Stiger’s Tigers (Chronicles of An Imperial Legionary Officer Book 1) by Marc Alan Edelheit

Author:Marc Alan Edelheit [Edelheit, Marc Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781942899167
Publisher: Telemachus Press, LLC
Published: 2015-03-22T16:00:00+00:00

Ten

“Are the men ill?” Stiger asked Sergeant Blake as a man broke ranks, darting into the dense, man-high brush that lined both sides of the road. The captain was walking his horse at the end of the column. The sergeant was walking alongside him. Dusk was fast approaching and with it, the heat of the day was thankfully beginning to abate. The company had not yet entered the Sentinel forest. The road to Vrell cut straight through its heart.

The company was marching past abandoned farmland as it approached the forest. The countryside on both sides of the road was littered with burned-out farmsteads. The once cultivated lands had grown wild with grass and brush. The region at one time had been rich and prosperous; a breadbasket, shipping grains back to the empire. Now devoid of inhabitants, it was an abandoned wasteland.

The captain watched as another man, further ahead than the last, darted off the road to disappear into the brush. Bad food? He wondered. The men had been eating well the past few weeks, but perhaps something in their game-rich diet was causing stomach disorder.

“Berry picking, sir,” Sergeant Blake admitted sourly, after a slight pause. “Seems it is berry season, and many of these farms grew berries.”

“Berry picking?” Stiger growled with a deepening frown. The captain’s blood boiled at this lapse in discipline. Sure enough, one of the men emerged from the bushes carrying a handful of what appeared to be end-of-summer jayberries. The man was smiling happily at his rich bounty.

“This is a march into hostile territory,” Stiger snapped at Blake, beside himself with irritation. “I will not lose men because they are berry picking!”

“Yes sir,” Sergeant Blake said, casting his captain a careful look. Blake thought himself a tough man. He had survived and prospered in the harsh world of the legions. He had risen to the coveted position of sergeant, the highest position possible for the common-born. Blake had encountered many officers during his twenty years of service. One of those might have not cared enough to notice the men stepping off to hunt for berries. Captain Stiger had noticed. Sergeant Blake hid a smile. Despite his own personal distaste and distrust of the nobility, he found himself beginning to not only respect, but like his captain. “I will put a stop to it immediately, sir.”

“Make sure they know not to wander off by themselves,” Stiger ordered. “Once we are in the forest, if they need to step off, they are to do so in pairs and notify their corporal. We need to hammer this habit into them now. Should the rebels prove competent, they will know this forest. We will not.”

“Yes sir,” Blake acknowledged. Captain Stiger knew his job and if he said there was a real risk, the sergeant believed him.

“In the forest, it will be extremely easy to become turned around. Losing a man or two because he gets himself lost is the same as losing one to the enemy. We will not be able to stop to look.

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