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*****

The last month of summer would be very busy in Albric Tor.

The local farmers were starting to bring in their harvests of fruits and grains, and there were symbolic tithes to the Royal Family, something that I'm told has been a tradition going back at least to the time of King Irenaeus. As related to me by that font of wisdom, Schweink, apparently things were arranged this way so that Irenaeus didn't have to go out to collect his rations. It put less wear and tear on the countryside. I asked him if Irenaeus the Bloodthirsty was also the founder of the old Thirty-Ninth. The boar tapped out his pipe and pondered.

"Yes and no, me lad. There was a Thirty-Ninth that existed at the time he came to the Throne..."

"How did he come to the Throne, anyway?"

"Stepped over the bodies of two brothers and a sister."

"Metaphorically?"

"Oh, no! Stepped over 'em, real-like. Wouldn't have wanted to be on the detail cleaning that mess up. Bet who ever had the mop had browned off his sergeant, to be sure. They do say royal blood's hell to get out of cloth and stone. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. Well, the Thirty-Ninth that had been around had been a special favourite of one of the brothers, so he reorganized it."

"How?"

"Drove the whole regiment off a cliff, just like they used to do with wild ants, back in the day."

"The whole regiment?"

"Well, an order was an order, lad. Old Irenaeus didn't take any back-chat. When he told you to march off a cliff, you saluted and did so. Don't make generals like that anymore. You'd be up on a charge if you ordered your lads to do that, today. Anyway, he filled all the vacancies, and had the new gang paraded before 'im. Didn't like how they marched, so he had that lot buried alive under the parade ground. You can be sure the third lot remembered who was under 'em when they marched before His Majesty, that time."

I looked rather uneasily at the Royal Parade Ground, and wasn't all that mollified when Schweink told me it wasn't certain that that was the same place where the old-old Thirty-Ninth had been disciplined for poor performance.

In any event, King Adler, bundled up and walking with a cane, shook paws with the farmers and inspected the prize marrows with evident relish and interest. He also personally tasted some of the fruits, to the swelling pride of the farmers, who tossed their hats in the air and gave three loud cheers for His Imperial Majesty.

The process of packing began in earnest, in preparation for the move to both the winter quarters of the Imperial Army and the winter capital for the Royal Household. A steady stream of heavy ant-carts began to deliver boxes, bags and trunks all over Albric Tor.

Lieutenant Wicker, unluckily, fractured a hoof dropping a particularly heavy trunk that he insisted on managing himself. The unlucky part was that he had been under observation by a group of fillies at the time, which probably accounted for the fact that he was not paying full attention to the job. My officer was not best pleased by this, in that he had to pick up some of the slack in the Statecraft Chamber created by the stallion's accident. Aside from the extra workload occasioned by supervising the moving of the files, there were still assorted meetings going on that took up a great deal of time, some of them at odd hours of the morning.

For me, the date of most important was the date of my qualification trial for Gramerye. This was given only twice a year, and Lt. Rutter promised that it would be an all-day event, with just about anything possible and practical in store. We ran through nearly all of the possibilities, though the boar was out of wasp nests, the season for them having passed. He warned me that the examiners might have a trick or two up their sleeve in that regard. I wondered (silently) if they had one of those nests up their sleeve. Too much to hope for.

I was, apparently, the first squaddie he'd actually managed to shepherd this far along in a number of years. Very few enlisted furs tried out for the Gramerye qualification; in many years, there were no candidates at all. It did give me an idea of why he had been pushing me as hard as he had been. It was a matter of professional pride to him that he could turn out a successful student.

There did not seem to be any official reward for getting the qualification. If you're an expert in Elven Spear or Elven Short Sword, you're entitled to an extra two silver a month for each qualification. Squaddies refer to this as "bitter money," since it's enough to pay for a few rounds at one's local. But for the Gramerye, nothing. I asked Lt. Rutter about this, and he only noted, cryptically, that there was a lot that wasn't done officially in the Imperial and Royal Army. As if I didn't know.

The biggest thing on the minds of squaddies, though, was the Royal Feast. The same Royal Princess that had founded the Privates' Institute had, apparently, also left a goodish sum to feed the garrison of Albric Tor once a year. Of course, only squaddies that had a clean record (read: a record of undetected crime) were entitled to share in the bounty. This led to some leverage on the part of assorted sergeants-major, who were able to wield the threat of exclusion from the bash in order to exact assorted fatigues or other kinds of obedience. It usually worked. By tradition, the waiters and servants at the Royal Feast were the senior NCOs and the lower-ranking officers, a bit of topsy-turvy authority.

Squaddies usually found it convenient to accidentally-on-purpose fix their duties so that they could swing by the Festival Field, where the Royal Feast was to be held. The stacks of wine-barrels, baskets of fruits, and the fire-pit for the roast feral aurochs were all surveyed with great anticipation.

The biggest worry, of course, was Bagoum. Apparently, in past years, he had managed to strain the resources of even the Royal Feast, and it was seen as the duty of all enlisted furs in the garrison to know where the greedyguts ram was at all times on the day of the 'do. There was a great deal of worry when word came out that Bagoum was only have one helping of grub per meal, instead of his usual three or four. He claimed he was in "training." You would think it would be the opposite, but there were frowns and whispers that Bagoum was out to set some sort of record. I did not want to know what that entailed.

