Lords 8.05
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Of course, not all of your time is spent directing the functions of your estate from afar. On any given day, only half the troops in your squadron are out on patrol; the rest remain in the Southern Keep, where you put them through half-forgotten drills and regular inspections.
Blaylock and Sandoral, themselves still without commands, prove themselves a substantial help. Though it has been years since they led men into battle, it seems the lessons you once imparted upon them haven't been forgotten. You quickly find that you can practically treat them as trusted proxies, copies of yourself in miniature, allowing you to drill your squadron with more efficiency and flexibility than you could have possibly expected.
Before long, your combined efforts begin showing themselves off to substantial effect. Your squadron seems greatly improved in all aspects, and if anyone feels that your regimen is too harsh after so many years of peaceful indolence, they don't make any show of it. With the increasing breakdown of order outside the walls increasingly evident every day, there seems little need to convince them of the necessity of such measures.
And not all of your men see increased drill as the solution to the increasingly dangerous task of keeping the peace in a city slowly turning against itself.
To some small minority of your men, the answer is a rather more simple one: if the Queen's Dragoons are to be made to perform a duty which is not only risky and thankless, but likely impossible, then the best way out of it is to simply no longer be a Queen's Dragoon.
In the beginning, the problem seems minor enough, a few men absent when assembly is called each morning. Usually, most of them show up later in the day, ragged and bleary from overindulgence in one or more of the city's public houses and brothels. Then, some of the men stop turning up altogether. Sometimes for days on end. Sometimes forever.
It is the new men at first, those who joined up with the regiment after the war, drawn by its relatively high pay and the reputation it won in Antar. They no doubt expected peace and easy living in Fernandescourt's fortresses, and you have little trouble believing that their martial ardour might have cooled somewhat after being thrust into a situation the exact opposite.
But then, it is your veterans who start deserting. And it is then you begin worrying in earnest.
-
"Eight gone last week," Lord Renard reports miserably one evening in the officers' mess. "Two corporals and a sergeant among them." He frowns, pushing away his plate of lamb chops still half uneaten. "T' tell the truth, I ain't grasp it at all. Half of those were Antar men. I ain't understand why they'd run off now, when they'd stuck with the colours for years through so much worse."
"Because if they tried to desert in Antar, they'd have had nowhere to go," Garret replies in between bites of roast potatoes, his own appetite evidently unaffected by the problem at hand. "If they tried to make for Noringia to sail home, they would have been walking right into the hands of the provosts. If they tried to go to ground, they would have been lucky to survive long enough for the Antari to impale them. I'll grant that sleeping on the ground and getting shot at wasn't much fun, but it was a better option than a stake or a firing squad. Here, all they have to do is burn their coat and walk out the gate to put all the pleasures of the city at their disposal."
"Third Squadron hasn't lost anyone," Sandoral notes after having said barely anything for the past half hour. "I know, I've checked."
Captain Hawkins' expression is a grim breed of what is almost satisfaction as the rest of the table turns to him for an answer. "No secret, I assure you. A foul reputation and general disdain are things we are quite accustomed to. Everyone who wanted to leave Third Squadron left months ago."
So much for that.
The conversation doesn't end there, of course. The rest of it is devoted to suggesting ways of bringing an end to the desertions: tighter discipline, a doubled guard around the fortress gates, restricted passes, and everything in between. Yet you've all been in charge of fighting men for too long to believe any of it will work. Short of wearing your own command down to a hardened stub like Third Squadron, the only way to stop the desertions would be to change their circumstances, to take them out of what is increasingly beginning to feel like a battle without victory in a war without an enemy.
And since you cannot do that, you all know that the desertions will continue.
And they do.
-
As the weeks pass, the situation continues to worsen, with not even the encroaching heat of high summer serving to drive the now-commonplace sight of armed gangs off the streets. News of brawls betwixt Wulfram's supporters and those of the Queen become increasingly frequent. Even in the most rarefied quarters of the New City, there is the promise of something terrible in the air. The social events which so usually punctuate the city's customary social season are all but absent, and even the benches in the Cortes remain as sparsely filled as they were in the spring.
No one with any choice in the matter wants to be in Aetoria for when the cataclysm that almost everyone is expecting at last arrives.
The only real consolation left to you is that it hasn't come yet. The street fighting may have become constant, but they're at least done with clubs and stones rather than pistols and swords. It's almost a wonder how quickly the news of such clashes become no less part of the background than the heat or the regular routine of drill. Little property is damaged, no one is left with anything more than cuts or bruises, and no incident occurs which warrants the presence of a full squadron.
At least, for a while.
All that changes one afternoon late in summer, when a runner from Cunaris' staff catches you at carbine drill with half of your squadron not on patrol. Gasping for air from the furious sprint down from the colonel's office, he conveys immediate orders to round up an escort and head to an address in a not-quite respectable part of the city on Prince Robert's Street. Cunaris' instructions regarding the matter are both clear and unequivocal: you are to depart in as great a force as you can muster, with pistols and carbines loaded and the expectation that you may have to use them.
