In the first summer after the new governor took office, reforms began across the Legions, and the major Legions received their first batch of training manuals.
At the Fifth Legion's garrison, veteran Wollun had only reached page three before his brow furrowed.
He was forty-one. He had spent eight years in the Tear Knight Legion, working his way up from ordinary spearman to squad leader. He had seen four commanders come and go, and had lost count of how many times the men under him had changed.
So when the instructor told them that every junior officer in the Legions had to retrain and take a standardized assessment, Wollun's first thought was that the new governor was making work for them.
"Legion hand signals?" He looked down at the tactics in the manual.
"Advance, halt, spread out, close ranks. I drilled this stuff for more than ten years as a soldier."
The irritation in his voice kept the younger soldiers beside him from answering.
Wolun frowned and flipped through a few more pages.
The manual went into great detail. It redefined squad composition and the order for evacuating the wounded. It set out separate procedures for contact with different contaminants, along with a mountain of other complicated rules.
Wolun scratched his head as he read, then rolled up the manual and stuffed it into his trouser pocket. "How did fighting get so complicated?"
He still scoffed at the manual, but as a Tear Knight soldier, he dutifully attended the practical training.
The first thing that bothered him was that the different commands used by each Legion had all been replaced with one standard set.
In the Fifth Legion, for example, the old signal for retreat was a clenched fist drawn backward. In the Second Legion, it was a downward sweep