A Jade Dragon

Chapter 7: A Reveal In Red

"Faster!" Benjen shouted in nihongo as one of his soldiers ran past him. Another soldier tripped in a hole concealed by the tall grass, but it was fortunately not so deep as to seriously injure him. Benjen walked over to the soldier and pulled him up. "Up, soldier! Get a move on!"

Benjen was running alongside the ten men he selected as part of a first stage he planned to get the soldiers back into shape after burning their supply of yapian and paying them their overdue wages. When he called muster the next morning, he found that the soldiers and their weapons were in bad conditions and they would need to undergo some form of retraining if they were to resume normal army duties.

Benjen looked through as much manuals as he could, especially those that dealt with training soldiers, and his first instinct was to use them on his brigade. However, when he outlined his plan to Lieutenant Lim, he was not impressed.

"You doubt that these methods would work, lieutenant?" Benjen asked.

"Captain, the previous commanding officer used those methods to keep the men in battle condition before he succumbed to avarice. While those manuals detail well on how soldiers should drill and what tactics should be used among other things, it also outlines what types of punishments should be meted out if the men fall out of line," Lim explained.

"Ah," Benjen nodded in understanding. "And I'm guessing he used those punishments in order to intimidate the soldiers into buying his substances."

"Exactly," Lim confirmed.

Benjen read through those punishments. The most common sort of punishment utilized was flogging with a cane, which was carried out by the senior soldier in the company, in which the punished soldier belonged to. If one soldier failed to perform a drill or not turn up to muster on time, then the whole company had to face the consequences, with the officer in charge being removed from the next promotion round before the Captain-General and the soldiers all being flogged. Desertion and insubordination were punished with death or demotion, which happened frequently in the brigade and thus explaining the lowered quality of the soliders. Dereliction of duty was dealt with through stripping the soldier of his clothes and making him stand outside until the morning muster. As for striking your superiors, you were either dishonorably discharged or executed.

Benjen caught on that his predecessor had abused the punishment system in order to coerce the soldiers into buying his substances and keep them in line. And he was not stupid enough to resort to those punitive measures, as his command would fail at that moment.

As Benjen thought more about it, the manuals listed punishments but rarely deal with rewards. He had a basic understanding of how the reward system in the empire worked, with examples being eight years of service equaling a final pay of five hundred taels and twenty years entitling the soldier to a grant of land, a final pay of a thousand taels, and a certificate that would allow them to pursue many different types of lives. However, those were rewards given to soldiers who served a certain length of time and didn't cover small actions while they served that merited some benefits. At the Wall, punishment might've been strict, but the Lord Commander never physically abused either the recruits or the sworn brothers. Moreover, the Lord Commander knew how to reward those who deserved it, as he did reward Jon with Longclaw after he saved his life from that wight. Something I might have to change.

Benjen's first priority, however, was to get the men back into prime battle condition. He looked over the list of soldiers who had served the longest, had them report to him before morning muster, and there he outlined his terms.

"All of you have served past the required eight years for those that had joined the army, meaning that you all are seeking the rewards that come after twenty years. I asked you all here because you've been in this brigade longer than most of us and therefore, you're in a good position to set a good example for the rest of the men," Benjen spoke to all ten of them. Lim stood by him as he translated, since while his hold on nihongo continued to improve, he still couldn't grasp some words and Lim helped him.