“Any Idea of what was their objective?” The older man asked, with his pipe still in his mouth.
The line of men were caught by surprise, quickly correcting their postures, fixing their hats and placing their closed left hands in their chests. There were ten soldiers side by side, blocking the road that passed under the overpass. They were dressed in blue uniforms with white trousers. They carried with them a breech-loading rifle each, had short swords in theirs hips to the left, and two ammo pouches to the right. The hats were white and carried the emblem of a golden flower with five petals in the front, with red plumes covering the rest.
“So?” He repeated himself, looking into each of their eyes, one at a time, as they struggled to find an answer. The man wore a dark blue uniform and carried only a saber at his belt, though, unlike the Guards, he carried a revolver on the left side of his abdomen, and only one pouch of ammo. He carried his helmet in between his left arm and his torso, rather than wearing it, revealing a very uncomfortable black metal pot with nasal protection and golden carvings – including an eight-petal flower in the forehead – topped by white plumes in the back and blue in the front. The man himself was nothing special to look at: brown hair cut very short, brown eyes and a cleanly shaven face, revealing a rather pointy chin. The man was no taller than the average soldier, tough a bit brawny in his structure.
The pause continued for a few seconds until one of the soldiers answered “We don’t know their objective, if those barbarians even had one, sir.” The man answered by moving towards the soldier and stopping right in front of him.
“What is your name, soldier?” The man asked the soldier face to face. “Dagmar, sir.” He answered.
“That’s a stupid name.” He said, puffing smoke in his face. “And you are a stupid man, Dagmar.” The soldier struggled to not cough as the man paced back so as to see all Guards. “Anyone here wants to prove a brain is required to enter the Guard?” The silence was unbearable, and the soldiers were starting to become unsettled.
“You were the first response, weren’t you? What did you see? What did you not see?” The man grew inpatient, tapping his boot in the stone of the street, making each and every soldier even more nervous.
This time another soldier responded by raising his left hand. “You are not a kid in school, boy.” The man said to the scrawny boy-soldier, satisfied that someone finally answered.
The Guard started speaking and slowly drifted his eyes towards his own feet. “They had an objective and were quite disciplinedth.” The boy bit his tongue as he spoke, but continued. “They had uniforms, which contradicts the type of equipment they had.” The boy waited for a second before realizing what was missing. “Sir.”
“Look up, boy.” The man was standing in front of the boy, as he had done with the other soldier. “What is your name, boy?” The Guard’s eyes were wide open, and he was visibly sweating.
“Ebert” His voice failed after the name, so he repeated, this time in a lower voice. “Eberto, sir.”
“Eberto, your answer wasn’t necessarily wrong, just incomplete, can you finish?” The boy simply gave him a small shake of his head as answer. “Then follow me, boy.” The man walked past the line of Guards without waiting for the boy to agree, steadily marching towards the overpass, with Eberto half-running to catch up behind him.
They walked in silence until they reached two groups of covered bodies, one in each side of the road. The man stopped in between the groups and turned around to face Eberto. “To your left, you have our casualties.” He pointed to his right, where 43 bodies lay in three lines. “And to your right you have their casualties.” He pointed to his left, where 29 bodies lay in two lines. “Examine them, and report back to me with the rest of your answer.”
The man left Eberto with the lines of bodies and kept walking. Two Guards repeated the salute given by the others as he passed them. He reached the overpass, sat with his back to the wall and stared at the opposite side, from which the attackers had emerged. The passage was marked by what by all means looked to be a line of chalk in the wall. He pulled a small notepad from under his uniform and started scribbling with a thin piece of coal.
It had been a while when the man was interrupted. “I-I-I have my answer, sir.” Eberto stuttered as he began to speak. The man put away the notes and the coal in his uniform and stood up. “Come with, boy. And speak already.”
“The first thing is that we seem to have killed someone important. He is the only one to be wearing plate armor, and he had a crest in the armor.” The two of them now made their way back from where they came. “And I found this.” The boy raised his left hand to reveal a small piece of leather. The hand, like the leather, was dirty of blood, though not nearly as much.
The man took the piece to look closer. “Good job, boy, but you still haven’t told me their objective.” As they passed trough the line of Guards, Eberto stopped while the man climbed inside a carriage. “What are you doing, boy?” He asked, already half-way inside the carriage.
“I’m in guard duty.” he answered.
“How are you going to complete your answer from over there, boy? Are you stupid?” The man said, sitting and dropping his helmet beside him. “Or are you just deaf? If I recall correctly, and I think I do, I told you to come with.”
Eberto hesitated for a moment, but soon found himself climbing up aboard the carriage.
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