Amazon Apocalypse 5: Chapter 1

My uniform was uncomfortably tight. The black and red colors with gold trim showed off the emblem of the Dragon Lodge’s armed forces. Until a few minutes ago, I was unaware they even had armed forces. Thanks to my recent victory in the tournament, I’d skipped about two dozen ranks and found myself not just an officer, but the commander of an entire army.

“Your soldiers are all accounted for. You will have a few weeks for training and preparation before you set out for war. Good luck,” the tournament organizer said, then scurried away before I could ask any more questions.

I had really hoped to avoid this particular responsibility, but it had come up too quickly for me to avoid. I stood just outside the arena, though the stands were closed today. The center of the field was a mustering ground, and I was who they were mustering for.

I heard a commanding woman’s voice shout in a commanding tone. “Attention, from this moment on, you are not students, but soldiers! Prepare to greet your Praefectus!”

There was a weak chorus of differing voices of affirmation, and I immediately had a bad feeling about this.

Just what had I signed up for?

The tournament organizer was already gone. Theoretically, I could slip away right here and now. Maybe ditch Mucaria altogether. Cyra and Myrina held second and third place, so if I disappeared, this task would fall to them, and the Samhain Clan would probably be pretty happy. But what stopped me was the voices I could already hear.

“How long are we supposed to stand at attention here? These boots are killing my feet.”

“Guys, I think my sword is stuck. I can’t draw it off my back.”

“So, are we actually going to have to fight? Like really fight? I can cast healing spells, but I’ve never been in a battle before.”

Young men and women spoke over one another. The forces arrayed for me to lead were no band of veterans. Hell, I would have preferred a group of convicts sentenced to war as punishment over what this was. These were a bunch of kids being thrown to the sharks.

I’d heard stories from a few already. A girl came into Doomblade’s Armory looking for a sword, saying she would fight for the Dragon Lodge to pay off the loans she’d taken to get her education as a wizard.

While I loved Cyra and Myrina very much, I was reluctant to leave these kids under their command. Cyra could lead forces into battle, but she still struggled with logistics, and all her experience was fielding Amazonian warriors, not magic users. As for Myrina, she would certainly lead from the front, but that was the only positive thing I could say about putting her in command.

Truthfully, if these really were raw recruits, I might be more qualified to train them up than anyone. I'd done this very thing several times back in Crownhill, after all. I could stick around long enough to pick out the good officers among the group and get a command structure together. With that, whoever I left the task to when I made my escape would have an easier time of things, be it Cyra, Myrina, or somebody else entirely.

Decision made, I entered the arena and crossed the sands. Already, a few had noticed me and were pointing in my direction. They were standing in a great mob, spread out in small clusters of three and four. It looked like there might have been a brief attempt at neat rows, but whoever tried that had already given up.

As I’d sensed from their voices, those gathered before me were all young and youthful. There were about two thousand of them in all. Most were at early C-Grade, which I knew was when the average student graduated from the Dragon Lodge’s academies. Before this, they would have been junior students, and only the wealthy or extremely talented among them would have continued their education in the Dragon Lodge's more self-directed graduate system.

I was technically one such graduate student, though I hadn’t taken many classes here. I was also at the peak of C-Grade, placing me most of a grade above the army. Truthfully, I should be preparing for my breakthrough to B-Grade instead of distracting myself with this, but I hadn't yet figured out how to wiggle out of my tournament grand prize.

“Attention! Get back in line! Silence for the Praefectus!” a woman shouted a few more times. I eyed her momentarily as I took up a position at the front of the mob. She was a stern-looking woman with silvery-blue hair, a natural tan, and a slim build that filled out her combat robes nicely. Unlike all the others, the uniform she wore looked like it had seen some use, and there were a few medals on her chest.

To me, she looked a bit too feminine to be a career military woman, but I suspected serving as a wizard was considerably more luxurious than other military positions. I nodded in her direction as she looked at me tight-lipped and with frustration on her brow. Clearly, she’d been trying to make my new forces presentable for me and had been failing miserably.

Discipline problems at this early juncture were a poor sign for the future. The first order of business would be getting this crew in order.

