(Author’s commentary); Hi, Paul… since you seem to be the only person reading my novel as I write it, I figured I would just address you directly. Can you tell me if the rank insignia description at the end of the chapter is easy to follow along with… too much detail… not enough… whatever… thanks, buddy. I am happy with the way the resistance army is shaping up… I like the new spy master… just have to figure out how best to use him… and just so you know, the story might seem to be a bit bogged down right now… but… well… I don’t want to spoil the surprise… but things are going to get… more interesting… soon…

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The Seven Kingdoms

Chapter Twenty Two

Hildy walked toward the man who was approaching her. They met in a corner of the field, and Hildy appraised the fellow. He was short and slender and well into middle age. His long hair, however, had no trace of gray to mar its sleek blackness. He had a thin, black mustache that hung down on either side of his mouth. He also had a tan as dark as any Hildy had ever seen, and his dark skin combined with his seamed and weathered face to give him the appearance of a carving made of some dark wood. He wore a dirty, wrinkled, white tunic and a pair of old sandals, and looked so ordinary that no one would focus on him in a crowd.

“I have looked forward to meeting you for some time, commander,” the man said.

Hildy was almost getting used to being called that. She nodded and waited for the man to continue.

He did. “I know the queen likes to call me her spy master, but I never think of myself that way. I just like people, I like to meet them, to talk to them. I’ve been that way since I was a little boy. I started as a fisherman, then worked on trade ships, and ended up owning one. I loved travelling. It gave me a chance to meet more people.”

Hildy smiled, prompting him to go on.

“The queen has always been interested in knowing everything that happens, anywhere at all. And I’m sure you know about her obsession with the Skulls. It was natural that she would seek out the traders, as a useful source of information. She would meet the ships at the docks when we returned form our voyages, and ask captains and crew all sorts of questions. After talking to me on numerous occasions, she just sort of decided I was the one best suited for feeding her need to know things. She asked me to continue to make new friends. But she wanted me to focus on particular people.”

Hildy nodded encouragingly.

He was encouraged. “She wanted me to befriend anyone who might be in a position to know anything about the kingdom of Skull. Traders who went there, or people who met Skulls when they were visiting their kingdoms, tavern owners and serving girls, craftsmen, shopkeepers and innkeepers. There were also people from this kingdom that have married into families in other kingdoms, but are still loyal to us. But she was most interested in any Skulls who had left the kingdom to live elsewhere, especially the ones who did not hold the kingdom in high regard. On top of all that, she gave me bags of coins, and told me to spread them around, to be extra generous to anyone who was having financial difficulties. She wanted long-term relationships, and she wanted people to feel indebted to us.”

“It sounds like it would be difficult to remember who all those friends of yours were, and where they lived and what they had told you,” Hildy observed.

“Oh, it is,” the man agreed. “I used to keep it all in my head, but it got to be too complicated for that. I have a set of rooms in the castle, kept locked and guarded at all times. There are chests and desks and walls of shelves and drawers. There are piles of reports and stacks of ledgers saying who was paid what and when. I used to come back from my travels and just tell her what I had heard. Eventually, I was asking my friends to write down important information, and I would pick it up the next time I visited them. I would get bundles of reports at every stop. The queen liked to spend hours every day, sitting in my offices, reading every last word. But the flow of information has dried up.”

“And most of your friends are still there, wanting to be, uh, friendly, so to speak, as the queen just reminded me.” Hildy was trying to think of ways to take advantage of this resource.

“Precisely, commander,” the spy master replied. “I even have friends in the kingdom of Skull that I would trust with my life. The difficulty is in getting in touch with them.”

Before she could reply, the spy master had more to say. “My ability to make friends does not only apply when I am away from home. Over the years, I have gotten to know many people here, people who were citizens of other kingdoms, but fell in love with someone here and decided to stay. Also, I have many new friends, friends who managed to find a trade ship or a fishing boat and flee their lands when the Skulls invaded them. And there are also old friends, from before the troubles began, who managed to slip away and ended up here. Many of these people, and not only men, but women as well, mind you, would be willing to return home. They would risk their lives to provide us information, if we could deliver them safely.”

“The black ships!” Hildy exclaimed, suddenly seeing what the spy master was hinting at.

The man smiled widely. “Yes, commander, black ships with black sails and black longboats, sailing through the darkness. We just need to paint over the white trim. Even if they were somehow spotted by the enemy, they might be assumed to be just another Skull ship, might they not?”

“I will not risk the Wavebounder, or the commander of my fleet,” Hildy countered, “but the Black Ship, which is what we have been calling our captured prize, would be perfect for testing this scheme of yours.”

“As you wish, commander,” Tarry Oar agreed, “but I had another thought as well. Perhaps, instead of just sending people to gather information, we might also send people to start setting up small groups of locals, and training them to be ready to aid us when we begin taking the kingdoms back from the Skulls. We could send weapons, to be hidden until the time of need.”

Hildy held out her hand, and the man took it solemnly. “I find myself liking you, spy master.”

The spy master bowed deeply, still clasping her hand. “I consider that to be a great honor, commander.”

The following day, at midmorning, Hildy was going through yet more reports, but now she had help. Right as she was finishing her breakfast, a group of men had arrived, carrying open-faced cabinets full of shelves, and chests with sturdy locks, each with a set of keys dangling from them. There was also a large desk that took four men to carry, that was full of cubbyholes and drawers with locks and keys.

Accompanying this procession of men and furniture were three middle-aged women. It was these three ladies, the names of whom she had already forgotten, that were now helping her sort the endless reports into some semblance of order. Hildy was not in the best of moods. At some time during the night, someone had crept into her room and made off with her uniform. She was reduced to wearing one of her plain, white tunics. It just felt wrong. She was sure there was a logical explanation, but no one had come forward with it yet.

