Wake of the Ravager

“Alright, time to meet my new command,” Calvin said, straightening his jacket before heading out to take a look at the unit that had been assigned to him.

“Look, Calvin, you’re what, fourteen?” Grant asked.

“Sixteen.” Calvin said, scowling. “Damn near seventeen.”

“Age is going to be the biggest defining factor of your career. You are, way, way too young to be a captain. You’re going to get zero respect, and that’s a fact. How you handle that is going to determine whether or not you’re cut out for this.”

Calvin stopped and faced the black-haired general.

“Explain.”

“If you get mad at someone for slacking, you’re throwing a tantrum.” He said, poking Calvin’s chest. “If I get mad at someone for slacking, I’m enforcing discipline. Because I’m a grizzled veteran, and you’re a teen.”

“That…sucks,” Calvin said, seeing where he was coming from. Calvin’s voice did get a little shrill when he screamed. Hopefully that would work itself out as he aged.

“Until you’ve got respect, don’t show a glimmer of anger. The best thing you can do for yourself is be all business, all the time. Any childishness you display will be an excuse to say ‘I knew he was just a brat’.”

“Right. Any other tips?”

“As the commanding officer, You’re the example that all your soldiers will be unconsciously held to. Work harder, they’ll work harder, bathe, and they’ll bathe.”

“Bathe?”

“God help you if you don’t.” Grant said.

“Okay, don’t act like a kid, don’t get angry, and don’t drop the soap.” Calvin said, heading toward the door to the courtyard.

Grant caught his shoulder again.

“And for Vashiels sake, don’t let anyone see you cry. That happens, you’re fucking done.”

“I imagine the only time I’m allowed to cry is a single regulation sized tear of pride as I overlook a beautiful sunrise vista of my troops overrunning the enemy position?”

“Now you’re getting it,” Grant said, clapping him on the shoulder.

Calvin shook his head as he entered the courtyard, seeing his company in formation, all two hundred of them, standing at attention in the afternoon sun. As he walked along the side, he saw them sneaking glances at him from the corner of their eye.

Calvin skipped the wooden staircase and jumped straight onto the platform overlooking them.

Calvin turned and gasped.

“It’s perfect,” he whispered, his eyes stinging.

Two hundred extremely young recruits were interspersed with about a dozen grim-faced veterans to keep them in line. Their uniforms were messy, some of them hadn’t combed their hair, or buttoned their vests up. A few were missing weapons, while one idiot was wearing his helmet in formation.

Calvin was pretty sure one of them was naked.

Salty tears began rolling down Calvin’s cheeks as a cackle built in his chest.

“Hah. Ha. Ha. Hahahahahahahaha! Glorious!” Calvin bellowed with laughter, his eyes clouded by tears. So many lives at my beck and call.

Whispers began circulating through the company, and Calvin made a couple of them out, even through his own manic laughter.

“..that the Wasp?”

“Motherfucker’s crazy.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Calvin spotted Grant slap his hand over his face.

Calvin’s mad chuckles slowly came to a stop, and he wiped tears out of his eyes just as the skinny lieutenant approached. What was his name again? lieutenant Vukya, that’s right.

“Captain, this is the newly formed 1st Mujenan Volunteers.” Vukya said, motioning to them with a wince.

As volunteers, they weren’t affiliated with any nobles, instead the crown had provided them with the minimal training and equipment in their haste to rebuild the ranks after the devastating attack that tore through the city walls.

Nominally, their loyalty was to the crown, but Calvin was their commander, and with enough time, he could make them his own.

Newly formed is right, but if Grant is to be believed, having them closer to my age should make it a little easier to get respect.

A little.

“Good afternoon!” Calvin said, scanning the crowd. He spotted Baroke poking out, standing head and shoulders taller than the other archers. Ella was standing among the heavies, shoulder-to-shoulder with the most brutish young men Mujenan could put forward.

Kala was up on top of the wall overlooking the formation, Calvin caught her wave.

A half dozen silly proclamations ran through Calvin’s mind and were dismissed in a fraction of a second, and he began chanting Grant’s advice to keep himself focused.

Business, business, business…

“My name is Calvin Gadsint, I will be your commanding officer for the foreseeable future. You all volunteered because you felt the need to do something for your city and your country. I’m sure most of you spent your first Break on Baking, or Cobbling, or Smithing, planning a long and boring career, making enough to get by, marrying that pudgy girl with the wide hips next door. You know the one. All the while never expecting the war to break into your life and take from you. But it did.”

“There isn’t a person here who hasn’t lost something to these limp-wristed Ilethans,” Calvin said, scanning the faces. The emotions he was receiving from the assembly were changing from confusion and ridicule to sullen anger.

“I imagine a few of you are interested in waging some kind of personal vendetta.” Calvin said, scanning the crowd and picking out the gazes most filled with anger.

