‘You’re a cruel man, Commander,’ Narasan’s friend Padan protested. ‘We’ll still have to get up at daybreak but you’ll spend the whole morning rattling the walls with your snoring.’

Commander Kalan grinned at him. ‘Just knowing that you’ll have to be up and moving when the sun rises will make my sleep all the more pleasant, Padan,’ he replied.

Narasan had been groomed for leadership since his early childhood, and despite feeling that his recent promotion was premature, he found his new status as comfortable as an old boot.

After a few minor wars, Narasan’s reputation began to grow, and other army commanders let it be generally known that their price would double if the opposing army happened to be commanded by ‘that Narasan fellow’.

To make matters better, even when the renters of opposing armies tried to conceal Narasan’s likely appearance on the battlefield, his opponents always sent scouts out to make sure that Narasan was nowhere in the vicinity. If it turned out that he was there, the opposing army would immediately surrender.

That made for a lot of easy wars.

One of an army commander’s more important duties involves the selection of the man who should replace him in the event that he happened to be killed in action. Narasan already had a candidate in mind - even though his youthful nephew had not even been commissioned as yet. Though it pained Narasan to admit it, his nephew Astal was at least twice as gifted as he was. Should the young fellow survive his early campaigns, there was the distinct possibility that he might be able to reunite the scattered armies of the Empire and change the course of history. The current government of the Empire was so corrupt that it very nearly made Narasan ashamed to even be a Trogite. A strong military could ram ethics down the collective throats of the Palvanum and place certain insurmountable barriers between the greedy church and the government. A supreme army commander could slap things into shape in almost no time at all. ‘I might even show up in a few history books as the man who engineered the saving of the Empire,’ he mused. ‘God knows that sooner or later somebody’s going to have to do that.’

2

‘I‘d be willing to pay you ten thousand gold crowns, Commander Narasan,’ the Duke of Bergalta declared. ‘Your reputation alone should settle the matter once and for all.’

‘That’s a very generous offer, Your Grace,’ Narasan replied, looking out across the drill-field at the center of the army compound. ‘Is that barony really worth all this trouble?’

‘Well, not really, I suppose. What it all boils down to, I guess, is that it’s high time to jerk the Duke of Tashan up short. That halfwit seems to believe that he can get away with just about anything. When old Baron Forlen died without an heir, Tashan brazenly announced that he was annexing that barony as “a protectorate”, and that rubbed me the wrong way. Then too, the barony has always been a sort of buffer state between my duchy and Tashan’s. If I let him get away with this, he’ll be camped right on my eastern border.’

Narasan rather ruefully conceded to himself that the growing reputation of his army was attracting more and more of these petty little squabbles. He shrugged. Probably all that was going to be involved in this one would be a leisurely march to the region in question and a bit of muscle flexing to persuade Duke Tashan to come to the bargaining table. The pay was good, and it was highly unlikely that there’d be much bleeding involved, so he accepted Duke Bergalta’s offer.

The one thing that perhaps more than any other had persuaded Commander Narasan to accept the offer was the fact that his gifted nephew Astal had recently been commissioned, and he was now a very junior officer in the ninth cohort. An easy campaign with little danger was quite probably the best way for the young fellow to get his feet wet. Astal was not the only recently commissioned officer in Narasan’s army, so Narasan’s decision to accept Duke Bergalta’s offer would provide training for several other junior officers as well as for his nephew. Narasan had noticed that Astal’s closest friend was the well-educated young Keselo, who indeed showed at least as much potential as Astal himself. There was another junior officer, however, who showed almost no promise whatsoever. His name was Jalkan, and he’d formerly been a priest in the Amarite church. That in itself should have immediately disqualified him. There was no question that the Empire was corrupt, but the Amarite church took corruption to its outer edges. After he’d somewhat reluctantly agreed to sell Jalkan a commission, Narasan almost immediately began to regret the decision. Jalkan proved to be lazy, stupid almost beyond belief, arrogant, and unnecessarily cruel to the men who served under him.

After Jalkan had made several serious blunders, Narasan began to draw up a list of the scrawny little officer’s misdeeds. He was fairly certain that the time would come in the not-too-distant future when that list would be very useful. Jalkan was obviously convinced that his purchase of his commission protected his status. Narasan yearned for the day when he could disabuse Jalkan of that misconception.

Following a rather brief conference in the war-room, Narasan’s army began the march toward the Duchy of Bergalta, moving south in easy stages. It was late summer now, and the weather was very pleasant. The slaves of the various landowners in the region were at work in the fields, lending an almost bucolic air to the march.

The army was not too far from Bergalta’s northern border, and about noon on a sunny day, Sub-Commander Gunda returned from a scouting expedition to the south. ‘There’s a ridge-line about a half-day’s march on ahead,’ he reported. ‘The road we’re following goes on through a fairly narrow pass, and we might want to set up our night’s camp before we reach that pass - just to be on the safe side. We haven’t seen any signs of an opposing army, but why take chances? The road gets steeper anyway, and the troops can make better time if they start out fresh.’

‘That’s the way we’ll do it then, Gunda,’ Narasan agreed. ‘Just as a favor, would you have a word with Morgas of the ninth cohort? Tell him that I’d like to have Astal lead the march. That should give his ego a bit of a boost. Sometimes that boy has a retiring sort of nature. If we put him out front, it might make him feel a bit important.’

‘That’s got a familiar sort of ring to it, Narasan,’ Gunda said with a broad grin. ‘Your uncle Kalan used to shove you out front just about every time we were on the march.’