The Forge of Men

by Caleb Wachter

  Nikomedes bristled, turning to face his direct commander. “You mean to await reinforcements?” he asked coldly, bringing himself up just short of accusing the man of cowardice.

  “There is no alternative,” Vasikus said tightly, taking the unspoken rebuke as plainly as though Nikomedes had actually given it voice. “We cannot throw our lives away; we are here to protect the Hold, and we can only do that if we fight our battles intelligently.”

  Nikomedes knew somewhere deep down that Vasikus was correct. But he also knew that, with surprise on their side, there was a very real chance they could defeat all twelve of them.

  But doing so would require him to reveal his real fighting ability, and that would endanger his long-term goals.

  For what seemed like an eternity, Nikomedes wrestled with the situation before finally arriving at a compromise of sorts.

  “Have Herodotus come with me,” he said, tilting his head to the final member of their party. “And give us your javelins.”

  “Nikomedes—“ Vasikus began, clearly about to invoke his authority, but Nikomedes cut him off.

  “We will scout ahead,” he explained, “and when Homer returns with the reinforcements, you will lead them to us.”

  “Why would you need the javelins for scouting?” Vasikus scoffed, seeing through the first layer of Nikomedes’ ruse as he had known he would.

  “For defense,” Nikomedes replied after a brief, deliberate delay.

  “You’re not that clever, boy,” Vasikus growled as he, too, wrestled with the implications. The invisible gears behind his eyes worked at a furious pace, but it was all Nikomedes could do to wait for the other man to arrive at the same conclusion he had done. “They have to keep the wagons in the low ground,” Vasikus said slowly, “and they’ll be on the move since these bodies are less than an hour dead. We’ll have terrain on our side if we keep to the ridgeline. And you’re quiet enough that you might be able to get us within casting distance without their noticing…fine,” he finished, giving Nikomedes a grudgingly approving look, “we leave the girl with Philippos and the three of us ‘scout’ ahead.”

  Nikomedes nodded, glad to have finally secured permission to go ahead. Three against twelve was far better than two against twelve, especially considering the fact that Vasikus was the only experienced warrior—other than Nikomedes—in the unit. The older man’s skill with a javelin left something to be desired, but if Nikomedes could get them in close enough then even Vasikus’ aim would prove sufficient to the task.

  After ordering Philippos to remain with the inconsolable girl and await reinforcements before following them, Vasikus led Nikomedes and Herodotus along the ridgeline in pursuit of the raiders.

  It was an hour before dusk when they finally came upon them. The closer they had come to their quarry, the further Nikomedes had moved ahead of the others, until he was one and a half hills ahead of them.

  Nikomedes smelled the rearguard warrior on his same ridgeline well before he caught sight of him. The wind was against the raiders, and Nikomedes drew a javelin from the satchel slung across his back as he peered around the last rock between him and his first kill.

  The raider wore furs and leathers which had clearly seen better days, and to Nikomedes’ disappointment, his first foe was far from an intimidating physical specimen. Standing no taller than a well-bred woman, he was scrawny and haggard looking, but he walked with his bow and arrow nocked in preparation for trouble.

  The raider’s eyes scanned toward where Nikomedes hid, prompting him to lean back and out of sight. Just as he did so, he saw Vasikus and Herodotus crest the last hill which separated them. He used hand signals to communicate the situation, and the other men made the last of their approach with as much stealth as they were able.

  Nikomedes waited impatiently as their quarry continued down the road, and the rearguard raider he had first sighted disappeared over the next ridgeline before Nikomedes’ companions arrived at his location.

  “I see four raiders acting as eyes,” Nikomedes explained in a low voice, gesturing with his hands as he spoke, “two to either ridgeline, and they are armed with bows.”

  “Did you see the caravan?” Vasikus asked.

  “Three wagons and two carts,” Nikomedes replied with a nod, “and the total count is fifteen raiders including the scouts up on the ridge line.”

  Vasikus swore under his breath. “I had hoped to be off in the other direction on the count,” he said tightly. There was a short pause, during which Nikomedes decided to once again propose a course of action in a subtle fashion.

  “I will take the opposite ridgeline,” he explained, “while you two deal with these ones. After the sentries are down, and we have the high ground, we rain javelins down on them and force them to flee.”

  “No good,” Vasikus said, shaking his head, “we’d have to hit with every javelin, and no one is that good.” At this last, he gave Nikomedes a pointed look which said he knew at least something of Nikomedes’ as-yet concealed abilities.

