As it turned out, it was much harder to garrison a town than it was to garrison a castle. Between the worse defences and larger area to cover the garrison for Mapjess would be at least triple the size of the garrison of Cliforge. And with it went Braydon’s hopes of a large army. Just under ⅓ of all of his new ‘recruits’ would be needed to man the garrison of Mapjess, if he wanted to fully man the garrison that is. Baron Monrow had not filled the garrison to give his army more men for the fights with the other two barons. His superior defences had meant that he would not be attacked as often anyway.

“Including the 70 men already in our service, not currently in a garrison, we have gained 550 new recruits. I would suggest putting about 175 of them into the garrison of Mapjess, for a full defence. Being part of the King’s faction, we are more likely to see skirmishes from the other faction’s proxy barons than the three barons were. We are simply a much bigger threat to the factional interests in the east. It is best to be cautious.” Rhydian laid out the situation they were in. While it would be ultimately up to Braydon as to what happened, it was unlikely that he would go totally against Rhydian’s advice. The man knew his way around a battlefield and had already gone over this with Corban when dealing with the garrison of Cliforge. Both men preferred to play things safe, usually contrasting with the brash Braydon and Gerald.

“That would leave us with just under 450 men to make up my actual army. Most of which will need to be in Cliforge proper to deal with the situation there. For now it will be stable on this side of the Brimstones, but we cannot guarantee it on that side.” Braydon mentioned another one of his headaches, dealing with the collateral damage from Shuluk’s raging civil war. ‘Though at this point, Shuluk is just Fiveria with more bloodshed.’

“If I may, Sire?” The butler asked.

“Of course, though first it might do me well to know your name.” Braydon noticed that he still did not know his new subordinate’s name. Something that would be changed immediately, it was far too inconvenient to just refer to him as ‘the butler’.

“I am Karim Ayers, my liege. It strikes me that you might not have noticed a use of a standing army when there is no combat. They are incredibly useful as a source of manual labour, of course they are more expensive than labourers but you are already paying them.” Karim’s idea had truly gone unnoticed by Braydon. He had not had a standing army until this point, it was natural that he did not think of all of the ways that one could be used.

“Indeed, I had not thought of this. I am sure that Colin would be overjoyed if he heard this.” Braydon thought of his chamberlain, the man appeared perfectly normal until you noticed that he seemed to take great pleasure in balanced books. More than just a man trying to do his job.

“Sire, who should lead your new forces? It is not practical to leave them leaderless now that they have grown to such a size.” Gerald asked, obviously hoping to be the head of an army over being his bodyguard. It would be a much more glorious and exciting task, and that was all the motivation that Gerald needed to want the position.

“Well, first, I want Corban to be the head of the garrison in Mapjess. We need someone who I trust and knows what he is doing to fill that role. You may choose your own deputy from amongst the garrison.” Braydon decided to deal with the garrison, a fairly standardised unit before dealing with setting up a whole new army.

“It would be my honour, Sire.” Corban took up the position with relief. Going from the garrison leader of a castle to a town, while not a promotion, was an increase in responsibility. Braydon was definitely showing his trust.

“Now as for the army, I want it to be led by Rhydian. He is one of the most experienced here and a very good drill master. It is a new force, but that does not mean it can be a weak force. It will need training with all the seriousness of an army, more so than what training a garrison gets.” Braydon’s appointment did not really surprise anyone, even Gerald. Though that did not mean that Gerald was not disappointed that he did not get the role, he would just not contest it.

“Definitely, Sire. Though I do have one suggestion about the army that would need your approval.” Rhydian’s suggestions usually were in reference to training, so Braydon was unsure what he wanted. Especially to warrant requesting it over just doing it and reporting after.

“The barons might not have been able to afford it but we should be able to. None of the men are archers, for an army of this size to not include archers is unheard of. We would need to equip a group of men to be archers, rather than infantry.” Rhydian’s request was technically to do with training, so Braydon was not surprised.

Braydon also saw that this was a big problem, he had fought with his father’s armies before, they had always included a not insignificant number of archers. They were almost essential on the field, they did not cost as much as cavalry, so were more ubiquitous but their price tag was still slightly higher than regular infantry. Equipping a unit of archers was not something a regular baron could afford. But he was no baron, with a land his size, just the taxes alone would be enough to sustain it, not to mention his iron mine.

“How many men are you thinking? And, Whilst we are at it, how many men should be in a squad, unit, etc? We need to have some kind of standardised way of dealing with it. It is useless having well trained troops if they are not coordinated.” Before they could even begin to think of the troop composition, the army had to be ordered into some form of structure. Only then would it change from a large mob to an army.

“For now, it would not be practical to have groups that are too small, the men will not be organised enough nor will there really be enough of a reason to justify it. It would ideally be about 100 men in a unit. As for the composition, I thought that a 4:1 ratio of infantry to archers would be the best way of splitting it. That way we could use our current men to have 4 units of infantry and 1 unit of archers, though one of the units would only have half numbers.” Rhydian’s thinking was somewhat logical. Braydon did not understand what would make a good composition between infantry and archers beyond that there should not really be more archers than infantry. So he decided to trust Rhydian on that, though the partially filled unit gave him an idea.

“We could use that partially filled unit for patrols. They are fewer in number so it would be harder to fit them in with full training, and 100 men as patrols would be a bit much on the long run.” Corban suggested, he had been under Rhydian for long enough to understand how his training worked, and had been in Cliforge long enough to know his way around patrols.

“It is sorted, then. And last but not least is you. You were a knight under Abel, but what are your thoughts on joining me?” Braydon turned to the last person in the room, and the only one other than Steven who had not spoken the whole time.