The arrow slipped past Lucius. He saw the attack, the betrayal, from the corner of his eye. He pulled his head back, felt the brush of feathers against his nose, and turned on the archer. The prisoner swore, scrambling to knock a second arrow. Lucius’ only hesitation was from mere surprise. The would-be assassin was a fair distance from him, and Lucius had to charge the man.

The other prisoners-turned-soldier dove out of his way rather than take a side, most realized that their fate would be acceptable in an escape but the likelihood was nil. He didn’t want their help regardless, drawing his sword without even a shout.

The assassin cursed, tossing the bow aside and grabbing a wood ax. He wrapped his calloused hands around the haft, squeezing it like the neck of a goose he meant to eat. That man bellowed. He puffed out his chest like frightened prey and screamed. The clash between them took the form of huge swings. They threw their bodies in and out, light on their feet, baiting one another’s attacks. They each stuck their faces forward, baring teeth, and pulled back at the swipe of steel.

Of course, in such a match up, the one with the sword had the advantage. Eventually, the heavy head got away from the man. The steel edge bit into the loam. A mere instant of resistance and he didn’t pull back in time. Lucius was upon him. First a boot to the stomach, finding it hard and lacking in fat. His hack aimed not at the chest but ripped a red line across the assassin’s arms. Blood rained between them, squirting into the man’s grip. He tried to pull the haft of the ax between them, taking it in both hands–one at the base and one at the head.

For a moment, Lucius was kept at bay, unable to hit anything but wood as the man retreated. Then he had a proper measure of the man’s strength. There was steel in the assassin’s bones, certainly. Living in a mine would allow nothing less. But there wasn’t enough.

With a snarl, Lucius stopped the graceful feints and flourishes. He had already demonstrated his technical prowess and it wasn’t needed. He hammered his blade down, letting the steel slam into the ax haft. Then he did it again, and again. He pummeled the assassin’s grip and forced it down, chipping bits from the handle with every strike until he cut through it. His sword parted the assassin’s rags and then he stabbed it through the stunned man.

He gave a jerk, a twist. The feeling was familiar to him, the sawing through flesh and organ as he cut intestines to sausage and killed the man. To the assassin’s credit, he didn’t collapse on the spot, but all he could do was grunt and grab hold of Lucius by the shoulders. He strained, face turning red and veins bulging as he tried to push himself forward. He managed one step, and the next brought him to his knees.

Lucius let him fall and stepped back, blood marring his breastplate. With a flick, he cast the mess from his sword and turned to the crowd. “Squad leaders! Assemble your men.”

All knew that punishment would be forthcoming, and his silence on the matter only made them more nervous. Group by group, the volunteer soldiers formed into ranks up and down the camp. They stood near their collective tents and waited for his pronouncement. At no point did Lucius call for guards, for support, for the sailors to protect him. He never even flinched in fear. Before whispers could grow into spurred revolt, he spoke. “There’s an old tradition in Vassish military forces. It goes back hundreds of years. Some say even before the calendar. It’s born from the brotherhood of arms. You see, an army is a collective. You are all organs in one being. So when one of you rebels, all are at fault. Do you understand?”

The men did not like where he was going with that, but the undeniable fact was that they could have stopped such a conspiracy. They knew it. He knew it.

“Look around you. Yesterday, I formed you into groups of five. That means your squad and the squad across from you make ten. Each of you, pick one from among you for decimation,” he ordered. With a cocky grin, he added, “If you’d like, the ten of you can try your hand at killing me, but there won’t be any survivors if you do that.” Then he marched to the end of the camp and sat upon a stump.

Soon enough, ten of the men did try their hand at killing him. If twenty had gone at once, he might have been in trouble. If they had been truly trained, they might have pinned him down and bested him. They were neither however. Without spears to hide behind, they regressed to the crude manner of brawling that men the world over know instinctively. They surrounded him and one by one jumped in to wail at him. Of course, they always opened by taking a swing at his back, when they thought he wasn’t paying attention, but it didn’t work. The boy was used to such fights. He had a way of making it seem like they were the ones at a disadvantage–by striking at the weakest and most scared. He disengaged from his aggressor to lunge and cut apart the craven.

It didn’t take him very long to kill all ten, and he didn’t feel bad about it either. They would have been saboteurs of a sort if left within the army, and it was good sparring practice. No one else tried to kill him that day, and he washed himself in peace. They had scored a few cuts on him, but they were shallow.(1) The bleeding had stopped by the time the victims had been identified for decimation.

