And then… that was that. He was a captain now – no, not only that, he was the captain. With the rest of the troops gone, he would probably be the only example of a soldier these peasants and shop boys had ever seen. He relished the challenge of a bunch of conscripts. Good training could make any man a passable soldier...so the best training…
He allowed himself a moment of levity, envisioning his wild success as an instructor.
He jumped slightly at the sound of… what was that the sound of exactly? A fight? More like a brawl. Already?
He knew he had about 30 seconds to take charge. With the general troops gone, if discipline was lost for any significant length of time, it would be almost impossible to regain. Far better to make an example of one of them, to show them what would happen to the unruly.
The men, naturally, all blamed the youngest and most inexperienced conscript. He was slight, girlish, not fully grown for his age, a boy still. The boy, Shang quickly decided, was nervous around so many other, stronger men, and was simply trying to prove himself their equal with clumsy attempts at manly prowess. Obviously, that did not excuse his wilful insubordination and deliberate impudence in refusing to answer basic questions (his name was A Chou indeed!) He would be tough, but fair. The men would return everything to normal, and nothing more would be said about the young Ping's overenthusiastic attempts at an initiation rite. If the regular army had fought each other like that, the perpetrators would have been beaten with rods.
And of course, that wasn't all. Ping wasn't just any other conscript - if Ping really was his name. Shang suspected no parent would name their only son 'flower pot'… more likely the boy realised his joke had fallen flat, was too afraid to admit it and now… he was stuck with it. Serves him right, Shang chuckled. No, Ping's father was the Honourable Fa Zhou, his future father-in-law. If Fa Zhou had never spoken of him, he was probably the overlooked son of an almost forgotten concubine who the family had no doubt forced into replacing the older man. Shang had few fond memories of his father's concubines, but he could not envy a man like Ping's position. Ping would have to make his way in the world without his father's attention, even love. There had been moments, Shang remembered with a shudder, when it had seemed like that was the only thing that had kept him alive. Army training was brutal…separated from everything he had ever known, the boy was forced to become a man, and the man forced to become a soldier.
But there was the beauty of it. If life gave some men very little, and others too much, the army's training gave them all the same basic tools of survival: strength, discipline, and the sovereign rule of law. He would look out the 'Strength' and 'Discipline' weights to begin the first lesson. It was an old trick, but surprisingly powerful. And, with any luck, Fa Ping would have picked up at least this much knowledge from his father, enough to impress the sneering older men that brute force wasn't everything. He would, of course, have to watch any tendency to be biased towards his own future family… with such a spiteful jobsworth as Chi Fu taking note of everything for one of his gargantuan 'reports', any suggestion that he was using his new position to impress his future father-in-law would be perfect ammunition.
Much better to keep it quiet.
He wondered, suddenly, if Ping was anything like Fa- Zhou's daughter. He chuckled to himself again. A Chou!