"Idiot," the doctor said, shaking her head. "But since I don't want to be wrestling with you while you pee, I'll help too."
Between the three of them they managed to stagger to the bathroom and Herzer relieved himself in relative peace. He even snagged a towel off a rack and got it around his waist before he staggered out the door.
"Back to bed, you," Dr. Daneh said, shaking her head. "The things people go through for privacy."
By the time Herzer was back in bed he was willing to admit that maybe the strange device, a white porcelain. jug, sort of, with a tube that did not look large enough, might have been a better idea.
"Get some rest," Dr. Daneh said, wiping a piece of hair out of her face. "You're going to need your strength."
"Why?" Herzer asked with a sigh as he lay back down.
"Fredar got raided," the doctor said. "That's what had me up. Some brigands looted it and burned most of the buildings. We're going to be having more refugees. Edmund has moved up the plan on building a real defense force. And he wants you on it."
"Good," Herzer said. He could feel sleep pulling at him but he felt that it was time for a good line. "Time to get back on the horse."
"Idiot" was the last thing he heard.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
On the fifth day after his accident, Herzer rebelled.
For two days after his head cleared up, Dr. Daneh had refused to let him get up and move around more than to the bathroom. But the fifth day he could make it that far just fine and felt more or less recovered. Rather less than more if pressed, he was still dreadfully weak, but that wasn't going to get better by lying in bed.
In the afternoon, after one of Daneh's "nurses" had left with his lunch, he was alone and apparently unguarded. Getting up he retrieved his mended clothes from the cupboard and went to find out what the repetitive banging sound was from behind the house.
He could hear clattering from the kitchen so he stepped out a side door and snuck around to the shed at the rear. He had expected to find one of the smith apprentices, even hopefully someone from his apprentice class, but it was Master Talbot himself standing at the anvil, hammering out a piece of bar-steel with a furious expression on his face.
Herzer started to step back but as he did Edmund looked up and nodded, distantly.
"I didn't think you were supposed to be out of bed," Talbot said, setting down the hammer and slipping the steel back into the coals in the forge.
"I suppose I'm AWOL," Herzer replied, stepping into the shed. It was less crowded than he expected, containing not much more than a table, some buckets, the forge and the anvil. There were a few tools but not many. After a moment he took in bare patches on the floor and some recent wood work and realized that much of its contents had recently been removed. Down to the town and the growing smithies he supposed.
Despite the relative cool of the afternoon, it was hot as. well, as a forge inside. He could feel sweat beading on his brow immediately and Edmund was drenched.
The smith nodded in understanding and took a drink of water from a jug, handing it over to the boy. "Well, if you think you're recovered enough, you can work the bellows," he said, nodding to the apparatus. "Put on an apron, though, or you'll get sparks all in your clothes."
Herzer felt that was within his capability. He grabbed a leather apron and examined the bellows. There was a convenient stool so he sat down and started pumping.
"Not so hard," Edmund muttered, turning the steel. "You'll get the fire too hot."
Herzer slowed down the rhythm until he saw the smith nod, then stopped when Talbot pulled the steel, now glowing a low cherry-red, from the fire.
"Different types of steel form at different temperatures," Edmund explained. "Right now, I'm just working the surface carbon into the bar."
Herzer nodded as if he understood, wiping his face with his hands. Edmund wordlessly passed him a cloth and the jug.
"What are you making?" Herzer asked, drinking deeply. The water was cut with wine, very lightly, just enough to give it a bite. It felt refreshing after the plain water he'd been given for the last few days.
"Just a knife," Edmund replied, an irritable expression on his face again. "It was come out here and bang on some metal or take the hammer and bang heads."
Herzer watched in companionable silence as the smith hammered the metal out and then thrust it back in the fire.
"Pump," Edmund said, glancing at him. "Although you look as if you're already tiring out."
"I am," Herzer admitted. "But I don't know why. All I've been doing is lying around."
"A hard blow like that takes it right out of you," the smith replied, turning the metal in the coals. "Daneh thought you should lie abed for another three or four days. I disagreed, but I wasn't going to tell her."
"I think at this point I need exercise more than rest," Herzer gasped. The bellows were strongly sprung and his arm was already growing tired.
"Enough," Talbot grunted, pulling the steel back out. "Do you know why the apprentice pumps the bellows?"
"No."
"Pumping bellows is a very similar motion to hammering. It builds up the apprentice's strength in specific muscle groups. Besides just being weak from your injury, you're not used to using those muscles."
"Well, great, another group to work out," Herzer said with a wry grin, and took another sip of water. "So is the knife to stick in anyone in particular?"
"No," Edmund said with a chuckle. "Although I can think of a few I wouldn't mind handing it to point first."
Herzer recognized it as an oblique negative reference, but not anything specific.
"Although," Talbot said after a moment, banging on the steel a trifle harder, "most of them wouldn't get the hint."
