The Shining Wyrm

9.1

Jewel joined the gryphon riders in the air to scout around the army. Father said it would also be good for her to get used to the pace of the march, to which the other gryphon riders had agreed.

At first, she had not understood what they meant. Surely there would be no danger of men on foot outpacing her in the air.

She was slow compared to a gryphon but Jewel was not that slow!

However as the morning passed, Jewel got a clear view of the efforts of the army gathering to march. And it was as she witnessed this that Jewel began to understand that they were not warning at how fast the army was going to be. No, the gryphon riders were warning about how slow it was going to be.

The army set out at the most incredibly slow crawl of a pace Jewel had ever seen.

And it was not by any fault Jewel could see, the captains and lords were making a solid effort to get everyone to move at pace.

They had begun to pack and gather to depart with the dawn.

And they had continued to pack and gather to march onto the road for almost the entire morning. Slowly unspooling onto the north western road out of Father’s immediate Demesne came row after row of men walking shoulder to shoulder.

But that continued for hours.

The issue was that the army was just so incredibly massive and the road was only so wide.

In some ways it was much like how Jewel herself might uncoil from a cramped bedroom: the mass of soldiers on foot and horse slid onto the road like a great serpent unwinding its coils. The ‘head’ of the army went forward from the village and into the woods and as the hours grew later and later it grew ever more distant from Fort Rochford.

In theory, the formations were simple ones.

Five men standing shoulder to shoulder and marching close as could be maintained to those in front of them. Footmen moving with the levies as they were available. Making sure that those who were yet unfamiliar with the proper manner of marching in regimented lines were instructed. Tightening their formation and evening out the pace.

With each bundle of levies was a Captain on horseback, riding elevated so he could keep an eye on his footmen and their charges. There was a captain for roughly every three hundred levies and under his command, there would be footmen to help manage the march. Sometimes as many as a hundred such experienced soldiers, more often less than twenty-five.

And between the bundles of levies were the pack horses, burdened as heavily as could be risked. Unlike when Jewel had traveled with Father, water was mostly absent from the packs. Instead, food in the form of the astoundingly dense travel bread and what jerky had been made in the winter and spring seasons.

And then past the blocks of levies trotted each herd of pack horses and their minders, two beasts to the shoulder and sometimes a dozen deep, and then there would come up another marching column of levies and their minders.

Interspersed with the footmen and their levies of either bow or spear man were the steeds of the Knights at march. Dressed in maile with proper fashioned plate (not the useless dressing of father’s ceremonial armor) usually trailed by another horse (sometimes two!) carrying further supplies ridden by squires or other servants.

As with the pack horse, the knights rode two animals shoulder to shoulder and almost as deep as the horse and mules.

And then, midway through the morning, the Gryphon Rider caravan finally moved out. At the head and tail of it walked the pack horse for the gryphon lords and knights and their servants. Carrying both food and kit for the fliers. The attendants were also joined by Smithson as amongst them some of Jewel’s own supply would be kept to conserve her stamina in flight during the march.

The horses in total for the needs of the Gryphon lords counted thirty. Split more or less evenly between the head and tail of the formation. Sometimes the horse would move between the head or tail as the formation made way.

But between them was the vital supply to keep the Gryphons in fighting shape during the campaign.

Nearly a hundred goats were driven from Rochford and every other Gryphon Rider’s demesne, with attendant goat herds and trusted guards from each of the Lords and Countess Bathory's own elite for the purpose of her knights.

Animals drawn from Zhekhedge and Viznove.

A herd of goat flesh to feed the gryphons in case of poor hunting or forage. Mostly just matured kids but also with a few dames that would supplement the army supplies with milk and camp cheese.

And then the gryphon lord’s caravan was past and once more it was levies, their pack horses and occasional punctuation of Knights.

It was by no means as orderly as any caravan save the most ramshackle Jewel had witnessed. But the sheer size of so many feet and hooves moving as one force onto the road and away had a quality all its own.

The last of the camps were only just barely packed, their owners shoved into march before noon.

And even then that was only the soldiers and their own supplies.

After Jewel finally saw the last of the levies packing and marching out of the village then the second march began.

All of the peddlers and other people and their animals that had followed the army into Rochford through the muster. Men, Women and Children that had come with the soldiers. Some of them were even free men and women from Rochford itself packing up their trade onto horse or mule to join in the wake of the army.

In this far less organized and chaotic march, there were families. Some even pulled carts along behind with further goods, craft and supplies.

Cloth, thread, practically a festival's worth of goods and further food packed up into whatever bundles or packs the people had available to them.

All of this setting onto the same road as the army.

Following the already staggering throng of soldiers that Jewel still was trying to grasp the reality of.

Twenty-Five Thousand Men.

And then there were Thousands More following them if Jewel had any sense of the look of things.

It was like the entire population of all of Rochford Barony had chosen to march out of Viznove and Zekhedge to war without the obligation or intent to see battle.

None of the books on warfare Jewel had read or any of the ballads told by Adventuring Knights of wars afar mentioned that entire baronies worth of people would follow soldiers with wares to sell.

And even though some of the books had mentioned the number of the armies, it had not fully dawned on her.

The scale of warfare had never been real before. But here she had just watched the better part of half a day pass for the army to simply leave!

And then there had been the chilling reality of what it all cost.

Father’s granaries were nearly emptied to bake the rations he contributed to the effort in making traveler’s bread for the army, the herds had been culled as the peasantry could afford without starving over winter for jerky and the hunting grounds stripped almost bare of game out of season.

His portion to the Gryphon Lord meat herd was by contrast relatively minor in the scheme of expense, only slightly giving over Zephyrvams own needs as a token to the allies that had joined them for the war.

And he was only giving a portion of what the army needed!

All this cost after supplementary caravans of supply were accounted for as they poured in from the rest of Viznove and Zekhedge for the entire muster.

Jewel had seen entire years worth of grain passing through Rochford as baked traveler’s bread.

All of that just to support the half season of the army mustering and filling their packs with rations for the march north.

Jewel turned away from her home, flying northwest to take her place in the rotation of the Gryphon Riders scouting ahead of the Army’s march.

Giving a silent goodbye to the familiar fields of her home.