You’re In The Army Now...

[Letho]

((Closed to Lucien.))


DAY 1

Letho walked before a group of his newest recruits at an agonizingly slow pace with a solemn frown cresting his brow. His hands were joined behind his back, his eyes studious as he examined the hodgepodge assembly that he was supposed to turn into soldiers. From what his eyes assessed, it seemed like an impossible mission. Amidst the fifty enlistees that stood before him in what looked like a poor copy of an attention stance, half a dozen looked like something he could work with. The rest were either too aged, or too green, or too female to ever don the black cloak of the Wolf Brigade. Half of them wouldn’t last longer then a month, the Marshal knew. This wasn’t the first time that he was given the Unwanted.

That was how the recruitment master back at the main CAF barracks called the lot he sent to Letho’s boot camp in Red Fort. The Fort wasn’t much of a fortress really; just a collection of brick buildings surrounded by wooden palisades situated on the outskirts of the Slums District of Radasanth. Prior to the defection of the Marshal to the side of the Empire, the compound had been abandoned, left for squatters and homeless. The first group of Unwanted – the recruits that all other Empire military branches rejected – cleaned the place up, cut down the thicket. The second brought up the palisades. The third one now stood before Letho Ravenheart and he was starting to feel a little bit like a babysitter with a sword. His Wolf Brigade was a brigade just by name; he didn’t have nearly enough men to form a proper regiment.

There were a few good men, however, that this training camp brought to surface. One of them was standing between the Marshal – a Captain now by CAF rank – and the rest of the troops. Sergeant Denny T. Goris was a soldier through and through... once upon a time. Now he was an aged man with a shiny bald head and a face whose wrinkles had wrinkles. Almost all of his front teeth were missing – some lost in fistfighting, others fell victim to cigars he liked to smoke off duty. His constitution was unimpressive, nothing but wiry legs, spindly arms and twitchy hands he held on his hips as his blue eyes burned holes in faces. And even if he wasn’t dressed all in black as all Wolves were, there was little doubt that he was a mean son of a bitch.

“I am going to be blunt with you, recruits,” Letho finally began, stationary before what loosely resembled a square formation. “You are not going to have an easy time here at Red Fort. Just because others rejected you does not mean you will find lenience here. Lenience is what makes lax soldiers, and lax soldiers get killed in combat. And I do not let expandable soldiers ride beside me in combat. That is why more then half of you will never attain this uniform. But those of you that endure these three months would become more then just soldiers. You would become the tools of the Empire, helping to preserve its stability.”

The Red Marshal spoke in his lordly voice, the kind that made lesser men cower, but they still didn’t have a honest ring. It was mostly because Letho didn’t quite believe in them. Perchance he was fighting for the Empire, but he didn’t do so willfully. The Coalition – a behind-the-scenes, non-government organization – used Myrhia as a bargaining chip, coercing the Ranger to become a turncoat and fight alongside the Empire. Though he didn’t exactly fight for the Empire. The Coalition merely placed him in such a position to gain trust of the current government. From what he could gather, the Coalition wanted neither side to win in this Civil War. The Rangers sold themselves out to the three overseas nations and the Empire was naught but a throng of brutes. The Coalition sought balance, sought to destroy both factions and let a new nation rise from the ashes. But for that they needed Letho to tear the Empire down from the inside out. And he couldn’t do that until the brass trusted him to be a good little soldier. So he did his job, thinking as little as possibly of all these conspiracies.

“I leave you now to Sergeant Goris. He’ll introduce you to the compound and your duties.”

The bald man saluted his superior in a stringent, martial manner, but the moment his Captain swung the scarlet cape over his shoulder and turned around, the recruits were in his crosshairs. “Yes, let us do the introduction!” the Sergeant spoke, his voice much more mundane then Letho’s, but twice as loud. “I’ll introduce you first. You are now officially mucus! Green, repulsive, slime fresh out of the nose! You all wear green because you’re greenhorns! In fact, you’re worse then greenhorns! You make those cubs all look like highly decorated heroes!” He walked in front of the first row with uncannily long strides, pausing sporadically to scream his words into the face of whoever had the misfortune to capture his attention.

