I'm drawing a complete blank on a word I think I should know, so now I'm making it your problem. What do you call the new guard who comes to relieve the first guard? Like, at a gate. You got one guy standing guard, and then another guy comes to stand guard because the first one's legs are getting tired or something. There's a word for that, right? I swear it's in here somewhere, but my brain just keeps yelling "HERE COMES THE CAVALRY!" and I know that's not it.
It's just one guard being replaced, so troop rotation isn't it. And I found changing of the guard with google, but that seems to refer more to the (ceremonial) process of switching out one guy with a furry hat for another. Maybe a bit of the scene helps. The guard asks why he's being relieved, and the commander tells him: "[The other guy] is late, I'll watch the gate until he gets here." With [the other guy] being the problem. The whole conversation is a stunted mess at the moment, because of that one word. Doesn't help that this is essentially an alien race who doesn't speak human. I probably bit off more than I can chew with this story. Naaah. Can't be that easy... Can it? Maybe we should pore over it a bit more for the sake of appearances. Seriously, though. I'm not gonna argue against it, but it doesn't sound... official enough? Is there a more military word for it?
I found this online example of a US army guard duty manual which seems about as official as one gets, and they do refer to guards replacing others as "relief": Reliefs The daily tour for each patrol is ordinarly from 6 to 8 hours, and each relief is inspected before going on duty. The patrols move directly to their post, from the guardhouse. One patrol relieves another by meeting at a particular point at a prearranged time. The patrol relieved reports back to the guardhouse immediately. Now they are using "relief" to refer to a patrol and not just one person but I don't see why it wouldn't apply to a single guard as well.
Relief is the right term, but its not usual for a relief to be late, generally they are on duty before the time of the watch change, and if they're not there the officer of the guard (to whom the sentries report) would send someone to find them The commander wouldn't be involved in any way and he certainly wouldn't 'watch the gate til he gets here' nor would a sentry ask why he was being relieved since he'd know that his watch was due to end. Your exchange would go somewhere along the lines of Officer of the watch: Pvt Smith why are you still on duty, where's your relief?" Smith: "I don't know sir, Jones was supposed to be here at twenty one hundred" OOW to his sergeant "Send someone to find Jones imediately" Sergeant "yes sir" then to whichever underling is within earshot "Bloggs go and find Jones, if hes still in his pit drag him out by the feet, he better have a damn good reason" Smith would remain on duty until Jones either presented himself, or until the OOW detailed another soldier to take over the watch In most cases if smith was halfway competent he would have called the guardhouse already to report that his relief hadn't arrived, and if the sarge in charge were halfway competent he'd have dealt with it before the Officer of the Watch noticed
I'm going with "relief." It's more that not knowing the word was driving me nuts than absolutely needing it in chapter 2 of the first draft of an epic that's supposed to become three fat books. I got that covered, though. My guys are a currently primitive but intelligent race of six-legged lizards. Oh, and the commander is helping another lizard out with sneaking into forbidden lands to find a MacGuffin. It's gonna be awesome. Or complete shit and wind up with the rest of 'em on the fukkit-pile, but at least I'll have kept myself busy.
Too little, actually. What barrel? Why do I need to get in it? Is it the barrel where the fun gets rolled out in?
theres an apocyphal story about sailors putting their dicks in the bung hole for 'relief' interestingly in the naval air arm being on five minute alert is known as 'being in the barrel'