Lucius walked back through the camp, looking at the men thrust to the front. They were broken souls, shaking and terrified more of the nine men behind them than of Lucius. Mostly, the elderly men had been volunteered. Some had protected their old men and selected otherwise. He could only hope the men had identified the traitorous culprits.

He did not distribute clubs to the army. He did not order the murder of the one out of ten.

“Bind their hands and put them on the ship. Take them back to the mine,” he ordered, his words soft, businesslike. He didn’t condemn anyone or question their choices. He barely remembered to add, “And bury the killers.”

He then had the bravery to spend the night with them. With a tent for himself, he slept without guard. He couldn’t have been safer. Every man who might have wanted to kill him was burdened in his own mind with the realization that he had singled someone out for death to protect himself.

He rose to the croak of pew frogs and donned his armor once more. Emerging from his tent, he spied one of the squad leaders crouching beside a morning cook fire. The man had done nothing more than heat his morning gruel, but Lucius singled him out regardless. “You, you’ll be my camp steward from now on. How loud is your voice?”

The new steward was of middling age, almost old enough to be Lucius’ father, but stood half a head shorter than him. “Loud enough, m’lord Solhart.”

“Assemble the men for archery testing,” he ordered.

The man nodded and turned his back to him. “Get up you louts! We’re finishing the archery thing,” he screamed, and planted his hands on his hips.

“You’re not a very educated man, are you?”

“Can’t say that I am. I was a shepherd, m’lord. Before the war.”

“Which war?”

“I don’t know, it was in the north.”

“A long way from here.”

“At least the weather is better here. Better mist than ice, I say,” the steward said, and finished warming his breakfast.

Eventually, the men were lined up at the improvised archery range and each given a turn to demonstrate their marksmanship. If they could hit the target they were given passing marks and exempted from frontline duties. If they couldn’t, they were given clubs and axes.

In the end, it wasn’t much of an army. It was a rabble. But history has long made fools of men who made light of rabbles. What they lacked in discipline could be made up for in tenacity, given the right motivation.

After a few more hours, wherein they worked to complete the camp palisade, Lucius assembled them at the shore. The barge had returned, enough to transport them into the archipelago. He stood between them and the vessel and said, “Right then, tonight will be a raid. They should be taking a nap right about now, and we’re going to give them a rude awakening. If they surrender, take them prisoner. The mine needs the workers now that you’re gone. We’re after a poisonous plant called the kuku plant. If you can’t identify what the plant they’re growing is, get me.”

And with that, the squadrons of men were loaded onto the barge, armed as they were. At this point int he narrative, I’m not sure I have properly impressed onto you, the reader, just how many islands are in the Misty Isles. It was certainly one thing for Vassermark to dash their colors across the region on the maps. The other great kingdoms even agreed that they had dominion over the islands. But at this time, Lucius still do not have proper sea charts and could only guess at how many farms, how many hovels and tribes laid within the archipelago. The only thing he could do was move from island to island doing the work of cartography himself. He hoped there was less than one hundred islands, one of which would have the demon. Taking into account the dozen or so islands already in economic transaction with Aliston, the odds seemed good for him.

In truth, there were over five hundred islands, most of which looked utterly identical, had no names, and spoke with such thick dialects that even Isalin struggled to speak with them. But he didn’t understand this at the start. He approached it one step at a time, and that step was from the barge to the shore.

His newly levied army pillaged everything they came across. Not for money–the locals had no money–but for livestock. Lucius couldn’t stop the army, for hungry soldiers are most dangerous to their own commanders. The only thing he could do was make promises of restitution, and arrange a sort of shell game of moving supplies. What the army didn’t eat from one island, he seized and sent to the previous to make whole any honest farmer. It was those working for the demon that he robbed blind.

The first plantation he found was on a nameless island, one almost passed over as nothing but rock and sand. The only reason they even stopped was because they sighted giant tortoises and one of the locals claimed they were good eating. Mere curiosity on Lucius’ part–and the thought that he might send some north to the king for favor. The island had been volcanic in nature. From the sea it had nothing but black cliffs, a mesa of lifeless dirt. But the center was a crater lush with life and the fires of men.

He brought his own fire upon them.