The Medieval Marine - S01 E26

Story 3 hours ago

The Medieval Marine - S01 E26

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 26

Earl John of Sheffield had been waiting for this moment since the summer. He hated that his serfs had been liberated and it really pissed him off that some of the minor nobles in the area were now making more money than he was. He just couldn't bring himself to pay the lower classes to do work that they should have been doing anyway for they were not good for anything else. At least in his opinion. It really pissed him off when Marion's labor board had fined him for shorting his employee's paychecks. He knew that he would have to wait for the perfect opportunity to revolt or Marion's army would crush him. As he waited, he wasn't idle. He put our feelers to the other nobles in the area to see if any of them would be interested in joining him. He found four other fairly minor nobles that were interested in joining him in his revolt. As his diplomatic efforts were under way, he had sent men to infiltrate Marion's army and learn about her style of warfare. As his diplomatic efforts were coming to fruition, he was able to find a black-market supplier for small arms for his army.

One of the minor nobles that joined him was named Hildyard and John didn't think that much of him. He was arrogant and constantly thought of himself more than he was. As far as John was concerned though, Hildyard would make good cannon fodder. Hildyard's wife on the other was against rebelling for she had been making really good money for herself under Marion's rule and knew that Marion's troops would crush any rebellion. She actually was mad enough, with Hildyard, that she kicked him out of her life for she wanted nothing to do with this rebellion and wanted to protect her family at all cost. She had seen the cost of rebelling against Marion and she wanted no part of it.

John watched as Marion's army crushed the Viking invasion and he hoped that Godwinson's army would tangle with Marion's, but that didn't happen. Just after the Viking invasion had been beaten off, his spies returned and began to train the rest of the noble's combined army in absolute secrecy, John watched as his army was brought up to the standards that Marion's army had been trained to, and John was finding that he couldn't wait to bring Marion's army to battle and crush it. He would then make her his

personal whore. As his army was training, John looked for the

ideal land to do battle on. He knew he would do much better to stay on the defensive so he looked for land that was easy to defend and would allow him an escape route in the event that his plans were upset. He found the perfect place in a spot that was surrounded on three sides by impenetrable swamps. Carefully he began to fortify the area and to protect his men against the expected artillery barrage; he had bunkers built and earthen walls put up around the area,

Finally, he was ready and now he just had to find the perfect opportunity. It came much sooner then he thought. Five days after King Godwinson got to York, the Normans invaded and he took off, back South. By mid-October word came that the King's army had been defeated in battle. John had been waiting for this for he was sure that Marion would send her army south and when she did, he would revolt. He was sure that this would force Marion to further divide her forces for he knew about the troops that she had in Scotland. Sure enough, she did exactly what he had been expecting and he watched as Marion's army moved through the area.

A week after Marion's army left Sheffield, no word had come and

now John knew that it was safe for him to revolt. He sent coded messages to the rest of his co-conspirators and they mobilized their armies. In all they had almost ten thousand men, all armed with firearms. The lack of artillery bothered John some but he was banking on cutting Luke's supply lines and hopefully he would shoot through his supply of ammunition making his artillery useless. It would take a few days for the nobles to gain control of the entire area, so they had spread out some. Their first target was the rail depot and supply dump that was there. Since Luke hadn't been expecting a revolt in the area, he had left only a token force behind to guard it. John's forces quickly overwhelmed the guards but not before the commander had set demolition charges in the power stores. As the guards were being marched out, the powder went up with a massive explosion. The explosion had been caused be a booby-trapped door and caused the death of John's oldest son and a number of his men. John was so upset with this that he ordered the female guards brutally raped before they were drawn and quartered. The male guards were to be castrated before they too were drawn and quartered. Although the guards suffered, they all understood that John's war effort would be crippled for he had been relying on capturing those powder supplies intact. It took almost an entire day to slowly kill the guards and the last to die was the commander. This way, he would have to watch his troops suffer because of what he did. Once all the guards were dead, John ordered that every building was to be torched and the army

was to move to the appointed gathering point. Once all the noble's

armies had gathered, they would march on York and forever put an end to all this bull about men and women being equal and the lower classes having equal rights with the nobles.

What John didn't know was that Luke was already on his way north. He wouldn't find out until he got a message from one of the other nobles. It had been sent in a hurry for the noble didn't even have time to write it down. The message simple:

"Marion's army is back."

John knew that he wouldn't have enough time to gather the rest of the men, so he headed toward his swamp fortress. At least two of the other nobles had been able to meet up with him. All told they had just over seven thousand troops and John was sure that Luke had suffered casualties in battling the Normans. The way John and the rest of his commanders figured; the armies would be about equal.

Almost as soon as John was settling into his new fortress, he got word that Hildyard's forces had also been eliminated. Here it seemed like Luke had launched a night attack and that had caught Hildyard's army by complete surprise. John had tried to warm that idiot about underestimating Luke, for he had managed to send some time talking with Luke during Luke's summer campaign in the area and had come away from that meeting with a huge amount of grudging respect for Luke's command talents. Now Hildyard paid the ultimate price for his stupidity. John spent the time before Luke arrived, strengthening his defenses and had a number of scouts posted to inform him when Luke's forces made it into the area. One of the other things that John had done was to make a hidden path out of the back of the marsh, so that his forces could escape if anything went wrong. He placed hidden fortifications where the path came into the fortress in case Luke tried to come up that path and had even placed a number of booby traps along it to slow Luke's forces down. Now all that there was to do was walt. They had plenty of food, water, and ammunition in the bunkers and had enough bunkers for all the men to hide in.

The very next morning, Luke's army was on the road again. This time they were headed to Scotland to settle some unfinished business. Everyone in the army was now stunned at just how cold Luke had become. Before he would always be the one who would warm the mood of the room with their presence. Now the mood turned subarctic everywhere he went. Of course, everyone still had the upmost respect for him, they just wondered what had

happened to him.

