Chương 13: CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE GARRISON EXPANDS

Hollis raised the question of expansion in the third week of winter, in the pragmatic way he raised all questions that had an obvious answer and were waiting only for authorization.

"Twelve isn't enough," he said.

"Wasn't enough when I got here, isn't enough now, won't be enough when the pressure from the north becomes serious." He paused.

"I want to recruit. Local men — young, reasonably fit, willing to work. I can train them."

"What's your target number?" Marcus said.

"Thirty before spring. Ultimately more, but thirty gives us something that functions as a garrison rather than a gate watch." He paused.

"I've been looking at the population. There are young men who'd take garrison work for the pay and the stability. Not enough of them with prior military experience — this isn't a place that produces a lot of trained soldiers — but experience I can supply. What I need is raw material."

"What does the pay structure look like currently?" Hollis described it. The twelve existing garrison soldiers were paid at the going rate for the region, which Marcus had verified against Marta's knowledge of what was typical — adequate to live on, not generous, competitive with agricultural labor in a good harvest year and better in a bad one. It was not enough to attract men who had better options. It was enough to attract men whose options were limited.

"Keep the pay structure," Marcus said.

"Add a meal provision — garrison soldiers eat from the castle kitchen. It costs us less than the equivalent pay increase and it's worth more to them because it's reliable." He paused.

"And change the training schedule to be visible." Hollis looked at him.

"Visible how?"

"Morning training in the market square," Marcus said.

"Not showing off — working. But where people can see what the garrison does and what kind of shape the men are in." He paused.

"Right now the garrison is invisible. If people can see that garrison service means being fit, being trained, being part of something organized — that changes the recruitment quality." Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. Hollis processed this.

"You want to make it aspirational."

"I want it to actually be aspirational," Marcus said.

"And then I want people to be able to see that it is." The training moved to the market square the following week. Marcus had expected some resistance to the change from within the garrison itself — soldiers didn't always enjoy being observed — but Hollis had prepared the ground, and what Marcus saw when he watched the morning session from the wall was twelve men working with the quiet pride of people who understood that being watched meant being worth watching. The recruitment began within days.

Not dramatically — no proclamation, no recruitment drive. Word traveled the way word traveled in small communities: through conversations, through the visible fact of the morning training sessions, through the garrison soldiers themselves who were, in the natural course of their social lives, talking to people who were looking for work or direction or both. By the end of the first week, three men had presented themselves to Hollis for assessment. Hollis assessed them with ruthless thoroughness.

He was not cruel — he was not the kind of NCO who confused difficulty with quality — but he was precise about what he needed, and what he needed was not just physical fitness and willingness. He needed the specific quality of character that could be trained to function under pressure: the ability to manage fear without being managed by it, the instinct to follow through on commitment even when following through was hard, the social intelligence to operate as part of a unit rather than as an individual.

Two of the three made it through the assessment. The third was redirected — gently but clearly — to the civil patrol that Price would eventually establish, which was a better fit for his particular combination of qualities, though Price didn't exist yet and Marcus simply noted that the man had the right instincts for law enforcement and filed it for later. By the end of winter, the garrison had grown to nineteen.

Not the thirty Hollis had wanted, but solid — each addition carefully selected, each one already showing the influence of Hollis's training methodology in the way they moved and held themselves and responded to instruction. Marcus watched a morning training session from the east wall and thought about what he had, which was: the beginning of something that could defend what he was trying to build. Not adequate yet. Less inadequate than it had been. He went back down and got on with the rest of the day's work.