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eveglassA story set during the downtime after last game, in which Sela realizes that training a troop of eagle riders may be somewhat more difficult than it first appears. (aka: The leadership feat only gives you first-level followers. *grin*)
There were few giant eagles in Galandreth, and even fewer riders.
Galandreth had never massed the naval force of its enemy; it preferred to keep its strength in its mages and siege towers. And even if it had wanted to show a force of cavalry, all the eagle nests were beyond the walls of Galandreth’s defenses. Eggs had to be smuggled in, hatchlings trained in secret so that spies could not report back to Falan that Galandreth was training contingents of riders. It was not surprising that Galandreth focused its attentions on resources easier to access.
Still, there were always some.
Sela looked over her dozen new recruits as they gathered together at the base of the ruined tower. Most had been drawn from Galandreth’s scouts and outriders and were solitary creatures, sent on their individual missions to gather intelligence and report back. Based on the way they milled about, Sela doubted they’d ever needed to stand in straight lines, let alone fly in parade formation. At least they had volunteered, which meant that the whining would be less when she drilled them in how to do it… she hoped.
“Are there any questions before we start?” she asked.
“Yes,” a voice piped up from the group. “Why does T’ainesa even need an honor guard?”
“Because she is a Falan noble. And any noblewoman of Falan approaching Pelsari alone would be laughed out of court. I would have preferred to give her an entire wing, but we have to start somewhere.”
“And what does an honor guard do?” came another voice, this one female.
Sela had had to ask the princess the same question. She had never been close enough to the Falan nobility to have ever seen one herself. “It depends on the noble,” she said, repeating the princess’s answer in her own words. “For some, it’s just a matter of precision flying and looking pretty. But you’ll find that Princess T’ainesa is not a conventional noble, and she will require more from us than most. We need to be prepared for anything.”
“But why us? We’re not Falan.”
Sela saw who spoke and bit back a sharp reply. Angodar’s father was funding the entire squad: uniforms, weapons, feed and housing for the eagles… she could not afford to be short with him. “That’s true,” she said. “But right now, any Falan soldier could be an agent for her grandfather, ready to stop the war before it even starts.”
“But how do you know we aren’t Falan spies?” The voice was hesitant, and the eagle upon which the speaker rode was clearly the runt of its litter.
“Because you have all been vouched for by people I trust,” Sela replied. “And because Duke Calayon has assured me that he will personally deal with anyone who thinks about turning traitor.”
There was a low murmuring among her recruits, but at least none had any questions after that.
Sela leaned forward and took up the reins. Beneath her, she felt Therrion shift his weight to prepare for flight. “What we’re doing today,” she said to the dozen recruits below her, “is a two-part exercise. The first is an obstacle course, the second is a target field. I’ll fly the obstacle course three times, and then it’s your turn, so watch carefully.”
Gracefully, Therrion flapped his wings and they rose up into the air. They caught the wind and flew towards the top of the tower.
Sela had initially been annoyed that there were no training fields in Galandreth the way there had been for her when she was a recruit – no carefully built courses with floating rings and poles worn smooth by generations of soldiers. But she had taken inspiration in the resources Galandreth did have: ruined castles. It had taken her weeks to find the perfect site, a ruined castle with plenty of partially-fallen walls, holes in the architecture big enough for an eagle to fly through, and yet far enough away from the Falan lines that no one would suspect what she was doing.
They dipped through the first obstacle, a half-collapsed pillar whose top half rested on a nearby wall, forming a large opening beneath. From there it was in through the side of the building and out the far walls, up and around the remains of a tower, and then a slalom through some wide crenulations that were remarkably still intact. It was child’s play by now, of course. She could probably do it sleeping. But she and Therrion had flown in, out, and around the castle for hours looking for a course that would have be challenging to her recruits but still manageable. She hoped she had succeeded in the course she had ultimately chosen.
Therrion flew the course perfectly three times and then landed on the top of the tower, rustling his feathers. “Did everyone catch that?” asked Sela. It didn’t really matter what they answered; she would make them do it anyway. You had to learn quickly in war, and no better time for them to start understanding that lesson than now.
She needn’t have worried about dissenters; no one spoke up.
Sela nodded. “Very well. Eventually we’ll be doing this course with everyone flying at once, but for this first time through we’ll go one at a time. Ready on my mark… Amali!”
A slender woman on a dark-feathered eagle launched forward and made for the collapsed pillar. She flew through it without touching the sides and slipped into the building with only a few stones tumbling beneath her eagle’s wings. To its credit, they eagle did not make a sound, though it must have been moderately painful to have nicked the side of the wall.
