Vignette 10 - Middle Watch in the Rain
The Siedge Weald, in the early hours of the morning
Sitting huddled up in his waxed cloak, in an attempt to keep out the rain, Delita had decided, at least an hour ago, that he didn't only dislike being on middle watch, as he had believed before tonight, he hated it! Being woken up at about midnight, then having to stay wakeful for three hours or so with only one's own thoughts for company was not fun. The tiredness the next morning from having two naps at either end of the night, instead of an uninterrupted sleep was even less fun.
He pulled Ramza's clock-watch from under his shirt, opening the ornate brass cover. Still nearly an hour to go. He swore this felt like a time mage had come and cast Haste on him so that, while he was speeded up, time itself crawled by. Give him another few minutes and he'd be mired in gloomy thoughts, as he usually found himself on damp nights.
He knew what Haste felt like, Ramza's mother had been a white mage, but had had a secondary speciality in time magic. Around his tenth birthday, perhaps three months before Lady Beoulve had died, the four children had once begged her and begged her to cast Haste and Slow on them, just to see what they felt like. She warned them it could be dangerous, that time magic was only meant to aid in combat, but had, eventually, agreed to let them try it, just this once.
Alma had always been good at persuading the adults to do what she wanted, Delita remembered. Her mother had been more aware of what the girl was doing, but had usually given in anyway, eventually. Her father and eldest two brothers she had had wrapped around her finger. Lord Barbaneth, in particular was putty in his "little angel's" hands.
Delita grinned, thinking that if he ever had children, he'd know to be very careful of the word "Papa", said with just that inflection!
The effects that the two spells had on the senses were fairly subtle and so, at around nine and ten, the children had been rather unimpressed. Delita did remember, though, that Slow had made the rest of the world feel like it was hurrying while Haste had made everyone else seem like they were dawdling. It was subtle, though. One had to be looking for it, he suspected, to even really notice it.
On the battle field, he thought the difference might be more discernible – Haste was about having improved reaction times, an ability to move out of the way before the blow connected and to strike quickly and accurately yourself. Slow was all about doing exactly the opposite to an opponent.
The Stop spell wasn't something they had initially asked to experience. Zalbaag had been the only one of the three Beoulve men to be at home at the time, and he had happened upon them as they had been experimenting with Slow. He'd laughed when he found out what was happening and ruffled both boys hair, ending, as always, by absently trying to smooth his little brother's cow-lick down.
"You two aren't trying this out?" He'd asked the two little girls, who were sitting, talking quietly, on a settle in the corner.
"They were - still are, I suppose." Ramza's mother had said from where she stood by the fire, looking worried. "With her Slowed reactions, Alma tripped and hurt herself, so she and Tietra have decided to wait this out. It was irresponsible of me to let them try it, Zal."
"Nonsense. How much harm can they come to with a Master white mage on hand? Did you even have to use Cure?"
"Yes - she burst her lip wide open." Lady Merissa had grimaced and looked guilty.
"Well it looks well mended now. Does it still hurt, my little angel?" He'd asked Alma.
"Not really, but I got blood on my dreth and it'th almotht new. Look, Thalbaag." She pointed at the few blood spots on the bodice.
The lisp had arrived as Alma had lost her two front teeth over the last couple of weeks and, while Zalbaag had found it endearing, Delita remembered that he and Ramza had not been so kind about it - for the few weeks it lasted they had found it hilarious to gigglingly repeat her lisped words over and over. "Thalbaag" had seemed especially humorous. It had earned them repeated thumpings from Alma, but that hadn't deterred them.
"Don't worry so much, Merissa, she's not hurt and Ramza, in particular, will probably be very grateful, the first time he feels this in battle, that he's already experienced it. It might even be a kindness, of sorts, for you to cast Stop on him when he's older, before he ever has to face it on the battlefield. I remember the feeling of abject terror the first time I ever experienced it – right in the middle of a fight." He'd shuddered.
Lady Merissa had blanched at the very idea.
"Yes, I remember what it's like as well. As a support mage, you hope you can stay well back and avoid that sort of thing, but I well remember the only two times I had it cast on me. I had to be Phoenix Downed both times.
