Moa did not recognize this soldier. He had not participated in the morning jousts and he had no memory of having seen him even participate in a joust in the past. Afterwards, Moa could not remember all the soldiers who passed. For a start, the majority of them would eventually die and then those who survived long enough were generally those who didn't perform heroically, leaving no real trace passed the retinal persistence and the short-term memory. So after a few days, the faces faded and if these soldiers did not show a performance worthy of leaving a trace, they were forgotten.
Finally, Moa had better a good quality memory, it was important for his job. This morning, the big rod in front of him was not on the battlefield.
Because yes, he was tall, maybe not two meters but he was approaching it. His height was enough to stare at Moa of any size, and even without wearing wedges. And yes, it was a rod, sharpened; it did not reach the quintal and had to have a BMI below the standard.
Usually, the paper checker was just one of the guys in the third squad who was out of luck to have showered too quickly and found himself isolated when he had to go to the mess. He was taken randomly but still belonged to the cyclists, the most physical of the guys, those for whom to climb four floors, to descend two before reassembling four new ones and to travel in the opposite direction after the meeting was a breeze.
This guy, Moa had no idea where he came from. He was probably a member of a team he never had to deal with. He had to be either a kitchen diver or a hairdresser, two professions he had no time to meet.
The only thing he was certain of, his uniform betrayed it, was that he was dealing with a simple soldier, a grunt, a non-graded, and ultimately, although even just a corporal, Moa was the superior.
The soldier's name was Ferrash Heuval, Moa still didn't know. He was indeed a hairdresser but his size should have put him on the path, a tall person being preferable to manage the haircut of an incipient baldness.
Ferrash greeted Moa, as the protocol required, respectful but without more zest. He then asked for his name and number, the standard procedure for attending the meeting.
Moa answered him but all of a sudden, he received an answer which he did not immediately grasp.
He was forbidden to enter.
Moa let out a sly little sneer, incredulous and took his invitation card out of his pocket, because in fact, he was allowed, it was an order he had received more than a right, it was a duty.
He received the same answer, Ferrash remained adamant.
Beginning to get exasperated, Moa explained to him what a hierarchical chain was and that the orders always went from the highest ranking to the lowest ranking and when someone was at the bottom of the ladder, he had no one to give orders to. Himself did not like to receive orders from a superior, it was human nature, nobody liked to be ordered, but hey as it was written on his work contract, it was part of the job, and he did with. A simple soldier giving him an order, in this case, it was hard not to get angry.
Moa wanted to go up and Ferrash had no authority to stop him. Besides, he had missed the train for the officers' mess and if he went there now, he was sure he would have to eat by himself and it was quite unpleasant because many looks would turn to him.
Ferrash remained adamant but seeing that his interlocutor was not calm, he tried to explain himself.
The reality was that he too had received orders and that these orders came from a superior of Moa, a senior enough in the hierarchy to prohibit the access of the building to a corporal and he was allowed to use all coercive means deemed useful to carry out his mission. As proof, he also had a duly signed mission order.
Joining the gesture to the word, Ferrash handed a paper to Moa. It was indeed paper with a regulatory heading, the signatures did not appear to be counterfeit, or by a competent forger and it was on this paper that he learned the name of his interlocutor. In the body of the text he could verify the veracity of what he had just heard. An additional order was also present: Ferrash was to retrieve Moa's report and to transmit it personally to the eighth floor.
To do this, a space was left vacant, a space where Moa could indicate the number of deaths, if he had special remarks, the date and his signature. Ferrash even handed him a pen to do the job.
That it was an order, why not. An order was not disputed, it was carried out, his quintals of peeled potatoes gave Moa cramps in the hands each time he remembered his year at the training camp.
There were, however, nuances that could appear when these orders were transmitted. Some methods were normal, completely acceptable, and others were much less so.
In this case, that none of his superiors waited for him to directly transmit the order, it was understandable, finally, his superiors had to start the briefing up there and they were not paid to wait for their underlings.
But there, Ferrash was at the limit of its threshold of acceptability. He was not condescending. Condescension and reverence were one-way attitudes in the army. Ferrash couldn't be condescending towards Moa; he knew he would have broken the rules. Moa would not have left it pass but he could see the small smile he wore, showing the situation did not displease him. When a man was given power and authority that he was not meant to have, the lack of habit tended to make him abuse of it. Were people born natural leader or did they become one? Moa didn't know how to answer this question but Ferrash was neither born as one nor couldn't he become one in one-shot.
Moa remembered his mishap with Vilpers, the pump attendant, that morning. An open-wound even after many hours had passed, especially for his upper lip. Vilpers was typically the kind of people he did not want to see in the army.
So that the limit was not crossed and Ferrash did not become a new Vilpers yet, he did not want it to occur. Moa did not bother to sport a petty smile, directly taking a serious look, to make the soldier understand where each of them was standing.
On closer inspection, Ferrash was tall and dry. Physically, he commanded respect, at least as much as if he had stripes.
Even putting himself on tiptoe, Moa could only look him in the eye with his chin raised at an angle large enough to make him look haughty.
To teach someone a lesson, you still had to have the means to achieve your ambitions. There, if the rhetoric was on the side of the Moa, and still, was it really, if it had to come to blows, he was almost sure to be on the wrong side of the teacher-student pair.
Moa swallowed back his pride and the saliva that had accumulated in the mouth.
He took the pen Ferrash held out to him and started filling out the instructions. The exercise was not very complicated, number of dead: "1", special remark: "none", after all they had all clearly seen what had happened. If he had submitted his report himself, he would certainly have added a thoughtful comment, just to get lathered, but as he was not going to go up, he did not bother, especially since he would not be present to see the reaction of others upon hearing his flash of humor and that it was a pleasure he refused to offer to Ferrash. He dated and signed the paper with his hand, before returning it to Ferrash.