Sela and Therrion watched her as she flew the rest of the course. Angodar went after her, then a woman with long hair, followed by a broad-shouldered man on an impeccably groomed eagle, and all the rest of them. “I’m surprised,” muttered Therrion to his rider. “They’re not totally hopeless.”
Indeed, most of her recruits seemed halfway decent, which was better than Sela had expected. True, none of them had flown perfectly, and there was more debris on the ground than there was when Sela had found the ruins, but she was comfortable with that. If they had been perfect from the start, there would be no need for training.
The second-to-last recruit, Nalyssan, launched himself into the air and immediately crashed into the top of the pillar with a resounding thud. Sela closed her eyes a moment, and a collective groan went up from the recruits who had already completed the course. Nalyssan’s eagle shook its head, flapped its wings, and took off once more, this time catching nearly half its right wing on the wall of the tower before it spun in midair and disappeared inside. It took at least ten seconds longer than it should have for him to emerge on the far side. “Are you drunk?” Sela called out to him.
“No, commander,” shouted Nalyssan as he bumbled his way through the crenulations.
“Is your eagle drunk?” she asked.
To this, there was a longer pause. “He may have gotten into my father’s stores, commander.”
Therrion snorted in disgust. Nalyssan’s father owned an inn in the merchant district of town.
The last recruit to fly the course, Veror Azestial, was no better, but at least both he and his mount were sober, just incompetent. His eagle managed to slam its head against a low overhang and he wound up walking part of the course. Unthinkable.
In truth, Sela had no idea why Veror had volunteered, or how he’d ever become a soldier in the first place. From what she’d heard, his parents were total pacifists, trying to end the war through diplomatic means, and were shocked when their son had taken to wing. They needn’t have worried, Sela thought; if Veror was as hopeless as he appeared, he wouldn’t be killing anyone any time soon.
Sela tried to get the bitter taste from her mouth as she led her recruits to the far side of the castle, where she had set up the second half of the course. Targets dotted the stonework, just the size for a well-poised lance. At the site of one of the old guardhouses, Sela had placed their lances, and she took one up. It was a plain wooden lance – Heartseeker (or, as Jass insisted on calling it, Souleater) was back in Last Stand for safekeeping. She would not have it said that she succeeded only because she had a magical weapon.
“The targets are built on a counterweight and spring system,” she explained to the recruits. “When you hit them, you’ll feel the pushback from the weight as you would from a real enemy. The target will snap forward, and then slowly return to its initial position for the next person. Again, watch me first, and then I’ll call out your name.”
Therrion took off, and Sela lowered her lance into position, striking at each target precisely in the center as they passed them. Again, she had tried to find a balance that would be challenging but not impossible for her recruits, and she settled herself onto a high tower for a vantage point to watch them fly through it. “Take your time – this is a test of precision, not speed. On my mark… Amali… Angodar… Arnafella… Azalon… Caslanria…”
With every passing moment, her heart sank. More targets were missed than hit, and it was the rare recruit who even tagged a quarter of them. Arnafella lost her lance on the third target. Ilquis, who had seemed so promising in the first exercises, flew too slowly towards a hanging target and the weight slammed into his eagle’s haunches as they passed, knocking them a good thirty feet downwards with the force.
“Nalyssan,” Sela called out.
The innkeep’s son launched into the air with gusto, trying to make up for his previous performance. But while his eagle flew no better than he had before, Nalyssan leaned in and managed to hit the targets at impossible angles, stabbing nearly half of them before his eagle staggered out of the sky three-quarters of the way through.
Veror, on the other hand, was no better at striking than he was at flying.
“I take it back,” Therrion muttered. “Totally hopeless.”
They flew down to where the recruits were waiting. Sela wondered what she was supposed to do with them. The princess wanted to fly for Falan in five years. Falan basic training took a decade, and these recruits would need longer than that. She wondered what Jericho would do. He would be able to make something of them all, despite everything. She wished he were here.
They landed in front of her troops. “That was awful,” Sela began by way of introduction. “Sloppy, unfocused, and clumsy.” She gave an exaggerated sigh. “But we work with what we have. So for the rest of the afternoon, this is what we’re doing. Half of you will be flying the obstacle course, half the target field, and we’ll switch every fifteen minutes. I’ll be watching and giving pointers. We’re going to keep going until someone can hit at least half the targets in one fly-through. If we’re lucky, we won’t have to keep flying through eclipse.”
There were a few scattered chuckles until her troops realized she wasn’t joking. A few muttered in concern. Sela ignored them.
“All right, you six take the first course, and you six the second. Move!”
They moved, organizing themselves into rough orders and started flying through the courses. She and Therrion banked in slow circles above them, watching. “You sure this is a good idea?” asked Therrion. “They’re never going to be ready in time.”
