by David Welch
Then, night fell. Noke and Eugen led them back to the hall, where most of the town was gathering. Word had spread of the stranger and the ‘test’, and everybody wanted to see. Gunnar walked into the hall, seeing a crowd of people milling about. The local innkeeper had a small cart in the corner, selling drinking horns full of mead, ale, and whiskey.
Gunnar made his way through the crowd, Kamith close behind. They were both ready for anything. Kamith, under a bison-leather surcoat, wore her new chain-mail. Her new sword, with its curved slashing blade, rested in a scabbard on her hip. Gunnar wore significantly more. His splint vambraces covered his forearms, and greaves covered his shins. His mail coat ran from mid-thigh to his shoulders, then down to his elbows. Over the mail sat his new sleeveless brigandine hauberk. His sword rested in a sheath at his waist. His left arm carried his shield.
People whispered at his appearance, murmuring about the amount of metal he possessed. That struck him as odd, but, when he thought about it, he hadn’t seen much metal the entire time he’d been here. Almost everything was wood. The buildings, the farming implements, most of the tools… The only exception he could really remember was the arrowheads.
At the center of the room, he stopped. A circle had been cleared. Four men stood around it, carrying stout spears. Unlike most of the townspeople, these men didn’t have enormous arms and shoulders. Gunnar noted that, then he noted Thoam and Edahr standing in the middle of the circle. Candles in sconces cast yellow light over the whole of the room, as did a pair of large hearths with blazing fires, one on each of the room’s long walls.
“Test me,” Gunnar said simply.
Silence fell over the crowd, and Thoam looked at Gunnar for a long moment, examining his battle gear. The war chief nodded to himself, then to the mayor. The taciturn man strode over to one of the spearmen and waited.
“Bring in Frad!” the mayor bellowed.
Shocked murmurs ran through the crowd. The mayor walked over to Gunnar.
“You’ve probably guessed; most of us are archers, but we do have some spearmen, and Frad is the best,” Edahr said. At the far end of the great hall, jeers rose to fill the room. A figure was led through the crowd. “He took to it. Real angry man, never could shoot straight and hated anyone who could. Made himself great with the spear,” Edahr continued.
“So I fight him and win, and I get the job?” Gunnar asked.
“Kill him and you get the job,” Edahr clarified.
Gunnar’s stare fixed on the mayor.
“What?” he asked coldly.
“Frad’s a traitor,” the mayor sneered. “He sold maps to the Bailor that led them right to Nekrador. That used to be the southernmost village of the Duahr, until the Bailor king sent his generals to burn it. Frad led them to it; he almost got away with it, too.”
Frad was pushed into the circle. Sandy brown hair covered his head. He stood shirtless, wearing only leather pants, his feet bare. He wasn’t a particularly big man, and confinement had taken its toll on his musculature. A large scar marred his stomach, a wound from the arrow that had probably ended his flight months earlier. A spear and a round, wooden shield were thrown to the floor at his feet, insults and saliva hurled at him all the while.
“If you can take him down, you have what the war chief needs,” the mayor said. “Or so he says. I don’t know; he’s got his own standards, and damned if I know what he’s thinking.”
The mayor stepped aside. Gunnar watched Frad pick up his weapons. He swung them wildly and swore in his own language at the villagers. They swore back at the traitor but stepped back for safety. The four spearmen remained where they stood, weapons ready to end the traitor’s miserable existence should he try anything.
Gunnar stepped into the circle, unsure whether it was right to kill this man. Those thoughts vanished when Frad lunged at him, roaring his defiance and thrusting at Gunnar’s neck. Gunnar stepped aside at the last moment, fully aware of the speed of this man. Frad leapt, trying to bring his spear down from above to slip past Gunnar’s shield. Gunnar knew the move and raised his shield, deflecting the spear above his head. He jabbed with his sword, a hard thrust that hit square on Frad’s shield and hurled him backwards. The man stumbled, regaining his feet at the edge of the circle. He turned square to see Gunnar bearing down on him. Frad raised his shield to intercept a chopping blow coming for his head, jabbing fiercely with his spear.
