[X] [WINTER] First Squadron is most in want of drill, it shall take priority.
[X] [WINTER] My ability to lead and inspire has dulled over the years; I must hone it again.
[X] [WINTER] The times ahead will require a sharpened mind, a requirement I intend to meet.
[X] [WINTER] I mean to call upon Lady Welles, whilst I still have the chance.
For some reason, the option to pay our Dragoons extra is unavailable. However, I believe it's because I had to select and then back out of the loyalty option when copy-pasting the words into the thread, unintentionally locking us out from taking that option again. Instead, I'll go with the Laurent's suggestion to boost Intellect. My apologies to those who wanted to make it rain for our troops.
[X] I take a personal hand in the regiment's drill, to prepare them for what is to come.
You have every intention of using the time you've been fortuitously allowed by the relatively peaceful interval of winter to improve the capabilities of the regiment. Indeed, given the responsibilities with which you've been charged and the current circumstances, it would be an abdication of duty to do otherwise. Even if the situation improves once winter ends, and the current sense of calm inhabiting the city persists into spring, you have little doubt that there will be times when your regiment will be once again called into action, as it was so many times the year previous.
And when such a time comes, you intend to be sure that the men of your regiment are ready for the challenge.
Of course, you cannot personally supervise the training of all three squadrons at once. Your appointment as Cunaris' second-in-command did not, regrettably, come with the furnishment of two additional heads. If you intend to take a personal hand in this matter, you'll have to choose which squadron to look after first.
[X] First Squadron is most in want of drill, it shall take priority.
First Squadron handled the events of the summer relatively well, but that doesn't mean it still isn't in many ways the rawest of the three squadrons at your disposal, especially given the great influx of raw recruits so lately added to its ranks.
Now, at least, you'll have the opportunity to put them into better shape than they are, and you intend to use that opportunity to the fullest.
So, for the next few weeks, you commit the whole of your energies to ensuring that First Squadron is drilled as heavily and as efficiently as possible. In conjunction with its officers, you lend the value of your long experience, as well as your own eyes, ears, and voice, to the cause of turning this yet-green squadron into one capable of facing whatever the coming events of spring and summer may bring.
The results are considerable and almost immediate. Indeed, at times, it seems as if your very presence is enough to make First Squadron's men work harder. Their drill improves remarkably over a rather short period of time. Their spirits, so depleted after the difficult summer, begin to recover too.
Its commanding officer seems to be most thankful for the assistance. Indeed, he says so directly more than once. It seems that Lord Renard carries some of the same concerns as you do. He too worries about how his squadron will weather the months ahead.
You can only hope that your combined efforts will be sufficient to see the challenge met.
-
The days come colder and shorter now. The first drifts of snow begin to fall over the city, though it doesn't pile up as it does in the countryside. Even now, with Aetoria half-deserted and winter approaching its height, there remains too many pedestrians and too many carts on the roads to allow for anything except a wretched brown slush of half-melted snow, packed ice, mud, and horse shit.
Within the Southern Keep, things become almost peaceful. With the streets outside the fortress more or less quiet, the men turn their hands to proofing their own quarters and those of their horses against the cold. At times, the process reminds you of Antar, but only a little. Here, you're stationed in no miserable camp, but the middle of the greatest city of your own country. For the purposes of keeping warm, there is material in abundance, be it extra blankets and cloaks, dry straw with which to insulate the stables, or great heaps of firewood soaked in oil for the building of bonfires in the courtyard, so that any men still engaged in the process of drilling might be kept warm.
In the meantime, your duties continue to take up a good portion of your day, yet nowhere near as much as they might have over the summer, or even during the autumn.
You yet have time this winter, time to use as you see fit.
Time to spend carefully, for the new year is not far off now, and spring will come quickly on its heels.
[X] I must look to restoring my own physical and mental fitness.
You've suspected somewhat that your years at peace have dulled your capabilities, but it wasn't until you spent the summer and autumn back in the saddle that you began to understand just how greatly your capacities had deteriorated. Movements on horseback which you were once able to accomplish with ease now seem sluggish and strenuous. The words of command and tactical concepts which you had once brought forth as easily as breathing take all too much effort now to recall. And as for the easy manner with which you were once able to make yourself respected and obeyed by your subordinates? You daresay you've lost your grip on that, as well.
You'll need such capabilities back, and at full, if there's to be any sort of reckoning come the spring. With what might well be the fate of the kingdom resting upon your ability to fight and think and command effectively, it has become more important than ever to restore your personal skills to the level you once maintained them at. Surely, given the circumstances, such an endeavour must be your foremost priority.
