Wish upon the Stars chapter 545

With the preamble out of the way, Camden had us all take a seat  around a truly gargantuan wooden table packed with chairs. Callie and I  sat close to the head where Camden was, just so we could be involved,  but we didn't plan on talking too much. Listening was the best way to  learn, and these meetings had been going on for ages without us  attending. They had their own trajectory that we needed to pick up. At  least that was the plan, sadly Camden didn't get the memo.

"Welcome  everyone." Said Camden as we all sat down. "As you've noted we have  newcomers among our number. Nightstrike and Solomon have recently  reached E-rank, and due to special considerations in their contracts,  will be assuming command of a century." I knew not every E-ranker in the  army was in command. There were several squad leaders and trainers who  were higher ranked, though his words led me to believe I hadn't seen all  or even most of them.

A dark skinned man nearby with a  placid expression and amber eyes nodded at us. "Lovely to meet you  both." He said in a light, slightly melodic voice. "As newcomers, I  suppose we should introduce ourselves to you. My name is Marco Powell,  and I'm the captain of the first regiment of Baron Tolbert's military.  The other commanders report to me when his grace is indisposed, so we'll  be working closely together."

"That's IT?" Spat a sickly  looking blonde man, slamming his hands on the table. His eyes were an  odd golden color, and his dark hair was shaved on the sides and bleached  on the top. His face was sunken and he was tall but unusually thin.  "They show up and hit the next rank and we hand over an entire century?  We all broke our backs to be here, signed contracts that last for  decades. I heard these bastards won't be sticking around for more than  half a year? What the hell?"

Camden's eyes narrowed.  "Sigmund." He said softly. "I don't recall where in your contract you  were given the authority to question my decisions? Are you secretly the  general of this army? Why was I not informed of something so important?  Nightstrike and Solomon paid for their positions and more. Their  contributions to our endeavors are substantial, and do NOT need to be  enumerated at your request."

The other eighty plus people  looked similarly upset. We had, from what Camden said, five regiments,  totalling eight thousand people. Each of the five had two companies of  eight hundred, each broken down further into eight centuries. There were  another two thousand elite troops under the command of Hamill, who were  considered core forces most likely to become high ranking officers once  the territory was settled. As century commanders we would be educated  in field maneuvers, formations, training techniques, and various other  base level instruction styles.

There had been talk, back  when we were drawing up the contract, of just promoting us to company  commanders, pulling soldiers from the core forces for us. In the end we  decided to start small and earn our way up. It was less likely to cause  problems, and most of what we needed to know for our territory we could  pick up here.

Marco, smiling disarmingly, held up both  hands. "Your grace, we don't question your decisions. If you say they've  earned their place we're of course happy to welcome them into the fold.  I think Sigmund is just voicing the concerns he feels may impede their  integrations, so we might disarm a potential distraction before it  becomes problematic. It is YOUR decision whether they're allowed to  remain, of course, but we'll be working with them. Perhaps a bit of  information on our new colleagues might put us all at ease."

Camden  looked annoyed, but I could see that Marco's method of doing things was  harder to just crush. Not to mention Marco was a regiment commander,  one of only five in the main force, which meant he was probably pretty  strong and had a lot of authority. "Fine." The Baron said with a sigh.  "The two of them are the team leaders of Agria, the new healer we  recently acquired. I trust you've all made use of her talents?"

To  my surprise, that seemed to settle them all down a bit. Sigmund looked  pensive. "She's been instrumental in keeping me on schedule." He  admitted grudgingly. "Team leaders huh?" He glanced at us, then sighed.  "Not used to how the other factions do things, but assuming that means  she's like a vassal, I could understand the credit. Healers are  invaluable. Especially one so useful."

Marco nodded with a  wide smile. "Agreed. Lady Agria has been a great boon to the camp.  She's saved us time, energy, and prevented not a few deaths. At this  rate, she'll put us far ahead of our expected progress. Which century  will they be taking command of."

Seemingly pleased with  the return to matters at hand, Camden smiled back at the regiment  commander. "I'm giving them Olena and Stern's centuries. Those two have  been causing problems, and I've had them reassigned to Weber's unit in  the core force for...disciplinary training." Every person at the table  shuddered visibly as the seemingly innocuous words, and I made the  brilliant deduction that I didn't want to ever find out why.

"The  thirty third and the nineteenth?" Sigmund burst out with a laugh. "Why  didn't you just say that? No reason to be jealous of them getting THOSE  units. Laziest and most difficult centuries in the entire main force."  He shot us a pitying look. "I actually feel bad for you all now. Olena  and Stern were problems from the start, and they were given the most  recalcitrant recruits. Thugs and morons mostly."