Gunnar parried his foe’s thrusts, getting inside and beyond the spearpoint. The chop had been a distraction; his true attack came when he put the weight of his body behind his shield, crashing forwards and into Frad. The steel boss slammed hard into the man’s side, cracking ribs and battering muscle. The sheer force of the blow sent him stumbling into the crowd. Hands grabbed him and flung him back into the circle.
Frad fought for breath, the front of his chest covered in scrapes and bruises. He tried to raise his spear, but Gunnar chopped again, his blade shattering the shaft. The spearhead fell to the ground, and Frad found himself with nothing but a broken stick in his hand.
To the traitor’s credit, he attacked, swinging for Gunnar’s head. Gunnar ducked the blow and slammed into the man’s chest again with his shield. It made a meaty sound as it crashed into Frad’s flesh, new breaks coming from the blow. Gunnar thrust his sword low, under his enemy’s shield, deep into the man’s thigh. The blade ripped through the muscle, past the bone, severing flesh and artery before punching out the other side.
Gunnar pulled his sword from the man, and Frad collapsed, blood spurting from the wound and staining the wood of the floor. The crowd watched with bated breath as the hated traitor bled out and lay still.
“Satisfied?” Gunnar asked the mayor as he left the circle, his voice as cold as the steel of his blade.
But the mayor did not answer. Instead, Thoam stepped forward.
“You’ll do,” he said simply, and then he walked off through the crowd.
“Okay, clean this mess up!” the mayor ordered. “Throw this scum’s body into the woods. Food for the wolves, if they don’t choke on it!”
A roar of approval went up from the crowd. Gunnar returned to Kamith’s side.
“You dragged that out,” Kamith said. “You could’ve taken him with the first blow.”
“Yeah,” Gunnar grumbled. He took a piece of linen cloth from his belt and cleaned the blood from his blade.
“Well,” the mayor said. “I guess that settles it. You’ll be training our spearmen this winter.”
Gunnar’s head shot up, fixing on the man.
“I’ll be doing what?”
***
He sat at Noke’s table, rubbing his forehead, trying to get a grip on this.
“I’m training them?” he said for the hundredth time.
“That’s what the war chief wants,” Noke said. For him, it was just that simple.
“I’ve never trained an army,” Gunnar replied.
“You trained me,” Kamith pointed out.
“Well, don’t tell the boys, but it’s ’bout time somebody whipped the spearman into shape,” said Noke. “Now, me? I wouldn’t be caught dead with a spear. But somebody’s gotta know how, you know? In case any of those Bailor bastards survive our arrows, we gotta have somebody who knows how to get up close and stab their guts out!”
The man made jabbing motions as he spoke. Eugen placed her hand over his, stopping him.
“I haven’t even fought with a spear since… Well, since my first year as a soldier!” Gunnar said.
“Well, spears are all we got,” Noke said. “Don’t got enough metal for swords and armor. Got spears, and arrows, and axes for the trees, and we still usually run out.”
Gunnar leaned back in his chair. Eugen moved from her seat to a hearth in the corner of the home’s front room. It only had three rooms, this kitchen-cum-common space, Noke’s bedroom, and the kid’s old bedroom, now theirs for the winter. Eugen removed a long, iron skewer with a freshly roasted duck on it. Gunnar noticed the iron skewer w
as worn with age, and the blade she used to carve the beast wasn’t metal, it was shiny, black stone. They really didn’t get a lot of metal here.
“All winter to train them,” Noke went on. “It’s good; it’ll give the boys something to do before the Bailor come. Work all spring and summer and autumn, planting and chopping and watching the herds. Come winter, we got nothing to do but practice shooting, tell stories at the pub, and…” He paused to squeeze his wife’s backside as she brought over a wooden platter of meat. “…make babies with our women.”
Eugen was well past that age, but she smiled anyway and swatted her husband’s hand.