Once the army was back north of the Thames, Alice cornered him:

"Ok Luke you can stop with the little voices now! The campaign is over and you survived just like everyone else in the army."

"Really, the campaign is over now? Since when and who sald anything about the voices bothering me?!?! And while we are on the subject of the campaign, when the fuck did you become a god- damn fucking general? Because I don't ever remember saying that the campaign was over yet."

This was the first time that Luke had ever terrified Alice. Normally his face was always an even color no matter how angry he got, but now he was redder than her hair. For a second, she was petrified but then she fled with tears in her eyes. The look in Luke's eyes basically said that he didn't feel anything about making Alice cry. Luke then received a message that some of the nobles in the Sheffield area was rebelling and that his supply depot had been destroyed to keep it out of the rebel's hands. The army had been gone for almost a week and a half with no news about if they had won or not. In fact, Luke had sent a single highly coded message to Marion telling her of their victory and that he was taking the army up to Scotland. He had also asked her not to say anything to anyone for he wanted to see if any of the nobles would rebel. He was determined that should he die; that Marion would be able to rule and not have rebellious nobles to worry about.

Up to this point the army was making about their usual distance of Just short of twenty-two kilometers a day. As soon as Luke got the message, he ordered the pace be picked up for he wanted almost forty kilometers a day. With this everyone knew that something bad was going on but Luke was close lipped about it. The army raced north arriving back in the Sheffield area in a matter of days. They found the whole area in an uproar for it seemed like a number of the remaining nobles in the area had been waiting on the army to be away so that they could rebel. They hated that their serfs had been freed and many of them had taken massive hits to their incomes as a result. To make matters worse, every one of them had firearms for their personal armies.

Luke had moved his army so fast that he had managed to catch one of the rebellious nobles by complete surprise and annihilated that noble's army within only fifteen minutes. The noble had been captured alive and Luke ordered that he and his entire family be Impaled and left at the side of one of the major roads in the area. To really drive his point home, the noble was forced to watch as

absolutely everyone in his family was stripped naked and impaled

on objects from his own castle. Once they had been impaled, he was impaled as well. Luke was tired of nobles rebelling every time he had his back turned and he was determined to put a permanent end to their rebelling. Luke didn't even take time to loot the noble's possessions before he went after the next target. This one had some warning but it wasn't enough for him to get completely ready.

Luke now pulled yet another trick out of his hat and made a night attack. This caught the noble off guard and most of his army routed without even putting a hand on their guns. The rest of the army was killed where they stood. The noble this time was killed in combat. When Luke investigated, he found that the noble's wife had kicked him out because he wanted to rebel while she loved being under Marion's rule. This saved her and her farmilies lives and Luke made sure that her property was not touched. He even invited her to dinner that evening but she respectfully declined. Now Luke's army had knocked off two rebel nobles and had only suffered forty casualties, while killing or capturing almost three thousand. All prisoners were required to dig the mass graves for the dead and then they were sent to a prison camp that Luke had set up where they could be delt with later. He made sure to leave enough guards to keep the prisoners under control and a cavalry unit to scout for any enemy units trying to free the prisoners.

The third noble out of the five that rebelled was now fully alerted that Luke was in the area. This one wasn't an idiot and had set himself up in an area that he could easily defend. Luke knew that he was going to have a problem with this one for he had met this bastard before and remembered him. Not only was this noble the smartest out of the five but he had the largest army and he was in as easily defensible position. In addition, Luke learned that the other two remaining nobles had joined him and swelled his ranks. Luke, with a small cavalry escort, rode around the enemy position and he noticed that there was a small, tight path into the rear of the enemy position. The problem that Luke had with it was that it was almost too obvious. In the end, Luke decided not to attack along the path, like some of his subordinates wanted to. Luke was going to pull out another trick and make his own path. He had his artillery start firing at dawn, the day after they had arrived in front of the noble's defenses. They were to fire as fast as they could for four hours and then stop. While the artillery was firing, Luke would take one of his brigades around and hack their way through the swamp that was guarding the enemy's flank.

The brigade that he would be using, left camp well before daylight

so that he could be in position to start hacking when the barrage

started. This, Luke's troops easily accomplished. On the way

through the marsh, Luke seen that one of his soldiers was having an especially rough time. Her problem was that she wasn't tall enough and she couldn't keep her ammunition box out of the water without a huge amount of effort. Another problem she had was that the water was cold and she was completely soaked. Luke came up behind her and picked her up and placed her on his shoulders. She was one of the new recruits so she didn't know that Luke often helped his troops like this

"Hello private. What's your name lass?"

"M-Madeline, sir."

"Please while you're up there, Luke will do just fine. I do have one favor to ask of you though. Can you help keep an eye out ahead of us for the enemy please?"

"Yes sir... uh Luke" Luke smiled at her hesitation.

"So why did you join the army, Madeline?"

To get out of an arranged marriage to an awful man. That and I wanted to serve Marion for she had done so much good for my village."

"How long have you been with us?"

"I joined right after you beat those Vikings."

"So, this is going to be your first real battle?"

"Yes,"

"So, are you going to enroll in reading and writing classes or can you read and write already?"

"I don't know. I mean I'm just a girl Luke."

"So what? Marion reads. Her head body guard, Gabriel, reads. The chief engineer, Pollyanna, reads. The head doctor, Alice, reads, so why do you think that you can't?"

"Well, I... I don't know. It doesn't seem like a very lady like thing to do.

"Neither is joining the army and yet you did that. Tell you what, after this battle, stop by my tent and you can talk with Alice for a bit so you can learn about all the benefits of reading. Can you at least do that, please?"