The Southmark's Third Garrison mutinied on an Ironday.
Not for ideology. Not for revolution. Not for the grand causes that historians attributed to mutinies when they wrote about them decades later. The Third Garrison mutinied because Corporal Dren Harwick — twenty-six years old, Human, three years of service, married to a woman he saw eleven days per year — was told that his leave request had been denied for the fourth consecutive time, and the denial pushed a man who had been bending for three years past the point where bending was distinguishable from breaking.
"I am not reporting for the night watch," Dren said. He said it to his sergeant — a career soldier named Tomas whose own leave had been denied twice and who understood the feeling but not the expression of it. "I am going home. My wife is in Mill Creek. I have not seen her in four months. I will return in seven days."
"Corporal, leave denial is a command decision. You can appeal through—"
