by Guy Antibes
Sam nodded. He greeted Emmy and tied her to the wagon when they reached their camp.
“Sword practice, now,” Harrison said. “More tactics than practice. Tomorrow you won’t be fighting one or two.”
Sam took off the sword scabbard.
“What are you doing?”
Sam looked at Harrison with questioning eyes. “The sheath will get in the way.”
“Are you going to walk through the village with a naked blade?”
Sam kicked the dirt, embarrassed. “We practice just like we would going into battle, right?”
“Right,” Harrison said. “I’m going to make some pollen armor for you, and unless it is a dark, dreary day, you should be wearing your spectacles.”
Sam didn’t know how well the healer could manipulate pollen until he observed Harrison quickly make a breastplate, which he pulled over Sam’s head. “It won’t last long on you, but any protection is better than none.”
Bentwick walked by with a lumpy sack. “Harrison told me you don’t work with armor very well, but a few metal pieces will help protect you,” the chief constable said. “Here is a helm, metal epaulets to go over your pollen armor and gauntlets for the back of your hands and your wrists.”
After Sam was adorned with pollen and metal armor, Harrison sparred with him.
“Not the same as practicing forms, is it?” Harrison said. “I didn’t expect to expose you to an actual war, but here we are. Get used to the weight of things. When we practice our moves, concentrate on how your balance has changed.”
Sam could tell he wasn’t as fast or as flexible. His timing was off, due to the weight and how the armor limited his range of motion, but by the time they finished, Sam had an understanding of his limitations.
“A single session isn’t close to being enough,” Harrison said, “but you won’t have to get used to the armor when an opponent engages.”
“I can’t fight other men.”
“Why not?” The healer said. “You defeated three assassins all by yourself.”
“But that was at night, and I could sneak up on the first two. I only avoided being killed because the last assassin slipped.”
“But who maneuvered the man to the pool of blood?”
Sam shrugged. Harrison had a point. “So I use everything I can to keep from dying?”
“That is what you do to survive.”
They practiced for another half-hour before the dinner call. After he had been fed and Emmy had found her scraps, Sam took his blankets and went to bed, stacking his borrowed armor beside him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
~
B UGLES CALLED ALL OVER THE CAMP.
“Quickly,” Harrison said, shaking Sam awake. Emmy barked at all the commotion in the camp. “The gang is trying to break out of Shovel Vale!”
Sam rubbed his eyes and sat right up. “Armor!” He reminded himself. After donning the spectacles, Sam attached his metal armor to the pollen stuff Harrison had made for him.
“No time for food. Let’s go!” Harrison yelled to him as he was putting on his metal helm.
Fighting had already broken out two hundred paces or so towards the edge of the walls. Sam saw glints of gold on the edges of the gangs’ swords.
“They will cut through the pollen armor.”
“Until the gilding wears off. You aren’t the only soldier with metal epaulets,” Harrison said as he walked swiftly to Bentwick.
“Do you think this is a feint?” the chief constable said.
“Undoubtedly, but men with swords can kill you, feint or not,” Harrison drew his sword. “Is this our section to defend?”
Bentwick nodded. “Let’s take care of them quickly.”
Sam followed the other two as they waded into the fighting. It was all man-to-man. Any semblance to order had already evaporated.
“Stay close and make sure Emmy keeps her pollen armor on.”
Sam gritted his teeth and nodded. “I am a soldier, this time.”
“A bit young to be thrown into battle, but you are better trained than the Mount Vannon guard. Make it count.”
Sam patted Emmy’s armor and drew his sword and screwed on a gold point. He could see that the thugs wore mostly pollen armor and very little metal, despite their gold-edged weapons.
Harrison stepped to the front line and began using his sword. Sam could see a difference in the healer’s fighting style. He saw Harrison’s lesson from the previous night play out in front of him. Sam quickly closed his eyes, saying a prayer to Havetta, before he snapped them open and attacked the first gang member.
