by John Ringo
“I had some trouble,” Herzer admitted, as if the wet ashes from the first fire weren’t proof enough.
“I’ll get some additions,” Kane muttered, then wandered back to the building he and Alyssa shared.
When Kane came back he took over the fire and set Herzer to feeding the horses. It was a huge herd and like all horse herds extremely hierarchical. Kane had somewhere obtained a large quantity of hay and Herzer attempted to distribute it by spreading it around, one forkful at a time but that didn’t work very well. The senior horses, a group of mares, had finished their share by the time he’d made his tenth trip and were driving the low-rank horses, including his own Diablo, off the piles. He was also getting worried about the health of the horses since the kicking and squealing was not only getting loud but vicious.
“Won’t work like that,” Alyssa said, walking over to him as he came back with another load. She was yawning and the squealing of the horses had clearly woken her but since he was sweating freely in the early morning cool he wasn’t exactly heartbroken.
“With so many of them and all in a group, all you can do is pile it up in one place,” she said. “It helps to move it to where they can get at it from every side.”
She went into the corral with a halter and returned with one of the Hanarahs that she then hooked up to a small cart. Between the two of them they loaded the cart with hay, then Alyssa drove it into the corral while Herzer fended off the horses that tried to bolt through the gate. Once inside Herzer stood in the back of the cart and forked hay to the horses as Alyssa drove it through the paddock at a slow pace. Along the way she kept up a running commentary about the horses that showed that not only did she know them all by name but their individual quirks and their place in the hierarchy.
By the time they got back, the rest of the riders were up and the mush was done. It was the recipient of some comments.
“Damn, Kane,” one of the riders muttered, taking a bite of the mush. “You’re not only ugly, you’re a damned bad cook. Why’d Alyssa ever marry you?”
“Well I am a bad cook,” Kane admitted, with a grin. “But this particular mess is all Herzer’s fault. And the reason Alyssa married me had nothing to do with my kitchen skills.”
“Wow, Herzer,” Alyssa added. “If the way to a woman’s heart is through her stomach, you’re in big trouble.”
Herzer took a bite of the mush and grimaced at the burned taste. “I guess,” was all he said.
Hoping that the morning’s fiascoes were past him, Herzer finished his food quickly and went looking for his horse.
Diablo seemed less than thrilled to see him and Herzer wondered if playing polo the day before had been a good idea. But he had held back a handful of the cornmeal and it was appreciated, so it was a horse in a much better mood that he led out of the paddock.
He saddled up himself this morning, remembering to get the horse to suck in its gut when he tightened the girth. Horses had a tendency to inhale and “blow themselves up” when the girth was being tightened. That way, as soon as the rider was done, they could let the air out and get some looseness in the girth. Diablo was just about as bad as a “normal” horse on that score but it sort of made sense; wearing a girth was a bit like a corset for a horse.
On the other hand, if the girth wasn’t as tight as possible, the saddle would slip off and the rider would find himself lying face down in the dirt.
Herzer got all the straps in place and mounted creakily. All his “riding” muscles had stiffened up and it was positively painful to swing his leg over the horse’s back. But once he was up there he started to loosen up and as he moved Diablo around so did the horse. He took him through a few of his paces to get the kinks out then rode back to the camp at an easy canter.
“Raring to go, huh?” Kane asked. He had emerged from the tack shed with some new gear and a long spear.
“Just warming up,” Herzer said. “When are the beaters supposed to get here?”
“They started this morning but they have a few miles to beat and they’re moving slow. So, say five hours from dawn. But there’s going to be stuff running ahead of them. So we need to be in place in another hour or so. But Alyssa and I want to show you a few things and get with everybody to talk about responsibilities.”
Herzer dismounted to wait and work on his horse. He pulled the saddle and bridle off, switching the latter for a halter, and gave the horse a thorough currying. The horses were losing their winter undercoat so Diablo especially appreciated that. Then he hunted up a feedbag and some feed; he knew he was going to be using the horse hard today and he didn’t want it falling out from low blood sugar.
