The Remembered Commander

The attack was sudden, devastating, and of unequaled brutality, lines upon lines of soldiers marching in neat order the perfect target for gunners hidden in trees to the right of the company, the first volley sending the troops into a panic. As their officers yelled at them to form up as still more shots rang out, hidden pits to the left of the road, and consequently now directly behind the forming lines were thrown open as more gunners opened fire on the forming ranks. The officers, many on horses and behind the lines, were the perfect targets. Without leadership and lead flying from all sides, the troops who still could move broke formation and ran. In the moment, the ambush took Lord Commander Carson Hubert DeVail by complete and utter surprise, but in retrospect, he was astonished he didn’t see it coming. 

To think, it had all started with a frustrated walk along the creekbank next to DeVail Castle, his old abode…

‘Castle.’ 

He snorted, kicking a stray pebble into the rippling brook. At nineteen, he was the eldest son of a minor lord in a tiny keep, one whose courtyard he was able to throw a stone across. It had barely thirty serfs working the sparse fields surrounding what amounted to a stone manor. There was only half-a-dozen staff and four guards, most of whom had at least half a head of grey hair. There wasn’t a single musket to be found in the armory, those tasked with his safety carrying halberds that were rapidly becoming obsolete. He had heard that the latest muskets being produced no longer required bipods to be handled effectively, having become light enough to aim and fire without needing the additional support. 

And yet here he was, without even the most basic arquebus at hand. 

His childhood dreams of marching at the head of a vast army, armed with the latest technology and marching to an intimidating drumbeat, seemed completely out of reach. It seemed his destiny wasn’t to be a glorious war hero, commanding his army in victory after victory, but rather to be a minor lord in a tiny backwater until he died.

‘No wonder I don’t have any prospects or marriage proposals!’ He thought angrily, kicking another stone into the water and immediately regretting it, as it had been quite a bit larger than the last one. It still splashed into the water, but left him dancing around in pain, clutching his foot and overbalancing. The impact of yet another stone on his tailbone made him start cursing, rolling around in quite the undignified fashion, cursing his father, the king, the backwater he was in charge, and his family that lounged about in the capital, eating and drinking and enjoying all the minor benefits their name held as he was forced to try and scrape a living from the rocks for them to consume, leaving him nothing.

When the pain faded, he sat up, spitting at the river.

“Dammit, I’m really going to die unremembered, aren’t I?” He muttered, another stone coming to hand and being chucked into the water. “Just let me be remembered for SOME militaristic achievement! That’s all I want!”

Let it never be said that the universe doesn’t grant wishes.

The news that arrived a few days later hit him like a cannonball. 

King William Haus was dead.

His trusted general had committed a coup, leaving the king, the royal family, and most of his advisors dead. Loyalist officers had managed to escape, and those who were currently on campaign were recalled to deal with the uprising. 

Civil war had begun.

While the serfs and servants fretted, he paced in his room, mind awhirl. Everyone else was in mourning for their beloved king, he poured over maps. They lit candles of remembrance, he lit candles to study his accounts. As far as he could figure, by draining everything his family had managed to scrape together in the hundred or so years that they had been a ‘noble’ family, he could buy ten rifles. At most.

OR…

He could hire three or four good men.

Folding up the parchments, he felt himself start to smirk as he looked up at the map nailed to the wall. His eastern neighbor had a fief larger than his, but the lord was an old man, and far too trusting. His guards were much like Carson’s own, old and outdated.

Pulling a fresh sheet of parchment close and lighting another candle, he began drafting a letter, one with nothing but malicious intent…

In the years that followed, he sometimes regretted the course of action he had settled on. Hiring criminals, ones who had been remarkably cheap, had only been the first set. With a dozen in tow instead of the four he had expected, he had disguised them as servants and serfs, bringing false news of an approaching rebel army to the neighboring lord. He had been invited in, the embrace he had received giving him the perfect opportunity to draw the long knife hidden in his tunic.

He had hesitated as he leveled it, panic causing him to freeze, but the old lord had noticed nothing until his momentum carried him onto the blade. The criminals sprung into action as soon as the lord had gasped, drawing their own blades and taking down the unprepared guards within moments.

It had begun.