“It’ll be good,” she said. “The ones with spears have spears because they can’t shoot the bows, or can’t shoot straight. Bad eyes or shaky hands. It’ll be good for them to be skilled at something.”
“They’re not bad men,” Noke said. “Just, we’re archers, you know? Bowmen! Took me ten weeks of trying before I could pull back the greatbow that first time. Didn’t just pack on these muscles to impress the ladies.”
He flexed, and kissed his wife’s cheek as she cut up the duck. Gunnar chewed on the dark, greasy meat, thankful for something to distract him from his thoughts. But it didn’t last long.
“My people were archers,” Kamith said.
“Really?” Noke asked, amused. “With those little bows I saw on your horse?”
“Yes,” Kamith asserted. “I’ve been firing those ‘little bows’ at full gallop since I first became a woman. Even Gunnar can do it.”
“Ah, well, all good when you’re on the grass. But in these woods, against the Bailor, you need the greatbow. An arrow from one puts a man down, and he doesn’t get back up. Even all that armor you wear won’t stop ’em,” Noke said.
Gunnar’s mind snapped to attention at this.
“Your enemies, do they have these bows?”
“Uh-uh,” Noke said proudly. “The Bailor couldn’t pull the strings back the length of their cocks, much less shoot them! How’dya think we’ve survived so long against one of the big kingdoms? Ain’t ’cause we charmed them, I’ll tell you that for free.”
But Gunnar didn’t hear. He chewed on another piece of duck, his mind lost in thought. Noke, miraculously, noticed and let him be. He talked to Kamith late into the night, while Gunnar’s mind ran through the task before him. Men needed to be trained, and it was his task to do it.
Gods Above, he prayed, let me be up to it.
***
He walked across the ground through brisk air. Gunnar could taste the snow on it, just waiting to fall; the first of the season.
The men stood outside the palisade. The town kept a two-hundred-yard strip of land clear of crops around the town, a kill zone where no cover existed for anybody assaulting the walls. It was a perfect place for an enemy to be shot down by their greatbows, but today, that grassy strip was a training ground.
He estimated just over a hundred men stood before him, each carrying a long, wooden spear. No metal heads lay at their ends; they were training shafts with rounded tips. The men stood in a loose line, each with a round shield in his hand that covered from mid-thigh to pectoral. That was it; they wore no helmets, no armor, just leather over thick, wool sweaters and tunics, and knitted caps to keep out the growing cold of the coming winter.
Before he began, Gunnar closed his eyes, muttering another prayer to the Gods Above. He had, in his mind, a model of how to do this, and it wasn’t a model he had particularly liked when subjected to it. His old lord, Tylor of Eslor, had been a monster. He’d killed women and children, and raped anything with two legs. Gunnar’s proudest day had been the day he’d fled, when he’d split the man’s skull in two with an axe. But monster or not, the man had known how to train soldiers, and that was what Gunnar needed to do.
“Form ranks,” he said in Trade.
The men murmured amongst each other and dithered.
“Form fucking ranks!” Gunnar roared, pulling his sword. “Twenty across, five deep! Move!”
Fear shot through the men, and they fanned out, jostling to get into position, panicked eyes counting as they formed into lines. It took them a minute or two before they got into position. Gunnar heard voices behind him and turned to see two dozen archers on the wall, talking amongst themselves, no doubt about him and his spearmen.
He turned back to his men, striding close, walking up and down the line to inspect his charges. They were not the most impressive-looking bunch he’d ever seen. The town’s best men carried bows. Many of the men he had were short or small.
“I am Gunnar of the Langal! Gunnar of the Tarn! I fought for seven years under the banner of the Kingdom of Harmon! I battled savages, tribes, and kingdoms greater than my own beneath the icy peaks of the Far West! I have wandered alone for three years and survived all the Great Grasslands have thrown at me! I am your captain, and you, all of you, now belong to me!”
Worry crossed the faces of the men, but they said nothing, too shocked by it all. Gunnar sheathed his sword and dropped his shield. He picked up a training spear he had waiting nearby.
