Trashy Battalion (2/2)
Seeing the newcomer's confused look, some of the soldiers laugh. The old soldier speaks up again, "You seem too straight-laced to be in a place like this, kid. What'd you do?"
"What're you talking about?" Haalfrin asked.
"I'm saying," the old soldier replies, "that this is Lord Tallus's troupe. Tallus is one of the king's bastard children. He likes to call himself a prince, but he's…"
Haalfrin hears the old man trail off, as he likely didn't want to insult royalty out loud.
"So," Haalfrin finishes for him, "Tallus is functionally not a prince, and he's seen as an eyesore by a lot of the higher-ups. We've either been given all of the trashiest officers in existence or they've been paid to not do their jobs as a form of bullying."
"It's a bit more than that," one of the skittish young soldiers in the back chips in, "The generals always put us in the front line. We've had the biggest casualties in the war so far. None of the people here think we're gonna make it."
"Cuz we're NOT!" another soldier chortles bitterly.
Haalfrin looks around the camp again and notes the empty looks in their eyes. "Well," he says, "That explains a few things."
Honestly, Haalfrin had never imagined a situation like this before. He's certainly been in an army before. Back when he was a lawful citizen working as a guard for a baron, he had to follow his baron out to war once... Though to be fair, it was more of a skirmish that lasted a few weeks.
Regardless of how short his army experience was, it was memorable enough to stick with him for all these years. From what he remembers, Being in the army is fierce competition, strict schedules, officers demanding obedience, and men bonding together over shared hardships.
Everyone starved together, feasted together, ate together, died together, and they (for the most part) worked together.
This? This just feels out of place for Haalfrin. Even the raiders he spent his life with felt more organized.
After walking away from the soldiers, Haalfrin looks down at his hip and feels a sense of loss. When he was sent to prison, his keepers never returned his enchanted sword.
"Where am I going to get another sword? No. Screw that. I liked that sword a lot!" Alas, Haalfrin has no individual in sight to vent his vexation on.
He pokes around and sees a lot of empty tents. In one of them is a pile of swords. They all look so dusty that they probably haven't been touched in weeks.
"Well, whoever these belong to, nobody's going to come looking for a single missing one."
Of course, he's sure to take the longest sword he can find, to accommodate his height and long arms.
Once Haalfrin steps out of the tent with a new sword on his waist, he puts his hands on his hips and looks out at the hundreds of soldiers idling about camp.
"Hmm…," Haalfrin thinks as he finds a place to set his things on the ground, "This'll take some getting used to.
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For the next several days, Haalfrin gets up several hours earlier than everyone else… though that isn't saying much; most of these people party hard late into the night and wake up close to noon… or later.
Why bother being strict with yourself when you think you think you're going to die? Others might give up right now, but Haalfrin has a very good reason to take care of himself.
You see, from being able to see Death gods all his life, as well as lingering spirits before they're taken away, Haalfrin knows a few tidbits about the afterlife. He knows that dead people's personalities are frozen in place. If you die a good person, you'll always be a good person. If you die a hardworking person, then you'll always be this way.
Thus, Haalfrin doesn't want to slack off and become a person he despises before he dies. He'd hate to find his brothers in Freyya's basement, only for him to have become someone who can no longer be friends with them.
For this reason, Haalfrin diligently wakes up before the crack of dawn every day and heads down to the training field. He takes this chance to spend a few hours swinging his sword and getting all his strength back.
It isn't just his muscles that are weaker from spending so long on his hospice bed; his training also needs some refreshing too… and fighting untrained bandits in the mountains don't count as practice. Those idiots didn't even stand and fight properly.
In the other camps, food is rationed out every morning and evening… but out here in Lord Tallus's camp, the suppliers only come by in the evening. The other camps get meat in their meals once a week, hot stew every day, and a serving of ale once a month (minus special occasions).
However, the soldiers here in Tallus's camp get no meat, sometimes cold stew, and hard bread.
Haalfrin also notices quite quickly that everyone in this pitiful excuse for a regiment had split off into many cliques.
"Well," Haalfrin thinks, "calling them cliques is being generous. It's more accurate to say they're a bunch of gangs fighting pointlessly over territory and bragging rights."
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Just a few short days into his stay at camp, Haalfrin is woken up late at night (the time a reasonable person should be sleeping).
He bolts awake with his sword already in his hands since he has a long habit of hugging it to sleep.
Haalfrin actually thinks they're being attacked by the Alsa'ree, but after he gets outside, he only sees 2 of the men from different gangs fighting each other.
This isn't the play kind of fighting either. They have hateful scowls on their faces, and their knives out – presumably ready to kill each other.
…And of course, there are no officers near enough to keep order.
Now that Haalfrin thinks about it... "But even if there WERE officers nearby, I doubt they'd do anything to stop it."
Haalfrin's fingers twitch, and he briefly considers stomping outside and beating up the two soldiers.
If these two "children" were young Raiders, he'd have scolded them like a grouchy old man and yelled, "Is this war a joke to you idiots! You're going to get yourselves killed if you waste all your time bickering with each other! Shouldn't we be working together!?"
However, beating people up and lecturing them is very uncomfortable for everyone involved - especially himself, so another part of him wants to just ignore these brawling fools.
'I mean, scolding people is a lot of trouble, and it's annoying. I'd only bother with doing that to someone I care about.' It IS true, after all, that these soldiers are lessening their own chances of survival by being sloppy and ununited.
'... But yeah. I couldn't care less if these soldiers die. They're not my clan brothers, so they can get themselves killed for all I care.'