“You’re here because nobody else wanted to train your sorry, soggy, lazy be-hinds! Well, guess what?! We don’t want you either!!! If you want a chance to serve the Empire and earn your pay, you’re going to have to step out of that shithole your call your life and impress me! If you fail to do so, we’ll throw you out through the Yellow Gate! If you decide that you’re too much of a pussy and too little of a man, just walk out through the Yellow Gate! If you ever feel the need to go running for your mommy’s teats or your woman’s cunt, just take a stroll through the Yellow Gate. Do you know why we call it Yellow Gate?!” The question was thrown into the face at a rotund hill of a man with a flabby gut that spilled from under the olive green shirt and over the belt of his pants. The fat enlistee was some good six inches taller then the Sergeant, but his face was too timorous to be anything but confused. “Do you, sonny?!”

“N-No.”

“No? NO? The last word out of those stinking jabbering holes in your heads will be SIR! Now, do you know why we call it the Yellow Gate?!” the bald officer shouted again, this time loud enough for a thick vein to pop halfway up his sweaty skull.

“No, sir!” the big man responded, trying to look dignifying.

“Because only yellowbellies walk through it!! Are you a yellowbelly, boy? I can see you have plenty of belly, and so far it looks mighty yellow to me!” As if to clarify this point, Sergeant Danny Goris launched the hairy knuckles of his right hand into the flaccid flesh of the man’s abdomen, sending him staggering backwards a step before he fell on his knees, short of breath. “Get up! Get up or I’ll make your pal here fetch a cart and drive you out of that Gate! If you can’t take a punch in that gut of yours, what good are you to me in a battle?!”

The fallen man stared in disbelief from below, searching for help in the eyes of his comrades and finding none. Everybody else was quite content with the fact that the Sarge hadn’t pick on them on the first day. He regained his footing slowly and reassumed the attention stance as well as his aching stomach allowed. The boot camp Sergeant only snarled and moved away, shaking his head.

“This had to happen to me. Why, if our Captain wasn’t so damn benevolent, I’d have you all out of here before breakfast. As it is, I have to do my duty. So let us have a nice stroll through the compound... AT RUNNING SPEED! NOW MOVE IT!!!”

[Lucien]

All he heard was music.

Though sweat dampened his brow and left his hair a sticky mess; though a harsh man with a sharp tongue hounded him; none of it seemed to overcome the tune that spun around his head, through his ears, and out his mouth in a weak, weary hum. The boy was tired beyond belief as he focused all his energy on the two things that mattered most at that point; his song, and his run. The music kept him sane, defended him from any insult that lashed against his back by the aged creature that pushed them forward. His run was for his pride, his lively hood, and his life. And if nothing less, it kept him from being trampled by the horde he now found himself in.

Lucien had never been exposed to the mob mentality. Earth had given the boy a cocoon of individuality, a weakness that any good officer needed to rid from his soldiers. Had the teen any other choice, he would have left the insults and poorly worked fortifcations behind in lo of less stressful work. But as they ran up the ramp of the soggy, rain soaked palisade, images flashed through the boy's head as to how he got into such a mess.

His adoptive family no longer in his life, his visions of a dream world shattered with the loss of his powers, Lucien had turned to common thievery, skull duggery, and (failed) buggery. The boy quickly found he had neither the skill nor taste for the more morally depraved practices (aside from buggery that is) and was quickly apprehended in a sloppy attempt at slight of hand in some poor man's change purse. Luck was on his side, however. Corone had been in upheaval ever since the assassinations, and the newly formed Empire desperately needed soldiers to combat any threats to its legitimacy. The arbiter at the trial graciously allowed Lucien to keep his hands, in exchange for his fealty to the armed forces of Corone. Like any teenage boy, the prospect of losing a hand was more than enough motivation.

Sergeant Goris let loose another barrage of insults matched word for word with tour information. Had Lucien been paying attention, perhaps he would have found some of the information useful. But the music kept his wandering mind far astray from the realities of a harsh life. For a brief and bitter moment of consciousness, the foul odor of vomit wafted from his olive green uniform; no doubt a gift from the previous recruit to wear it. The heavy boots he wore, two sizes too big no less, rubbed against the raw flesh of his foot. He wondered how the rest of the cadets could keep up. Lucien had youth on his side, yet somehow the bulging man the Sargent beat earlier matched him step for step.

