Mortensholm "Next!" A pair of gentlemen made their way towards the recruiters table. The Dawnstriders had been busy handing out relief supplies, sending the priestesses and surgeons to tend to the wounded, and rebuilding homes. Now they had to start recruiting locals for guard duty, and train them for war. The two in front of the recruiter were older, and seemed like they'd make poor soldiers. What bothered him is they had come together, instead of one at a time like the rest of the recruits. He sighed; damned stupid peasants never got easier to deal with. "Names?"
"Abeel"
"Olav"
The recruiter nodded, writing down the names, and prepared to assess their fitness for duty...
The recruiter, a sergeant of a more years experience than he had ever bothered to count, and in truth the answer would have surprised even him, looked the pair up and down. They must have been far on the wrong side of fifty years of age, which might well have blessed them with wisdom (the sergeant had yet to find out) but had definitely sapped them of their vitality.
The one called Abeel was obviously bald, a fact that the utterly unconvincing wig he had pasted to his head with some sort of admixture of honey and flour thus attracting several flies, and which was fashioned not from human hair but from what could well had been a horse’s tail, utterly failed to conceal. The one called Olav appeared to be quite lame, though he was attempting to hide the fact by putting his arm around Abeel’s shoulder, as if they were bosom buddies out for an evening stroll. Neither had yet noticed that Olav’s arm had dislodged Abeel’s wig so that it hung down upon left side of his head.
“Gainful employment,” said Olav, as if answering a question.
“What d’you say?” asked the sergeant.
“Me?” said Abeel. “I say the same as him, ‘gainful employment’.”
The sergeant rolled his eyes and patted a cloth to his neck, where sweat and his gorget had combined to raise a very annoying rash. “I know what he said, I wanted to know why he said it.”
“I should ask him then,” suggested Abeel helpfully.
There was a moment’s silence, a long moment’s silence. The sergeant stared expectantly at Olav; Olav stared blankly back.
“Well?” demanded the sergeant.
“Oh,” said Olav, “Am I to suppose, then, that you’ve already asked the question my good friend here suggested you ask of me even though you have indeed yet to ask said question, and have only hinted that you might do so?"
The sergeant was just looking at him. Feeling he ought to explain further Olav added, "I would not presume to put words into your mouth, sir sergeant.”
The cloth at the sergeant’s neck got caught on the catch of his gorget. He began tugging at it, in response to which it began to tear.
“Is it important to you?” asked Abeel.
“Is what important to me? You mean the question I asked?”
“No, sir, the cloth. The one you’ve just torn.”
“No!” shouted the sergeant.
“That’s a relief, then,” said Abeel, obviously satisfied.
The sergeant tore the cloth away, and stuffed the fragment that was left stuck to his gorget down between the armoured collar and his neck. “Let’s start again, shall we?”
“I’d say that was the only source of action open to us at this juncture,” said Olav.
“And I would agree with him,” said Abeel. “We’ve brought our own swords, if that’s of any help.”
The sergeant looked at the ancient and quite rusty hilts of the swords in question, both stuffed into Abeel’s belt.
“Those swords?” he asked.
“The very same,” the two of them answered simultaneously, then simultaneously slapped each other on the back of the head saying, simultaneously “Don’t do that.” This caught them simultaneously by surprise.
“Why, may I ask..” began the sergeant.
“Don’t let us stop you. Feel free to speak as you wish. I’ve heard it all in my day, and anything I didn’t hear my good friend probably heard in my stead,” said Olav.
The sergeant was growing red, and not just at his neck - his cheeks were flushed, his forehead similarly hued.
“Why is he carrying both of them?”
“He’s a very helpful kind of fellow,” said Olav, “but that’s not to say, and you can write this down if you wish, that I am not helpful too.”
For a moment, one can only assume because the heat and the rash and the muddled conversation were all combining to assault his composure, the sergeant almost picked up his quill to write. He took a deep breath, and asked, as calmly as he could, “And where are the scabbards?”
“Ah, I see where you are coming from,” said Olav. “Not the military fashion to go about with a naked blade…”
“Except in anger!” interrupted Abeel.
“Of course, except in anger,” continued Olav, “when to leave the blade in one’s scabbard would be somewhat counterproductive to the act of stabbing, slashing or in some otherwise manner inflicting harm upon whoever or whatever it is that one is obliged … to set about … the act of…” (his words were faltering) “… under instruction, or orders I suppose you military fellows would say … to go about stabbing, so to speak, if that’s at all possible …”
“Stop speaking!” ordered the sergeant. “Where are the scabbards?”
Neither man said a word. The sergeant pondered a moment why this should be, then in a flash of disturbing logic said, “Start speaking.”
“The scabbards, sir sergeant, were left behind quite deliberately, due to the added burden they put upon poor Abeel here, who was already carrying two swords. Asking him to carry two scabbards as well as the two swords seemed unfair.”
“Two too many things,” said Abeel. “If you get my drift.”
The sergeant was stunned. He opened his mouth, then shut it very quickly, for it dawned on him that saying anything more might just prolong the farce. He picked up his pen, dipped it deep into the ink, and put a bold line through both names.
“You can go,” he said, looking down at the paper.
The two men didn’t move. The sergeant, who had faced battle crazed orcs that towered over him in battle, and had once put his sword into a creature the size of an Ogre and yet with the head of a rat, dare not look at them.
“You can go,” he repeated.
“Which one of us do you mean, sir sergeant?”
The sergeant slowly lowered his head until it came to a halt on the table. He realised the paper, with the great daub of ink upon it where he had scrawled out the two names, was now stuck to his forehead. He didn’t care.