Right?
[X] My ability to lead and inspire has dulled over the years; I must hone it again.
Were you a solitary man of no particular condition or responsibility, then perhaps you would need little more than physical strength and mental ability to weather any crisis which the next few months might bring. Yet you are not such a figure. You are a gentleman of the blood, a Lord of the Cortes, and a commander of fighting men. There are obligations to such distinctions. Where others are free to run and hide from the threat of chaos and disorder, you must stand firm, you must inspire confidence in those around you, and you must restore order.
You must lead. Your class and your position require it. And if you are to fulfil that duty effectively, then you must remember how to lead in a time of crisis once again.
It is a job already half-done. The experience of the past year has taught you that you at least retain a solid grasp of the fundamentals of leadership. Yet even so, the difference between a mediocre leader and a good one is not in basics, but in nuances: the right tone of voice here, a precise wording there, a way of carrying oneself in the saddle, and standing in a manner which makes it all but impossible not to be seen and heard and obeyed. It is those matters which you concern yourself with improving over the next few weeks, especially now that you have more active and insightful judges than a mirror to practise them on.
You make easy progress at first, the leader's intuition you thought you'd forgotten through the years of peace returning to you readily. Yet as the weeks pass, you exhaust the well of half-remembered advice and experience which you have hitherto drawn upon. Before long, you find yourself unable to improve much further.
However, that doesn't mean you haven't more or less achieved your aim. Judging by the way which your officers and men respond to your efforts, your powers of leadership are fully restored to the extent they had been during the war—or at least, been repaired to a point close enough as to make no difference. With further improvement unlikely without the expenditure of time which you do not have, your capabilities as a leader of men are likely to be as honed as they might possibly be. Hopefully, they'll be enough for the challenges ahead.
-
The new year brings with it the height of the winter. For a handful of fierce, blustery days, the wind and the snow come down with a force which makes the previous weeks seem but a prelude. The roads are all but emptied, the shops close, and even drill and assembly are temporarily suspended in the Southern Keep.
The older men of the regiment, those who fought in Antar and know the force of a real killing winter, scoff at such measures. Even the fiercest Aetorian blizzard would be seen as a mild morning in Kharangia. Yet for the new men, those who had joined in Fernandescourt and never set foot outside of sunny Cunaris their entire life, the weather is something of a genuine horror. To see them huddled around the mess fires with blankets around their shoulders and a nervous tension in their eyes, you cannot doubt that they would be of little use for anything at the moment, even before the veterans begin their stories of the winter of 610, when the King's Division ran out of firewood outside Mhillanovil.
But even the most callow and shivering of your new recruits have it better than some.
Every winter, the snow sweeps across the streets like a reaper's scythe, and those caught on the freezing cobbles—those with no homes to retreat to and no hearths to shelter before—are cut down, their bodies left to lie under the piling snow to be dragged out and burned come the spring.
Only a few survive such a season, but by the time winter comes again, their numbers are swollen once more by those who have lost their homes and livelihoods over the summer and autumn, only to be made chaff in a fresh winter's harvest.
The numbers, you suppose, make for grim reading. You've heard some estimate that anywhere from ten to fifteen thousand freeze on the streets of Aetoria every winter, more than were killed at Blogia and Second Kharangia combined. You suspect that if you'd told any of the new men that, they would be shocked by the mere thought. You would be too, if you'd been in their place.
But you've lived in this city too long for that. Heartbreaking, perhaps. Monstrous, certainly. But it's no longer a shock to you, any more than it's a shock to the broadsheets which report the great mortality of Aetorian winter as if it were no more than a carriage accident.
It is simply the price the city extracts.
In the meantime, the winter grinds on. Having reached its peak, it begins its slow retreat before the as-of-yet unseen forces of spring. The snow still falls and the wind still howls, but the days begin to grow longer, the chill a little less bitter. The streets are once again peopled, though by only the hardiest of its inhabitants. The shops re-open. Even the market squares begin to renew their activity, little by little. The bonfires in the courtyard are lit again, and Cunaris orders the regiment's exercises to resume.
There's still time left before the thaw, before all the forces which have seemingly been frozen by the winter's chill are once again unleashed upon the city and the realm.
But it's a resource that grows ever more finite with each passing day.
-
[X] I must look to restoring my own physical and mental fitness.
You may have made some improvement in the restoration of your personal capabilities since the beginning of winter, but that doesn't mean your work is done. There are parts of you that yet remain less than what they could be, and if there is to be a reckoning come spring, then you'll need those capabilities restored to full capacity.
The fate of the realm may depend upon it.