“But let me tell you now that we’ve got no room for that shit. You are each now a cog in the machine that will crush Iletha flat like some kind of… Iletha flattening machine.”

Smooth.

“You do your part, Ilethans die. Every brick you lay, every uniform you patch, every pound of wheat you haul down the road, That’s an arrow in the eye of one of those blue-eyed cunts, a knife in their spleen. Everyone’s got a job, and everyone’s gotta do it. An army ain’t gonna eat hopes and dreams, it ain’t gonna sleep out in a jungle filled with mosquitos and Widowmakers.”

“This isn’t going to be a Sunday picnic, either. We’re going out there to establish a foothold. We’re the foot steady on the ground, so the other foot can kick those pasty rags right in their ball-less crotches.”

The young men burst into chuckles, and Calvin waited for it to slow.

“Do your job, stay alert, and we’ll be responsible for so much pain and misery in those duplicitous belles that they’ll be pissing their pants at the mention of our coming.”

Calvin turned to Vukya and lowered his voice. “You got the destination?”

The lieutenant nodded, a tiny length of curly hair bobbing on his forehead.

“I could stand here all day, but time’s valuable, and I’m sure you’re all anxious to make shit happen. Lieutenant Vukya, take them out.”

Vukya began barking orders rapid fire, as sergeants split men off into groups, getting wagons ready to go while others began loading their gear into them.

“Kinda brief,” Grant said, scratching his chin as he approached, “But not bad.”

“Thanks,” Calvin said, rubbing his hands together as he watched his minions prepare to depart. “It doesn’t come naturally.”

“You better make them think it does,” Grant said. “Like it or not, every commander of men develops a mythos. They become larger than life. That can work for you or against you.”

“That sounds exhausting.” Calvin said as he watched the young men within a year of his own age scrambling to obey the commands of their Sergeants.

“You get used to it. Now, while they’re busy, let me give you the run down on what actually wins wars.”

****

Food and Hygiene. If you think it’s easy to feed a hundred men, think again. If you make men march in wet shoes for two weeks, and get surprised that their feet are rotting off, you deserve to lose. Moving food, calculating rations, clean clothes, clean bodies, good medicine. All of this is what wins a war.

Calvin tapped his pen against the corner of the paper, making an ink splotch.

So, by forfeiting any kind of salary, I was able to bribe eight whores, with Perthea’s help. They joined the camp followers, ostensibly as seamstresses and cooks.

The whores have an average of…

14 Will. That means two castings of Calvinian summoning per woman, per day. The summon lasts two hours, the Knick knack weighs thirty-five pounds, meaning thirty-eight summons per cast. So all told that’s…

two times eight times two times thirty-eight. My investment in those women bought me…

Calvin scratched out some multiplication.

1216 Knick-Knack hours per day, plus the chores done by the women themselves. With that we can aim for a fort approximately…

Calvin blinked and set down his pen when he realized he was missing some numbers. Namely the conversion rate between man-hours and Knick-Knack hours, and the total amount of man-hours it took to build a fortress big enough to host an army of ten thousand.

Lot more math than I thought, going in.

That’s life for you.

Calvin took his notebook and stepped out of his tent, in search of numbers. They had just arrived at the chokepoint after three boring days of travel, and calvin’s tent was the first one down. The rest of the company was busily getting themselves set up.

“Sir?” Lieutenant Vukya said, hopping up from polishing one of Calvin’s shoes.

Calvin stood on his tiptoes to look at the distant mountain, then back to the

“We have engineers, right?”

“Yes sir.”

“Trained ones, literate ones?”

“Yes sir.”

“Bring them to me, I need to start planning the fort. Then I want you to stop the men who are setting up. Break them up into teams of five for latrine digging, logging, and setting up camp, but don’t let them start yet. Tell me when they’re assembled and ready to start.

“But they’re already started, why do we need to…” He trailed off as Calvin looked at him.

“I need numbers.”

“but if we don’t get tents up in time…”

“Assure them the camp will be ready before nightfall. I know what I’m doing.”

“Yes sir,” Vukya said, the slender officer saluted before hustling off.

Calvin walked through the camp, painfully aware of how little he knew about the common footsoldier’s troubles.

He got outside the bustle of two hundred men and forty women, and glanced around. He saw where the mountain naturally sloped close to the road, maybe an eighth of a mile into the jungle. Off to the side was a sheer cliff that led out to the ocean.

Can’t have ten thousand men shitting in holes, Calvin thought as he eyed the cliff. Wouldn’t be too hard to dig a shaft that sends sewage into the ocean. He glanced up at the snow-capped mountain, miles distant.

Need water, too, and a lot of meat. I wonder if I’ll have enough spare Knick-Knacks to build an aqueduct. Gotta make sure it’s protected, though. Can’t have people shitting in it and poisoning everyone.

