Django Wexler - The Thousand Names

She should have known better. God only ever answered her prayers when He was plotting something worse. The word had come down that the remainder of the day would be reserved for drill. The recruits accepted this as a matter of course, but the Old Colonials swore and grumbled.

The announcement had brought the lieutenant back from his usual position at the head of the column. Apparently eating dust alongside his men didn’t fit his mental picture of an officer’s duties, but putting them through snappy evolutions on the drill field did. Winter had seen him only a couple of times over the past few days, and it was only now that she had the chance to make a detailed inspection.

Lieutenant Anton d’Vries wore a tailored blue uniform as regulation-perfect as any of those sported by his soldiers. He was a small, wiry man, with dark eyes and a pouting mouth under a luxuriant mustache. His hair was carefully combed and stiffened with powder in what was presumably the latest fashion from Vordan, though the effect was rather ruined by the regulation officer’s cap. He wore a sword, the leather of the scabbard still polished and shining, and carried a thin walking stick that whistled through the air when he pointed with it. Winter flinched every time he stood beside her, in fear of an accidental blow to the side of the head.

Drill, she had discovered, was worse than marching. When the column had been in motion, at least they’d had the feeling of accomplishing something, even if it was only sweeping another few miles underfoot. They’d been allowed to fill their canteens when they passed a stream, and to talk or even sing as they walked. Most of all, no one had been judging them. The only measure of success was whether you staggered into camp before nightfall.

Now the hundred and twenty men of the Seventh Company stood in a solid block, three men deep and forty across. Each was accoutered just so-cartridge box on the left hip, doubled straps across the chest with sheathed bayonet, musket held against the right side with fingers curled around the butt in a nerve-deadening position. They were required to wait, under d’Vries’ narrowed, sunken eyes, until he ordered them to move.

Winter stood in front of them, facing the center of the company, beside the lieutenant. Her task was to relay his orders to the troops, and make certain they were obeyed. Not an enviable position. Not only did she have d’Vries’ special attention, but she could feel the dull resentment of every man in the company. Sweat trickled down her face and soaked her hair, and every inch of skin seemed to be itching at once. They had been at it for two hours so far.

D’Vries tapped his stick against his leg and watched his men with a haughty distaste. He cleared his throat and looked back and forth along the triple line with an undisguised scowl.

“Right,” he said. “We will try that again. On the signal, right oblique, double pace!”

He spoke in a conversational tone. Winter had to repeat those orders loud enough to carry to the ends of the line. Her throat was already ragged, but she summoned up the energy. It came out as more of a croak, but d’Vries didn’t appear to notice.

The company drummers struck up the double pace, heartbeat-fast. The line shuffled into motion, and almost immediately it became obvious that little progress had been made.

Long ago, in what felt like a different lifetime, Winter had been a girl younger than any one of the rankers. All she’d known of the military life was the stories she’d read of great battles, in which unflinching men marched precisely through their evolutions while their ranks were torn by ball and shot. Since her unorthodox method of self-recruitment had prevented her from spending the weeks in depot where the men presumably learned such stoicism, she’d done her best to make up for it, acquiring a copy of the Manual of Arms and the Regulations and Drill of the Royal Army of Vordan and working hard to memorize both. The knowledge had turned out to be almost useless, of course, but some of it remained with her years later.

Consequently, she knew what was supposed to happen. At the first beat of the drum, each man would take a step with his right foot, placing it exactly one standard pace-thirty-six inches, according to some hallowed measuring stick in the bowels of the Ministry of War-in front of the other. The next step would be on the next drumbeat, and so on, so that the company moved forward in perfect order, each man remaining stationary with respect to his fellows.

This would be hard enough, but d’Vries had called for an oblique advance, which meant that with each pace forward every man was supposed to move a half pace sideways, producing a sort of diagonal sidle. From the faces of the soldiers, Winter was sure that many of them hadn’t understood this, or at any rate didn’t remember until it was too late.

The result was about what Winter expected. Some men started with their left foot instead of their right, which meant they bumped into the man beside them. Others forgot to move obliquely, with similar results. Still others stepped too far, or not far enough, and then trying to maintain their place lost the beat of the drum and fell out of step. Two men in the rear rank somehow entangled the straps of their packs and collapsed in the dust when they tried to move in opposite directions, thrashing like a couple of inverted turtles.

Within twenty yards the neat three-rank block had dissolved into a blob of red-faced, shoving men. When Winter called for a halt and the drummer stopped playing, they stumbled a few more steps from sheer inertia, then scrambled to push their way back into the correct files. It was a full five minutes before some semblance of order had returned.

Thus it had gone every previous time as well, and d’Vries’ lips had tightened with each successive failure. Now his patience was apparently exhausted. He turned to Winter, cold with anger.

“Sergeant!” he snapped.

Winter saluted. “Yessir!”

“I’ve seen enough. I want you to keep these fellows at it”-he raised his voice-“until they get it right or they damn well drop dead on the field! Do you understand me?”

“Ah, yessir.”

The lieutenant’s lip quivered. “Right,” he managed, and stalked off, walking stick snapping out to flick impudent bits of gravel from his path. Winter watched him go, feeling the pounding of the sun on her shoulders, and tried to figure out what she was supposed to do next.

Her eyes found Bobby in the first rank. The boy was red-faced, from either embarrassment or the sun, and he was visibly trembling with fatigue. Winter had been in Khandar for two years, as d’Vries had not, and she knew that dropping dead in the field was far from simply a rhetorical possibility. Too much more of this and the heatstroke cases would overflow the infirmary.

She looked across the dusty scrap of land that was serving as the regimental drill field. It was scrub plain, like all the land they’d marched over. Occasional rocks or knots of tough, wiry grass broke the monotony of endless parched earth. The only color came from a tiny stream meandering through on its way to the sea, which winked and sparkled in the middle distance. A dozen companies were currently occupied in various exercises, being put through their separate paces according to the whims of their officers. Winter watched one lieutenant berating his men as though they were disobedient mules, and inspiration struck.

“Right,” she said, turning on her heel. Raising her already ragged voice, she managed, “Company, quarter- right !”

The men, who’d been watching her with some apprehension, gave a kind of collective sigh and straightened up again as best they could. They turned in place through ninety degrees, which converted a block of men forty long and three deep into a column three wide and forty long. Winter stalked over to what was now the front, drummers hurrying behind her.