I  grimaced. That wasn't ideal, but we had ways to handle things. I glanced  at Camden, who was grinning at me mischievously, and rolled my eyes  internally. "Is that so?" I said lightly. I should have known he'd find a  way to screw me at least a little. If I brought it up he'd probably  feed me some bullshit about learning more with a more difficult task,  but I was pretty sure he was just passing the buck on a problem. "Then I  want to request a few transfers. Two specifically. Gabriel Brightlaw  and Abel Castleton. One for each of us."

Camden made a  noise of amusement. I'd been polite about asking, knowing more about how  far to push after my lessons on diplomacy, brief though they had been.  Eventually, he held out a hand to Alister, who stood behind his chair.  The seneschal passed a scroll, and the Baron opened it, skimming the  names. "Mercy and Desmond. Those two are outliers in terms of  productivity. They'll take your friends places in the tenth and forty  third centuries. Acceptable?"

Since I didn't know who  those people were, I just nodded. If these assholes were so obnoxious  the other commanders were pitying us, we'd need all the help we could  get. Sure, as E-rankers we could kick the shit out of all of them, but  if we had to keep crippling and healing our people to get them in line  it would look bad. Letting Abel and Gabe do it would be MUCH more  reasonable.

"Well that's the easy part taken care of."  Said Marco cheerfully. "Now we need to figure out who is going to be  instructing them on training methods. It'll need to be someone running  one of the more disciplined centuries, since they'll have to be away for  a while helping these two adapt. Any volunteers?" He scanned the room,  and a pair of hands went up. A small, olive skinned girl with aquamarine  hair and kind blue eyes, and a tall tanned man with dark, intense eyes  and long straight hair.

Camden reconsulted his list before  nodding. "Demia and Niles, is it? The fifty seventh and sixth  centuries?" At their agreement he glanced at me. "Very well, the two of  you should be suitable. Make sure to help your new comrades to the best  of your ability. This isn't a punishment detail. I have faith that  Nightstrike and Solomon can whip those units into shape, and anyone  found derailing that goal will be penalized. Understood?" He cast his  glance across the table, and everyone nodded solemnly.

I  was glad he'd said that. His little joke aside, if the other commanders  got the impression we were intended to fail, they could make things  difficult for us in plenty of ways. Making sure that we weren't the  victims of hazing was the least he could do, and made me wonder if he  really HAD given us problem units to make us better commanders.

The  rest of the meeting was much less tense, and much less focused on us.  Camden checked up on troop movements, assigned field exercises, patrol  routes and just did general upkeep stuff I hadn't even known was going  to come up, and once he was done, we were all dismissed. He asked Demia  and Niles to wait for us outside and called for us to stay back to talk  to him.

Once everyone was gone, he slumped a bit in his  chair. "I hate doing these." He groaned. "Sitting all still like that is  terrible for my back. Alister, get a back pillow made for my chair."  The seneschal made a noise of confirmation and jotted down a not, and  the Baron turned back to us. "That went pretty well, all things  considered. Do you have any questions?"

"You mean like why  you screwed us over on unit selection?" I said dryly. "I assumed its  some nonsense about adversity building skill."

He barked  out a laugh. "Nope. Politics. As you noted, once I mentioned your  assigned units the dissatisfaction abated quite a bit. I can't babysit  you two, and if the other commanders have a problem with you it'll make  things much harder around here. Olena and Stern were bastards, no one  liked them. If I'd given you a proper unit, I'd have had to take it from  a more respected commander, and it would have turned everyone else here  against you."

"This way we can prove ourselves." Said  Callie in understanding. "If we can straighten up the problem children,  we'll get a reputation for being competent, and without depriving some  well liked commanders of their posts. But are you sure we can actually  DO this? Olena and Stern were E-rank too, I assume."

He  shrugged. "Barely, and they didn't really try much. They weren't exactly  command material. Olena's brother Matthias is a particularly competent  bastard who runs one of the units in the core force. I put them in  charge as a favor to him, but once they proved they couldn't hack it he  had no issues with me pulling their command. THEY had plenty of issues,  but attacking fellow soldiers in the camp is taboo. They might challenge  to a duel though, so I'd watch out for that."

I nodded  solemnly. A duel wasn't too bad. We were newly minted E-rankers, but we  had our own advantages. If these two were beginners we could definitely  take them. "Demia and Niles." I said leadingly. "They're talented?"

"Two  of my best." He said with a laugh. "I know all my top recruits,  checking the list was just to make it look like I wasn't playing  favorites. I had Marco approach them before the meeting to volunteer.  The first thing you need to learn about command is to make sure you  don't leave anything up to chance. That was all scripted, Marco,  Sigmund, all of it. Now everyone knows what I want them to know about  you, and nothing more. I've given you a good position, what you do with  it from here is on you."

With that, he dismissed us, and  Callie and I headed out to meet our new teachers. Demia and Niles were  waiting for us at the entrance to the tent and once we joined them, they  escorted us to meet our new units while Abel and Gabe were summoned for  their new duty. Time to meet our personal armies.