By the time he was done Kane had saddled his own horse and hooked the odd accoutrements to it. The tack turned out to be a holder for the spear, along with places to hook other weaponry. Kane also brought out a long battle axe and sword to go along with the spear. Herzer mentally changed the word “spear” to “lance” but he really couldn’t see the difference.
In the meantime Alyssa had scared up one of the little Arabs and saddled it as well. Her saddle was much more ornate than Kane’s but seemed just as functional. On the side of it she hung an odd, rectangular case. Just after Herzer recognized it, correctly, as a case for a recurve bow, she opened it up and removed the bow, which was unstrung. Stringing it turned out to be a major operation and actually took Kane doing most of the work. First she took out a long string, more of a rope, really, with two leather toggle and loop devices on either end and attached them to the opposite ends of the bow. Then as Kane lifted the bow in a curl, sweat almost immediately breaking out on his face, she carefully attached the actual string to the bow and ensured that the limbs were straight. That done Kane slowly let off pressure until the bow was fully strung. Herzer had to wonder, as she removed the stringer, how often she could actually draw the thing, which looked as if it must have a pull of sixty kilos or so.
A few of the older riders had been setting up targets and a few even brought out their own lances and holders. But Alyssa was the only one with a bow.
“Okay, cavalry means fighting from horseback,” Kane said. “But most cavalry techniques derived from hunting on horseback and only got converted to killing people later.”
“Well, the lance was probably the other way around,” Denver Quilliam pointed out. The rider was one of Kane’s coterie and while his horse work was only so-so he handled the lance with ease.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Kane argued. “There’s no clear archaeological record for it and admittedly it seemed to appear after the development of horse cavalry, but…”
“Kane,” Alyssa said.
“Oh… yeah… well we’re going to show you a little about the lance and the horse-bow this morning while we’re waiting for the first animal to arrive.”
“Are we going to be using lances and bows?” Herzer asked.
“If anyone feels like they can handle them without falling off their horse they can try,” Kane said with a laugh.
He started by demonstrating the two ways to hold the lance in a charge. The idea was to hold it lightly in the hand so that you could maintain targeting even on the horse, which was, of course, moving in three dimensions, then at the last moment “clamp down” and drive it into the target. Smaller lances could be used overhand with a throwing motion for similar effects. He drove one of each into the center of the target and then challenged others to copy his actions. Herzer and Denver probably got closest and Herzer had done his turn at a gallop like Kane; Denver had driven his home at a much more sedate canter.
Herzer had gotten very comfortable with riding Diablo. The massive chestnut was not unlike those in his enhanced reality training and was even a tad “smarter.” But he still hadn’t opened the horse “all the way up.” He had seen that blazing gallop the first day and he was still a tad uncomfortable with seeing what it was like to be on his back under those conditions; a slower gallop was still like having a rocket between his legs.
After Kane
was done and the lances recovered, Alyssa gave a demonstration with the horse-bow. She first demonstrated firing from a still horse at about seventy-five yards, putting three arrows into the center of the target just about as fast as she could draw and fire. After that she began to canter, putting an arrow into the central area of the target about every five or six seconds, then last she demonstrated the “Parthian shot,” turning on her horse as it was galloping away and firing. These last were… more or less in the target area. But Herzer could see how it would be a nasty situation to deal with on a tactical level.
After the demonstrations Kane told them off to their duties. Herzer was going to be one of the “zone riders,” in charge of managing a certain section of the main corral. He was supposed to move herd animals out of his sector and to the herding riders, break up dangerous activities, drag off any animals that were killed in his sector and otherwise handle any contingencies. Besides Diablo he would have two more animals to switch off to, an even larger bay gelding called Butch and a bad tempered palomino named Duchess. He’d have to lead them over himself but as long as Duchess was at the rear of the lead he wasn’t worried.
Before they headed out to the slaughtering corral Herzer trotted over to Alyssa, who was in last minute consultation with Kane, and waited until she nodded in his direction.
