The Many Lives of Cadence Lee

*Kingdom of Gracel, Two Years Ago*

*Rauvin Kassid POV*

  The most commonly held trait for people with the [Officer] Class was the desire to be an [Officer].

  It is a statement that seems so obvious that it seems like it would go without saying, but I knew better. There is a lot of information that can be found hidden within the nuance and is often left unsaid. Which would be fine if the information was not important, but unfortunately it was.

  “You were ordered to stand watch over the unit’s water supplies,” I did my best to keep my frustration out of my voice, it would not be professional or helpful. “Not to take a nap in the cart with the barrels.”

  “Begging your pardon, [Officer] Kassid,” the old [Soldier] spoke with a salute. “No one came to relieve me from my post over the night, I apologize that I was not able to stay awake until relief was sent.”

  I had shifted the schedule to account for the extra soldiers - mostly [Soldiers] and [Infantry] Classed - but one man had followed the previous schedule instead of the new one, meaning that no one had come when the watch should have changed. That was an issue I had already addressed, and on the surface one might think that it was a good excuse. On the surface, that is.

  “And it never occurred to you to ask any one of the soldiers who came for a drink to come and let me know?”

  I knew he knew better than this. The [Officer] Class generally requires you to want to be an [Officer] because you need to accept a promotion - accept the post - beforehand. [Officers] are not the most qualified individuals for their position, but rather the most qualified individuals who said yes. The old [Soldier] in front of me knew how to do my job better than I did, but he had no interest in ever accepting a promotion and taking the [Officer] Class.

  They could be the best of [Soldiers] to have under your command, the worst to have under your command, or often they would be both at the same time. The trouble I had was getting them to respect me, because when they didn’t shit like this would happen.

  “You could have asked any of the people who came by to give me a message,” Rauvin knew he wasn’t going to be winning him over today though. “You should have asked one of them to do so.”

  Anyone who knew anything about war knew that logistics was the most critical part of victory. People and mounts needed to eat and drink, boots needed to be replaced, swords and armor repaired, arrows supplied, and wounded and dead sent home to recover or be buried. All of that was obvious, but what was less obvious was that the most critical part of logistics was management. To the chagrin of many a [Grand Strategist], wars have been won and lost over something as simple as poor scheduling and the first thing that happens when an army is mustered is that something breaks down.

  And the mustering of the army was rushed, the [Generals] had been caught off guard and were sending us in piecemeal as a result. Goblin Swarms were rare and there were whispers that some [Officials] had tried to cover it up, but now the military was being brought in to hopefully nip it in the bud. This was not the time where I could just let the [Soldier] off the hook, and I’d let him know as much.

  “Any other time,” I nearly growled in frustration. “Any other time that might have flown at least enough for me to just give you a talking to, but this isn’t any other time and so I am putting you on a punishment detail. I hope you enjoyed your nap, because you won’t be getting another until we are done with this Swarm.”

  The silver lining to dressing down the old timers? They never tried to wheedle or whine, they would always just shrug and accept it with their faces going blank. Which was good, because we had a long march ahead of us and a battle at the end of it.

  “[Leadership has Leveled up! Leadership is now Level 18!]”

  It always felt good to gain a level. Hopefully it was a good sign.

*Two Days Later*

  “AOE AT THE FRONT NOW!” I roared over the sounds of battle, calling for one of our mages to give us some breathing room. “Pull back and collapse the pass!”

  Gracel was a mostly flat country, but thankfully it was only mostly flat or we would be fucked. We were too late, too few, and just not high enough level to deal with what was going on. We would have to regroup with the rest of the army, at the very least, and given that this was a Swarm we would probably need to bring in high level adventurers as well.

  All of which was very easy to say, but it was far less pretty to experience than to talk about.

  My orders were carried out. Fire and lightning rained down on the front lines, clipping our own soldiers but that would be mostly mitigated by their armor and shields. More importantly it would slaughter all the goblins in that area and allow us to disengage. We hadn’t lost much, only two [Soldiers] were missing by my count, but Swarms weren’t dangerous in the traditional sense.

  Hell, those two [Soldiers] probably weren’t even dead yet. Between their levels and their armor it might take them an hour or more to die. It wasn’t a pleasant thought to have, and I didn’t have the time to consider it anyways.

  The noise of the landslide that would cut off the pass behind us momentarily eclipsed even the sounds of the goblins. The air was filled with dust which stuck to the sweat on my exposed skin making it almost as uncomfortable as the sweat slicked leather lining of my helmet was. I had to refocus myself, this momentary respite had errant thoughts running through my mind and it was very much only a momentary respite. Gracel’s landscape was hardly impassable and the Swarm would be through or around the blockage in hours. Maybe a day if I was lucky.

  I deserved some good luck right now, but instead I was told that most of our supplies were on the Swarm side of the blockage.