Sela sighed. “I know,” she said, “but we’ve gotta start somewhere.”
They Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used To
There were few giant eagles in Galandreth, and even fewer riders.
Galandreth had never massed the naval force of its enemy; it preferred to keep its strength in its mages and siege towers. And even if it had wanted to show a force of cavalry, all the eagle nests were beyond the walls of Galandreth’s defenses. Eggs had to be smuggled in, hatchlings trained in secret so that spies could not report back to Falan that Galandreth was training contingents of riders. It was not surprising that Galandreth focused its attentions on resources easier to access.
Still, there were always some.
Sela looked over her dozen new recruits as they gathered together at the base of the ruined tower. Most had been drawn from Galandreth’s scouts and outriders and were solitary creatures, sent on their individual missions to gather intelligence and report back. Based on the way they milled about, Sela doubted they’d ever needed to stand in straight lines, let alone fly in parade formation. At least they had volunteered, which meant that the whining would be less when she drilled them in how to do it… she hoped.
“Are there any questions before we start?” she asked.
“Yes,” a voice piped up from the group. “Why does T’ainesa even need an honor guard?”
“Because she is a Falan noble. And any noblewoman of Falan approaching Pelsari alone would be laughed out of court. I would have preferred to give her an entire wing, but we have to start somewhere.”
“And what does an honor guard do?” came another voice, this one female.
Sela had had to ask the princess the same question. She had never been close enough to the Falan nobility to have ever seen one herself. “It depends on the noble,” she said, repeating the princess’s answer in her own words. “For some, it’s just a matter of precision flying and looking pretty. But you’ll find that Princess T’ainesa is not a conventional noble, and she will require more from us than most. We need to be prepared for anything.”
“But why us? We’re not Falan.”
Sela saw who spoke and bit back a sharp reply. Angodar’s father was funding the entire squad: uniforms, weapons, feed and housing for the eagles… she could not afford to be short with him. “That’s true,” she said. “But right now, any Falan soldier could be an agent for her grandfather, ready to stop the war before it even starts.”
“But how do you know we aren’t Falan spies?” The voice was hesitant, and the eagle upon which the speaker rode was clearly the runt of its litter.
“Because you have all been vouched for by people I trust,” Sela replied. “And because Duke Calayon has assured me that he will personally deal with anyone who thinks about turning traitor.”
There was a low murmuring among her recruits, but at least none had any questions after that.
Sela leaned forward and took up the reins. Beneath her, she felt Therrion shift his weight to prepare for flight. “What we’re doing today,” she said to the dozen recruits below her, “is a two-part exercise. The first is an obstacle course, the second is a target field. I’ll fly the obstacle course three times, and then it’s your turn, so watch carefully.”
Gracefully, Therrion flapped his wings and they rose up into the air. They caught the wind and flew towards the top of the tower.
Sela had initially been annoyed that there were no training fields in Galandreth the way there had been for her when she was a recruit – no carefully built courses with floating rings and poles worn smooth by generations of soldiers. But she had taken inspiration in the resources Galandreth did have: ruined castles. It had taken her weeks to find the perfect site, a ruined castle with plenty of partially-fallen walls, holes in the architecture big enough for an eagle to fly through, and yet far enough away from the Falan lines that no one would suspect what she was doing.
They dipped through the first obstacle, a half-collapsed pillar whose top half rested on a nearby wall, forming a large opening beneath. From there it was in through the side of the building and out the far walls, up and around the remains of a tower, and then a slalom through some wide crenulations that were remarkably still intact. It was child’s play by now, of course. She could probably do it sleeping. But she and Therrion had flown in, out, and around the castle for hours looking for a course that would have be challenging to her recruits but still manageable. She hoped she had succeeded in the course she had ultimately chosen.
Therrion flew the course perfectly three times and then landed on the top of the tower, rustling his feathers. “Did everyone catch that?” asked Sela. It didn’t really matter what they answered; she would make them do it anyway. You had to learn quickly in war, and no better time for them to start understanding that lesson than now.
She needn’t have worried about dissenters; no one spoke up.
Sela nodded. “Very well. Eventually we’ll be doing this course with everyone flying at once, but for this first time through we’ll go one at a time. Ready on my mark… Amali!”
A slender woman on a dark-feathered eagle launched forward and made for the collapsed pillar. She flew through it without touching the sides and slipped into the building with only a few stones tumbling beneath her eagle’s wings. To its credit, they eagle did not make a sound, though it must have been moderately painful to have nicked the side of the wall.
Sela and Therrion watched her as she flew the rest of the course. Angodar went after her, then a woman with long hair, followed by a broad-shouldered man on an impeccably groomed eagle, and all the rest of them. “I’m surprised,” muttered Therrion to his rider. “They’re not totally hopeless.”