“Ma’am, is there any way I could try out that bow for a moment?” he asked, diffidently.
“You’ve shot before?” she asked.
“Not from horseback and I know I can’t shoot while riding. But I think I can hit the broad side of a barn from Diablo when he’s still.”
She looked at Kane and traded a look, then nodded and pulled out the bow. However, she then looked at his bulging forearms. Both of her own were guarded by bracers, but his were bare and the left would be turned into hamburger if he didn’t have some protection. She paused and traded a look of consternation with the younger man; there was no way that her relatively dainty bracers would ever fit over his arms.
“Hang on a second,” Kane said with a laugh and rode over to his hut. He went inside and emerged a moment later with a pair of metal bracers and another bow case.
“Really should be leather for bow work,” he said. “But see if these fit.”
Herzer tried them on and found that they fit fairly well. There was an internal leather strap arrangement that was somewhat adjustable and the bracers were, if anything, a tad large.
“Keep ’em,” Kane said, remounting. “I won ’em off someone a while back and have just been carting them around. I don’t use that kind of armor.”
Herzer accepted the bow and a quiver of arrows with a nod and then trotted out to the range. He carefully checked to make sure no one was going to be riding across the way and then stopped Diablo with a gulp. He realized that if he missed he was going to look like an idiot but he had to try it anyway. He took a moment to check the inside of his bracer to ensure that there were no protruding bits of metal or sharp edges that would strike the bowstring, then drew out an arrow. He kneed Diablo to a stop, gave him a quiet word, then took a breath and nocked the arrow. The draw on the bow was, as he suspected, at least sixty kilos but he’d fired worse and the recent “exercise” he’d had helped in the strength department.
He drew it properly, pushing the bow away himself while “standing” with the string, then took aim. He’d forgotten how much a string could cut into your fingers and then recalled Alyssa was wearing bowman’s gloves, very light gloves of thin leather. Nonetheless, despite the pain, he took a good aim and fired with a prayer to any watching gods. Diablo, bless him, didn’t flinch in the slightest.
The arrow flew straight and true and dead into the center of the target, sinking to the fletching. He fired two more, just to ensure that that wasn’t a fluke, and both were nearly as accurate. Then, despite the pain of his fingers and the fact that they appeared to have started bleeding again, he tried it at a walk, a trot and a canter.
At a walk he could get the arrows into more or less the center of the target at fifty yards. But he had to aim carefully and it was not a fast process. At a trot he was afraid that he’d lost a couple of Alyssa’s arrows deep in the woods. At a canter he was a bit better, it was a smoother ride than a trot anyway, but the arrows still were only “near” the target; one hit in the center more or less by a fluke but the other two missed low.
“Where’d you learn to use a bow?” Alyssa asked as he rode back up after retrieving the arrows.
“The same place I learned to ride a horse,” Herzer said with a rueful grin. “Stupid me, I kept all my stuff off-line rather than at my house or something. Or I’d be fully decked out. Lu, I had a beautiful bow,” he added sadly.
“Did you do horse archery?” Kane asked. “And what kind of bow?”
“No, I didn’t really fight from horseback at all; I’d dismount,” Herzer replied. “And it was a long recurve, hundred kilo draw.”
“A hundred?” Alyssa said, her jaw dropping.
“Well, I couldn’t shoot it a lot,” Herzer admitted. “But when I hit a fisking orc, it stayed dropped!”
“You weren’t a reenactor, though,” Kane said with a frown.
“I… no I wasn’t,” Herzer replied. “I had some physical problems up until recently. I was training to start being a reenactor. Then the Fall hit. And here we are.”
“Well, if you’ll help me string this thing, you can carry Alyssa’s spare.”
“I think I can do that,” Herzer said. “And you’d better get me out one of those pig-stickers, too.”
“You said you hadn’t trained on horseback,” Kane said with a frown.
“I haven’t, but I’m thinking of the origin of the name,” Herzer replied with a grin.