At least the group stopped, their hellish tour ending for now. It was just in time for the cooking fires of Radasanth to come floating through the air in heavenly grace, teasing the pallets of every man (and woman) who stood in front of a gate, painted in tones of yellow, chipping with the wear and tear of army life.

"Alright. Welcome to the first, and only break you miserable lot will get for the day." Goris had a no nonsense look about him, giving ever cadet a shiver down their spine. "You've all seen the camp, it's not much more than a few run down buildings rebuilt by soldiers who beat you all as men by ten-fold. This is our final stop, and the most important."

Silence. It even stopped the music in Lucien's head.

[Letho]

Behind the second-story window of the brick manor that served as the company’s headquarters, standing with his arms joined behind his back, Letho Ravenheart watched as his Sergeant chased the newest batch of recruits from one end of the compound to the other. With the glass and distance dampening the sound, it was an almost comical scene. The bald officer whipped the untrained men with curses and derogatory words, and though the Red Marshal wasn’t overly fond of such a treatment, it was far better then the alternative Danny proposed. Whipping people for real perhaps would’ve made more stalwart soldiers, but just how many would’ve chosen to take the punishment instead of just calling quits was a questionable matter.

Most would’ve probably opted for the Yellow Gate, which Sergeant Goris just began introducing to the recruits that heaved for air after a dash down the entire length of the surrounding palisades. The Yellow Gate was Letho’s own idea, a path of shame that the would-be soldiers were supposed to find so unacceptable that they would rather endure another day then tucking the tail between their legs for all to see. It was Danny’s idea to make the gate open up to none other then the main channel of the Radasanth’s sewers. So, whoever got fed up with the harsh treatment of the Red Fort had to go through both the chagrin of walking past the Yellow Gate and the waist-deep sewage stream. If that wouldn’t dissuade them from quitting, then there was probably little else that would.

Most of the greenhorns below barely managed to even out their breathing when Sergeant Goris screamed something awful again and got them back in formation. He would lead them to the armory next, Letho knew, and each of them would get a sword, a shield and a suit of armor, all combat ready. And the Sergeant would make sure that the recruits know that they are combat ready and not toys. Repeatedly. At first, the idea was to give the new trainees tournament weaponry, but Letho would have none of it. Responsibility was one of the most important lessons that needed to be taught, and taking care of the apparel that would eventually mean the difference between life and death was a good start. The barracks were the next stop after the armory, where they would be introduced to the uncomfortable cots they’d be sleeping on for the next several months. Sarge would take his time to show them how to properly make their bed. Then, when they’ve settled down, he’d lead them to the mess hall for lunch. And while the recruits would be eating their measly noon meal, he’d go back to the barracks and overturn all the beds and lockers. And then he’d make the recruits redo them all over again.

It was all standard procedure, the modus operandi that so far forged two solid classes of battle-ready soldiers. It wasn’t easy. Sometimes it didn’t make sense. But soldiers weren’t paid to think; they had officers to do that for them. They were paid to follow orders. And if an officer told you to do something over for the umpteenth time, you did it or you got flogged.

Sighing, Letho turned away from the window and sat behind his desk. The dastardly paperwork still waited for him, stacks and stack of reports and affidavits and needless bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo whose sole purpose was to waste time. Being an officer of the Corone Armed Forces was nothing like being a Ranger. Here, the hierarchical ladder was so intricate that you had about a dozen people sitting above your head. And here you could spend your tenure sitting on your ass as long as you filed the proper form in duplicates. Only now, when he witnessed the inner workings of the remnants of the Republic’s democracy did Letho truly realize the truth in the words that Killian Jahaad told him. The Coalition’s man told the Marshal that the Republic’s system was flawed, unjust, unbalanced, and Letho now knew just how much. The Empire was an empire just in name and iron clutch they had over the lands; everything else was the same as before the war.

About half an hour of reading and signing and sealing later, the bald head and wrinkly hand of Sergeant Goris saluted Letho in his office. Despite all the running and bawling and cursing, the spindly man barely worked out a sweat. Only his hairless head shone, but then again, that smooth piece of skin always seemed to have a sheen, as if the man was oiling it.