[X] The times ahead will require a sharpened mind, a requirement I intend to meet.
Should a reckoning come in the spring, you'll need more than physical strength and social graces to ensure that you emerge with your reputation and fortune intact. You'll need to make the right decisions at the right time, and unless you're able to restore your ability to think quickly, clearly, and on your feet to the condition which it had once possessed, there's little guarantee that your mind will be up to the challenges of the months ahead.
So, it's to that end that you begin to pursue the process of repairing all of the intellectual capacity which you had neglected and allowed to rust over the course of your long years at peace. On the parade ground, you place yourself in the position not of a squadron commander, but of a junior officer, relaying and recalling words of command, drill formations, and the intricate workings of a unit of horse on the field, until you're able to bring them up with the utmost alacrity. At all other hours, you devote yourself as much as you can to the library of the officer's mess, re-acquainting yourself with the aspects of military theory and staff-work which your mind had once carelessly discarded as redundant.
You make swift progress at first, uncovering half-forgotten concepts and intelligence as if they were buried caches of shot and powder hidden in shallow sand. Yet as the weeks go on, you find your improvement slowing. You find some things harder to remember, others easier to forget. Perhaps there's only so much information a mind can absorb at such a pace—even if it is information it had once so easily accommodated.
Alas, it quickly becomes clear that your improvement has all but come to a stop, and well short of the condition your mind had once possessed. There are yet matters which come slowly or imperfectly to you, ones which you remember having a near-perfect mastery of once upon a time.
But you suppose that's something you'll have to live with. You haven't the months to spare to affect a full restoration of your intellectual powers. You must face the future with what you've managed and hope it will be enough.
-
The winter retreats in earnest now, but it does not rout. The cold and snow fall back in leaps and starts, like skirmishers covering a withdrawing army. One day might come warm and sunny, with the snowdrifts halving in size over an afternoon. The next morning might be as cold as it was a month ago, the rivulets of snow-melt frozen solid in the crevices betwixt cobbles. The next day might bring more warmth, or more snow, making up that which was lost the day before.
But the trend over time isn't easy to miss. As the weeks pass, the skies grow more sunny. Mere patches of exposed stone and mud become great half-frozen expanses of naked ground, made slippery and murky with half-melted slush tracked by the passage of an increasing volume of moving feet and wheels. The steady drip-drip-drip of melting ice becomes a common sound, first during the warmest parts of the day, then from the late morning to the afternoon, then from dawn until sunset.
Soon it will be spring. Soon, the crisis which has been so frozen in place through these past few months of cold and wet may once again roar into motion again, crushing all those in its path not prepared for its passage.
Already, the signs are there, plastered upon the wall of every alley and every street corner: pamphlets and posters of every variety. Some exhort the loyal to support the Crown. Others are full of high-minded rhetoric and allusions to long-dead heroes to sway the common folk into supporting the Duke of Wulfram. But all seem to make clear that the tense calm now resident in the city will not survive the season, that both sides are now gathering their strength for a reckoning fit to decide the fate of the Unified Kingdom.
There is time yet to ready yourself, your allies, and your regiment.
But not for much longer.
-
[X] I mean to call upon Lady Welles, whilst I still have the chance.
It has been a very long time since you were able to speak with Countess Welles in confidence. So it is something of a surprise to have your valet send out your calling card to her townhouse and receive a reply almost immediately. Doubly surprising is the fact that the wording of that reply doesn't offer the promise of some invitation to her own residence after the appropriate interval, but suggests a more immediate visit, to your own quarters.
So, it is only three days later that she turns up at your townhouse, with only a heavy cloak and a single coachman to keep her company.
"I was hoping you would extend me some sort of invitation, my lord," she says as she greets you before the warm fire of your drawing room. "I hoped that we would have some occasion to speak this winter, before…"
She looks away for a moment, her words trailing off.
"Before what?" you ask.
The Countess looks back to you and steels herself with a breath.
"Before I leave."
"It isn't something I would have chosen of my own free will, one might be well assured of that," she explains, with the sort of desperate steadiness of someone trying their absolute utmost to offer reassurance. "It is all Izzy's idea. She has suggested that in the wake of the loss of the HMS
Rendower, it would be advisable for me to inspect and make an analysis of the current status of the fleet at Northern Pillars, to ensure that such an incident doesn't occur again."
You nod. It's a perfectly sensible explanation. The Royal Tierran Navy has not only just lost the strongest part of its line-of-battle, but a King of Tierra besides. It would seem only reasonable that said sovereign successor should order an investigation regarding the readiness of the fleet, both in the interests of the realm's security and that of her own person.