Those criminals had stayed with him after he promised them more wealth in the days to come, several contacting others they knew in the underworld. Using his neighbor’s wealth and simply ignoring the clamor of the serfs, giving a bullshit story about the incident being an ambush by the lord against Carson and not much caring if it was believed or not, he built an army of mercenaries and vagrants that wanted loot as much as he wanted fame. Launching attacks against his neighbors and overwhelming the unsuspecting fiefs, he soon found merchants willing to smuggle him firearms and supplies for his growing army. He swaggered through the camp of his ‘army,’ wearing a uniform jacket four sizes too small and his hand resting on a saber at least half a foot too long for him. He ignored the unmilitaristic nature of those under his command, the cursing and gambling, the drinking and fights. He told himself that he was the master of the finest army the continent had ever seen and that this was only the beginning. He ignored the fact that the respect he demanded was barely present, the deliberate slowness to obey his orders, the general lack of response to his demands. It was all for the future, he told himself. Nevermind that he never had a goal in mind, the campaign being simply for glory’s sake. He was at the head of an armed column, and that was all that mattered.

As his ranks swelled, numbering in the hundreds and he began encountering resistance in the form of hasty militias, he began seeking support for his campaign, he found his countrymen turning against him. Fearing his conquest would end far sooner than was satisfactory, he began searching for support outside of the country. Of course, when he drafted his messages, he exaggerated many details. Minor successes were told as mighty victories, small fiefs taken were painted as mighty castles that fell. Unsurprisingly, he found more than a few benefactors that were delighted to have a puppet that could potentially take control of the entire country.

They sent support, weapons, even men. These trained ranks filled Carson with pride when they marched off their ships, far outshining the men he had previously led. Of course, it wasn’t pride in the loaned army, but pride in himself.

‘Look at the men that are worthy of being led by me!’ He wanted to yell, but he didn’t. It would have been undignified.

Instead, he looked to his ragtag company and told them, in no uncertain terms, they were no longer needed. With a turn on his heel and a nose in the air, he left them to take command of his new troops, ones who he was quite confident in taking to the capital itself. 

“I could even be king, couldn’t I?” He muttered before presenting himself to the commanding officer of the new forces. “I am Lord Commander DeVail!” He declared, a lofty title he had pulled from where the sun didn’t shine. “Your king has seen fit to put you under my command, and I expect your obedience.”

The officer didn’t look impressed, but he was loyal to his master, and that was all that mattered to Carson. Instead of backtalk or deliberate delay, Carson received a crisp salute and a barked “Ser!”

He grinned. THIS was what he had wished for.

As the gunfire rang out around him, smoke billowing across the narrow valley, he contemplated his situation with a shocking degree of calm. Of course, he had to do so while laying on the ground with a hand pressed to chest in a vain attempt to stop the hot stream of blood that had sprung forth, created by the clump of lead that had knocked him from his mount. As he marched his new army inland, he had ignored the advice to pick a different route where the troops could deploy if caught by surprise, as it just had been. He had ignored the steady disappearance of the serfs in the lands he had marched on. The reports of the merchants that there were more buyers for modern muskets had fallen on deaf ears, unrecognized for what they were. He had ignored the hate in the eyes of the company of hired guns and miscreants he had thrown away so casually, forgetting how apt they were to stab in the back, especially when there was a profit in it. With a lack of any intelligence or reconnaissance into the surrounding country, something he had grossly overlooked, he had failed to see the loyalists and rebels had united against this upstart leading a foreign invasion. He hadn’t known about the numerous encampments training the serfs, nor did he have any spies with which to discover the trap laid in his path.

And so all of the mistakes had compiled into the ambush he had found himself in. He may have had superior numbers and equipment, the loaned troops he led outnumbering the ambushers three to one and being able to shoot nearly twice as far. It didn’t matter when the ambushers were at nearly point-blank range and firing from both sides as quickly as they could. Broken, leaderless, and with no hope of regaining momentum or forming their ranks, the foreign troops fled back the way they came as fast as they could in one of the greatest bumbles in military history.

“But…I wanted to…be remembered.” Carson managed to choke out around mouthfuls of blood.

Steps sounded in his ears as a figure came into view, pulling a flintlock pistol from his belt. Idly, Carson remembered seeing him in the background a handful of times when he had met with the neighboring lord, back in the days before Carson had murdered the old man.

‘Oh, right. He was a father…’ He managed to think through the darkening haze.

“Remembered, huh?” The man said, cocking the firearm and aiming it between Carson’s eyes. “You’ll be remembered, alright. How does ‘The Moronic Commander’ sound?”

With a flash of light, the protest on Carson’s lips died, as did he. The son of the late lord shook his head as he placed the pistol back in his belt, snorting in dismissal as one of his fellows came up beside him.

“Did the fool really say he wanted to be remembered?”

“He did.” The first responded, looking after the fleeing shoulders. “Then again, I suppose he gets his wish. He’s a prime example of how NOT to lead.”

“Well, be careful what you wish for, I guess. Shall we? We can probably catch a few more of them before they get to the harbor?”

A nod was the reply as the pair moved off, leaving the body to become a feast for the crows.

Be careful what you wish for, indeed.