While military leadership had never been a skill I thought I’d learn, organizing militia bands to defeat monsters had given me a lot of practice. And I’d gotten more practice recently when the System sent me off on a quest to slay a demon lord. Between the two, I had a decent amount of field experience doing this sort of thing, particularly when it came to undisciplined, untrained troops with poor morale.

First, I’d need to impress them to prove why I was their boss. I had a few stars on my uniform, and they knew I was in charge of them, but few seemed to even know what that meant. I would have to manage something akin to what I'd pulled off on Eowyn's world when I turned a band of broken knights into an army that could defeat a Demon King.

I wasn’t about to shout feebly in the air and be ignored as the silver-haired woman had, so instead I rummaged around in my pockets and found one of Reluna’s shield talismans. It was weak, but I didn’t need the magical barrier to defend myself. I just wanted a show.

I activated the talisman and threw it in the air. Then I activated the Void Cannon and blasted the shield generated by the talisman. The eardrum-popping cavitations from the explosion were loud enough to hear halfway across the city. The bright flash of light from Lightsculptor’s Brush made the combination of tricks seem like one awe-inspiring spell.

“Attention one and all! If you watched the tournament, you’ll know I was the winner. I’m Carter Smith, and until somebody higher ranked than me says otherwise, I’m in charge of you lot. Look to your left and to your right. These are your brothers and sisters in arms. Soon they'll hold your life in their hands, just as you hold theirs. Right now, you're an unruly mob. By the time we go into battle, I expect you all to be organized, disciplined, and efficient. Anyone who can't be all these things might as well leave now.”

I eyed all two thousand wizards, who gazed back at me with various degrees of seriousness. Some I’d won over already. Others would need some convincing. I caught the eyes of one who looked particularly rebellious and kept staring at him until he spoke up.

“Relax, buddy. Just because you won a tournament and somebody threw a uniform on us all doesn’t mean we have to play soldier.” He snorted, elbowing a few of his fellows as he gathered support. A few chuckled alongside him.

“Oh? And how would you suggest I lead?” I asked, taking a dangerous step forward.

He rolled his eyes. “All the marching, shouting, and saluting is for parades and people who don’t know what’s what. A wizard who knows the job and how to get it done doesn’t need orders. Or a commanding officer. The army already has a general, we should just stick the army's rear and help out if we can.”

I suppressed a grin. “It sounds to me like you’re saying you want my job? Everyone, clear the path! I have a challenger.”

“W-wait...” he grimaced as he tried to excuse himself, but I didn’t give him the chance.

The two of us squared up, and I proceeded to humiliate him. His spells slid harmlessly off me. I walked right up to him, swiped the wand from his hand, and then slapped him across the face until his cheeks bled.

“Mercy...” he said, sinking to his knees with his hands up.

“One dealt with. Who’s next?” I turned to the rest of the gathered group, daring them to challenge me. A few even took me up on the offer.

Naturally, I won every match with little effort. That shouldn’t have surprised anyone since I was a tournament champion. If they could beat me, they’d have been standing in my place.

This was a crude way to assert my control over the mob of people they’d handed me and called an army, but it was all I had at the moment. By the time I was finished beating the last of my challengers black and blue, the rows and columns were much straighter and the chattering had finally stopped.

Unfortunately, much of the previous interest in me had been replaced by fear. Hopefully, I could eventually turn that into respect later.

It is safer to be feared than loved because love is preserved by obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for advantage. But fear preserves by dread of punishment, which never fails. Or so says Machiavelli. I was still working on my philosophy on the subject. At the very least, when I did find someone to foist this duty off on, a disciplined unit would survive a lot longer in a war zone.

“Anyone else think they could have beaten me in the tournament and claimed this grand prize themselves?” I glanced around, searching for more examples to make. Everyone remaining stared straight ahead, eyes not budging from the horizon.

After a few moments of silence, I dusted my hands off and started issuing orders.

“Good. Now that we’ve established I’m in command, I want everyone with prior military experience to come forward.” I waved people forward and conferred with those who presented themselves. For most of them, their prior experience consisted of having a parent who served, or doing a quest as an adventurer that involved a military unit working with them.

Only one person in the crowd was someone who I considered had real experience. The silver-haired woman threw me a salute I didn’t recognize.