“Wasp, sir!” a young man about two years older than Calvin said, dragging him out of his thoughts about poop.

“What did you call me?”

The man flinched. “That’s what they call you in Mujenan. The Wasp that saved the city?” He had a snarl of teeth, and stains on his uniform from messy eating. Slender though.

“Huh,” Calvin glanced down at the man’s uniform. Green sash. Green sash means engineer, Calvin thought, having been given a handy guide by Andra. He needed to study it more.

“Whats your name?”

“Gulad, sir,” Gulad held out a hand, and Calvin shook it, not really sure what was happening as the man began to spill his guts.

“The story about how you singlehandedly defeated the Ilethan royals, their troops, and hundreds of those metal monsters, all while guiding the citizens to safety with your wasps, Well, I couldn’t not join up. I had a Break that night and knew it was my chance, so I volunteered immediately. Most of the rest of us are the same.”

Calvin blinked. The truth had been stretched nearly to the breaking point. While he did some of those things, he certainly didn’t do them singlehandedly, and not at the same time. Is this what Grant was talking about with a mythos?

“I was originally a mason, had the Carpentry and Bricklaying Skills, so they trained me in Engineering. Now I’ve got Logistics, Architecture, and Squad Leadership. I’m gonna be the best damn engineer they’ve ever seen.”

“Good because I need a castle.” Calvin said.

“What?” Now it was Gulad’s turn to blink.

“Give me the estimate of how many man-hours it would take to build a thirty foot tall, five foot wide wall, from the cliff to the mountain, along with a castle and barracks that could comfortably house fifteen thousand soldiers.”

Calvin glanced off to the cliff.

“And we’re gonna need shit-pipes.”

“Umm, sir, that’s…We don’t have enough men to do something like that, not even close. It takes thousands of people years to build something like that. We’ve got two hundred.”

“And even less time to do it in,” Calvin said, eying him. “I’ve got a plan, but I need to know exactly what the required amount of work is. Can you get that for me?”

“Sir!” Gulad saluted and ran off to get Calvin his numbers.

A moment later Vukya arrived, motioning to the camp, where forty squads of five men were assembled, waiting for instruction.

“They’re ready to go,” Vukya said.

“Excellent.” Calvin walked up to the camp and mounted a Guar so that everyone could see him.

“We’re going to have a little race. Can you get camp set up faster than my Knick-Knacks?”

Calvinian summoning…

7/12 Bent Remaining.

Calvin summoned five groups of Knick-Knacks, coming just shy of the original two hundred recruits.

“Each team will be competing against a similar number of my summons, doing as much work as you can over the next two hours. The three teams that gets their jobs done fastest get tomorrow off!”

Calvin mentally instructed the Knick-Knacks as the soldiers cheered, and the metal creatures broke off into units of five, matching themselves up with the human soldiers.

Calvin leaned down to Vukya and spoke quietly, “Have the sergeants record the time difference between their recruits and the summons.”

“Yessir.”

“Let’s get this camp set up!” Calvin shouted.

***

It went about how Calvin thought it would. The Knick-Knacks stomped the soldiers after a couple minutes to learn what their task entailed.

Once the two hours was over, Calvin had over thirty sets of numbers from the sergeants, and he sat down to do the math.

Calvin averaged the time for every human crew, then averaged the time for every Knick-Knack crew.

Once he had the average, he compared the two.

Knick-knack hours were worth one point four man hours.

Double that. make it an even three times.

Why?

Your soldier were racing. They were working as fast as they could, especially toward the end there, they skipped steps and cut corners to win. Take a quick look outside, and you’ll see the tents put up by humans have rips and sagging parts. The latrine’s sides aren’t even.

Everything the Knick-Knacks did is immaculate.

Moreover, since your men were racing for that prize, the only speed they can go from this point is slower. Your summons don’t get tired, they don’t get sick, or bored, or hungry, they don’t need to shit, but people do.

The knick-knacks weren’t racing, were they?

No, they were not.

Calvin bumped his estimate of Knick-knack hours conversion to an even three times human speed.

So those eight whores represent…

Calvin did a little multiplication, his pen scratching against the paper in the light of the lamp.

3648 man hours per day, or the work equivalent of…

Elliot beat some kind of drum.

Three hundred and four men working twelve hour shifts.

….shit.

Even with the two hundred men he had, that was still low.

I need more women.

Gotta be careful with those whores, man. There was a captain a long time ago whose name literally came to mean whores, because he had so many. Hate to see that happen to you.

“Captain,” Gulad said, barging in on Calvin’s thoughts.

“I’ve got a man-hour estimate. We can make the housing out of wood, that’ll make things go faster, and we’ve got all the ingredients we need for the wall, between the mountain, forest, cliff, and the ocean.”

