"My soldiers," Commandant Chang said. "Give me room."
Many of them had trained in the same temple as the Commandant had. They knew the man, and his ways. Even calm as the Scribe Soldiers all aspired to be, they had their habits, and their quirks, and they had their ways of letting those below them know that they were discontent, even without letting that emotion show on their face.
When Chang asked for them to part, they did. Two men stepped back out of the encirclement to allow room for Chang and his horse. But that still left the Commandant in a tighter position than he would have liked. He tended to shy away from such claustrophobic situations. They hampered his lance work, and forced him towards unnecessary thoughts.
Those thoughts arose then, but he dismissed them. He might have preferred a different stage, but this was the one that they were given, on the narrow mountain pass in which they stood.