“I’m Decanus Asimi, a junior mercenary from a band on Glacia. I was told the Dragon Lodge had a job and was looking for officers and they hired my band to help train and lead their inexperienced forces. I should have been one of a dozen officers, but there were some last-minute budget cuts, and only I was hired over from my mercenary party.”

I returned her salute and nodded along with what she said. “I’m not too familiar with Glacian military ranks. I take it Decanus is just beneath a Centurion?”

“Yes, Praefectus!”

Glacia seemed surprisingly Roman-esque, or at least had similar names and titles. I blamed the System’s influence on Earth, even in those early days. I suspected the budget cuts that led to Asimi's mercenary band being cut down to just her had something to do with the Samhain Clan's political rivals, but that would be a matter easy enough to rectify with a little spare cash. But right now I needed a second in command, and Asimi was all I was working with.

“Then as of this moment, you’ve been promoted to Centurion. I will need your help drilling this group of raw recruits into a fighting force. I will bring trainers to assist, but you’re unfortunately going to have to keep them on task while I’m gone.”

“Gone, sir?” Asimi looked worried, like she’d somehow sensed my plan to ditch this responsibility.

“I’m sure you’re a fine young officer, but you can’t help me lead two thousand wizards. I will call on some connections and see if I can’t recruit a few more officers to fill out the ranks and figure out what happened to the funds meant for the rest of your mercenary band. In the meantime, I’ll send a party of adventurers to help teach basic urban and wilderness survival skills to our people. You can drill them in military protocol.”

Asimi brightened and looked considerably relieved. She probably hadn’t expected her new commander to have any sort of plan, considering the position had been given away to a tournament winner. No doubt she was used to incompetent leaders if this was how Mucaria picked its generals. Given who I'd be fighting for, I suspected Glacia picked its leaders by political appointment, which was hardly any better than my circumstance.

“Consider it done!” she saluted me again, this time with a face full of hope. I prayed it would last after I handed this job off to somebody else.

From there, I told everyone we’d meet in the same location the next day, and that they should take their upcoming training seriously. They would have to take this training seriously, because their lives would soon depend on it.

After that, I returned to Doomblade’s Armory and informed Team Seraphim of a new work opportunity for them. The adventurers were still working the modeling gig I’d given them to show off our fancy gear, but by now, they’d recovered enough from their ordeal with Healer Tharandul. They were ready for more demanding jobs, and teaching survival skills to a bunch of bookish wizards was something right up their alley.

I wasn’t sure where we were going yet, but Team Seraphim had experience fighting through urban and rural environments, so I wanted my people trained for both. Hiring additional trainers with military experience to help Asimi wouldn’t be too expensive, and if I was lucky, a few of them would sign up to be officers for the full campaign. Or I could get Reluna to contact some of those people who’d fought with me against Dramonar. Some of them had seemed pretty competent.

I figured I could set aside some hundred thousand contribution points to get these people trained. More if I got another Mark One power armor shipment to sell at Doomblade’s Armory. I’d need to clear such a sum with Sakura first, but she’d let me spend nearly that much on weapons for the tournament.

Hunting down where my mercenary officers went was harder. Apparently the Phantomfist family had offered them a better paying job off-world just before they signed a contract with the Dragon Lodge. In short, I'd need to hire my officers elsewhere. Luckily, that was a problem that could be solved with money.

That was when I abruptly realized that I was spending a fortune training these troops all on behalf of the Samhain Clan. They were a martial clan and surely had plenty of warriors in their ranks, and while they might be fighters, the branch here on Glacia had close ties with a number of smaller wizard families. They really ought to contribute to this project too, given how important it was to them.

The mark on my shoulder and the woman I’d woken up with that morning both marked me as a member of the Samhain Clan by marriage, and I’d been stocking up on favors from them for a while. It was pastime I cashed some in.

<Note>
Back to Amazon Apocalypse! Hard to believe it's been two weeks since the last truly new post (one week of rewrites and one week of outlining for me.)

I vaguely remember promising to start this book before the holidays. I'm still pretty busy getting the last book ready to publish, so I don't have a schedule in mind yet.

I'm also still finishing up my outline, so this could change if I think of another intro chapter that is a better fit. But I really wanted to get this chapter out there to break the ice on starting the new book. I'm not 100% settled on starting here, but I've been writing bits and pieces and this is the best place to start that's actually finished.