"It was less the dying itself, more the waiting, unable to move, speak or even do anything but stare straight forward and strain your ears. What I found so terrifying was knowing that I would feel the pain of someone's blade bite into me any moment and that I could do nothing to prevent it, nor even see it coming.
"I don't mind admitting that both times it happened, I woke up in cold sweats for weeks afterwards, having dreamt I was completely paralysed and just waiting for death again."
Delita had seen Zalbaag nod at that. He wondered now, whether Zalbaag had just been agreeing about the horror of waiting, completely incapacitated, for death, or if he too had actually suffered nightmares about it.
Ramza, he remembered, had asked to have the spell cast on him right then. Delita thought it had probably been a little brother's hero-worship of Zalbaag, that had prompted that bravado - bravado and competitiveness was certainly what had prompted Delita to second the idea, that both of them could be Stopped. The girls hadn't been stupid enough to join in, and the two adults had both said "No!" in the tone that all four children knew really meant no.
"Ask me again when you're sixteen or seventeen and ready for your first battles and I might consider it." Lady Merissa had said to her son. "I can understand your brother's reasoning, but I will not do it until then."
She had smiled at Zalbaag, but her eyes had been worried. Ramza's mother, he recalled, had never been happy that all of the Beoulve men simply assumed that her beloved little boy would automatically become a warrior.
He remembered, not long after this, just weeks before Lady Merissa's death, a bitter comment from her, said in passing to Lord Beoulve, about her only son becoming yet more fodder for this seemingly endless war. "Poor Delita too, no doubt." She had added as she watched the two boys playing with tin soldiers on a battlefield of their own imagining...
His eyes were drooping and the fire was going out – the rain was getting heavier. He threw more wood on, but it was damp and that didn't help. Damn it! Just as well Sam was on final watch and she'd recently progressed to learning some black magic. He hoped casting Fire would relight the camp-fire, because nothing he did seemed to be working to prevent it going out.
He checked the rain-cover on the candle lantern – yes that was still working, thank goodness, and the candle should last until first light, by the look of it. In the dark of a cloudy night - with no fire-, moon- or star-light - if you had no lantern, you were left relying on your ears alone to detect intruders. That tended to leave you ridiculously jumpy! He took up the lantern and checked the clock-watch again. Only about twenty minutes to go. He stifled a yawn.
After a few moments, Delita found himself speculating idly about whether Ramza realised that he had started to become the thing he wanted above all things in the world – he was becoming very like his elder brother Zalbaag. Zalbaag was a very good man, an honourable man and he was an excellent leader and tactician. Ramza was gradually becoming all of these things.
Zalbaag, though, was not the strategist or the long-term planner that his elder brother Dycedarg was. This would be a very serious drawback in a General, except that Dycedarg was always there for advice and guidance for his younger brother. Delita often found Dycedarg hard to like, but he could readily admit that he respected and even admired Dycedarg's acumen and strategic planning abilities.
Without conceit, Delita knew that he had some of the same qualities as Lord Dycedarg. This was ignoring his recent slip, of course, when he should have been helping Ramza plan for their arrival at Dorter, and instead he'd been too preoccupied about Juliana's rejection, Argath's sneers and the fun of being off on their own.
He wondered if that was going to be his role in life – Ramza's advisor and adjutant. In ten years time, Delita imagined that Ramza would probably acting as Zalbaag's second in command. Another Beoulve General. For a low-born man to become aide-de-camp to General Beoulve would be something indeed... but was it enough? Should it be enough?
He hated to say it, even inside his own head, but in many ways he outdid Ramza – even admitting it to himself felt like disloyalty, but it was also true! Delita was not only a great strategic planner, he was a more than passable tactician. He could understand the political implications of military decisions and he was generally calmer and more rational than either Ramza or Zalbaag.
What he knew he lacked was their innate leadership ability. People said, without exaggeration, that Barbaneth Beoulve's men had been so loyal and devoted that they would have followed him to certain death, if that was what he had required of them. Zalbaag didn't rate quite such adulation, yet, but Delita had seen signs amongst the men stationed at Eagrose that told him that it could well come to that, soon.