* * *
The capture corral had been established where the Little Shenan met the big Shenan, just to the side of the main bridge for the Via Apallia. In fact the “funnel” fences, split logs mostly tied to trees, extended over the road. Their own corrals were just to the south so it was a short ride up to where everyone had gathered. Buildings had been erected along the main road and there were now steel kettles being filled with water and A frames being erected in front of them.
“For the slaughtering,” Kane said. “Get the water boiling hot, dip a pig in the water to loosen up the bristles. Other animals, too. And the frames are for slaughtering.”
“Are they going to slaughter all the pigs?” Herzer asked. “They’re important animals for a farmer.”
“Wild pigs aren’t anything for a new farmer to be handling,” Kane pointed out. “We’re not to kill any of the young ones. And the people along the fences are going to try to capture any that get through. But we’re going to slaughter all the big ones and smoke them. We don’t have enough salt to smoke them properly, but if you give them enough of a smoking they’ll last a while. Unless there’s a huge number of animals we’re going to go through the food pretty quick. There’s two types of deer that are going to be coming out, white tails and wapiti. The white tails will go right over the fences; kill any of them you can. But the wapiti can’t cross them so we’re going to collect them.”
There were four smaller corrals off the main corral, planted so that herd animals could be driven in. Herzer, having seen how “easy” it was to drive animals the previous day thought them optimistic.
He tied off his two spare horses to the corral and took up his position, on the “outside” corner and waited for the first animals to come in. There were people starting to line the fences, many of them with spears made from saplings. He saw Shilan in his sector and waved at her, then spotted Rachel walking along the line, a bag slung over her back. That brought him back to the fact that many of the animals that were going to be coming in were not going to be exactly friendly. He thought about riding over and talking but stayed in his place instead, trying to figure out what his “good” lines of fire were. If he missed a shot the arrow would just keep going and eventually the entire line of fences were sup
posed to be manned. That was going to make shooting problematic. That being the case he left the bow and the spear where they were.
Kane rode over with a coil of rope in his hands. “Can you tie a knot?” he asked.
“A few,” Herzer admitted.
“There’s a slip knot in the end,” Kane said, handing over the rope. “If something gets killed, drag it off to the side; somebody will take care of it from there.”
Herzer took the rope and found a place to tie it on the saddle. He wasn’t sure about dragging something with Diablo, much less with Butch or Duchess. Butch and Duchess tended to wander away when he dismounted, among other things.
He didn’t have much time to worry about it, though, because shortly afterwards, to a general cry, a deer jumped over one of the fences and into the open area. It was well outside his sector so he didn’t bother to try to uncase his bow and get a shot and it quickly bounded across the open area. But when it saw the line of people along the fence it turned towards him.
He kneed Diablo towards it to get it turned, then saw it was ignoring the horses. He was just starting to get the bow out, not easy on a trotting horse, when an arrow from the side took it down. It still continued to run but then dropped as the message got through to its brain that it was dead. He trotted over to it, dropping the bow back in the case and dismounted, untying his rope. He got the slip knot around the rear legs then walked back to Diablo who unaccustomedly shied away.
“He doesn’t like the smell of blood!” Kane called. “Talk to him.”
“Shah, horse,” Herzer crooned, letting out the rope. “Good horse. Stay. Whoa.”
He finally got on its back, with the rope nearly at full extension, and kneed him toward the nearest fence. The weight of the deer nearly dragged him from the saddle but he wrapped it into the leather it had been tied on and started dragging. Unfortunately before he had gotten more than thirty meters the second animal appeared; a half mature tiger.
At the sight of the great cat, which was no more than fifty meters away, Diablo went nuts, rearing and trying to run away from the cat and the deer it was dragging simultaneously. Herzer somehow stayed in the saddle, his hand painfully caught in the leather and rope. He pointed the horse away from the tiger, which was just fine by it, and towards the fence. But the tiger, seeing something fleeing, started after the horse, then turned and leapt on the deer instead.