“Do you think,” Hildy asked any of the three women who felt like answering, from where they were spread out around the walls of the room, cramming reports on top of other reports on similar subjects, “that we should make copies of all these reports for the queen?”

Two of the ladies exchanged bemused looks, while the third turned to Hildy with a smile. “I can assure you, my Lady, that the queen receives a copy of each and every one of these, usually before these have been delivered here.” She returned to the task at hand.

Hildy barely had time to consider that this didn’t surprise her at all before another strange procession trooped into the room. Lawry, Aluff and Nudge paraded to a halt in a line in front of Hildy, where she sat behind the huge new desk, and came to attention. They were all dressed in green soldier’s uniforms. And the uniforms were not uniform in color, but were splotched and mottled in various shades of green. They all also wore a helmet and breastplate of leather, and these too had been splashed with green dye or paint. Hildy was more than a little impressed.

“We have a present for you,” said Lawry, suppressing a grin.

Seevan came marching into the room, carrying a bundle of green clothing, and looking very pleased with himself. Hildy had wondered where the little messenger boy had gone. He presented her with her own uniform and armor, now transformed with new shades of green.

“And how exactly did you end up with my clothes?” she asked in mock seriousness.

The boy looked worried. “I crept in last night when you were asleep, so we could surprise you.”

“Well, you did,” she said, ruffling the boy’s hair.

“You can’t wear them quite yet,” Nudge said.

“Some parts are still a little damp,” Aluff informed her.

“It turned out that making the uniforms green was the easiest part,” Lawry explained, as Hildy unfolded her shirt to admire it. “The tunicgrass from which cloth is made is already green. We have been learning all about how the grass is pounded and flattened and then soaked in big vats of cold water in order to remove the green color. When it is white, they make cloth out of it by twisting the long fibers together and then weaving it. Then they dye it the desired color, or leave it white, before it is made into tunics or uniforms, table cloths or curtains or whatever.”

Nudge took up the story. “We found out that by soaking the pounded grass for just a little while, it takes just enough of the green out to give us a good, lighter shade of green for the uniforms. But we save the water from each big batch, and as we boil it down it gives us darker dyes to splash on the cloth later, after it is woven into big sheets. No two uniforms will ever come out exactly the same, they are each a work of art.”

Aluff leaped into the narrative. “Once we have the large sheets of woven cloth, all dyed in different shades of green, we throw them into huge vats of boiling water, and this sets the color into the cloth.”

Hildy found all this to be very interesting.

“We do have one problem,” Lawry pointed out. “The tunicgrass grows wild and very fast, too. We will never have trouble getting material for uniforms. But the armor is another story. I’m afraid there aren’t enough rooters in all the world to make enough leather armor for all the soldiers we are going to train.”

“I was just reading a report about that very thing this morning, sent to me by Zar,” Hildy replied.

“We are working on an idea,” Lawry told Hildy. “The cloth is made into long sheets, as we said, and the fibers of the grass run in one direction. We found, that by sewing together a few layers of cloth, with the fibers running in different directions, you can make chest pieces that will stop a spear point… most of the time… if the person thrusting the spear isn’t to big and strong.”

“Well, regular leather armor won’t stop a spear point every time,” Hildy observed.

“I’m glad you feel that way,” Lawry replied, “because we have begun making the new cloth armor already, and it works for the helmets too. And the best thing is that the cloth armor is faster to make. All the women know how to sew, but there are not that many armor makers around.”

“You know I trust your judgment, Lawry,” Hildy assured her. “We need to balance a lot of factors, how much can we make, how fast, with what we have. I know you are all doing your best.”

“I just figured it would be better for everybody to have some kind of armor than for only a few of us to have the slightly better armor,” Lawry said. “But take a good look at your new uniform shirt. You missed one little detail.”

Hildy did as she was told, and noticed there were small, round patches of red-dyed cloth sewn on both shoulders of the shirt, as well as one on the left side of the front at chest level, and another, at the same height, centered on the back. The patches were about as big around as a large coin, or if she formed a circle with her thumb and longest finger. In the center of each of the red circles was a black dot the size of a thumbprint, and crossing through that dot, a black X extended to the edges of the circle.

“It occurred to me, as I watched the piles of uniforms growing in the sewing rooms,” Lawry said, “that, in the old days, all the soldiers knew who their captains and commanders were. But with an army the size that we will soon have, with soldiers from all over, that will no longer be the case. We came up with the idea of putting these rank insignia patches on all the officers’ uniforms. They will be on the front and back of the armor too, and the helmets.”

“We make them in different colors, so you can tell what the officer does, as well as his rank,” Nudge added.

“Yes,” continued Aluff, “we used red for the army, and blue for the navy. And we just started making yellow ones when we heard what Sanara was up to, for her fire troops.” The look of love on his face when he mentioned Sanara almost caused Hildy to break out laughing.

“We had to change commander Bloom’s system of rank,” Lawry explained. “We are growing too fast. We use black X’s for army troop commanders of one thousand men, a black dot for troop captains of one hundred men, and plain red patches for junior troop captains of ten men. Fleet captains of ten ships get a blue circle with an X, and the captain of a single ship gets the black dot. Junior ship captains, the second in command of a ship, get the plain circle. We are still working on the flame troop insignia. We probably will use a yellow circle with a black dot for fire troop captains of one hundred men, and a plain yellow circle for junior fire troop captains of ten men. We aren’t sure how many fire troops we will end up with, and we can always change it later. But the best part of this is that you can just sew a new patch on when anyone gets promoted, and people will know who they have to take orders from.”

“And you get the red circle with the X and the dot, because you are the commander of all of us,” said Seevan proudly.