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Gentle rites and proper prayers soothe the sick, but if you bring crates full of stamped Legion supplies that can be spared from the quartermasters tents, you can actually also make their day better.
The 404th go house to house in Glimini, bringing supplies. Hope. Under Scholae Decius directive, this serves as a good chance to mark out which House Militia can be relied on in battle and which might break at first sign of sword. The ones less reliable are told instead their foremost duty is to guard the home, and what serving-soldier could disagree?
The 222nd Pathfinders receive an anonymous tip from a haggard source. Perhaps in the calculus of loyalty to distant masters or bread in pocket, they choose the later. It is this very tip which leads Methodian and the Pathfinders up a twisting mountain path to the abandoned mineworks near Howlhammer, and, there, come across a warren of criminal smugglers with far too many pharmacological products for such a small town.
Perhaps the person who wrote a small, scribbled note saw the 404th delivering prayers, righting fenceposts and helping people pull their lives back together and decided that they too wanted to be part of something grander than a criminal conspiracy.
Under the Sun, all things are possible, and so often, it starts with simply sharing the common warmth of humanity.
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Somewhere else, Echo almost steps on a buried skycracker charge. One of the Steelcrows pulls him away at the last moment, and then a third one has to step in because the pair almost tumble off the road, down a small decline and into the second buried skycracker charge some absolute maniac put *off-road* on the *faint chance* people searching the woods weren't sticking to the paths.
The only people who ever join an artillery company already have something wrong with them. Spending all their time around volatiles only brings it to the forefront.
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Valas and the Esvacian peltasts, screening, make remarkably good time south by southwest. They follow churned paths and tossed earth and the occassional dead horse, strung out beads. They follow the faint sound of rustling reed-cloaks on the wind. They follow their prey.
Units of heavier infantry struggle to keep up the determined pace, shedding waterweight as they go. Your typical Legio might consider half their combat arsenal to consist of various ways to put one foot in front of another. But across broken, uneven ground, past roads, where the winds roam and the plants rip from dry earth or concentrate around the little oasis of life-giving water? Out here, where the signposts grew fewer, in the no-mans reaches between the little lights of civilization?
Well, the march boots help. But they seldom let you arrive first.
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