitán Gonzel replied. “This is Master Sergeant Raul, and he and his fellow sergeants are going to make sure whenever I say run, you scum sprint! Split ’em up, Master Sergeant. Be on the lookout for”—he scanned the ranks and, for a second, Necrem felt his eyes settle on him—“troublemakers.”
“Aye, Capitán!” Raul saluted, slamming his fist to his heart.
Capitán Gonzel stepped down from his stool and wandered off into camp without another word, leaving them in the care of the master sergeant.
Necrem suspected Raul’s treatment wouldn’t be any kinder than the capitán’s.
“All right, lads,” Raul said, rocking on his heels with an unnerving grin, “me and the other sergeants are going to split you up into families now. Wherever we say to go, go. If you don’t, we’ll give you a kick in the ass to make you go.”
“You,” someone said in the back.
“You!” another yelled over to Necrem’s left, just out of sight.
Nine men in armor, like the master sergeant’s, and who’d been watching from afar, descended upon them, taking men out at random and ordering, sometimes pushing, men out into smaller groups. The one closest to Necrem, though, was the master sergeant himself, and he kept an eye on him. While the other sergeants went about their work with disinterest, Raul stalked between the ranks with a gleam in his eye.
Raul pushed through one rank, stopping in front of the shivering lad Necrem had spotted earlier. He looked the boy up and down, the uneasy smile never wavering.
“You,” the master sergeant said, grabbing the boy by the shirt, “over there.” He pointed with his halberd toward the right, close to the corner of the ranks, where no one had been directed to yet, and flung the boy out of line.
The boy yelped, stumbled, and barely caught himself in time before crashing into the dirt. Raul laughed as the boy picked himself up and walked, hunched over, to where he’d been ordered.
The master sergeant stalked away and, despite feeling bad for the young man, Necrem breathed a deep sigh of relief. Along with several others around him.
The selection and division continued. Necrem baked under the hot Easterly Sun, waiting for something worse to happen. His sweat-soaked shirt stuck to his body. His dry breath whistled through his mask. A couple of sergeants did walk by, looking at the other men, taking the man to his right, but never giving him a glance.
His attention wandered the longer he was ignored.
The army camp stretched for miles around. The sloping hills were covered with canvas from erected tents and flapping banners. He could never keep straight which banner belonged to which baron, company, or individual calleros. To him, they were all nobles and paid for most of his smithing work while traveling with the armies. Doing his work and being paid was all that had mattered to him back then.
He tilted his head. Through the growls of the sergeants picking men nearby and the hundreds of shouts, orders, and yells in camp, he thought he heard the faint pings of metal against metal, hammer against hot steel. He formed a fist, feeling the worn handle, the weight of the head, then the drop.
“Oh no,” Master Sergeant Raul growled, snapping Necrem out of his daze.
He heard boots crunching and the heavy thump of a halberd handle slamming into the ground. He couldn’t turn his head to see, but he felt a closer presence right behind him.
“Maeso Corri.” The master sergeant spat. “You thieving rat. Couldn’t keep your greasy fingers out of other people’s pockets this time either, eh?”
“I did try, Sergeant,” a snarky voice replied. “Forgive me, Master Sergeant. The higher rank suits you—it really does. But, you know, sometimes life after campaign can be hard for humble men like me.”
“Humble?” Raul snickered. “Since when have you ever been humble, Maeso?”
“Since I was three, sir. Honest.”
“You’ve never been honest a day in your life.” There was small scuffle before a short man with thin, patchy hair came scrambling around Necrem, flailing his arms to keep balance. “Get over there with my group and behave, if you know what’s good for you.”
The short man, Maeso, turned and bobbed his head, keeping his back hunched and his hands folded together. The thin line of a mustache on his upper lip and narrow nose certainly gave him a rat appearance. He was missing some teeth, and Necrem barely got a glimpse of his eyes before he scurried off. The other sergeants laughed, but then, one by one, fell silent.
The hairs on the back of Necrem’s neck stood up. That presence still lurked behind him. He saw the master sergeant’s shadow out of the corner of his eye, just standing there.
Then he moved.
He slowly stalked around, walking with his halberd thumping on the ground with each step. The master sergeant stopped in front of him and looked him up and down.
“All right, big bastard,” Raul growled. “How much trouble are we going to get from you?”
“None, sir,” he replied.
Raul squinted at him. “What was that? Speak up, big man! Am I going to get any trouble from you?”
“No, sir,” he said louder.
“That’s no, Master Sergeant, giant!” Raul stomped his halberd in the dirt. “You’re in Si Don’s army now, and I’m going to put you in your place right now. I know your kind. If you crack any skulls or throw any weight around without me telling you first, I’ll have you broken down to size. You understand me?”
“Yes, Master Sergeant!” Necrem made sure to be a little louder but tried not to push it.
He knew Raul was just asserting his rank and was showing the other men he wasn’t scared of Necrem’s size. It didn’t matter to him. He simply had to do what he was told and do his best to get back home, alive.