I had a mini-feast of my own. To my surprise, upon visiting Meadow to help her with any chores, I found that Miss Eichelgruber had laid out a table for two in the garden. While the entrée was delicious enough, the dessert was a fragrant rhubarb cake. Meadow and I eyed each other over it, and we finally decided that one of us should cut the cake, and the other pick one of the two resulting pieces. You never saw such efforts to get a precisely even cut.

The squirrel femme played music throughout the meal. Aside from the lute, she could also play the flute, and even more unusual, she set out a series of very old wine glasses, moistened the rims, and played a very ethereal tune upon them. It was enough to make me put down my fork and ignore the rhubarb cake. Which says quite a bit for her musical talent. She clearly enjoyed the (richly deserved) applause that Meadow and I gave her.

The Lieutenant, for his part, had given me a small package to give to Meadow, which was opened after dessert and a few more songs. It was an object that I had never seen before, and Meadow certainly hadn't, either. Even Miss Eichelgruber, with her knowledge of lore and legend, had to unpack a few of her scrolls and look it up. It was, apparently, something referred to as a "cowrie," and was available only in seaside areas, or in trade with them. Needless to say, the Empire hadn't seen one of these in many a year. This one was mounted as a necklace, set in silversteel.

Let it not be said that the Lieutenant lacks either taste or gallantry. Or cleverness, given the unmistakable signals he was sending to the real party in interest.

The day of the Royal Feast, which was the day before the Great Parade (and two days before my Gramerye Qualification) was one where the officers and NCOs pretty much assumed that no productive work of any sort was going to be done by the garrison. Squaddies changed early into fatigues, the better to take the inevitable wine and food stains that would occur, and mess-kits were scoured and cleaned, and supplies of condiments stuffed into pockets. The tables and benches began to be set up, and the smell of burning wood for the firepit began to carry across that portion of the city.

Toward dusk, the torches in the Festival Field were lit, and hundreds of enlisted furs began to line up, in more or less orderly fashion. The line was not perfectly straight, on account of the fact that many were keeping a careful look-out for Bagoum. The ram was nowhere to be found, even at the head of the line, where he usually was every year. Some wondered if he had an ache in his stomachs. Too much to be hoped for, was the verdict.

With loud cheers, the commander of the Albric Tor garrison approached the Field's closed gates. He sardonically grinned as he was greeted with cries of "Now then, let's drop and give us twenty!" and "March sharp, there!" and similar cries.

He gave a speech, reminding the squaddies of the origins of the Royal Feast, and noting that the Royal Family continued to rely on the Garrison as they had for years past, to preserve order in the capital and ensure that the heart of the Empire could operate with its mind focused on its duties. This was met with spoons and forks rattling against mess-kits, a signal both for applause and to terminate the speech.

With a flourish, the general opened the gates to the Festival Field, and saluted as we all marched by, singing various old army songs. (These ones, I should note, were the clean variety, ones that could be sung in front of generals. Though I think they knew the lyrics to some of the more interesting ditties.)

At one point, the marching stopped, and there was confusion in the ranks as to what the hold-up was. It was only when the word got passed back, that there was a mighty roar of consternation.

Bagoum, it appeared, had nicked an officer's uniform and had snuck in as one of the "servants." Thus, he had access to the vittles before anyone else. The serried ranks of empty plates before him bore testimony to the fact that he had had an early start on us all.

The crowd was somewhat mollified when it fell on Lt. Wicker, crutches and all, to roust the ram from his post, which he did. Though it took the stallion a great deal of time to overcome his stutter and call in the Red Caps, who marched an unrepentant greedyguts passed his colleagues.

For all that, we admired his ingenuity, so we gave him a vigorous whistled chorus of "The Rogue's March" as he was escorted out to the garrison guardhouse. Most of us were of the view that he probably had stuffed his uniform pockets, so the bread-and-water diet there likely would not faze him.

I was served my meal by Sergeant Wing, who ladled out a generous portion of vegetable soup, the kind with carrot slices as big as gold pieces. Our eyes briefly met, and he nodded at me.

Lieutenant Chitterleigh was on wine duty, which occasioned a number of calls for "wench!" To his credit, he took those gibes with a good humour. Some of the more unpopular sergeants were not so lucky, especially the ones who had to clear the tables. Those were the ones who were going to have a long night.

Coming back from the dessert line (rice pudding with raisins), I found that someone had left in my place a scroll. Unrolling it, I found it was what appeared to be a specially commissioned episode of "Jane." This one starred those same two cervine friends I had seen in the colour presentation at the FAFI.

I was able to hit the fire-pit from where I was seated, and got the satisfaction of a brief flare-up as the scroll lit up and disintegrated. I hoped whoever had left me the "gift," and I had a good idea who it was, saw that.

No one wondered why I was moody and brooding the rest of the night. There was understanding regarding my upcoming test, and I was left alone at my corner of a table, to eat the last of my pudding.