  “Fall in people,” I called out. “We are leaving, hopefully to rendezvous with the rest of the army. Move!”

  The good news was that Swarms weren’t particularly coordinated. The goblins weren’t hunting for us or looking for us, they just expanded outward and ate whatever was available. We wouldn’t have to worry about traditional pursuit, although by the same token if they did catch up to us there was a chance that the attack would simply never stop.

  So we, in military parlance, retreated. Or perhaps we made a “strategic withdrawal,” otherwise known as running away. I know that is what I would call it when I reported it, but I was fairly certain that it would be edited as it was passed up stream. Maybe they would call it, “escorting civilians to safety,” because for some fucking reason the area had not been evacuated.

  Once they heard what was going on though, they flocked to us and I had to make a hard decision and keep them away. We didn’t have the numbers to protect so many people without stretching ourselves thin, and even rationing supplies we would be going without sooner rather than later. I watched men, women, and children beg me for help and I had to keep them back at the point of a spear. I hate myself and I hate this kingdom. I could only let a few families come with us in exchange for supplies.

  It wouldn’t be long before people became desperate enough to attack us, and so I needed to watch the fleeing refugees just as warily as I watched the shadows for goblins. Although the first one to approach me, a young man - barely that, more of a kid really - actually asked me how to fight.

  “Sir,” he asked, watching me with as much or more caution than I regarded him. “Could I ask you a question?”

  There were a lot of hard questions to which I had equally hard answers, but I knew what he wanted to ask. After all, anyone with a beating heart would at least ask, but I had already steeled myself against it and I would have to put that steel into my voice.

  “Kid, I bet I know what you are going to ask. We can’t let just anyone into this camp.” I said to him, wishing that I had the resources to help everyone but knowing the reality of the situation. “Even just to sit. Desperation turns honest men and women into thieves and cutthroats. I don’t blame them for it, but neither can I trust anyone who can’t look after themselves.”

  He asked me if we could arm everyone. Goblins were weak, after all, and there were a lot of people around, but all that told me was that he didn’t understand just what it meant for there to be a goblin Swarm. It wouldn’t be too long before there were so many goblins that they stripped the countryside of everything that they considered edible, which was everything including the dirt down to bedrock. There would be so many goblins that they would be crawling over each other, some places might end up two or three goblins deep.

  The army would take part in culling them, of course, but mostly as a cordon that kept them from spreading further. The actual killing would be done by mages and high level adventurers with powerful AOE spells and abilities.

  In the end, I did agree to teaching the kid how to fight. Perhaps not the best decision, but there was only so much I could harden my heart at the end of the day.

  “Hey kid, what is your name?” I asked him, he told me his name was Tamlin and I held out my hand towards him. “I’m Rauvin. Happy to meet you, although I wish it was during a better time.”

  I had to admire the determination on Tamlin’s face as he took my hand and shook it. He and his sister would take shelter in the city of Pylae as my unit and I continued our fighting retreat across Gracel, eventually reuniting with the main force of the army. It didn’t take long for me to hear more rumors that this Swarm had gotten out of hand due to some kind of fuck up from some [Lord] or [Official]. I wasn’t surprised, but I was tired of it. Seeing adventurers gather, I had to wonder if maybe that lifestyle would be better… It could hardly be worse, after all.

*Seven Weeks Later*

  Words cannot adequately describe the devastation the Swarm left in its wake. First, the goblins came through and ate even the dirt. Then, we came through and killed them, leaving their corpses to blanket the ground and marched tens of thousands over it, trampling anything that was left. It was madness.

  The bodies would have to be burned, but without wood the pyres would have to be lit by magic. Wherever we went, we left piles of corpses billowing black, choking smoke behind us. It stained our armor, got into our water, and eventually became an omnipresent haze that covered the sky and completed the apocalyptic vision that had consumed the formerly idyllic Gracel countryside.

  I was relieved to see that the city of Pylae had survived, when we reached it. Just seeing something had resisted being eaten by goblins raised my spirit, although it was immediately crushed when I entered. The people of Pylae were gaunt, at the very best. Some were little more than skin and bones, sitting in the accumulated filth that came from two months of a city filled beyond bursting by refugees, unable to move or uncaring about the garbage they wallowed in.

  Hell, that one leaning on a spear looked more like one of the undead than a liv- I recognized that spear…

  “By the Gods! Tamlin, is that you?” I could barely believe it, he was far from the frightened, but lively, kid I had met just a couple months ago. He seemed less fearful, but all the life had been drained from him and the contrast between how I remembered him and the skeletal figure I saw before me…

  It was there I made the decision to quit the army. I didn’t want to work for a country that would let this happen, and so I decided to become an adventurer. Maybe, after Tamlin recovered, I would see if he wanted to join me as well…