“The recruits are at lunch, Marshal,” the grizzly officer reported.

“Captain,” Letho corrected him again, jotting down a signature at the end of an inventory list of a tool shack he didn’t even know they had in the Red Fort. “So, what’s your opinion on our newest batch, Denny?”

“Sorriest bunch I’ve ever seen, sir.” Given the enraged disposition he had towards the enlistees, Sergeant’s tone was much more placid now, as if he vented out all of his rage and he had none left. It wasn’t true. It was simply respect for the superior officer that held back the usual tongue lashing. “If we get a platoon out of the lot of them, it’ll be a miracle.”

“You said that the last time as well.”

“They’ve sent us the same crud as the last time.”

“Perhaps. Be that as it may, we must make the best of it,” the former Marshal said, his tone stern and serious as plague. “So no more needless punishment. Nobody was born a soldier.”

“Aye, Captain.”

With that said – albeit a bit begrudgingly – Sarge left the office. Letho didn’t often reprimand his officers and he wasn’t necessarily against physical punishment. Pain could be quite an effective instrument in prevention of repeating mistakes. If you remembered that you nearly got your wrist broken when you dropped your blade, you made damn sure you didn’t drop it again. But there were limits to such treatment and Letho wasn’t too fond when those limits were broken. He was a harsh man himself, but a just one as well.

[Lucien]

The day had finally ended; though Lucien's stomach seemed to be among the casualties of war. Like a violent tempest it rolled and rumbled amongst waves of a poorly synthesized cement the compound called food. As the teen held on to his stomach for dear life, visions of contempt rolled through his head like tanks crushing any sugar plums or fairies.

As the simple torchlight flickered and danced all over the walls, the boy could only groan at what he thought was the worst day of his life. He soon found his face buried deep within his hands, squirming a bit on top the hardest piece of fabric known to man. While Lucien expected something tough, he never believed cruelty could exist in human form in front of him, a vision clothed in wrinkled skin constantly frowning beneath a skull-like dome marred only by liver spots and hate.

"A Nazi," thought Lucien, " that's what that man is. A fucking nazi." Despite the best efforts of his vivid imagination, exhaustion would not allow him to picture Sergeant Goris singing a rousing rendition of 'Deutschland über Alles.'

The men around him seemed just as shaken up, some even visibly crying from the abuse thrown around during their 'fun run.' A man to Lucien's left curled up into a ball after the verbal lashing he had received when he didn't treat the sword he'd been given with the proper respect, prompting Goris to force the man to treat the weapon as he would a lover. The faint cuts were still visible on the man's lips. The pudgy creature from earlier, even after having to make his bed twice, was still made to sit on the floor when the Sergeant realized his fatass wouldn't fit on the bed correctly.

Talk was kept to a minimum, which was fine for Lucien. Something unpleasant clung to the roof of his mouth; whether it was one of the many flying insects that buzzed about, or the collective body odor of a sweating platoon, the boy didn't care. He sprawled over the cot and closed his eyes tightly. "Maybe tomorrow will be a better da-"

His thought was interrupted as cot gave way, introducing the teen to the hard wood floor underneath. As the blanket floated down to cover him up, he could hear the harsh voice of Goris following the creak of the heavy oaken door.

"Lights out," was all he said as darkness took over then.

[Letho]

DAY 2

“Open the gates for the Commander!” a cowled sentinel requested from atop the left watchtower that overlooked the main gate of the improvised cantonment. With the rain coming down in a torrent of drops as big as fingernails and as fat as the fingers, his words barely reached his counterparts on the ground level who were in charge of the entrance to the compound. Still, despite the persistent rapping of the rain on the wood of the palisades and the canvas of their black cloaks, the guard below responded with a nod and motioned to his comrade towards the bolted gates. But even with the beam dislodged, it took quite an effort to swing the wooden gates open. The palisades were freshly built, the wood was still settling and the rain didn’t do any favors by turning the soil into clingy muck. It turned something as simple as opening the doors into an act similar to plowing through mud. Luckily, there was only Captain Ravenheart on the other side, so they didn’t have to open it all the way.