Yet you cannot help but think that the Queen might have some secondary motive. Surely such an inspection ought to have been carried out by a naval officer? Someone more accustomed to the workings of the senior service? Although you've heard that much of the Navy's officers carry Wulframite sympathies, surely there are still experienced officers loyal to the Crown. Unless…
"Her Majesty wants you out of the city," you conclude. "She suspects—or knows—that matters here may deteriorate to the point where your security can no longer be assured, and so she's sending you away, for your own safety."
The Countess frowns. "I suppose that's one way of looking at it. I'm not the only one, either."
"How do you mean?"
"Izzy has broken up the circle," she replies, a fierce anger beneath her tightly controlled voice. "She's sending all of us away—well, almost all of us," she continues. "She's ordered Rina to stay in Leoniscourt. She banished Wen back to her estates on some flimsy pretext. She ordered Vin's husband haring off on a diplomatic mission to Butea, and sent Tiza's father back to Weathern with a box of secret orders and a Marine escort."
If Wulfram's own warning hadn't been enough, this all but confirms it: the Queen is planning something, or at least preparing for it. "What does she think will happen?"
Welles shakes her head. "I do not know, but I should be here for it, not trapped on some rainy island counting anchor chains."
"But if she has sent the others away—"
"I am not the others," she replies, her voice sharp and heated. "I am not Rina, to jump at the sound of cannon shot. I am not Wen, who would try to do battle in white gloves if she ever had the opportunity." Her voice fills with a rising anger. "I have known the shape of soldiering since I was a girl. I have smelled the powder. Saints be damned, I have led men into battle! I should be here!"
She stops herself, her chest heaving with deep breaths, her reserve strained almost to the point of breaking. She shakes her head as her composure reasserts itself.
"I apologise, my lord," she continues, with no hint of the passion which had animated her but an instant ago. "I have few friends left in this city, and I did not mean to impose upon you as one of them. I meant…" She stops again, searching for the right words to say. "I meant only to thank you, for the brief moments of company you have been allowed to offer, and to offer my apologies, for not being able to accept more of them."
[X] "The Army Reform Commission is not concluded. Surely you cannot leave it now?"
"I have already submitted my resignation from the Commission," Welles replies, almost stiffly. "It will be up to the other members to carry on the work without me."
"You would abandon your seat on the Commission so easily?" you ask, more than a little shocked. "After you put so much effort into it? After all the research you've done on its behalf?"
"It was through no choice of mine," the Countess replies, her voice growing sharper with every word. "If the decision had been left to me, I would have stayed to see the Commission through to its conclusion, to see the final report submitted, and to see it pass. Had Izzy given me the choice of inspecting the fleet, I would have refused it. Instead, she has commanded me, and such a directive, I cannot deny. I can only—"
She catches herself. Again, she looks away. Again, her anger ebbs away as her composure reasserts itself.
"Were she only my friend, I would have surely mounted some protest at her choosing to place her own interests above mine like this," she continues, her voice once again tightly controlled. "But she is Queen also, and that means her interests are also the realm's interests—and those, I cannot gainsay. It doesn't please me to be separated from my work, to have the fruits of so much labour taken from me and given over to the hands of others, but in this regard, I can no more disobey the orders of my chief than you might yours."
There is an undertone of regret in her voice, too strong to be ignored. There is a sadness in her eyes. She smiles a little, as if endeavouring to soften for herself the sting of the hurt which the Queen's commands have clearly inflicted upon her, a hurt which still lingers even as she sits before you now.
"I have accepted her decision," she concludes with an almost over-eager firmness, even as all the indications of her expression indicate otherwise. "Let us speak no more of it."
[X] "What about your suitors? Your chaperone?"
"Fled," Welles replies, the genteel contempt clear in her voice. "Barbone left for Welles last month. She insisted that the dangers which she had been engaged to defend me from were no longer present, and the ones that were, she was not equipped to handle."
You frown. "You must have had a hard time of it," you reply. You cannot imagine it easy to be an unmarried lady of the blood possessed of good fortune and a title without a chaperone for protection. "I hope your suitors haven't been giving you trouble?"
"They're gone too. Most of them after the riots, the remainder after the death of the King. The last one stuck it out until about two weeks after your regiment arrived." Her features take on a look of disdain, a sedate one by the standards of most. From Lady Welles, it carries the force of a full-throated scream. "Cowards," she all but spits. "Cowards all."
[ ] [WELLES] "They were unused to violence. One ought not judge them so harshly."
[ ] [WELLES] "Perhaps they too were called away, as you are."
[ ] [WELLES] "You deserved better than the company of such wretched creatures."
