The Army Advances

A man stood on a hill, surrounded by nothing but open plains. His longish dark hair blew in the wind, flailing aimlessly around his face. He was getting annoyed with the single strand that seemed to be constantly getting into his eye as if it was on a mission to inconvenience him, but there were people watching, and the last thing he wanted to do was make it look like he wasn't dramatically gazing out into the future.

"Orders, sir?" a peon said from behind him. This was it. This was his moment. He'd wanted to deliver an inspiring speech since the urge to join the military had first hit him as a boy. He took a deep breath, waiting for the words to hit him. They didn't, or at least if they did it was more of a love tap.

"Onwards," he said unimpressively. Had he no restraint, he would have cursed aloud right then and there. There was no increase in the volume of his voice, no rasp in his voice that acted as a tell for his daunting life experiences, and, most regrettably of all, no emphatic finger point. He'd blown it.

"Onwards!" the peon shouted to the rag-tag team of soldiers, which amounted to maybe five on a good day when you didn't count all of the wounded that stumbled behind them, still climbing up the hill. All of them seemed to groan in unison. Onwards was not a popular course of action, it would seem. That or they were as disappointed with the man's delivery of the order as he was.

The man waited as the soldiers crawled by. Even their horses, guaranteed by the Royal Stablemaster to be the finest and most attentive in the land, seemed to have given up on life. The peon stood next to the man.

"What's our course of action, sir?" he asked, wearily looking at the wounded soldiers who brought up the rear.

"Onwards, for now," the man said.

"Yes sir, but after that?"

"The invasion commences," the man said. That was a good line, he felt. It could have used a slightly better delivery, but the material itself was pretty decent.

"Sir, shouldn't an invasion force be made up of more than seven able bodied men?"

"Not when we have our secret weapon," the man said, trying on a menacing grin. Its effect was lost on the peon, who only raised an eyebrow in confusion instead of cowering in fear.

"What would that be, sir?" The man looked at the peon, trying to pick out whether or not he was joking.

"Well I..." he started, "I figured you'd know that."

"I don't, sir. Please inform me."

"No, I mean, I put you in charge of inventory for a reason, peon."

"My name's Reikker, sir. Sergeant Reikker."

"What'd I say?"

"Peon, sir."

"Freudian slip. You'll have to forgive me."

"Whose slip?"

"Forget about it. Not important. I asked you to keep a track of inventory. Have you done that?"

"Yes sir."

"Then you know about our secret weapon then."

"No clue, sir."

"Okay, read me the inventory slip." The peon pulled a rolled up scroll out of his pouch, unfurling it and perusing over it for a few moments.

"It's not good, sir."

"What've we got?"

"Not much, sir."

"Gunpowder?"

"No sir."

"Spare swords?"

"No sir."

"Daggers, even?"

"No s- wait..." the peon examined the scroll further. "No sir."

"Okay, what does the sheet say we have?"

"Nothing, sir."

"Nothing? I know we have something."

"Not according to this sheet, sir."

"Well what does the sheet say?" The peon looked over the scroll again for a long few moments.

"We ain't got shit, sir."

"You've already said that, peon," the man started raising his voice, unsuccessfully trying to sound like he was holding back a hellish fit of rage through bared teeth. "What does the sheet say?"

"That is what the sheet says, sir." The peon flipped the scroll around to reveal that the sheet read just what the peon had said: We ain't got shit. The man stared at it dumbfounded.

"We don't have enough resources to have anything worth putting on the sheet, so we use what little resources we have to put that we don't have anything worth putting on the sheet on a sheet."

"It would seem that way, sir." The man didn't move, keeping a half-defeated, half-mortified look on his face.

"I'm starting to think we might not win this war on my good looks alone."