Icarus's blog: "Somantics"

Every seed planted, doesn't sprout.
Every sprout doesn't grow.
Every tree doesn't bear fruit...

Some just wither to dust, he wondered what name they were calling him now...
Some far off, distant thing.
Started with a D?

"Captain?"
Davretor...
the name was Davretor this time.
"Hmm?" He had trimmed his beard and knixed the waggling pony tail of his faux-lordship. Trading white cloth gloves for studded leather and iron once again.
This new suit though... it creaked and whined with every move, no damn good.
He began to contemplate protection over sound... it'd have to depend on the day, the mission, and the weather.
So much depended on the weather.

He had a faint suspicion that while he fussed over his armor, the junior officer addressing him wouldn't actually keep talking.
"This isn't regular army, get that stick out of your ass before someone helps you breathe through your neck- speak! I can do two things at once"
The man he bought the armor from absolutely refused to distress wear, or break in the the joints for him... old gloves really are the best. No one ever says "fits me like a NEW boot". Davretor suddenly had an awareness of his distaste for "craftsmen".
"New orders sir! Your platoon is to cover the advancing flank with support fire and mop up any stragglers"
"...you mean deserters?" The young courier jarred a bit under his helmet.
"In addition... you are to discourage any faltering in the advancing ranks with lethal means if necessary"
"So... you want me to put a spear to the backs of some farmer's son drafted into your meaningless war and pick through the wounded like some grisly vulture that can't wait for lunch?" Davretor eyed the young officer. He had probably never raised a sword in anger or righteousness in his entire life.
And based on his breeding, fair skin, twinkling eyes, and that glistening new armor smell...
he probably never would.
"Sounds great!" He clapped his hands on his knees and popped up, forgetting he was in a particularly squat tent and managing to brush his head with coarse cloth which caused him to instinctively jerk out of the way. His previous accomodations were much more glamorous. Marble floors, columns, booming halls and echoing ceilings. He even had a butler... a butler! Someone to buttle for him and say "good day sir" and "as you wish sir".
Things were so stable, so regular... so easy.
But with Catherine gone...
He pawed absently at the pierced, tough flesh on his abdomen.
Went right for the liver and kidneys...
"God I miss her." He said looking straight through the messenger.
The boy was already terrified of the mercenary commander, hearing tale of his exploits in combat around campfires, and witnessing first hand how Davretor could put his hand through a full oak-bound keg of ale and lift it with one arm.
Let nothing come between that man's soldiers and their ale.
Not even the stingiest corks.
... Though a hammer, drill, or hatchet would've done the job more neatly.

He was the stuff of bad dreams on the battlefield.
Someone said he pulled an arrow that struck him through his hand and threw it back at his assailant striking him dead before he even realized he had fallen off his horse.
A close friend of a good buddy, of a new acquaintance claims he saw the captain speaking tongues and made the earth bleed where his devilish words fell.
A whole squad swears he drinks the blood of the fallen, and eats his wounded to keep his men's souls trapped in eteranl servitude.

Two of these statements were in fact true.

However Davretor was not aware of the soldier still in his tent, and the young man took this as a sign that he should step very quickly and quietly away. He should then return to his pretty fiance, and the house of his mother and father immediately after this little scuffle he had volunteered for with dreams of adventure and chivalrous battle only to be met by mud that must be scrubbed, things barely considered food, snide lords made officers for the week swilling wine and commanding at great distance of anything but numbers against numbers, charts against graphs- and one dangerously eccentric monster who bedded in a field tent dressed in a man's skin and cavalier grin.