What we saw in Rorke's drift was two building barely held together, with a knee high wall around them both. The storehouse presumably had food and other items to tide us over until the relief column arrives. Thinking about it I might have to rescind my previous offer of a day off, much to the anger of my soldiers, but we have to be ready for the war. There was also another building which is a hospital with two rooms and enough beds to hold 20 ponies if needs be.
As we are marching over I can hear the complaints of my soldiers, "Come on, if we all complain and don't try and fix the problem, you'll never stop moaning. So lets fix this place up and then you can have two days off for relaxation and the like," My promise seemed to quieten them down a bit. God knows I need the quiet, I need to come up with a plan on how we'll get this place ready for a war.
Once we got to the camp and looked in the buildings, there were sand bags that could be used to build a wall. But right now we need to get settled in, the soldiers are setting up their tents, and starting to cook food and soup, Pike is starting to cheer up the troops with jokes and songs. Things weren't looking as bleak as they did before, I was thinking of ways to set up the sand bags and how to position soldiers in my head.
We would need a fallback line but also a front line, we could use the preexisting wall and stack sand bags around that. I was brought out of my thoughts by chowder, the cook, telling me that the soup will be finished in twenty minutes. I can see the tents going up, the same faded sandy colour as everything seems to be here.
The land was not arable, which could be a blessing and a curse. On the plus side any besieging force couldn't support themselves on our farms, but again that meant neither could we. We'd have to survive off of the relief column and if we were besieged for an extended period of time there'd be no food after about five to six days. Meaning we'd have to stock up with rations and water. But that will be a job for another day, right now we have to be defend-able.
"Fort, Gunpowder, can I speak with you," I asked, hearing both of their affirmatives I called them over to a rough sketch of the encampment in a near by tent, "Now, we've found quite a few sand bags in the storehouse, they could be set up as a front line based on the preexisting wall, but I think we'll need to establish a fall back line just in case a breakthrough occurs. Your opinions?"
"Yes, but a fall back line needs to be in the right place so we need to anticipate how the Zulus will attack us." said Fort.
"How about instead of guessing, we build the front line slightly further out than the brick wall and have us abandon the hospital and funnel them into volley fire for the fall back line" Responded Gunpowder.
"That would mean we would be risking the lives of those that may be in the hospital," Fort rebuked.
"I see that, but it may be a necessary sacrifice," I said.
"You can't seriously be considering this?"
"I'll do what needs to be done to save most if not all of the ponies here, don't you forget that. But some sacrifices must be made to save the many." I said, "Gunpowder tell the rest to start arranging the sand bags."
"Yes sir"
I could feel Fort's eyes boring into the back of my head, "Dismissed Fort."
"Sir! Yes sir!" He responded, and left.
He does that, when his opinion was disregarded he would go into 'Soldier mode', meaning he would act the perfect soldier, out of spite. But that doesn't matter at the time, at least it'll be one less thing to worry about, right now I need a contingency if all goes to hell.