“Louder!” Raul snapped.
“Yes! Master Sergeant!”
A ripping sting raced across his right cheek. Something warm slowly trickled down, and the familiar taste of iron and salt seeped between his exposed teeth.
That was a stitch! He forced his breathing to still. My face is too dry.
Raul growled and shook his head. “I still can’t hear a damn word you’re saying. Take that stupid mask off.”
The veins in Necrem’s neck tensed. It was as if the eyes of everyone in camp were upon him. “Sir . . . I can’t—”
“Take off that damn mask!” The master sergeant slammed his halberd into the ground again. “That’s an order!”
Necrem briefly thought to explain what he was hiding, why it was best no one saw his face. The determination in Raul’s face, his disgusted sneer, and uncaring eyes, however, told him instantly that wouldn’t work.
“Fine.” He reached around the back of his head, slowly as not to frighten anyone. “You want to see?”
He untied the leather band, careful not to pull his hair. The stiff leather caught on his prickly, dry skin and peeled off his right cheek from the bleeding stich. The hot air instantly struck his face. Grains of dust blew between the open cuts in his cheeks, embedding themselves in his exposed teeth.
Raul’s sneer drained from his face, along with the blood from his face. He gaped up at Necrem, all his bluster and authority evaporating as he stared.
A growing murmur spread through the onlookers. Men shuffled around in their groups to get a look at him, only to recoil at the sight, cussing and touching their own faces in some fashion.
Necrem didn’t blame them. His face was crisscrossed, gouged, and carved from one ear, following his jawline and along his cheekbone, under his nose, and to his other ear. Some cuts were shallow, but the deeper ones sliced into the muscle, and the stitching had barely helped them heal because patches of skin had been carved off his face.
Part of his lips were also missing, combined with the multiple slashes, and his teeth and gums were exposed in several places. He knew several of them were brown, too. The missing skin and frenzied nature of the cuts meant he had to continually sew some of his scars back up to hold his face together, allowing them to heal the best they could as his skin pulled taut across his face over the years. They also needed fresh salve applied regularly to keep the skin and scars moist and clean.
His face resembled a living corpse’s—hanging flesh, exposed muscle, gums, and teeth—but all alive and constantly healing, reopening, and bleeding again.
With his mask off, saliva began pooling at the edges of his exposed teeth and dripped down his chin. Blood from the ripped stitch ran down and left a warm streak curving under his jaw, finally dripping onto his shirt.
“What . . .?” Raul stammered, shaking in his armor. “By the Savior, what the . . .?”
“Punishment,” Necrem hissed and whistled through the open sides of his face. The whistling continued from his breathing, and he switched to breathing through his nose. “Can I put my mask back on now, Master Sergeant?”
“Yes!” Raul couldn’t speak fast enough. “Never take the frickin’ thing off again. Get over there with the others. I’ll make sure you don’t cause trouble for the capitán personally.” He waved him away then went back to sorting through the remaining conscripts.
Necrem begrudgingly put his mask back on. Not that he cared what everyone else thought, but the blood already staining the inside of the mask. His stitching needed to be redone, and the rest of his scars needing salve. He wanted to treat his face away from prying eyes. He suspected the master sergeant wasn’t done with them.
After tying on his mask, he picked up the bag by his feet and trudged off to his assigned group. Most of the men had already been divided up and, at quick glance, he could see they were being split up in groups of twenty. Some of the sergeants were already berating their chosen men.
People watched him.
Before, he had just been a tall curiosity because of his mask. Now he was a walking horror. The men who the master sergeant had selected stepped away from him, giving him space and not meeting his eyes as he walked to the back of the group. A quick count told him there wasn’t a full twenty yet.
He set his bag between two tents, squatted, and then pulled out a tin of salve.
“How’d that happen, you wonder?” someone whispered behind him.
Necrem untied his mask and put it away in his bag before popping the can’s lid off. The heavy musk of the fatty, cream-colored contents hit his nostrils, and he held back a gag. He’d been gagging for over nine years, but it was the only thing to soothe his tattered face.
“Pissed off the wrong people,” someone whispered back.
You’re not wrong there.
He dipped the tips of his fingers into the thick, slimy salve, coating them, and then brought them to his face. The salve seeped into every crack and line on his face. Some rolled into his exposed mouth, and he heaved at its overwhelming salty, oily taste. It made his eyes water.
It took another dip to salve all his scars. He wiped the blood off his cheek and neck before covering the right side of his face. He hissed and clamped his teeth together the moment the salty salve touched his ripped stitch. He gently tapped the stitch, feeling the tear.
I’ll have to pull the entire stitch. He didn’t look forward to that. He was still terrible at stitching, despite his years of practice.
Necrem salved the rest of his face, bearing the musky smell under his nose and the oily taste on his hacked lips, and then he put the salve away. He breathed easy after fishing a clean mask from his pocket and tied it on. This mask—made of cloth—pressed down on his slickened skin and formed a seal, but also let him breathe.
