"Out for a stroll are we?"
"We're not afraid of you, scum! We shall fight!"
Captain Lezalit draws his short sword and strikes a martial pose. On foot, in his rusty hauberk, battered segmented helmet, cracked kite shield and short sword, he cuts a "heroic" figure. Shouting in his high-pitched voice, he said:
"Soldiers of Vaegir! Deploy into Wedge formation!"
"glupo! pochemu my dolzhny eto delat'? ! (Stupid! Why do we have to do this?)
Alayen is astride his brown hunter. Swaybacked it may be, but it cost 2845 denars from those cheating merchants in Dhirim: They had splendid chargers but they cost a whopping 59,426 denars, which he could not afford. He took great pride in maintaining s splendid suit of Vaegir Elite Armor, complete with Nobleman's helmet, mail boots and gloves, long arming sword and knightly heraldic shield. For a ranged weapon he had looted a bag of bent javelins, which will have to do. As Lezalit gets visibly angry at the soldiers, Alayen just laughs, winks at the solitary Vaegir horseman, and shouts the Vaegir battle cry,
"UURRRRAAAAAA! Va Vaegirea, Va Slava, Va krov! (For Vaegir, for Glory, for blood!)"
and charges straight towards the enemy. The Vaegir horseman follows suit, as well as the entire band of 3 Vaegir Infantry, 5 Vaegir footmen 2 Vaegir Archers and 4 skirmishers. Even the archers and skirmishers are following Alayen into the attack!
"You…. Come back! We need to set up a formation, pin them with the archers, and then flank them….. WAIT!" Lezalit was left in a whirlwind of dust as the undisciplined, half barbaric men of Vaegir charged to meet the enemy. "Egads! This shall be a tactical disaster of monumental proportions! According to the Art of War by Alisenius the Great, he…"
Lezalit could already hear the cheers of Alayen's men as they stood over the bodies of the defeated looters.
"Ah, Net khoroshey veshchi ot grabitelya!" (Ah, nothing to loot from looters!) Exclaimed one of the archers in exasperation as he picks one of his own arrows out of a dead body.
"gryaznyy!" (Dirty!) complained a footman who was tasked to strip the dead bodies of all valuables. There was a pittance, a few rusty knives, a chipped falchion, but he managed to find a suit of nomad armor, so he took that back to Alayen.
"Khorosho" (good) said Alayen, who gestured for the new "nurse", Ymira, to come.
Ymira had joined this ragtag Vaegir band on a whim, at the Shining Duck in Veluca after running away from home. She wondered how much her parents worried about her, but she was having too much excitement to care!
"Ja, Alayen?"
"Call me Sir Alayen, not just by my name, understand? I am a noble of the house of…"
"Sure, man-on-a-swaybacked-horse. What do you want?"
"Sigh…. Anyway, one of my troops has found this. " Alayen ordered the footman to give Ymira the nomad armor. "Here, wear this."
Ymira took one look at it and laughed, as it was woolly, dirty, smelly and just plain "schmutzig" (dirty). "I'm not wearing this, ha ha!"
Alayen looked at her with a serious expression. Ymira stopped laughing.
"Das ist sehr wichtig, fraulein! (This is very important, lady!) It can be the difference between surviving an enemy arrow and being killed! It is not the best armor, granted, but it will have to do."
"But its so dirty and smelly, can't we at least wash it first?" Ymira scrunched up her pretty nose at the nomad armour, which was so pungent it was starting to attract flies.
"Just wear it will you, it is better than seeing you dead"
Ymira took one look at Alayen's serious yet gentle expression, sighed in exasperation and admiration, and wore the armor, hot and sticky as it was. It was, after all, "better than dying".
Suddenly there was a commotion from where the soldiers were standing.
"Du schwanz!" (You bastard) echoed around the valley, while a mailed glove put itself around the neck of a Vaegir skirmisher.
"Du schwanz, you pissed on my foot! How dare you insult me so! I shall kill you for that!" The Hired Blade drew his bastard sword and threatened the skirmisher, whose face was starting to turn purple.
"Sobaka!" (Dog!) shouted the Vaegir Horseman in response as he galloped in to save his comrade. He took out his two-handed battle-axe, nicked with the blood of many enemies.
"menya ubit' tebya!" (I'll kill you!) said the horseman as he put his axe right at the neck of the Hired Blade, but stopped short of killing him. Suddenly all the hired blades drew their swords and all the Vaegir soldiers drew their weapons. The Vaegir archers nocked their arrows on their nomad bows and aimed threateningly at the Hired Blades. They stood locked in a staring contest, eyes wild with rage, and insults in Swadian, Rhodok, Nord, Sarrinid and Vaegir filled the air. Curses involving mothers, terrifying gods, sisters, fathers, excrement, "sticks and twigs" and the size thereof, and other such pleasant topics were thrown left, right and center. Meanwhile, Rogert, the Hired blade who had tried to speak Vaegir to Alayen back in the Shining Duck tavern in Veluca, was trying to maintain calm using his rudimentary Vaegir.
