Tale of the Lancer, Part 1 (Fantasy Military Fiction)

I sat my horse and watched the Captain ride into our assigned area. I should say that he was so drunk that it was his horse staggering. Captain Aegis Freelander spent his life in three cycles; half-drunk, drunk, and passed out. In the first two stages he was perhaps the greatest soldier I had ever known, and he could move from passed out to either of the other stages at the call of a bugle.

I know that he had opposed attending this ceremony, even though we were assigned to "guard" it and not participate in the show itself. We were on a plateau about three hundred feet over the valley floor that served perfectly as a natural parade ground. The Captain had been some minor nobility and had been exiled from court; the story was murky and the details contradicted each other from each person I heard it from. Evidently, our squadron was assigned to watch watch and not take part in the festivity in order to humiliate the Captain. Personally, I think he just didn't want to be around the tin soldiers that provided the bulk of those attending.

I shifted my attention to the Doctor. He had always creeped me out; I had never seen a field surgeon that sent most of his time with the dead and dying that put his medical kit to the side and employed jars. I do know that when he used those jars, one of two things happened. Either a dying enemy finished dying right then and there, or one of our troopers lived...no matter how badly he had been wounded. A superstitious fellow might have thought the doctor was taking the lives from the enemy and putting them in jars to use to fix our soldiers up. Since that bordered on magic, and thus did not exist, I just ignored it when he did it.

Now the Doctor was talking to a young village girl. She was too young to seduce, probably about fourteen or so, so I rode up on him to make sure he didn't besmirch the name of the troop. As I eavesdropped, I could tell that he was teasing the girl, but not in a perverted way. I rode closer over to the edge of the plateau and watched the Court battalions form up. The band down there was not playing any martial music, but something a little unsettling instead. The beat of the drums was definitely off.

We were certainly not a Court squadron, we of the Prince's Own Mounted Huntsmen. Raiders, scouts, harriers, and dragoons when necessary, we were selected by the staff of the Inspector General from the best horsemen in the King's cavalry troopers. We were fifty troopers and one hundred horses. Most of the troopers were line, but our sutler, saddler, and doctor rode with us, as we ranged over a wide area in war. The Captain and the Doctor had been with the squadron when I was assigned to it twenty years ago. Now I was the First Lance, second only to the Captain.

H. Ambrose Kiehl [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Doctor rode over to me as I continued watching the King's army finish it's evolution into ranks. He had been frowning as he watched the troops make the final dress adjustments, and now he looked startled as the band started up with the most hideous music I had ever heard. It was almost if the Earth itself was squealing in time to the horrid beat.

The Doctor whirled his horse and bolted towards the center of the village where most of the troop was gaggling about. He shouted for the Captain.

Aegis!! Braxmis!!

Whatever the hell that meant, the Captain too danced his horse around and pulled the guidon and the bugler to him. They broke into full gallop away as the bugler sounded On Me; two longer, steady calls followed by three short, broken, and impatient ones...braaaap braaaap burap burap burap

I saw the doctor break one of his jars and I heard him speak as clearly to me as he had been standing his horse next to mine. Ride like the Devil is on your tail. Don't stop until the Captain does. It appeared that the rest of the squadron heard as well as troopers were leaping onto their mounts and spurring into movement. The Doctor swooped down on the girl and swept her across his horse as he fled the plateau.

The ride off the plateau would have been terrifying to even our experienced horsemen due to the speed in which we took the dangerous trail down, but that fear was spiked from the cries of the men from the ceremony, which rose up as that horrible music climaxed. It sounded as if each man on the floor had been tortured to death in one vicious moment. The Doctor's voice spoke in my mind again. Focus on the ride. Don't look back. Don't stop for the fallen.

The trail was full of cutbacks and deadfall, easy enough for a slow and careful ride up, but nerve-wracking exhilaration when racing down it. I saw one trooper and his horse go down, but as I slowed to render aid, I heard screams from the village we had just left. I never even saw who the trooper was.

The escape off the plateau suddenly grew harder as the sky behind us started getting dark. I occasionally began to hear a man or horse tumble behind me, or to see a fall in front of me, and again I thought to slow down and aid the fallen. It was my battle duty to ride at the rear in retreat and account for stragglers. This time, it was the Captain's voice in my ears, although he was out of sight at the time. No, goddamnit! Ride and live!

My horse went down, and the trooper behind me didn't even slow down as he lowered his body and scooped me off the ground. It was the finest display of horsemanship I had ever seen, even considering that I was the beneficiary of it. He had even managed to keep ahold of the reins of his spare horse in the gallop down. I took the risk of switching to the spare on the ride down, as riding double in these conditions would have worn down his horse and left us both behind the troop.

And that was something I did not want to do... I could hear a man scream behind us now and again, and I knew that these were our own, fallen behind. The shame of that could not come to the forefront of my mind now as I had to survive, but I knew that I would be sick once we had found a safe harbor.

Finally, the slope became more gradual and the path straightened out. We followed the Captain as he took a branch off the path, and headed towards what I thought of the Swamp of the Witches, a childhood name for a country whose name I could not recall at the time. All I could remember now were the legends that the men were subservient to the women, and that the women mated with or killed any other man that passed through the swamps. Childhood myths...hopefully.

We had to slow for a moment off the plateau...the horses had galloped over 2 miles down a treacherous path. Two horses were done for by the time we stopped, and their riders had switched to new mounts. The sky was still getting darker, but in some weird way, it looked like it was getting darker over the area we had just fled, almost to a solid black.

The Captain set us to trot-canter-walk, and I took my place at the rear. We moved into the swamps, and I knew we were safe when we began seeing red ribbons tied around the trunks of the trees. We stopped and took count. We were down to twenty-one men and thirty horses. There were three villagers with us; the girl that the Doctor had rescued, a young woman that had been flirting with a trooper when the escape began, and a middle aged man who had jumped upon his own horse when he saw our sudden flight.

We found a clear area in the trees and set camp. I started to order the night guard, but the Captain held me off on that and told me that we were safe here. I saw that men began collapsing into a deep sleep, some before they had even finished unrolling their bedrolls. Of course, we had looked to our horses before we set the camp! A cavalryman is of no use without a horse.

By Galtrey, Sidney, 1878-1935 [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons

I thought I would be too guilty to fall asleep myself, but there was something in that darkness that drained life from you. It was not even late afternoon when we all fell into slumber.

The last I remember seeing before i shut my own eyes was the Captain and Doctor in fierce discussion. The grim anger in the Captain's eyes was as bright as I had ever seen them in battle. I did not have pleasant dreams in that exhaustion...at all.