The ambush

[DM B]

Armies tend to do a lot of marching. The commanders said this was necessary because the men had to know how to march long and hard in case they were called out on campaign. Moergan wasn’t too sure about that – marching might very well just be a way for keeping the men occupied in lieu of having anything important to do during peacetime. Soldiers with free time always caused trouble – or so the sergeant claimed – so keeping them occupied probably was a good idea. Moergan wasn’t too keen on marching himself, not because it was tiring, but because it was so mind-numbingly boring. The be absolutely fair there was a lot of other army stuff that also bored Moergan – keeping his kit in order, drilling in formation, digging trenches, standing guard…the list was pretty long – in fact, when Moergan thought about it, there were relatively few things about soldiering that were enjoyable. But marching…marching was perhaps the most boring of all. Marching was just like walking – only you had to stay clear of the men next to you and try and keep a steady pace, but even a village idiot could manage that – and walking had never been any fun to begin with. Yet the army managed to make it even less interesting by making you do it a lot and deciding where and when you had to go. Moergan supposed he was one of ‘lucky’ ones, in that he was pretty tall and had proven his skill with the blade. It put him near the front of his company and enabled him to see above the heads of the two persons in front of him. Yet it also put him in the leftmost column, the one most exposed to enemy attack. Not that he was afraid or anything, but again Moergan didn’t really intend to die in this man’s army, and prudence seemed the better part of valor when it came to surviving battles. Moergan wasn’t so sure that the improved view was worth the added risk, but he supposed it was too late to do much about it – his sense of personal honor would not allow him to pretend to be less skilled than these commoners – and so he simply accepted the situation and marched on.

[DM B]

Yet – despite the view – Moergan found his mind drifting every time they marched. He knew most of the others weren’t paying attention either. They weren’t supposed to do that of course. They were soldiers, and so expected to be vigilant at all times. But that just wasn’t possible – the human mind was not meant to endure so many hours of boring nothingness. No matter what you did, sooner or later the mind would drift away. Some men were dreaming of battles and glory, rape and pillage, while others thought about loved ones left at home or some such nonsense. Moergan, however, found himself thinking of things that he had never bothered to contemplate before – he though about the history of Anuire, the nature of men, politics and religion – stuff his father’s teachers had tried to force him to memorize. He had never had any interest in it before, but he suspected that was because he hadn’t taken the time to think about any of it. Hadn’t tried to look at the whole and see how different pieces of lore interlinked with other pieces – and how changing one piece could have effects on other pieces far removed from it. ‘I’m turning into a scholar – not yet of age, and already I have the mind of an old man. Soon my male member will shrink away and I will loose interest in women and start having unholy thoughts about young boys. What a fate!’ He was only half joking to himself – the part about the young boys wasn’t going to happen anytime soon – but he could not deny that he was finding a certain satisfaction in his new inner life.