COLLECTED MEMORIES OF SERGEANT CAVANAUGH

[caesaropapist]

[Tesrin Hray, 8th]

    The sun was unbearably hot. I had been a Sergeant, then. The second week of my shift: two or three days after we had taken them in. Arnock, then, was just a Soldier. Fauchard was green around the gills, and ever paranoid of our ill fortune. We were strong, then. A sense of brotherhood.

And then we met him. Another lost, miserable piece of shite Worminger. He said he was from some Ring or another, back then. A soldier in another Lord's army. None of us paid it any mind. We all were. Rings Ninety-Three, Ninety Nine... Those Banafsi boys; they didn't even remember their rings. Prison nicknames, and blurry pasts. I think, even that day, the lot of us were friends.

I don't think I really gave him a choice.
"Welcome to the Fourth Legion, scab. You don't have a name till you earn it back."

We briefed him. A quick talk. He knew the rules. So did I.
I couldn't even tell you about his time as a Scarab. He was a natural fit.

[Tesrin Hray, 27th]

"I'd like me one of those Camels,"
Coughing. I smiled. "Don't we both? You've got to make Sergeant first, Cavanaugh."

He's the only fellow I've never met with no ambition. What was it, that he told me? I remember it just barely in the back of my mind. "I don't want the command. Just a damn camel," and I remember laughing. I urged him to push. To try to take the next seat. I think Fauchard was my second, back then. Some of the men were green with envy. Others, anger. Boucher: he and Cavanaugh were alike in everything but that.

It's the good men who don't want power, in this life.
It just falls upon them.

[Kanon Hray, 22nd]

"Is it you?"
I could tell he was hurt. But I was suspicious. I was always suspicious. He offered me a gift. It was a flail. And a nice flail, at that. And the next day, there was a dead man. No face left. It was caved into a fine pulp. Back then, we said that man was Magistrate Squeev. Dressed up in his fine white coat, trussed like a hog. The door to the barracks was open, below. The blood trailed into it.

"Was it?"
It wasn't.

[Kanon Hray, 29th]

"It's not because you messed up," I said.
"It's because you got caught," I said.

We whipped him like a dog. Half the Well watched. Some of them chanted for his death, like rabid dogs and animals. Every strike I dealt stung worse than the last. I was beside myself with anger. In the middle of our most important investigation, he'd roughed up Mro Po. He let them make noise about it. A whole riot, brewing in the streets, over doing his damned job. And I was cutthroat. I still wanted Lieutenantship, back then.

That was the last time we truly talked, before things went downhill. But that's my history, not his.

[INTERREGNUM]

"You're conscripted," Caddy said.
"Tell me that again, and you'll be shitting teeth," the Khan said.

They were quick friends. That's what I'm told. Cavanaugh had a way of turning any good warrior into a brother in a couple of days flat. A bit like a magnet. The opposite of me. Most men came to loathe me, the longer they knew me. Difference between a good man and a successful one.

[INTERREGNUM 2]

Banked opposite a fortress of the Orcs.
Arrows were flying back and forth, somewhere near Nusrum.
They went to take the charge: the Khan, his companions.

But the Green was already ahead of him, at the walls.

[ADAR 16th]

"He got what was coming to him."
This was the last time we ever met.
"Drinks at the Krak?" Like old times, after every victory.
We used to get shittfaced and mock Jodfry. Or I did. That's just who I am.

"I'd tell you about the future. Plans, politics, shit like that.
But this is going to be the last time I get to see you, eh?
Unless you let me talk you out of it."

I implicitly pleaded with him to stay home.
"It's my job," Cavanaugh said.
"Love him or hate him, I can't leave a Legate to die."

"Fine. Take this, then. Pay me back when you get home."

[ADAR 16th, Night]
They carried him back.
The other one, my brother, didn't even leave a body.
Maybe Kreutz is still down there. Maybe it was just a clone that died.

    "He earned his legacy," the Lodgeman said. "This Axe will be mounted on our wall, and his battle remembered."
Kirgan'd be happy with that, I think, if he were still alive.
But he's not. It's just us. Us and that fat pig on the podium, mourning his loss.
The reason the Tormented exist. The reason Oscar Kreutz is dead. The reason Cavanaugh died.
The reason Hekatomb died.

One more honorable Martyr is nothing more to the Butcher of the Red Hill.