Ferrash coughed to point out to Moa that the pen he had used was one of his personal possessions and that even if the military was not stingy with the supply of office supplies; this particular pen was a gift. Moa realized his mistake and returned his property to Ferrash.
He could not help adding that even if he was under the direct orders of the hierarchy, his conduct did not please him.
It was however a few moments too late, Ferrash had already greeted him, turned around and entered the building.
The impudent had fled without even bothering to listen to Moa until the end. If the limit hadn't been crossed, this kind of thing had the power to exasperate him.
He would have to chastise Ferrash and it was no longer for a personal convenience. It was the duty of a diligent superior when one of his subordinates was so disrespectful. If Ferrash allowed himself this behavior with the peers above him in the military hierarchy, it was hardly imaginable what behavior he would adopt in front of the press or worse, an FWJ official.
Well, as a hairdresser, the likelihood that he would interact with them was low.
Journalists had their own crews, working exclusively for them. Make-up artists, hairdressers, costume designers, all that made it possible to hide the misery of a disadvantaged physique was a staff the media could not survive without.
As for the officials of the FWJ, they preferred civilian personnel, considered more competent.
Nevertheless the probability was not zero.
Lots of reasons could make such a meeting possible. Take for example, social anger was escalating for already a few hours and many people decided to go on strike. Since strikes were an individual right, not everyone was. Some journalists continued to work because appearing on the air was important to their ego, at least more important than fighting to improve their working conditions. A large part of their team refused to work, picketing, and the journalists should call on military personnel if they had not kept themselves informed of the strike notices. It was unlikely, okay, quickly, the management would have taken the necessary measures to put everyone back to work, either by threatening a social plan or by requisitioning butcher apprentices who knew how to use scissors, because the curriculum of the two scholarships were alike.
If not convinced, let's take another example. The school teacher of the child of a hairdresser in town was not there this morning. Either because she was sick, in training, in meeting, sometimes teachers really worked, or simply on the verge of depression and at risk of murdering one of her students before killing herself if she set foot in class again. There, caught off guard and unable to call on a babysitter because in general it was more difficult to resort to their services than to obtain an appointment with an ophthalmologist within six months, and then a babysitter, it is expensive, the said-hairdresser should stay at home and take care of his child and could not open his hairstyling salon. In this case, an FWJ official could very likely impromptu come to hire the services of an army hairdresser.
What is important here is not the likelihood of these scenarios, they are likely. What is important is that they exist. Life is beyond imagination so what imagination can conceive of, life can end. The syllogism is not very complicated to grasp. Anything that could go wrong was bound to go wrong. This kind of scenario, over ten years of a war without any real outcome to the conflict, the less it had happened in the past, the closer we got to the date it would happen.
Respect was the mortar of the building army. Without respect, it was the very foundations of the army that were shaking and the architecture of a colossus would become as fragile as an eggshell. Without respect, without his mortar, the army would be a mess, a glory-hole and Moa, he loved order.
He didn't have to think very long about the punishment he could inflict on Ferrash. After all, there were internal rules within the military and the army could not afford anarchy to appear when it came to punishment. If often a trial was considered incidental, after all the word of a non-commissioned officer faced with the evidence from a subordinate had more weight, a scale was necessary.
The lack of respect was a serious issue, the penalty had to be exemplary as well as humiliating; this was what the internal rules said.
When he had just arrived at the third regiment, Moa had had an argument with a sergeant.
Not very well on that day, not that the moon had any impact on his biorhythm, a legend he did not believe in, just that he had found his moped flat, out of his barracks. It was in the bygone era when the front moved every day, and Moa was a little nervous.
Report given, he had left the briefing tent without greeting the said-sergeant, whom in fact he had not seen.
A little later in the morning, Moa had found a good place to observe the jousting and this sergeant had returned to the charge, telling him that the mission of a sergeant was de facto more important than that of a corporal. He insisted to take his spot and relegate Moa to a corner where there were blind spots appearing on the battlefield. Moa agreed but couldn't help but let out a sigh of exasperation. His work was difficult that day, he nearly missed two deaths.
The final point of the confrontation took place at the mess. If the sergeant did not attend the noon meeting, he had an errand to run and arrived just after Moa in the queue. He therefore asked to pass in front of him, because a sergeant must have pre-eminence over a corporal, including during meals.
There, Moa was more than exasperated. Forgetting the label, he turned around and replied that the mess queue was outside the traditional rules and that there was no pre-eminence here, it was first come, first served. The sergeant was furious being refuted by a corporal. Finding that he lacked respect and that it was not the first time of the day that this rookie bordered on insubordination towards him, he took off his pants, which he folded diligently so as not to crease them and took off his panties which he stuck into Moa's mouth.
Humiliating and dissuasive, these were the two words that came to Moa's mind when he received his baptism in the army. This had made him understand the concept of respect for a superior. Well, that sergeant was no longer in the army today, but never again did Moa behave in a way which could suggest, even for a brain that tended to over-interpret everything that went by, that he could be accused of disrespect.
It was the right punishment to make Ferrash understand how he should behave.
Moa took off his pants which he folded carefully so as not to crease him, in the same way as this sergeant in the past. This sergeant was not humanly a good person and even if he was no longer, he had been a great soldier, aware that a non-commissioned officer must have a correct and impeccable outfit and that at noon the female-ironers were not at their post, so that he had to take care of his clothes.
Wanting to be original and leaving a better impact, especially as Ferrash was stronger than him, he bandaged his crossbow, using his underpants like a bolt, leaning his crossbow on the ground for better stability.
Suddenly he froze.