Chương 399: 11.8

Bakr was an Officer of the Magarskan army, he was paid a good sum of silver for his family back home and was ordered through a great many back breaking efforts when he was still a simple Soldier. Now, he still had to do the hard training to keep himself fit but the Officer rank was a position he had duly earned! Fighting against the vampyre uprising and living to tell the tale was a feat that far too few of the men that had joined him could claim.

He remembered the Officer that had commanded him and the thing which had torn him in half before he and a dozen others managed to stick it with enough spears to halt its attack. They had still had to burn the things as well, it was still struggling even if it had lost the strength to harm them. Now he was in another war, fighting another front. He'd trained under dragon slayers since then, he'd fought the Wolf Prince himself in a bout and then taken what he had learned to those Soldiers under him.

There was little chance that they would ever have a chance to use what they had been taught. No, the Captain had been clear on that part of the plan. The shining doom would be felled by the fliers of the army. By gryff riders and the many brave war gryff striker flights trained by their handlers. Bakr was glad he only had a messenger gryff handler under his command. Those that were committing their trusted charges to the battle today were going to face a truth so harsh as to strain their martial vows.

His Captain had revealed the war council expected them to lose half or more of the fliers committed to any offensive against the shining doom. The Officers were of course ordered to silence on it with their men. So they did as their vows demanded. Their obedience hardly needed the cutting touch of the heavens for Bakr, but he knew his fellows and their Captains were going to be counseling bereaved gryff tenders come their victory feast this evening. It was a thing that could tempt a man to taste heaven's bite.

Bakr thankfully had been given a far more manageable task. Men on the ground, twenty five under his command of proper Soldiers. Another seventy five green Recruits marked for service at the start just this year. There was only a season to prepare the Recruits called up from the villages and poor among the cities, but he'd done a praiseworthy job of it he thought.

Bakr was proud of them for the progress they made from when he first saw them, they were just about able to survive the march under their armor and not one of his new men had refused the heavenly vows required for their half year of service. Some of the other Officers under Bakr's Captain had been required to punish their Recruits into compliance until they made the vows of loyalty.

Bakr had heard some of them had even needed to return back to some particularly obstinate man's family for a replacement to fill their required count of Recruits due to refusal to bind his will to the heavens and the army. Bakr thought it was probably the fault of the proverbial Officer in question honestly, else you'd hear exactly who was having such extraordinary trouble with Recruits. As an Officer he hadn't had that much trouble for three musters of the Magarskan army role!

He'd needed to heavily discipline a few of the fresher Recruits in his first command, but after you learned the knack of it that was hardly ever necessary. You just had to give a little honey with the bitterness of service. Not that he needed to even lie! Spoils could make a simple recruit rich, and a veteran of a year's war under vow could qualify for joining as a proper Soldier the next year if a man wanted. It came with stronger vows but it also paid in silver year round for that trial!

Bakr found letting the most rural recruits know that he used to be a camel minder himself (yes that was his name very funny) it helped win them over. One year's campaign as a Recruit eating what the army provided and doing what the Officers told you, and then after a chance to fight the next war better armored, better prepared as a Soldier and then maybe even someday earning the chance to be a full Officer as well? An Officer was practically a noble for the most backwater parts of Magarska.

His family certainly was living well with his pay! It was a good and enticing deal for a Recruit in the army. If an Officer said it the right way. Bakr was a good Officer, he got them to speak the words under watch by the army chaplain with the stars called to listen. To make the vow under the heavens and bind their loyalty for the campaigns. And after a Recruit was avowed?

Well then they would train and drill and move as Bakr commanded, with a heaven's pact on their souls, even the weakest farm boy could be made to lift and march until his bones hardened and his muscles swelled. A Recruit could even be ordered to walk til he could no longer move if that was what their superior required of them. Not that any officer should do that of course. It was a waste of fed men, besides it was part of their duties to judge and give only suitable orders for the Recruits.

The proper Soldiers, of course, were given greater freedom but even they had to obey full commands of their Officers. In the heat of battle obedience was vital. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. They all had their role to play, over Officer Bakr his Captain had made the order for him to rally his men to this place on the field with the dawn.

They had eaten on the march after securing their arms and armor, none of his Recruits or Soldiers had failed in any of their preparations. Now they stood at ready, both Soldiers and Recruits shifting as his leniency had allowed. Bakr's first Officer when he was just a Recruit had not allowed them to shift and he'd seen men fail to act from the cramps in their legs caused by that order when they had to start drills.

The man had been beaten by his Captain, in full view of all the Recruits, forced to stand still while he was bruised and berated for wasting the army's men and time, then left standing through the night. That Officer had been replaced by another the next morning, Bakr never found out if he'd died standing at attention. Bakr made sure he was a better Officer than that poor idiot. Your orders to heaven-bound men needed to be open to allow the natural state of the body to thrive.