Letho generally liked the rain, but in the early hours of a cloudy day it turned the world around him into a dreary place, about as lively as a graveyard. And that went double for the Red Fort and the adjoined facilities. Nothing but blackish-brown soil surrounded the headquarters whose bricks, now saturated with heavy precipitation, seemed more brown then red, as if they too forfeited their vibrancy to the weather. Hooded figures dressed in raven-black walked the walls like faceless specters, their pace methodical, almost surreally constant. And above them all, a gray sky loomed, laden with the same element it’s been pelting on the earth below.

Even the recruits seemed to blend in into the landscape. Even though the pale dawn was less then an hour behind them, Sergeant Goris had them lined up in two rows already, practicing military postures. Unlike the sentries, neither the enlistees nor their instructor wore cloaks or hoods, which made them pretty much soaked to the bone. In the official black attire of the company, Denny Goris barely looked soaked, while the would-be soldiers before his looked as if they just took a bath with their gear on. Despite this obvious discomfort, however, there was no leeway to be received from the stringent Sarge.

“A-TEN-TION!” he commanded, the word coming out sounding more like ateeeeenhut! as he assumed the posture that the men before him were supposed to copy. An unsurprising number of them failed in this simplest of tasks. Fully armed and armored, they held their shields too high or too low, they weren’t certain where exactly to rest their other hand, they didn’t even get the footing right, their heels too wide apart, their toes too close. The rookie mistakes, but like so many things within the walls of the Red Fort, they weren’t to be tolerated.

“You call that attention, boy?!” the Sarge spat at a rather weakly blonde lad as he broke the stance to approach the struggling boy. “Hold that shield up like you have a pair! Line it up with the rest. Right hand at the belt! Heels together!” He moved on to the next man in line, a rather lackluster man in his forties whose graying hair clung to his face like a mop. “And you! Suck in that gut! Chin up! Show some dignity, for devil sakes! You’re supposed to look like a soldier.”

There was probably a lot more that Sergeant Goris had in store for those before him, but his eyes caught the Red Marshal approaching, bareheaded but wrapped in the legendary scarlet cloak he tore off the back of a member of the even more legendary Scarlet Brigade. The ardent officer stepped away from the recruits, stood at attention and issued a different command to the trainees.

“Officer in proximity. Sword salute!” It was really a simple maneuver, unsheathing the sword and bringing it head-high in a horizontal position with an outstretched arm, but after all the clattering and fidgeting, it was a good thing that nobody hacked anything off in the process. Aside from that and the fact that the swords were badly aligned – they were supposed to form a continuous line which they most definitely failed at doing – it was a relatively successful salute. Letho’s doused head nodded in approval.

“At ease!” Denny bawled again and again the metallic din ensued. About ten seconds later, the swords were in their scabbards and sundry squad calmed down. The vein on Sarge’s head pulsed with irritation.

“Any trouble during the night, Sergeant?” the bearded Captain asked, eyeing the recruits through the veil made of raindrops. There was only one thing more irritating then walking through the showering rain and it was standing still while it bombarded your already soaked, itchy body.

“Two tried to sneak out through the Yellow Gate. We let them go. They weren’t on the list.” The List was consisted of names of criminals that were repaying their debt to society by serving in the military. Names like Lucien Aeonis, the petty crook, and Marcus D’Alano, the local forger, were on that list and they didn’t have the option to give up. They either suffered the training of suffered the dungeons. “EYES FRONT, MAGGOTS!” Sergeant shouted in the general direction of the squad before he turned back to Letho. “Should we show them the sights today?” he added, this time in a hushed voice directed back at the Marshal.

Letho looked at the man before him, at the fifty-odd recruits behind the bald head and then finally at the persistent skies. “Yes, I reckon it’s quite a nice day for a stroll,” he said to his officer, patting his shoulder with a smirk. “Carry on.”

((A nice stroll in this case is a march that will lead you out of the fort, then out of the outskirts, through some pretty boggy areas and all the way to one of the bridges on the Niema river. Do make note of the speed of Goris’ stride. Despite his rather unimpressive stature, he can walk so fast that you never quite now whether you should walk or run after him. And he never seems to grow tired. Make a roundtrip and return in time for dinner or something. The next day we’ll do some weapons training.))