"HALT! HALT! All soldiers HALT!" Shouted Lezalit at the top of his voice, but no one listened.
"HALT, or I shall give the entire company a beasting! And you all well know what a Lezalit beasting is!"
The soldiers stopped staring at each other and started at Lezalit instead. A few seconds later they averted their eyes from each other and slowly went back to their respective tents to recuperate and cool down. Every soldier hated Lezalit's guts, but despite his pompous exterior they all knew deep down just what cruelty Lezalit was capable of. It was calculated to cause the maximum suffering while still enabling a soldier to fight the next battle. Lezalit had learned the drill books well.
Just as the incident was about to die down and be forgotten, the Vaegir skirmisher who had been choked was still holding his neck, gasping for breath. The man who choked him chuckled and pointed at him. Suddenly the skirmisher flew into a rage and threw a punch at the Hired Blade, who ducked easily and smashed the skirmisher in the nose. A fistfight! Everyone suddenly came back to watch, when Lezalit, showing amazing strength, separated the two, and then bellowed at all soldiers present:
"All of you! Run around the tents 50 times, NOW!" He took out his infamous knotted whip, with knots designed for maximum pain. Everyone groaned and grumbled but dutifully started running around the tents. The horseman even had to dismount, but he was a good soldier and set the pace for the Vaegir men. Lezalit pointed at the two original offenders. "Except you two. Come here, both of you!"
The two men glared at each other, the Vaegir with the bloody nose, the Hired Blade with the bruised knuckles.
"Schwanz!" "Sobaka!" "HAAALLLLTTTT!"
Lezalit's bellow stunned the two into silence. "Strip off your body armor, leave your pants on! I don't want to see your shriveled 'members', now do we?" The two had no choice but to comply.
Then, with their torsos bare, Lezalit whipped first the skirmisher, then the Hired Blade, across the chest, then the back, alternating until they had both been whipped 30 times. It was a brutal ordeal for both of the men, but the muscled body of the Hired Blade took it better than the pale, skinny body of the Vaegir skirmisher. Yet through it all the only sounds were grunts and groans, no shrieks of pain, as they both wanted to show they were fearless. However, the pain was excruciating for the two men, and when the beating was finished they could barely crawl back to Ymira's tent, to be tended by the new girl.
Lezalit was not finished. He had to drill some sense into these no-good barbarians and mercenary thugs.
"Soldiers, FORM UP!"
Exhausted from running 50 times around the camp, the Hired Blades and Vaegir soldiers lined up, but in a slovenly "formation" as they were too tired to care.
"You think this is over? It is NOT over! I will drill you, and drill and drill some more, until you fear me more than the enemy, and certainly more than each other! DO YOU UNDERSTAND!?"
"Jawohl, herr Hauptmann!" and "Da Tochno!" rang out from the exhausted men.
"Alright! ATTEN-SHUN!" The men tried to stand stiffly erect. "RIGHT DRESS!" The men tried to line up their right arms so they would deploy into "loose" formation, but it was a mediocre attempt at best, as the men were exhausted.
'By the front, QUICK MARCH! Left, right, left…" The soldiers resigned themselves to a meaningless march around the camp, followed by a meaningless march up the hill, then down the hill, then up the hill…
"glupo! pochemu my dolzhny eto delat'? ! (Stupid! Why do we have to do this?)
Lezalit stormed up to the marching mass. "What did you say?"
"Glupo, ta sobaka!" (Stupid! You dog!)
"I don't understand, but that tone of voice is unacceptable! All Vaegir men fall out! Hired Blades continue marching!"
The Vaegir men left the formation, hence Lezalit whipped each man across the face once. Blood was drawn from quite a few, but no one flinched.
"That, is the price of defiance! An army must have discipline! Then when alles ist in ordnung (all is in order) then we can think of fighting the enemy, you Vaegir pigs!" He tried to whip them some more, but his hand was held from behind. Surprised, Lezalit turned around. He laughed and said:
"New girl, stay out of this! What do you know of war? Go and tend the Vaegir pigs and mercenary thugs!"
"I am not 'new girl': I am Ymira, and I strongly disapprove of your cruel methods! They have been punished enough!"
"I will stop the punishment when it is time!"
"Who knows how long you will make men suffer!"
Suddenly Alayen's voice shouted: "Stop everything!" Everyone stopped and looked as Alayen galloped up as fast as he could on a swaybacked horse.
Alayen opened his mouth and said… (To be con't)