That was why the vows of Soldiers with loyalty beyond the heavens' enforcement were given more freedom. The first true battle of the war was coming, not some skirmish, not harassment by their fliers on the enemy. But the distant march of the thousands of boots of the enemy coming into position, still hidden by the rise ahead of them. Officer Bakr flexed his grip on his spear. They would not be facing the shining doom as he had been trained and drilled on.

There would be no white searing death to contend with or a beast able to strike you down from every side on the ground. There was no way that could happen, the Captains had told him so. Told him what the plan was and his part to play in it. Hold the line, rally the Recruits and Soldiers, engage and cut through the northern barbarians and their pathetic army of rabble in leather and shoddy iron. He'd never fought the northerners, but he knew of them.

The pretenders at Cantor's legacy fought with none of the precision of the Old Cantor. If there was any heir to the power and might of the ancient fallen empire it was Magarska and her soldiers! He'd studied the texts, as every Officer of the army was required after he takes his station's vows, both ancient manuals and the newest treatises by the masters of war.

From all he had seen and heard the so-called armies of Cantor Reborn practiced little of that, their nobles were said to be the only learned among them, and even that was a coin toss. He'd thought such a notion was ridiculous, no army could be so foolish, but then again they had put a beast in charge of the entire war! A signal horn blew, the marching of thousands of boots moving into position rolling in from the distance ever louder, another horn answered it, deep and haunting and horribly foreign.

He flexed his fingers around the dragon-slaying spear he had earned as a symbol of his position over his men. The banner hanging from under the spear was a clear marker he could swing in ready view to signal all who had the heaven's binding to follow and obey his signs. He shifted his weight in readiness. The creak of his straps and the settling of the weight of his armor was familiar, it was all correct. He saw the Soldiers doing the same, reassuring themselves and showing him they too were prepared. The Recruits?

Not so much, even with a season to drill them under heaven's binding a man could only do so much. Officer Bakr saw the opposing army cresting the hill. He knew from the word of his captain that they were less than their own number. But it was hard to believe that when it felt like the men across from you were a match for your own command and your neighbors. At least the news of their barbarity was clearly on display. Barely any men among them were even fully armored in metal!

It was an impressive count, a line that could match him and his fellow officers to a man. But if he only had to face those before him Bakr was confident he'd not even lose a quarter of his Recruits in this battle. The war horns of the enemy called out again, and then the booming calls of the northerner's sparse flight of War Gryffs. Only the hulking beasts suitable for riders grew in the north, the manuals said that they had been stolen generations ago by the northerners.

Enslaved and abused into compliance by the foul cold men of the north. Their own flocks boomed and cried in response, overwhelming the opposition with their cries. Above the riders flew up and down their lines, guarding the skies. Among the ranks the shriller calls of lesser war griffs filled the air. But the men were obedient and silent, stoic as their commands demanded them.

Magarska's voice prevailed, until suddenly a sound filled his ears, filled his bones, cracked the air and worst of all took up cruel and foreign words. Harsh and biting and alien to his ears. He did not know it but he could feel the malice in every syllable, in the guttural cuts and snarls. Officer Bakr flexed his fingers again and held the line, his command shifted uneasily as the words carried on.

Then he saw it, the shining doom, golden scales burning in the noonday sun, wings wider than any but the greater griffs which ferried the highest ranking personnel and most precious materials of the Army. Soaring towards them, and with its battle cry the barbarians began their charge. Rushing down the hillside that the generals had positioned themselves in the valley of. Bakr called out his command voice clear and precise.

"Position spears, prepare!" Recruit and Soldier moved as if they were his own limbs, the Soldiers in perfect unison with his own hands on his spear, the Recruits somewhat delayed by yet to be honed reflexes. Among the rushing rabble with their weapons and simple cloth coats horses rode out and over the hill, these were proper warriors, slender soldiers in black stained armour, lowering lances towards them, terrible beasts charging with their riders, already pulling ahead of the soldiers.

Officer bakr had faced a Wyrm in close combat, he did not even need the binding touch of the heavens to muster his spirit. He stepped forward, with a wordless call of command. The recruits moved in line with his voice, the soldiers matching his own motion moments before. He was an Officer of Magarska and his Soldiers and Recruits were his weapons. He had two hundred and two hands and all of them were bracing for war, primed to his voice and movement.

Most might be less sure then the rest but all would move as he willed it. The charge coming down the hill was sloppy, the bulk of it messy, the lines clumping up. There were not enough horses to break his part of the line, not with the skill he and the Soldiers possessed with wyrm slaying spears. Or the drills and bulk of bodies the Recruits would provide.

He would- There was a roar of sound to his left, he spared a glance and saw only white light and erupting earth, fire, sparks, flame, then it was rushing towards him. The sound was deafening, no! They weren't supposed to-