With that decision made, Haalfrin rolls over on his cot and tries his best to go to sleep.
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Unfortunately, just after he falls asleep, Haalfrin gasps in shock when he hears a loud crash, and he feels a heavy, sweaty body lands on top of him.
"GET OUT!!" Haalfrin roars at the man who fell on him. Haalfrin looks around and sees that one of the brawlers had been thrown onto his tent - breaking it in the process.
Having his things broken just makes Haalfrin even more angry. That, coupled with how tired he is right now, makes him unable to control himself anymore.
Roaring something unintelligible, Haalfrin grabs the man's ankle just as he's trying to get up, and he trips the man. Before the man can get up again, Haalfrin is already on top of him with his left arm wrapped around his neck.
The man is frantically trying to roll over and shake Haalfrin off, and he's desperately grabbing Haalfrin's wrists and attempting to loosen the madman's grip. Alas, there's nothing he can do to stop Haalfrin from suffocating him.
"Do you think we should stop him?" one of the soldiers standing off to the side asks. "I think Jole's going to die at this rate."
Most of the soldiers do nothing, though a few of Jole's friends run forward and try to pull Haalfrin away.
None of them are strong enough to pry his arm away by force, but a few of them start punching his ribs instead.
Haalfrin only releases Jole once he passes out.
However, despite Jole being free, his friends are still angry at what Haalfrin did to him. They just look to each other, nod for confirmation, and continue attacking Haalfrin.
Maybe it's because Haalfrin's killing intent is very high right now, but the Death Energy in his soul reacts.
In the end, that Death Energy spell written in his Name is a form of Spirit magic, and Spirit magic is heavily influenced by your feelings. Thus, when Haalfrin feels the desire to kill something, the spell automatically casts itself.
...
...
Haalfrin certainly feels his Name stir and the power inside activate, but nothing much happens. The only Death Energy he's collected was from a few bandits he slew as a guard and a few animals he hunted for food.
There's barely enough Death Energy in his soul to make the soldiers assaulting him feel uneasy when they look at him. This wariness turns into even more aggression.
Rather, instead of helping himself out, this spell seems to be making the soldiers fight even harder.
Haalfrin feels bruises pop up all over his body, and he feels his bones creaking from their blows; he knows that he won't be able to fight them all off. Plus, there's no convenient corner he can back himself into to minimize their numbers advantage.
The only thing he CAN do is focus on one boy at a time and make them suffer. Perhaps if he's brutal enough, he'll scare them away. 'There's only 5 boys attacking me, and the only one who had a weapon on him was the guy I knocked out in the beginning.'
... 'Oh! There's a dagger on the ground!' Haalfrin takes advantage of the fact that the other soldiers had pushed him to the ground, and he reaches out and snatches the weapon up off the floor.
He then switches his grip on the dagger and stabs one of the men's feet - a short man with blonde hair.
The blonde man jumbs back on one leg, and Haalfrin takes this opportunity to kick his one good leg in the ankle - knocking him over.
Haalfrin is about to lunge forward and finish off the fallen man with his blade, but 2 of his friends manage to pull Haalfrin away just in time.
"Man! We're sorry!" one of the blond man's friend yells. "We didn't mean to wake you up!" The man who spoke up is a tall man, beanpole of a man with freckles all over his face.
The freckled man then turns his head and makes eye contact with all of his other friends - telling them all to back off with his eyes. "It's not worth it, guys."
Haalfrin puts his newly acquired dagger in his belt and straightens his clothing. "Well, goodnight to you, folks." He reaches his left hand out to offer a handshake to the red-haired boy.
The boy accepts the shake, and they part ways.
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Haalfrin watches the 5 soldiers walk away - 2 of them limping, and another being carried unconscious. Haalfrin himself can hardly breath without his ribs hurting.
Feeling a little resentful and disappointed, Haalfrin looks around and doesn't see a single officer in sight.
'All that external bullying by the higher-ups aside, this "Prince Tallus" himself never made an appearance…'
This is actually what pisses Haalfrin off the most.
Tallus himself is the man who's supposed to have the most vested interest in the soldiers, so where is he? Does he not even WANT to control his men?
Feeling frustrated and annoyed, Haalfrin carefully makes his way towards a nearby warehouse to pick out a few parts for his tent, since he knows a few of the wooden frame pieces were crushed when that first soldier was thrown in it.
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On his way back to his ruined tent with his new frame in hand, Haalfrin passes by a soldier in officer's clothing. "Oh?" Haalfrin remarks out loud, "I didn't know officers were in this camp."
The captain's eyes twitch for a second, then his face goes back to being neutral. "I'm not from this camp." He cocks his thumb over his shoulder. "I was just visiting Prince Tallus in his tent."
The captain then looks around to see if anyone's nearby. Then, when he sees no one, he says in a lower voice, "Was that you who was casting that fear spell earlier?"
Haalfrin shrugs. "If you could call it that... yes. Why?"
"So you're a mage then?" the man asks carefully. Haalfrin's remains silent, which only confirms what the man was thinking.
Instead taking this conversation further, the man nods his head to Haalfrin and says, "Good day." He turns around and walks back the way he came from.
"Hmm...," Haalfrin mumbles as he thinks, 'Wonder if anything's going to come of that?
After that, he finishes going back tent and he spends a few minutes setting it back up again.
For the rest of the night, everybody either kept away from Haalfrin's tent or talked in hushed tones.
Sure, the crazy guy inside isn't invincible, but what's the point in picking a fight with a madman - especially one with Kareen tattoos?