Messenger as main character in story

dates/2022/02/13/migration seeds/worldbuilding

In battle, delivering orders to squads on the battlefield until one day realizes that the orders are bad, starting to deliver alternative orders and the army starts to win


Turning point
The sun burned hot against the ashen sky as Cale sprinted across the uneven terrain. Dirt clouding behind him as his boots repeatedly reintroduce themselves to the dry earth. The hot smell of gunpowder sharp in his nostrils as he clutched the tightly rolled parchment in one hand, the wax seal already melting under the heat of his palm and the rapidly increasing solar glare. He didn’t need to open it; he knew the orders by heart before the ink was dry. "Advance to the ridge. Hold position until reinforcements arrive."

Familiar as an old friend, the words that direct death. Cale did not mind such a thing as a principle, they are fighting to win, killing is part of the game, but some words lead to our death, or rather theirs he corrected himself, I am not one of them. He could see his mothers eys stearing dagers into him, penertating deeply withoyut saying a word, until he uttered those few simple words. I am not one of them.

"Runner!" The shout shoke him off of his revere as he steered himself passed the small guarding force at the back and onto the southern slope. "Runner!" He repeated the shout himself this time, lifting up the hand caring the parchment as if it were the marker of a thousand suns.

Cale has delivered hundrads of those orders, to each front and each squad, he was faster than all of them, and they knew it. Delivering commanmds issued by men sitting in tens miles from the screeching chaos of the battlefield, far from the frontline. He had learned not to linger, not to look back, even thoguh he always did, always read the reports on what happens after he's done his job, after the orders were given.

But this.. The ridge was a death trap. Cale had seen the enemy’s cannons swivel toward it hours ago, their barrels poised like hungry wolves waiting for prey. To hold the ridge was to court annihilation. The information was all there yet the orders stayed the same.

He reached Captain Harlan’s squad, crouched behind a crumbled stone wall, their faces smeared with soot and exhaustion. Harlan, a stocky man with a perpetually furrowed brow, looked up as Cale approached, his expression a mix of hope and dread.

“What’s the word?” Harlan barked.

Cale hesitated. For a moment, he saw it all in his mind’s eye: the squad breaking cover, sprinting up the ridge, the enemy cannons thundering to life. Harlan and his men wouldn’t last five minutes.

The parchment seemed to burn in his hand.

“Cale!” Harlan snapped. “The orders, boy!”

Change my mind!