Indeed, most of her recruits seemed halfway decent, which was better than Sela had expected. True, none of them had flown perfectly, and there was more debris on the ground than there was when Sela had found the ruins, but she was comfortable with that. If they had been perfect from the start, there would be no need for training.
The second-to-last recruit, Nalyssan, launched himself into the air and immediately crashed into the top of the pillar with a resounding thud. Sela closed her eyes a moment, and a collective groan went up from the recruits who had already completed the course. Nalyssan’s eagle shook its head, flapped its wings, and took off once more, this time catching nearly half its right wing on the wall of the tower before it spun in midair and disappeared inside. It took at least ten seconds longer than it should have for him to emerge on the far side. “Are you drunk?” Sela called out to him.
“No, commander,” shouted Nalyssan as he bumbled his way through the crenulations.
“Is your eagle drunk?” she asked.
To this, there was a longer pause. “He may have gotten into my father’s stores, commander.”
Therrion snorted in disgust. Nalyssan’s father owned an inn in the merchant district of town.
The last recruit to fly the course, Veror Azestial, was no better, but at least both he and his mount were sober, just incompetent. His eagle managed to slam its head against a low overhang and he wound up walking part of the course. Unthinkable.
In truth, Sela had no idea why Veror had volunteered, or how he’d ever become a soldier in the first place. From what she’d heard, his parents were total pacifists, trying to end the war through diplomatic means, and were shocked when their son had taken to wing. They needn’t have worried, Sela thought; if Veror was as hopeless as he appeared, he wouldn’t be killing anyone any time soon.
Sela tried to get the bitter taste from her mouth as she led her recruits to the far side of the castle, where she had set up the second half of the course. Targets dotted the stonework, just the size for a well-poised lance. At the site of one of the old guardhouses, Sela had placed their lances, and she took one up. It was a plain wooden lance – Heartseeker (or, as Jass insisted on calling it, Souleater) was back in Last Stand for safekeeping. She would not have it said that she succeeded only because she had a magical weapon.
“The targets are built on a counterweight and spring system,” she explained to the recruits. “When you hit them, you’ll feel the pushback from the weight as you would from a real enemy. The target will snap forward, and then slowly return to its initial position for the next person. Again, watch me first, and then I’ll call out your name.”
Therrion took off, and Sela lowered her lance into position, striking at each target precisely in the center as they passed them. Again, she had tried to find a balance that would be challenging but not impossible for her recruits, and she settled herself onto a high tower for a vantage point to watch them fly through it. “Take your time – this is a test of precision, not speed. On my mark… Amali… Angodar… Arnafella… Azalon… Caslanria…”
With every passing moment, her heart sank. More targets were missed than hit, and it was the rare recruit who even tagged a quarter of them. Arnafella lost her lance on the third target. Ilquis, who had seemed so promising in the first exercises, flew too slowly towards a hanging target and the weight slammed into his eagle’s haunches as they passed, knocking them a good thirty feet downwards with the force.
“Nalyssan,” Sela called out.
The innkeep’s son launched into the air with gusto, trying to make up for his previous performance. But while his eagle flew no better than he had before, Nalyssan leaned in and managed to hit the targets at impossible angles, stabbing nearly half of them before his eagle staggered out of the sky three-quarters of the way through.
Veror, on the other hand, was no better at striking than he was at flying.
“I take it back,” Therrion muttered. “Totally hopeless.”
They flew down to where the recruits were waiting. Sela wondered what she was supposed to do with them. The princess wanted to fly for Falan in five years. Falan basic training took a decade, and these recruits would need longer than that. She wondered what Jericho would do. He would be able to make something of them all, despite everything. She wished he were here.
They landed in front of her troops. “That was awful,” Sela began by way of introduction. “Sloppy, unfocused, and clumsy.” She gave an exaggerated sigh. “But we work with what we have. So for the rest of the afternoon, this is what we’re doing. Half of you will be flying the obstacle course, half the target field, and we’ll switch every fifteen minutes. I’ll be watching and giving pointers. We’re going to keep going until someone can hit at least half the targets in one fly-through. If we’re lucky, we won’t have to keep flying through eclipse.”
There were a few scattered chuckles until her troops realized she wasn’t joking. A few muttered in concern. Sela ignored them.
“All right, you six take the first course, and you six the second. Move!”
They moved, organizing themselves into rough orders and started flying through the courses. She and Therrion banked in slow circles above them, watching. “You sure this is a good idea?” asked Therrion. “They’re never going to be ready in time.”
Sela sighed. “I know,” she said, “but we’ve gotta start somewhere.”