“This,” he boasted, “is the most widely used weapon on all of the earth! Not the sword, not the bow, but the spear! And you will know how to use it when I am through with you. You will be out here every day, in the cold and snow, and by spring, you will know how to drive back your enemies to the very gates of their cities! Do you understand me?”
Nervous whispers broke out as the men tried to figure out what to do.
“Do you understand?”
“Yes!” screamed a dozen.
“Yes, Captain!” shouted a dozen more.
Gunnar nodded and stalked forward with his spear. He walked to a large man in the front, one of the guys who had the muscle to pull a bow but apparently not the aim. He had a weathered face, brown hair, and dark blue eyes that darted every direction but Gunnar’s. The fellow had three inches and thirty pounds on Gunnar, but he still looked nervous as the armored warrior approached.
“Where did you get this shield?” Gunnar asked.
“Carpenter made it, uh, Captain,” said the man.
“What’s your name?”
“‘Aled’,” the man replied.
“Aled, this shield is crap,” Gunnar declared, taking it from him. “It’s too damn small! You have no armor, Aled; how are you going to protect your neck or your legs with a shield this short and no damn armor?”
The big man swallowed his fear.
“I-I didn’t make it, sir!”
“And it’s made out of pine!” Gunnar shouted, looking closer at the shield. Disgusted, he tossed it away.
“Throw your shields down!” he bellowed. “They’re only good for firewood!”
More voices came from the wall, mocking and mirthful. Gunnar noted that too, deciding he’d have to do something about it.
“We are going to the carpenter after we are done and we are telling him we need new shields! From shin to neck! Large shields, made out of oak and covered in leather. That will keep your soft little bodies safe,” he explained, walking back and forth across the ranks again. More whispers ran through his men.
“Now, ready your spears!” Gunnar shouted, holding his own above his head, in position to stab forwards and down. The men mimicked him, gripping heavy, inch-thick shafts. “Thrust forwards, one hundred times, full extension!”
The men went to it, haphazardly at first, but then quickly falling into a rhythm. Their thrusts synced up, and the blunted tips went forwards as one, again and again. The speed started to tail off as they worked through the set.
“Why are you slowing down? Will your enemies slow down? Keep fucking stabbing!”
Bursts of energy and fear sent the spears thrusting forwards again with renewed force. The end finally came, their arms dropping, burning with pain.
“Half-extension! You jab half as far as you just did! One hundred times!”
The men groaned, but they picked up the spears and started making short thrus
ts. Gunnar picked up his blunted spear, doing the thrusts with the men as he walked back and forth in front of them.
“Short jabs! They’re in your face and you want them gone! One hundred!”
The men choked up on the spears, sliding their hands just a foot or so from the tips, and made quick, chopping jabs. They struggled to finish, their spear arms unused to such relentless effort.
“Now, switch hands and do it all again!” Gunnar commanded.
They went to it. Sweat began to pour off their faces as they worked. Many pulled off their hats, despite the cold. Chests heaved to draw in air, but they kept jabbing, and, high above, on the palisade, the archers kept chuckling.
“Take a minute,” Gunnar said as they finished. He turned from his men and crossed the grassy strip, stopping near the earthworks that held up the palisade. Thirty feet above, the archers watched, amused expressions on their faces as he approached. His men moved closer to the wall, watching Gunnar anxiously.
Gunnar picked out an archer; a young fellow who laughed particularly hard. Even from this distance, Gunnar could see the arrogant smirk on his face. Gunnar drew back the heavy spear, took aim, and hurled the shaft straight at the man. It was a long throw, but it was within his reach. The blunted spear leapt up to the top of the palisade, slamming into the young man’s sternum, which poked over the top of the wall. The heavy spear sent him flying backwards, crashing flat on his back onto the wooden allure.
There was a flurry of motion on the wall. The youth shot up, strung his bow, and took aim at Gunnar. His friends on the wall shouted at him to back down, but he kept the arrow ready, staring down at his attacker.