And Ramza? Whether he liked it or not, he followed Ramza like a faithful hound, and barely ever questioned his final decisions. Yes, part of that was simply that he often had had great influence on those decisions, but even when they occasionally disagreed on a point, ultimately Delita did not resent or question Ramza, he simply followed.
As short a time as this team had been together – the four girls had come to all look up to Ramza and, like Delita himself, they followed him without question and deferred to his decisions. Even the obnoxious Argath had backed down and given two apologies in as many days, and had not tried to undermine Ramza's plans once decisions had been made.
That brought him back to his current problem. Ambitions were all very well, but as a man of peasant stock he was not even supposed to be able to hold a commission in the army. There had yet to be a General who didn't hold an aristocratic title, and he didn't think there was a Brigadier or even a Colonel who didn't, at least, come from the landed gentry. Most other officers had similar backgrounds, though a few, these days, were coming from the upper echelons of the wealthy middle classes, so perhaps things were improving slowly.
Actually it wasn't strictly true that low-born men never gained commissions. Occasionally there would be an exception. Wiegraf Folles had been just such a one.
Discovered to be able to channel the Holy Sword techniques, which were extremely uncommon and always highly prized, Wiegraf had been given an Ensigncy by Lord Barbaneth and had gained two subsequent promotions, ending the war as Captain of the Dead Men. A Captain whose use had ended with the war and whose men, all volunteers, no less, had been discharged with almost a year's back-pay and their discharge bonuses unpaid.
Was it any wonder that they had turned against the Order of the Northern Sky?
In the privacy inside his own head he would admit that when he had spoken to Ramza of how Dycedarg was an "interesting" man, what he had actually meant was that his legal guardian was a dyed-in-the-wool dishonourable bastard. Seeing Wiegraf Folles twice in as many days had forcibly reminded Delita of the day, a little over a year ago, when he had first seen the man.
Dycedarg had been up at the Castle, in conference with the Duke and Delita had been asked to run up there with a message for Lord Beoulve, a task he or Ramza would sometimes undertake when home from school. So he had happened to be just leaving Eagrose Castle as Wiegraf and his three Lieutenants had approached, and respectfully ask for parley with the Duke or either of the Lords Beoulve. Dycedarg had given orders to refuse them entry and would not even contemplate hearing or reading any petition about men's rights or listen to the truth about their suffering families.
As far as Delita knew, Dycedarg hadn't even tried to justify why he was refusing to see them or let them speak to the Duke. Lord Barbaneth would not only have listened to everything the men had to say he would have gone to the Duke and the King and petitioned on the men's behalf, Delita was sure.
Yes, Delita knew that he had some of the same qualities as Lord Dycedarg Beoulve. That he could certainly admit without conceit. He wished he could admit it without a sense of unease. He sometimes hated that he could think, even a little, like that man. He knew he had plenty of ambition, but he hoped that he would always remain a decent, honourable man who would only ever use ethical means to achieve his own ends.
Checking the clock-watch revealed that it was time to change watch. He went to wake Samantha.
Author's Note:
This is something a little different for a variety of reasons. I made a decision not to include the battles, or extensive discussion of them, but I am keen to try to integrate bits of the game's mechanics into the setting, nevertheless - hence the Haste/Slow/Stop part. I also tried to make this "introspection" piece have a feel of someone's wandering thoughts when they are alone with no company but themselves.
If I made it too wandering, leave me a comment and I'll try to make any future similar pieces a bit tighter. I want to do one from Ramza sometime soon too - I did Delita first because he's easier and more interesting to write - Ramza has so much Mary Sue potential. Please leave feedback about anything in these first ten chapters, for that matter.
Historical Trivia – Clock-Watches
Ancestor to the pocket-watch, dating from about Elizabethan times, they were a small clock, with only an hour hand, that were generally worn around the neck like a giant locket/medallion on a chain (hence Delita pulling it out from under his shirt). Anyone who already knew what one was - sorry if this note seems patronising. (The reason I include it is that I didn't know what one was, and I tend to be a bit of a history geek. I originally had Delita using a pocket watch, but for the faux-late-medieval setting that seemed all wrong. So I ended up googling "forerunner of the pocket watch" and found something that fit a late-medieval/early-renaissance setting better).