Herzer nodded, not admitting that he didn't either.
"Pump," the smith said. "So, you heard we're speeding up the deployment of the guard force?"
"Dr. Daneh told me," Herzer said. He had caught his wind and in a way it was getting easier to pump than it had been at first. It was still hot as hell, though. "She said something about Fredar?"
"A group of brigands, I suppose you'd call them, hit it. I'd been out there just a couple of weeks ago. They had gotten the preliminary pronouncement of the Norau reformation and were making noises about the 'violent nature' of the proposals."
"The defense requirement?" Herzer asked, stopping the bellows as the smith drew the steel out.
"Aye," the smith admitted. "Their town council had taken a strictly nonviolent position; some of the reenactors who had stopped there moved when they did that and told me. I went over and tried to talk them out of it, the fools." He slammed the hammer down twice, hard then stopped, setting it down and putting the steel back in the fire. "Get some more charcoal, would you?" he said, gesturing with his chin at a bucket in the corner.
Herzer got the charcoal and then looked at his hands. Not only they but his arms were covered in soot. "Going to be hard to get past the doctor like this."
"We'll wash you up, don't worry," Edmund replied, taking another drink. "Anyway, the. brigands killed most of the men, including the few skilled artisans, damnit, ran off with most of the women and left the children behind. Oh, and they burned everything down on their way out."
"Rape, loot, pillage and burn," Herzer said with a frown.
"Oh, yeah, they got it in the right order," Edmund said, sticking the steel back in the fire. "Pump. It's actually odd. Quite often raiders got the order out of sequence. Burning things down is quite fun under the circumstances; it's keeping people from burning that is tough."
Herzer looked at him sideways his brow furrowing. "That sounds like the voice of experience."
"So we've moved up the schedule for the guard force," Edmund said, ignoring the implied question. "You going to go for soldier?"
"Yes," Herzer replied.
"Which kind?" Edmund asked.
"I don't know what there's going to be," Herzer admitted. "I have sort of been out of the loop."
"It's going to be small," Talbot replied. "We don't need much right now. But I want it to be a good cadre for a larger force, so it's going to be brutal training."
"I'm up for it," Herzer said as the smith paused.
"That's what you think now," Edmund snorted. "The main force will be two groups, archers and line infantry. The archers will use longbows and the line infantry will be modeled, lightly, on the Roman infantry."
"Legions?" Herzer said, with a grin. "Now that's more like it!"
"Well, with your arm you'd make a hell of a bowman." Edmund frowned.
"Fine, if they tell me I have to be an archer, I'll be an archer," Herzer replied. "But if I have the choice I'll take the legions, thanks just the same."
"Why?" Edmund set down the steel and really looked at the young man for the first time.
Herzer turned his face away from the regard and shrugged, his face hot. "I don't know," he temporized.
"Okay, tell me what you think."
Herzer hesitated for a moment then shrugged again. "Legions. well archers. Archers sit back and hit the enemy at a distance. They don't. close with them. They don't get a grip on them. I. I trained with a bow, and, yeah, I'm even pretty good, but I always preferred to close with cold steel. I call it 'iron hand.' It's just. my thing. Sometimes it was the wrong thing to do. But. it's what I preferred."
Edmund nodded again, an inscrutable expression on his face and picked up the steel. "Pump. The term you're groping for is 'shock infantry.' There's effectively two types, disciplined and undisciplined. Undisciplined is the Pict screaming forward with his axe raised overhead. That works, sometimes, against other undisciplined infantry. The other model is the phalanx, which advances in a steady force to take and hold ground. Iron hand. and I've heard the term before although you'd probably be surprised where it came from, iron hand is more about the screaming Pict. Can you grasp the difference?"
"Yes, sir," Herzer replied. "But I'd still prefer the legions. The legions. well." He paused and shrugged.
Edmund smiled at him and nodded. "Again, I've got the advantage on you. I've had years of reading, consideration and studying to define what you're groping for. The legions are 'where the rubber meets the road,' another term that's hard to define. They are what will, ultimately, decide the tide of battle."
"Yeah," Herzer breathed, glad that someone could explain the. feeling that was in him. "I want to be where the rubber meets the road."
Edmund laughed at that and shook his head at the young man, who was looking embarrassed. "Don't worry, it's just. when you get out of basic, if you pass, I'm going to let you read a book. Hell, I'll make you read so many you'll hate me. Clausewitz, flawed as he is, Fusikawa, Keegan, Hanson. So you'll be able to define the terms. Knowing the lingo is half the battle in learning. But shock infantry isn't all that is needed. Long term I want a balanced combined arms force. Bow, ballista, legion, heavy and light cavalry."
"You're talking a big force," Herzer said, shaking his head. "Raven's Mill isn't going to support all that."
"Who's talking about just Raven's Mill?" Edmund chuckled. "That's what's getting me so upset with the council. They keep thinking just in terms of here and now."