His opponent had already been bloodied, but that hadn’t removed the hatred in the man’s eyes. Sam raised his sword, and the fight began. The man’s pollen armor had been hacked up, but Sam’s blade hadn’t broken through. He poked the tip of his wand hard enough to break through the armor, but he didn’t score his enemy’s skin.
The man slammed his sword through Sam’s defense and bent the metal epaulet on his left side. Emmy leaped, grabbing the man’s sword arm, giving Sam another chance with his wand. The hole that he punched through the pollen armor had expanded, so instead of using the poker, he thrust the tip of his sword into the man’s body. Sam gasped as his sword bit through the soft flesh but hit something inside the man’s rib cage. He had to let go of his weapon when the man gaped and fell.
The man’s gilt-edged sword fell to the ground. Sam picked up the more effective blade and looked for his next opponent. He spotted Harrison engaged with two gang members. Sam had already killed Temper, the renegade constable from behind, and Harrison had told him that in a battle, the niceties of polite dueling had to be tossed aside.
He thrust the heavier weapon through the pollen armor of one of the men. The man arched his back as the blade bit into his skin. His opponent dropped his weapon and crumbled to the ground, moaning.
Harrison dispatched his victim. He turned around while Sam knelt at the gang member’s side.
“He can be taken care of later. You can’t help him now.”
Sam shook his head at the healer and finally pulled out another golden-edged blade from underneath the fallen man. “I thought you might do better with this.”
Harrison looked at his own blade. The gold edging had already worn off. He slammed his sword into its scabbard and accepted Sam’s offering before they looked to find more opponents, but the fighting in their section was over.
The healer leaned on his borrowed sword and shook his head. “Now my other work will begin. Such is the irony of a fighting healer. You hurt men, and then you help them. Stay with me, with your sword out. Sometimes your enemy pretends to be injured only to take up their sword and try to kill you while you are bandaging them up.”
Sam nodded. He examined Emmy for any injuries, and after finding none, he followed Harrison back to their camp, where he retrieved his medical bag and returned to the field.
“Let the other soldiers move the bodies and the injured,” Harrison said as he began to work on a line of constables and Mount Vannon casualties. When he finished with those, he tended the enemy. Ambulatory opponents had been restrained with pollen manacles.
Sam held the bare-bladed weapon in his hand. He figured that the wand wouldn’t discourage tricksters as well as a sword. Harrison found two of the enemy casualties who were faking their injuries, but neither carried a weapon, so Sam didn’t have to worry about fighting the men.
“Another wave!” shouted a soldier.
Harrison looked up. “Stop! Don’t engage!” he yelled, getting up from a battlefield casualty. “They are villagers.”
Sam looked at the villagers to see the last healer in town leading obvious non-combatants, but he noticed something odd as they approached. He removed his spectacles. “It is a ruse! They are wearing disguises,” he yelled, pulling his sword and running to engage with the enemy.
Other soldiers on his side automatically pulled their weapons, but couldn’t engage with the ‘villagers’ until
one of them pulled a sword to fend off Sam’s advance. The next battle was over before it started. Sam had been the one to kill the Healer Humble imposter.
One of the gilded swords sliced into Sam’s arm. Harrison ran to him and repaired his wound. “You should treat those more injured than me,” Sam said.
“You saved a lot of lives, today. No one else would have been able to see through the disguises.”
“They weren’t as good as Les Oakbrush,” Sam said, wincing at each stitch in his arm.
“Whoever made up the disguises didn’t need to be,” Harrison said. “The breakout might have been intended to go through here because the Mount Vannon home guard would be more reluctant to strike down fellow citizens.” He pointed to the barricade being rolled back into position. “See? They are piling more stuff on the barricade, now. Maybe it wasn’t a feint, after all.”
“Can’t we burn that?”
“Leave the tactics to General Torrent. Stay with me while we tend to these new injuries,” Harrison said.
