Paksworld

Where you have recruits, you have problems.   Some problems seem to be endemic to just about every military organization, though I suspect that some paramilitary organizations full of fervent Believers (any kind–fervent Believers are more alike than distinguished by the content of their beliefs) may avoid some of them.

Some of these problems were mentioned in the first Paks books, but a new set of books lets me play with a few more.   Consider the issue of food.   Recruits in Paks’s world do not come from sterile homes fanatical about cleanliness or worried too much about vermin.   Most come from poor families, where there’s one room or maybe a room and a loft, and people sleep in the same room with the remnant of what they ate.

So the rules in the recruit cohort, about not having food in the barracks–though easy to enforce when recruits have no place to obtain food except the mess hall, with their sergeant and corporals watching to be sure they don’t walk off with any–may be evaded during such celebrations as Midwinter Feast, when there’s an abundance of treats and a general relaxation of the rules for a couple of days.

Surely no one will miss a few of those piles of honeycakes, and it surely would be great to extend the celebration a day or so by having a few of those honeycakes and other goodies to nibble on in the cold nights with one’s best buddies…just tuck them well into the straw mattress, and who will ever know?

The critters that no organization, however diligent, can completely eliminate, not with stables right across the courtyard, the granary, the storerooms for the messhall, and the middens.   So, on one of the nightly rounds of the NCO on watch, there’s a telltale scurry along a wall…somethings with long tails…where there should be nothing to attract such things.   And a thorough inspection reveals  more than one private stash of rodent-attracting goodies.

“It wasn’t stealing…you said we could have all we wanted…”

They don’t have toothbrushes, exactly, but you can imagine what life is like the next day for the recruit cohort.    Bad enough to have the stash; really not smart to try to talk your way out of trouble.

Terribly unfair, too, as the real reason the rats were where they were was the dragon.