When you arrive at the scene, you quickly realise why.
-
A crowd has already gathered around the site when you and your Dragoons arrive, and some make way for you quickly. A handful even touch their fingers to their hats as you pass. Most, however, simply give you sullen looks and move aside with all the sluggishness of a low-burning, fearful antagonism. You're not well-liked among this crowd, though you cannot say whether that's because of your personal reputation or the uniform you wear.
Still, they do clear the way eventually, which at last allows you to see precisely what has called you here.
The address you were given was a not-insubstantial print shop. The neighbourhood it sat in isn't a poor one, and the front of the shop had surely been part of an elegant facade, its decorated stonework and dark wooden panelling still visible in parts.
Yet it takes one look inside, past the shattered glass of the shop window and into the dark cavity beyond, which wholly justifies any description of the place solely in the past tense.
The inside of the shop is a blackened ruin, as if someone had tossed a bundle of hand grenades through the window. The presses are smashed to pieces, and the table which might have once served as a front counter resembles more loose splinters than a piece of furniture. Jars of ink lie shattered along the walls, the splatters of black all but blending into the darkness of charred panelling and wallpaper. You begin to marvel that the entire building hasn't burned down. Only the splashing of your horse's hooves as it steps into a rather deep puddle, and your belated recognition of a small fire engine and a cordon of Intendancy constables not far away offers any explanation as to why it hasn't.
You find the printer and his wife being comforted by the crowd. They are small, almost undistinguished folk, soberly dressed and certainly no older than thirty, the very picture of the Aetorian middle class.
They're also beside themselves with terror and anguish, and despite the promises of aid from one half of the crowd and the equally earnest vows of revenge against the perpetrators from the other, they seem to grow even more distraught with every passing moment.
It only takes you the most cursory of questioning to discover why.
The printer and his wife were absent when the attack took place, but their two daughters and their maidservant hadn't been. They were taking their customary afternoon nap in their rooms directly above the shop. Through tearful sobs, they describe how they returned from an errand to already find the building aflame and a crowd gathering to put out the fire, how they heard not a single cry or sound of life from above the blackened stairs—and how they haven't yet worked up the heart to see why.
Part of you cannot blame them. You suspect you know what they will find.
It is not fire that kills, but smoke, and smoke always travels upwards, gathering in the highest portions of a closed space.
You don't need to say a word for the two anguished parents to catch your meaning.
The reason for the attack is easy enough to find. The shop floor is strewn with them, broadsheets by the hundreds, some charred to ash by the flames, some reduced to grey pulp by the water used to fight them. Some, however, remain intact, or at least, whole enough for you to recognise that this shop must have been one of the city's major producers of Wulframite literature.
It's everywhere: broadsheets decrying the Queen's 'tyranny,' ones calling for the restoration of civil order or demanding that the Duke of Wulfram be made regent until 'the questions of the Queen's powers can be decided by a reasoned body of men.' With such a revelation, a great deal is explained, from the relative hostility of the crowd outside to the likely identity of the attackers.
It also makes things considerably more complicated.
You may now have a motive for the attack, but it is one which implicates half the city. True, you could ultimately wash your hands of the whole affair and leave the Intendancy to investigate, but you suspect that will do neither your own reputation nor that of your regiment any good, especially when acts of violence like this are precisely the sort of thing the Dragoons are in Aetoria to prevent.
Yet you don't know how much good a vigorous investigation might do, either. You may find yourself turned astray by a thousand false leads and get nothing, or you might find yourself following the chain of culpability into places where country barons with poor estates ought not to tread, Dragoon commission or no.
It's clear that Garret is pondering the same questions you are, though his face shows none of the worry which you're sure must be marking yours. After all, though he may be faced with the same queries, he at least has an easy answer.
"What are your orders, sir?"
[X] "What do you make of this, Garret?"
Your second-in-command eyes the scene carefully for a moment. "It is something of a conundrum, sir, isn't it?"
"I wouldn't be asking your opinion if it weren't," you reply, a hint of impatience creeping into your voice.
"We could always ride away from it all," Garret suggests in an almost underhanded tone. "Arson and murder are Intendancy jurisdictions, and look—" He nods towards the set of constables by the fire engine. "They are already present."
You frown. "Cunaris won't like it. He'll think we've made the regiment look like do-nothings."
The other officer gives you a bland, innocent grin. "Then we shall have to investigate, I suppose, though—" He leans in, his voice dropping to little above a whisper. "It may serve us better not to investigate too vigorously. If our trail leads us to someone of influence among the Queen's faction, we may be compelled to make some…inconvenient enemies."
[ ] [GARRET] "These people deserve justice. I mean to give it to them."
[ ] [GARRET] "So what are we to do? Make a lot of noise to no end?"
[ ] [GARRET] "This crowd won't be pleased if we don't find a culprit…or manufacture one."