“Hit me,” calvin said, spinning the pen on his finger.

“So a conservative estimate is twenty two million, three hundred and twenty-six thousand and eighty. Man-hours. Sir.”

Calvin’s pen fell out of his hand.

“Thank you, Gulad, that’s exactly what I needed,” Calvin said, screaming on the inside.

Calvin didn’t have to write anything down to tell he was going to be here for years.

Does Andra see me as a cheap source of labor?

In the end, Calvin shrugged it off. It was what he would do to himself, were he in charge.

Well, time to do the math…

Oh, would you look at that, just shy of ten years. Plenty of time for us to get to know each other. Calvin tapped his pen on the paper.

Obviously something needed to change. Even if he press-ganged the remaining thirty-two women into providing Bent, he’d still be here two years.

No, what about raising the Skill?

The effect of Calvinian Summoning increased at a staggering rate. One more level would add… another eleven Knick-Knacks, with twenty-three extra minutes for all of them. A huge boost in speed.

Calvin bent low over the paper, crunching numbers and shutting out distractions as a manic grin started to slowly take over his expression.

Gulad backed out of the tent slowly, leaving the captain to his piece of paper.

“I’ve got it!” Calvin said, underlining the last set of numbers twice.

“All I have to do is get Calvinian Summoning up to level twenty and convince all the camp followers to give me their Bent and we’ll be out of here in a little over a month.”

All you have to do, huh?

“It’s either that or going on raids to get female POWs.” Calvin said, crossing his arms as he looked at the hard numbers.

I fail to see how THAT could go poorly. Sarcasm rolled off of Elliot’s words.

No shit, so I’ve taken the morally and politically more viable option of simply asking for assistance from the female workforce.

That’s gonna be a problem too, Calvin. Word’s gonna spread, and they’ve got husbands, lovers, etc. People will start gunning for you if you get a reputation.

“They’re the most cost effective solution, damnit!” Calvin said, throwing up his hands in frustration. “Why do I have to worry about the damn politics of it!?”

Because, like Grant said, you’ll develop a mythos. And at the rate you’re going it’s going to seem like you like women a bit more than you should. People are gonna second guess what you’re doing with them, no matter how you try to spin it. especially since you gotta do it personally.

Wait a minute,

“Wait a minute,” Calvin and Elliot said at the same time.

“Bring up the list of Chained spi-“

Already on it.

Continuity: The Chained spirit remembers time spent during each summon, is aware of what the user is aware of while it was unsummoned, and can learn or improve System and non-System Skills to the limit of Chained Spirit.

Bent: The Chained Spirit gains a limited pool to draw from to fuel Abilities. The effects of the abilities are extentions of Chained Spirit and not actual Bent. Pool is 1/5th the level of Chained Spirit.

Chained Minds: All active Chained Spirits and the user share senses and can communicate telepathically.

Mutations:

Siphon: Chained Spirit gains the Lady Killer mutation, any Bent drained is sent to the User.

Voodoo U: Damage taken by caster is absorbed by Chained spirit instead.

Consume: 1 Bent to consume a corpse on touch. Size limit mirrors Chained Spirit’s.

No more pesky things going moldy in the fridge while you’re working through the leftovers.

“There! Siphon!” Calvin said, jumping out of his chair. If he could send Nadia to gather Bent, he could distance himself from the scheme. There was also the option of using One of the Guys to disguise himself, but if he got caught it would be even worse than doing it above the table.

A buffer between you and the inevitable rumors of impropriety.

“Indeed, but…” Calvin scowled. He couldn’t get the ability until level fifteen, after Continuity, and he still had to break Nadia’s will.

That was a long way off.

“Ah what the hell, I’m gonna be here for a while. Plenty of time to raise my Skills.”

Calvin needed to raise Fishing and Bali Ma as well, to see if they had any Abilities that could help him.

Fishing was damn close to leveling.

What about Your Princess is in Another Castle? Elliot pointed out.

“It feels weird practicing kidnapping princesses in Shadowboxing. Like, really weird.”

Suck it up.

“Fine,” Calvin said with a scowl, flipping his number-filled sheet of paper over and beginning a bullet-pointed list of his goals.

“I’m starting to accept we’re going to be here a while,” Calvin said aloud as more and more tasks began to bubble up. He was way behind on his development.

“Good,” Grant said, barging into Calvin’s tent. “Because before we can even start your fortress, we’ve got to set up basic security.”

“Can anyone just come and go at any time?” Calvin demanded.

“You didn’t assign guards.” Grant thumbed over his shoulder. “another thing that needs to be addressed. You’re holed up in your tent, so the men think it’s time to relax. You need to make a show of working hard if you want them to do the same.”

“When am I supposed to meditate?” Calvin wondered aloud.

“When you’re dead, let’s go.”

Macronomicon

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