Forge of StonesChapter 5
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Tyrpledge had been unavoidably spenting the past few days inside his minute office, sitting at his desk with piles of reports and inventories stacked in front of him up to his neck. The minutiae of a preparation for complete mobilization were indeed innumerable.
Personnel manifests, rotation forecasts, matériel inventories, requisition forms, count practicals, soldier and officer levies, clothing requests, workshop and mill necessitation orders, movement and guard formations, and forced labor documents were combined into a logistics nightmare.
All of these types of documents had to reviewed and amended if needed. They had to be edited, signed, and forwarded; then signed again and scribed, before sent out in a seemingly never-ending vicious cycle of bureaucracy and stale ministry procedures that were designed to triple check and record everything that went on. The idea behind all that trouble was making sure that nothing seemed to stray in weird and unexplored territory, something that would alarm the various ministry officials and by natural order the Arch-minister himself.
All this paperwork and mind-boggling interdepartmental anarchy had the general sitting wide-eyed at his desk with papers strewn all over his desk; it resembled a carpet of ink and white that made his head dizzy merely by looking at it, much less reading it.
He leaned over and put his elbows on the desk to rest his head on his hands, gently massaging it as if that would make the terrible headache go away. The latest developments had had him thinking about his career in the army in general. He almost wished he could somehow go back in time and fail at pretty much everything so he could get Gomermont's job for a change.
Instead he leaned again back on his chair, the muscles in his back stiff from constantly sitting, signing documents since early dawn. His wrist hurt like he had been practicing with a sword since the day before. He looked at the plain and unadorned ceiling with eyes out of focus, and seemed to ponder deeply the state of affairs he was in.
The army had been metaphorically, though almost literally at times, handcuffed and thrown around like a useful but dangerous idiot for almost ever since its inception and creation. The hindrances and bureaucratic steps that were constantly arrayed against the army and its people were designed in such a way as to extend the period of time it takes for troops to assemble, equip and move, from days onto weeks.
The concept was thoroughly and widely known as a safety measure against those who might try and achieve power through strength of arms, perhaps even to the degree of being able to change the balance of power within the Ruling Council so as to include the General of the Army.
There had been precedents surely but that had been another time entirely, when the Territories were still young and the people dumbfounded by the then newly emerging order of the world; one common rule for all, under one religion.
There was bound to be some dissidence, some kind of resistance. It was well known that even the earth opposes the river's flow, but the ending was inevitable. So it came to be that Shan the Traitor only managed to permanently turn the army into a mere lapdog at the beck and call of the Ruling Council, blessed be their exalted souls.
'And so I'm stuck here, ' he thought, 'trying to build a machine of war faster than what is conceived possible with almost anything and anyone at my disposal; except from freedom of action and the ability to ask for things and make them happen. How typical.'
Even with the help from the Arch-minister that had indeed expedited some processes, Tyrpledge was experiencing significant delays in most of his petitions and requisitions. Everything had to sift through the gargantuan train of Ministry processes, officials and hearings to disappear in its labyrinth offices, clerk pits and then back up again through the same path, in order to probably but not always most likely, make something useful and tangible in the end.
The more he thought about it the more incredulous it all seemed, but it was manifestly real. Just the other day, he remembered, he had received a notice of an annulled material request for a shipment of chisels required for the maintenance and construction of most of the siege engines. The ministry's reasoning behind the annulment was mystifying at best: "Said objects are still under examination for safety reasons".
It seemed the ministry was contemplating whether or not a military coup could put chisels to good use, in preference to the usual swords, scimitars, bows, steamers, slingshots, siege engines and the good old knives it already possessed.
Their lack of trust was crippling. He was given a colossal task that was daily compounded with the burden of the ministry's schizophrenic tendencies that balanced precariously between gross, outright denial and a maniacal urge to have everything done and ready, armed merely with ink.
The arch-minister had been quite unable to help, since this was pretty much how everything worked in the ministry. Reiterating the jumbling mass of ministry people to adopt new sound practices in a matter of days was just as inconceivable as totally circumventing the antiquated ministry machine in whole. In essence, Tyrpledge was caught between a hammer and an anvil. With nowhere else to go, he knew he would have to endure as the good soldier he was. He could feel the pressure though, and it was rising to a crushing level.
He got up from his office and decided to have a little stroll outside. Maybe some fresh air would invigorate him. As he made to leave his office, his aide-de-camp and various other officers belonging to his immediate staff saluted crisply, most of them with papers and ink in hand, designated to handle some of the bureaucracy whose scale defied that of the legendary behemoths of the sea.
He left orders for his aide-de-camp that he was not to be disturbed or communicated to in any way while he was out having his walk. Anything that might come up it would have to wait for him, and not the other way around.
He might not have a vote on the Council, but he didn't like being pushed around like a junior officer after 45 years of humble and devoted service. It felt wrong, that was the word that best described his feelings. Plain wrong. He reached for someone else's mug of fresh uwe and without a nod or excuse just picked it up and went outside in the clear cold air.
He looked casually over the throngs of artisans, laborers and soldiers going about their frantic work. The artisans were terribly busy constructing breakable, portable siege engines, refurbishing and testing the steamers that had fallen in prolonged disuse. Even with the sudden influx of forced skilled and unskilled labor, he could easily discern they had already fallen behind schedule.
In the background to the main staging area of the army, laborers were hard at work ferrying ore from the nearby Ilo and Rohms mines. The mines were working at full capacity non-stop, but the noble families that were allowed to operate the mines were failing to reach the needed production quotas. Already, procrastinators had teamed up with squads of army men that were instructed to gang-press as many people as needed to meet the allottment.
There were less than ten days left before the army was expected to march fully armed with the maximum strength of trained men. There were still thousands of weapons and pieces of armor to be made, which meant more and more ore was required each day.
Forges had been setup right there in the staging area, but artisans were already starting to break down from exhaustion. Work had been issued to forges and workshops around the Territories, and failure to meet the quota assigned to each would be punished by death.
The same went for the grand fields of noble families. It was reported that even the Lords themselves, the heads of the families, were working their own fields; busy to harvest as much grain, wheat and fitlle as possible however premature the season.
The whole of the Territories was living and breathing in preparation of the army - everything else had come to a standstill. Mills had broken down from excessive speed while grinding incessantly, day and night. Rumors of some of them catching on fire trying to meet the demand could not be far from the truth.
Horses and tract animals of all kinds like cows and donkeys were being taken forcibly from their masters, in most cases the sole animal in their possession to work the lands and make a living with. Huge convoys that stretched from one side of a town to the other were being created by local procrastinator forces and went about the countryside, picking up whatever it was on their ministry-approved lists to fill up cart after cart of supplies and materials for the army.
All of that wealth was congregated and amassed in even larger convoys that stretched as far as the eye could see, filling up the few roads that carts could traverse. Some of them had already started arriving at Pyr and the staging area which was a huge stretch of land to the south of the City, where once the harbor of Urfalli had lain.
The harbor had been made anew and ships from the farther reaches of the Territories would begin arriving in the next couple of days, and like the cart convoys would be laden to the brim with supplies and men, flirting with disaster from being overweight and prone to sinking should they happen upon bad weather.
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