"Do you always think about ten years down the road?" Herzer asked. "That's how long you have to be thinking. There's no way even to raise a full legion for. two years minimum."
"Why two?" Edmund asked, looking at him again.
"Stuff," Herzer shrugged. "Log. logistics?"
"You know some terms already."
"Just. I have no idea how many kilos of steel go into arming a legion of six thousand men."
"Tons, go on."
"Tents, food. The tents were made from leather. We don't have enough cows to make the leather for that many tents!"
"And not enough men. Food."
"Preserved food," Herzer said, suddenly excited. "I mean. salt. It's what they paid the legions with."
"Not strictly necessary as a payment method, but I get the point. It is necessary as a preservative, which is why we're having to eat this food so fast. It would have been better to wait until fall for a roundup, but we needed the food now. You remember what I said about 'cadre.' Do you know what it means?"
"The. core of a force?"
"We're at the tools to build the tools stage. The Raven's Mill defense force is designed to be the tools to build the tool. Can you get what that means?"
"Ouch," he said, looking at the hammer with a grin. "You want us to be a hammer?"
"And a hammer is heavier and harder than what it bangs," Edmund chuckled, nodding at the analogy. "You think you're heavy enough?"
"I don't know," Herzer admitted. "I hope I will be by the time you're finished. Are you the hammer that makes the hammer?"
"No," Edmund admitted. "I have someone better at it than I am. You'll find out. And I guarantee you'll hate it."
"Okay, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, I guess," Herzer said. "I wish we had guns, though. Try to let some brigands get though a volley of rifle fire."
"Expansion rate protocols," Edmund said with a shrug. "Won't work."
"It doesn't make any sense to me," the younger man said, shaking his head. "I mean, first of all, why outlaw explosives and second how in the hell does it actually work? Expansion rate conversion never made any sense."
"You want an answer?" Talbot said, setting down the steel again and then sitting on the anvil. "I've about got my mad worked out, we'll let the forge cool off now that. Well, don't worry about pumping. So you want the answer?"
"Yes, I wouldn't have asked the question if I didn't."
"I know you went to day-school with Rachel," the smith frowned. "And I know she knows this. So why do I have to explain it?"
"You don't if you don't want to," Herzer replied, standing up and stretching his legs. He felt better than he had all day. He really had needed some exercise. "But I took the preindustrial technologies track. I mean, it was covered in backgrounds to history, but that's all they said. And I never really cared before."
"Okay, but I'm not going to take fifty thousand words and if you don't understand it, you don't understand it. Got it?"
"Got it," Herzer said with a chuckle.
"The first thing is 'why?' " Talbot said. "The protocol got emplaced shortly after the AI war. You're up on that?"
"Somewhat. There was a class on it. I didn't sleep through it."
"So you know it was bad, bloody. Nearly as bad as this. shit we're in. There was a twenty-five percent die off in the first year of the war, some from fighting, most of it from starvation and other extermination programs of the AI's."
"Yes," Herzer said grimly. The Norau rump of the Council hadn't passed around current casualty estimates, but he'd seen the bodies by the tracks with his own eyes. If the human race had as little as a twenty-five percent die-off rate from this Dying Time he'd be very surprised.
"Anyway, the die-off and the war produced a great deal of pacifism in its wake. But at the same time it produced a lot of people who were pretty extreme. One group of them ambushed one of the members of the Council and wiped him and his bodyguards out. It wasn't easy. The 'assassins'-for want of a better word for a group of six hundred battle-armored infantry backed by AI tanks-were nearly wiped out by the bodyguards and the Council member, who for all his pacifism had gained it in the frontlines of the war.
"That really shook the Council. If Hollingsworth could be taken out, anyone could. The only thing that could prevent that was Mother."
"Ah."
"Now, no group of Council members had ever gotten large enough and unanimous enough to have Mother control crime or anything like that. That was so intrusive that they all recognized it would lead eventually to a revolt of one form or another. And most of them were against it in principle. On one level you know that Mother is always watching. But as long as you know, it doesn't matter. So, anyway, they decided that they could either violate that long-held prohibition against using Mother fo
r surveillance purposes, or they could find some other way around it."
"Weapons controls?" Herzer asked. "But. But, I guess it sort of makes sense."
"Sure, if you have no understanding of history," Talbot snarled. "Anything resembling universal suffrage is a postindustrial, postgunpowder concept. Gunpowder gave the Everyman a way to kill the Lord on his horse. Industry, by which I mean steam and internal combustion, removed the need for day-in, day-out muscle use! As long as their comfortable replication- and information-based society was stable and stagnant, everything was fine. But take that away and what do you have?"
"This," Herzer whispered, noticing how Edmund referred to the pre-Fall society as "theirs."
John Ringo - Council Wars 01 - There Will Be Dragons Page 44