The enemy stopped fighting after more unsuccessful attempts to punch through the troops surrounding Shovel Vale. Sam wasn’t comforted by the temporary cessation of hostilities.
“Sleep with your sword next to you,” Chief Constable Bentwick said. “Anything can happen, including all of you going on the offensive,
Sam rubbed Emmy’s ears and went back to his blankets to get some sleep. The day had worn on him, and any rest would be appreciated.
~
“Up,” Chief Constable Bentwick said. “General Torrent wants to see you.”
Sam put his armor on in the dark. He didn’t bother having Harrison fix the hacked parts. The healer needed his sleep. He trudged next to the chief constable as they walked the distance to the command tent, still lit up at whatever time it was.
Sam walked in to see six prisoners, five men and one woman, tied to chairs in the tent.
“You can see through pollen, correct?” the general said to Sam after nodding to him.
“I can, sir. I detected the disguises on the last breakout in our section.”
“That is what Bentwick told me. Take a look at these men and tell me what they look like.”
Sam recognized Bagbox, looking like a youth, and the young woman was a much older Ionie Plunk. She must have been higher up the gang’s leadership than he thought. He looked at them with his spying glass.
“That is Bagbox, the man who wanted to be lord of Horner’s Rest. The woman is Ionie Plunk. The chief constable knows what she looks like. I don’t know who the others are, but all are wearing disguises.”
“We’ve tried to remove them, but we can’t. You are more experienced at disguises than anyone.”
“I don’t know about that,” Sam said, but he pulled his wand from his case and used the gold tip to start the deterioration process on the masks. “Wait a few minutes. You should notice where the disguises begin to fade.”
“Did you kill my Les?” Ionie said to Sam.
He could hear pain mixed with anger in her voice. Her Les, she had said. She and Les Oakbrush were a couple? He shook his head with disgust.
“I fought him in the constabulary,” Sam said. “He slipped, and I had to defend myself.” That was the only explanation the woman deserved.
Now it was Bagbox’s turn to vent his anger at Sam. “You and your vicious healer destroyed my plans.”
Sam shook his head. “Your plans? You didn’t have any plans. You report to your leader. You don’t have any more right to your position than whatever your leader wishes. You don’t have any more right to rule than the sheep that your gang stole.”
Bagbox sneered at Sam. “I’ll destroy you.”
“That will be enough. If none of you have anything important to say, you won’t last until tomorrow morning. Wearing disguises to sneak down the river?” General Torrent shook his head. “Sing or swing. Those are your two alternatives.”
Bentwick looked at the general who nodded. He then pulled Sam gently from the tent.
“Torrent didn’t believe me when I told him you identified the villagers as combatants. When his men fished out these six trying to float down the river, they thought something was wrong with them, so he thought of you. Good job, Sam.”
“Our jobs aren’t done until we get inside Shovel Vale to see how many of the villagers the gang has killed,” Sam said. “Can I go back to sleep?”
“We will attack at dawn, so make sure you are rested, and please tell Harrison to replace your armor. I could get through the pollen armor with a wooden sword.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
~
S OMEONE WOKE SAM UP FROM A QUICKLY-FORGOTTEN DREAM. He looked up into the eyes of Emmy licking his face. He heard Harrison chuckling out of his line of sight. Sam reached up to tug on Emmy’s ears before he tossed off his blankets. Dawn was just bringing its daily light to the world, and the camp was waking up as Harrison built new armor for Sam.
“You’ll have to bend your epaulets to make them fit better,” the healer said.
“I’m a blacksmith’s son. I can do that,” Sam said.
A uniformed woman gave them both a small bag of food from a large sack.
“Eat it all. It might be your only meal today,” Harrison said.
Sam went to work on his metal armor, doing his best to make it serviceable. In minutes, Harrison was done. They ate their food, tasteless to Sam’s thinking, but then he was anxious about the day. There were other teenagers in the forces, particularly in the Mount Vannon home guard, but most of those carried spears.