After putting his things away, he stood up to find everyone still watching him. Unsurprisingly, they shied away from him, not risking looking him in the eye. Yet, he could already pick out smaller groups forming among them.
The younger men stood apart from the older, those who had seen a campaign stood together with their arms folded, and the raggedy, nefarious types were huddled together, whispering as if already conniving a pecking order and planning to steal everyone’s possessions.
Seeing them, Necrem picked up his bag and held it close.
“You look better with the mask,” Maeso said, crookedly grinning from the middle of the raggedy bunch.
The band of thieves surrounding him hushed, and everyone passed cautious glances between the two men.
They’re expecting me to growl or say something menacing.
Everyone expected that out of Necrem. To average folk, a man as big as him had to be mean or intimidating. It was just an image that came naturally to them.
He shrugged. “I never had looks.”
They all blinked at him.
First, there was a snicker. Then a chuckle. Finally, the thieves broke down laughing, and the veterans smirked.
“All right! Shut up!” Master Sergeant Raul ordered, hauling in his last pick by the collar.
The man didn’t fit in with any of the three forming groups. His wavy hair reached below his shoulders. His clothes were unstained and not those of a working man from the slums. His dark, high-collar jacket was clean, his trousers only had a layer of dust, and he wore shoes instead of boots.
“Please, sir,” the man begged, “there must be some mistake.”
“The only mistake you keep making is not shutting your trap!” The master sergeant sneered in the man’s face before tossing him in with the rest.
The man fell into one of the veterans, who in turn tossed him aside into another. That repeated while the fancy man flailed aimlessly, like a spark dancing in the air until he finally flailed out and fell into the dirt, much to the thieves’ amusement, them pointing and laughing at him.
“Shut up, filth!” Raul snapped. “You’re all in Si Don’s army now and, for better or worse, get to serve for the honor of his son, Don Givanzo. You better start acting like it and follow orders fast, or you’re all going to start off with a flogging!”
That returned everyone’s sour mood and silenced the laughing.
“Good.” The master sergeant smirked. “Now, take a good look around. This is your family for the rest of the campaign. While we’ll march with the entire company, you will eat, train, fight, and sleep with the men around you. And you’re all responsible for each other.
“If any man is caught stealing, him and five more of you will be flogged.” Raul stalked in among them, glaring warningly at the thieves when he mentioned stealing. “If any man is caught slouching on their training, him and five more of you will be flogged. If any man can’t keep his weapons and armor clean, him and five more of you will be flogged. If any man is caught mistreating camp followers, he may be hanged, but five more of you will be flogged. And, if any one of you tries to desert”—Raul stopped in front of Necrem and sneered up at him—“all of you will be . . . punished.”
The master sergeant let the threat hang in the air while the other men stared at him.
Necrem just hung his head. Deserters are hanged. There’s no reason to—
He spotted the young lads trembling. The sweaty one’s face was pale.
He’s just scaring everybody.
“Do I make myself clear?” Raul asked, looking back over the rest.
“Yes, sir,” several mumbled and nodded, including Necrem.
“Yes what?” Raul spat. “I can’t hear you, filth!”
“Yes, Master Sergeant!” they all said louder.
Raul grunted and strolled through them.
Necrem reeled back to avoid the master sergeant’s halberd that he swung carelessly on his shoulder.
“From now on, you’re all part of my personal squad. Which means you do whatever I say before everyone else does. And if any man doesn’t do it fast enough, well . . . are any of you smart enough to know what happens?”
They remained quiet. A mutual feeling on not being stupid enough to—
“He gets a flogging along with five others,” Maeso replied. “Right, Master Sergeant?”
“Good to see you still remember, Maeso.” Raul chuckled. “Maybe the lesson will stick this year.”
“Truer words were never spoken, Master Sergeant.” Maeso rolled his shoulders.
There were a few nervous chuckles from his shabby band, but no one else found it funny.
“All right then.” Raul cleared his throat. “On to—”
Drumming started from somewhere deeper in the camp. Raul and the other sergeants stopped their beratement and listened. More drums followed. Then a bugle call. Then another. The lads shared confused looks, but Necrem and the veterans knew what they meant.
The army’s been ordered to move.
Glancing over his shoulder, he spied camp followers already rushing into the tents, hurrying to pack. He remembered doing the same when he had followed the armies. It was the hardest and worst job to do—loading all his tools and equipment as fast as he could so as not to be left behind.
“Sounds like Don Givanzo is eager to start the season,” Raul said then grinned at the young lads. “Here’s your first lesson, boys. In Si Don’s army, you run. Everywhere. Get moving! All of you move! Move!”
The other sergeants echoed their master sergeant, and Necrem and the rest of his conscripted company were soon sent dashing through the camp.
He threw his bag over his shoulder, holding it tightly while wincing with every footfall. He wasn’t sure where they were leading him, but he was certain his knees were going to hate every step of the way.