The CRES code

Chapter Fifty Four - The Army

     Crowds lined the city's great outer wall and swarmed in the fields just outside, ready to welcome the victorious army into the city.

     A thousand conversations were mingled into a single murmuration that filled the air and gave it an atmosphere of excited anticipation. Some people were holding flags, ready to wave them the moment the army appeared, and fathers had young children sitting on their shoulders, holding them by their skinny legs. Every eye was on the western horizon, searching for the first sign that their salvation had arrived. Above, birds circled in the perfect blue sky as if wondering what was going on.

     "There they are!" came a faint voice from the top of the wall and hands were raised to shade eyes as everyone stared in the indicated direction. Pennants were visible on the horizon, shining in the early winter sunshine as they flew from the tops of raised poleaxes. A couple of minutes later shining helmets were visible as the army crested McReady's Hill, bobbing as they marched in perfect step, and the crowd broke into a tumultuous applause, ignoring the orc blood that still stained the mud they were standing in and that was splashed up their legs as they jumped and danced in jubilation.

     Randall was standing with Colonel Manners, the officer in command of Elmton's garrison, and a delegation of aristocrats just inside the city's great gates as they were slowly pulled open by six sweating, straining men turning crank handles. The aristocrats all looked splendid, their elaborately decorated armour shining and polished, while Randall's armour, which had once belonged to Dunstan Bannermane, Dolly's late husband, was dented and still had specks of rust despite Dolly's hours of scrubbing and polishing the evening before. He stood out like a lump of coal in a jewellery shop window and the Barons gave him looks of annoyance as they all stepped forward into the path that the soldiers would use when they entered the city. He was lowering the tone of the reception committee! What would General Kimble think when they saw this grimy oaf standing amongst the city's elite? They would have liked nothing more than to drive him away, back into the surrounding rabble, but the rabble belonged to him now and gave him an authority they couldn't deny.

     The crowd, on the other hand, was delighted to see him there, among the aristocrats, proof that the barons had submitted to the will of the people. Already, Randall was getting demands from a steady stream of tradesmen and labourers that they wanted him to pass on to the barons. Demands for them to reduce taxes or repeal laws or abolish trade tariffs, whichever would benefit that person the most. Every time, Randall promised to raise the matter at the very next meeting of the Council of Barons, which he was now allowed to attend, while privately intending to do no such thing. His hold on the aristocrats was fragile. His promise of wealth and riches if they helped him excavate Gorsty Common was the only thing that had saved him from an assassin's garotte so far, but it wouldn't save him if he started pushing them any further.

     "Be a good chap and let us do all the talking," said Duke Latimer out of the side of his mouth. "It's bad enough that you're here without you drawing attention to yourself."

     "Happy to," Randall replied, and he was. What mattered was that the common people of the city saw him there. He'd never been good at speeches and was privately rather relieved that he wouldn't have to give one now.

     Latimer looked at Randall's armour and grimaced with almost physical pain. "I could have lent you something a little more... fitting if you'd asked."

     "I like this," said Randall, though. "This is honest armour, and the advantage of having a few dents is that you don't mind getting a few more. If I was wearing something like that..." He waved a hand at Latimer's brilliantly gleaming armour. "...I'd be scared to fight the orcs in case the polish got scuffed."