He stood with Harrison, looking up at a mounted Chief Constable Bentwick, wearing steel armor.
“We took the brunt yesterday,” Bentwick said. “We will be the second wave going in.”
Harrison just nodded.
Bugles blew in the distance. From where they stood, Sam couldn’t see anything. He had imagined the walls lined with men at the top, but that wasn’t the case. Perhaps the walls were meaningless at this point. Smoke began to rise above the battlefield.
“The barricades are being torched. I hope the smoke continues to blow toward the village,” Bentwick said. “We are to wait.”
Sam looked at the soldiers, mostly Mount Vannon citizens, around him. They all looked as anxious as he felt. They heard the cries of battle. More bugles blew. The clash of arms and cries of anger and anguish filled the air, and Sam had to stay quiet. Emmy stood at his side, barking at the sounds. Sam wanted to leave her behind, but Harrison told him to take her. If the enemy penetrated to their camp, the thugs would definitely slay the dog.
The battle continued until a bugle blew close to them. “Get ready!” Bentwick bellowed, raising the point of his sword into the air. “Form ranks!”
Sam had never been in the ranks, so he didn’t know what to do.
“Follow me,” Harrison said. “We will fight as a pair.” He looked at Emmy. “No, a trio.”
Bentwick leaned over. “We will be hitting the enemy on the left side of the breach of their barricade. Our troops are about to break through. The general’s men will need a rest as we push forward into the village. Make your own shields, now.”
Sam wondered about all the space between the wall and the village buildings. “There is a lot of space we have to go through. General Torrent knows about that, right?”
Bentwick smiled. “Right, he does. The ranks have been told to expect arrows from all sides when they slip past the walls.”
“We weren’t told,” Harrison said.
“Yes, you were, just now,” Bentwick said.
Harrison concentrated and spun a shield for Sam and himself just before they moved out.
“Keep those spectacles handy,” the healer said to Sam.
Sam held the shield and could feel Harrison’s shield begin to soften where he touched it. He should have worn gloves, he said to himself as they walked forward. They emerged from the Mount Vannon formation and looked at the battle. The ground was littered with gang member
s, some of the king’s troops had joined them.
“Step over our men,” Bentwick yelled to the rear. “I don’t care what you do to the enemy.”
Harrison winced at the chief constable’s words. “I’ll have to spend more time patching the bad guys up,” he said to Sam.
They walked up towards the wide breach in the barricade. It was far enough from the wall not to have to worry about rocks being thrown on them, but arrows occasionally buzzed in the air from both sides.
“Shields up! Forward, double time!” Bentwick said.
“He started in the army,” Harrison said. “You can tell.”
Sam could believe it. He lifted the shield in front of him. He took off his spectacles, so he could see through all the shields ahead of him. Harrison stepped to the right-hand side of the four columns of men.
The king’s army split to let the Mount Vannon force in between them. The general’s men lined the side of the breach and were lined up inside, creating a bulge. Royal archers met the enemy. The gang’s archers stood on both sides of the breach, about one-hundred paces from the bulge. It was plain to see the gang’s archers weren’t as competent as the army’s.
“Our side saves their golden-tipped arrows when they have clear shots,” Harrison said as they slipped through the barricade.
Sam had thought they would be fighting hand-to-hand. That part of the battle had passed, but he knew it would come again. They marched through and emerged from the bulge of the king’s troops.
“Attack!” Bentwick said. He directed two columns to the archers to his right and the other two columns to his left. They formed up into a line and charged the archers about one-hundred paces from the breach.
The Mount Vannon army didn’t run, but they proceeded at a steady pace, and in two minutes the forces clashed. Harrison and Sam still stood next to Bentwick.
“We are heading towards the village,” Harrison said. “The five-hundred men that we met outside of Mount Vannon are heading straight ahead.” Harrison looked up at Bentwick. “We are going to join them. I’m going to see if Healer Humble is still alive. A better intelligence wouldn’t hurt.”
