The Forgotten War by Howard Sargent

may help to thin the number of volunteers down considerably.’
    Twenty minutes later Reynard returned to where Morgan was waiting outside his tent with some dozen or more well-built, surly-looking men. Morgan recognised one of them immediately.
    ‘Hey, Rozgon!’ he called. ‘Still avoiding your wife?’
    A grizzled bear of a man, almost as broad as he was tall with a shock of white hair and a long, tangled beard stepped forward. He wore what looked like a wolf pelt over his studded leather
jerkin and an ugly-looking axe swung at his side. He regarded Morgan fondly, only through one eye though, his left being white as milk.
    ‘By Keth, which one?’ He clasped Morgan in a grip as bearlike as his appearance. ‘Here’s me telling everyone you had died still owing me ten ducats.’ He was
renowned for never forgetting a gambling debt.
    ‘Pah, the dice were loaded, and they were your dice, I seem to remember; either that or you had Culo’s luck.’
    ‘They were my dice, they weren’t loaded and I don’t need the God of Chance to beat you!’
    ‘Do you ever lose with them? I mean, seriously? And what’s with the stupid beard?’
    ‘The good lady Britta, who does for me most handsomely in this blighted camp, says it makes me look younger.’
    ‘I suppose at your age I would like to look sixty, too.’
    Rozgon snorted and smiled. ‘Cheeky whelp! If anyone else had said that they would be decorating their armour with their own teeth. Anyhow, what is this all about? The good knight says you
have a job to do, one that could drive us all into the arms of Xhenafa.’ Xhenafa was the god who carried the living to the world of the dead and their final judgement; soldiers would invoke
him if they saw their chances of survival as dubious.
    ‘He might be right, but I think we could all get through it. It is just a jaunt through Claw Pass. Want to come?’
    ‘Claw Pass?’ said Rozgon thoughtfully. ‘At this time of year? Keth take me! If it gets me out of this shithole of a camp, count me in. The newer recruits have no respect here,
you know. I was telling a few of them about our defence of Fort Axmian when one of them yawned. Yawned, I tell you! The little bastard, I had to dangle him upside down over the campfire before he
apologised.’
    ‘You were always a persuasive man; we should have sent you to negotiate with the Arshumans years ago.’
    ‘Aye,’ nodded the big man enthusiastically. ‘They would have sued for peace immediately.’
    ‘Only if you bored them to death by droning on about our defence of Fort Axmian.’
    Rozgon laughed at this, a sound that startled even the warhorses. Morgan grinned himself. ‘Now, who do you recommend out of this lot?’
    ‘Well, they are all good men. What are you after? Bruisers? Archers?’ Morgan nodded when he mentioned archers. ‘Well, in that case the two boys at the end. Samson, Leon, step
forward.’
    Two much younger men advanced. Both were tall, spare and more lightly armoured than Rozgon. One had jet-black hair and a thin smattering of chin stubble; the other was as bald as an egg with
thin watery blue eyes.
    ‘Leon’s the one with the head like a baby’s arse,’ Rozgon said tactfully. Morgan spoke to them. ‘Growler here has recommended you. I need archers that can scout,
hunt game, not waste arrows, and follow orders. It is a risky mission and we will be in the wild for much of it, so foragers are the sort of men we need.’
    ‘You have described us both perfectly,’ said Samson. ‘We are handy with knives and short swords, too.’
    Leon turned to Samson and they both smiled, as if sharing some private joke.
    ‘Do the two of you know each other?’
    ‘We are cousins, sir. Always competing with each other; one day Leon may even catch up with me. Anyway, that is why we both want to go – camp life has not offered up enough
challenges as of late.’
    ‘Very well, I will give you all the details shortly. First... Hold on, that’s Haelward.’