The Jeweled Hills (Legionnaire Book 3) by Gilbert M. Stack

Author:Gilbert M. Stack [Stack, Gilbert M.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2018-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

I Don’t Like Any of This

“We lost a quarter of our recruits yesterday,” Severus reported as he ate a very good breakfast of eggs, sausage and bacon. There might be a food shortage in the city, but you couldn’t tell that in Marcus’ household. There were major advantages to being wealthy. “Almost all of the señors were among those who left. They just can’t take a hard day’s work.”

“It may be more the case that they can’t stand obeying the orders of anyone they feel is not superior to them,” Calidus suggested.

“I can’t stand around all day giving orders,” Marcus said. “That’s what junior officers are for.”

“You’re assuming they believe you’re superior,” Calidus said with a sly smile. “As far as I can tell, the Gente not only believe they are superior, most of them believe they are superior to each other. No wonder the Gota conquered them. They can’t get along with anyone.”

“So this is going to be even harder than we thought,” Marcus said. “That reinforces my resolve to make some changes to the ranks.”

“Changes?” Severus asked.

“All of these recruits are green. Therefore it doesn’t make sense to train them for a green band, a red band and a black band. So I want to train them in two ranks. The first rank uses shields and swords if we can get the Thegn to approve them.”

“The señors can own swords,” Calidus noted.

“But most of our troops are not going to be señors,” Marcus said.

“Second rank uses those spears the Gota fancy. While the first rank fights in a shield wall, the second rank stab across the wall at their enemies. We train them to coordinate their attacks. That’s the key to victory in the north. Neither the Gota nor the Gente have any real fighting discipline—at least when they’re fighting on foot.”

“From what you’ve told us, the bandits are going to be mostly on horseback,” Severus said.

“These two ranks work for that too. The first rank still has their shields and the second rank should be able to put three spears on every horseman who comes into reach. No one in their right mind is going to ride into that sort of wall.”

“So the riders break off their attack. How do we bring the battle to them if we’re carrying long unwieldy spears instead of nice short easily thrown pilum,” Calidus asked.

“Don’t have to bring them to battle,” Severus said. “On the way out, we only have to hold them at bay. We’ll have more cavalry on the way back in.”

“What we need are bows like the savages have,” Marcus said. “Then we could shoot at the bandits as they break away.”

Severus shook his head. “It takes a long time to learn to shoot a bow and none of us know how to do it properly. Stick to what we know. We only have time to train them in the basics anyway.”

He stood up. “Come on, Calidus, time to go to wake the babies.”

****

The master of horse

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.