  Nikomedes nodded slowly as he considered alternatives, his subtle suggestion having been either ignored or dismissed by the unit’s commander. “Then I have another plan,” he said, taking a look at sun as it descended inexorably toward the horizon, “but we must hurry.”

  Nikomedes moved as quickly as he dared among the loose rocks on the far side of the ridgeline from the road on which the wagons were being pulled.

  He had sighted his quarry and already entered javelin range, but for his plan to work he needed to deal with him long before the caravan reached the narrow pass between the roughly parallel ridges. At its narrowest point, the crests of the hills were no more than a hundred meters from each other, where the road below had been carved from the soft rock which formed the bones of the hills in the area.

  Moving quickly, but quietly, Nikomedes kept his javelin gripped in his hand as he moved past the nearest scout’s position. Looking back, he saw Herodotus twenty paces behind him, and was glad for the man’s apparent affinity for stealth.

  Nodding to Herodotus to signal the beginning of the first act, Nikomedes turned and lined up a cast on the near raider. As soon as his quarry moved to the same side of the ridgeline as Nikomedes now stood, he loosed the well-balanced missile with a long-practiced motion.

  The javelin flew straight and true, piercing the man through the neck from a distance of over fifty paces. He fell to the ground and Nikomedes scrambled as quickly as he could to the man’s body as it slid down the hill, coming to a rest twenty meters from the ridge.

  Drawing his sword, Nikomedes ended the raider’s life with a clean stroke before pulling his javelin free and moving on as fast as his feet would carry him over the steep, broken terrain. Glancing back over his shoulder, he was satisfied to see Herodotus removing the first raider’s furs as quickly as he could before making his way to the ridgeline with the raider’s bow and quiver of arrows in hand.

  None of them were especially good with bows, including Nikomedes, but for this phase of the plan all that was needed was for Herodotus to appear as though he was the raider he had just taken the furs from.

  Nikomedes moved into position after a few minutes of moving along the outside face of the ridgeline, finding his quarry had nearly reached the narrow point in the path. He was forty paces from the scout, and he cocked his javelin back to a ready position before hurling it at the scout.

  This time the missile struck the man in the shoulder, prompting Nikomedes to draw the javelin he had used against the first scout and hurl it at the wounded warrior.

  The warrior made a muffled cry as he fell over the edge of the ridge, and Nikomedes raced to his position as he drew his sword from its sheath. The scramble was loose beneath his feet in patches, but he leapt from rock to rock as he attempted to minimize the hindrance to his pace.

  Many of his strides took him three meters as he maintained a fast run which saw him fall upon the raider just as the other man drew his own blade, having lost his bow after t
he javelin impacts.

  The raider offered a weak block from his back, but Nikomedes batted the blade aside before driving the metal-reinforced toe of his boot into the man’s jaw. Several bloody teeth flew from the bandit’s mouth and Nikomedes ended his life with a stab to the throat.

  Collecting the raider’s furs, he turned and saw that Vasikus had already taken down the rear raider on the opposing ridgeline and donned his furs. Even from this distance, Nikomedes could make out the twin braids of his superior’s beard which nearly reached the bottom of his sternum.

  But as Nikomedes draped the furs over his armor to disguise himself as the scout he had just slain, he was dismayed to see that both of his javelins had broken badly enough that they would no longer serve their purpose.

  Moving back up the hillside, he collected the raider’s bow and quiver, which he slung over his shoulder. He still had one javelin, but it appeared he would need to use the bow for the first shot of his final ranged target.

  Nocking an arrow in the bow, he reached the hilltop and saw that the raiders below had ceased their motion as they looked expectantly up at his position. From their nervous demeanor, he knew they were not hardened warriors like the guardsmen who now stalked them, and he almost felt pity for them as he waved his arm forward to hopefully indicate that they should continue.

  But the leader, who was markedly larger than the others—and considerably better fed, judging by his immense girth at the midsection—seemed unconvinced as he bellowed to the others in the caravan with him.

  Nikomedes held his hand to his ear, feigning that he had not heard him. In truth, he had not heard him clearly enough to make out his words, but he was trying to get the caravan moving. If they could get the raiders into the narrow, two hundred meter long section between the converging hills, it would be an easy thing to rain javelins and arrows down on them.

  Then Nikomedes remembered something the little girl, Olympia, had said and he stopped in his tracks. She said her mother had given birth to a baby boy a few weeks earlier, and that she had been among those in the caravan as they sought to bring her to a healer in Argos.

  That meant there was a baby down there, because there had been no infant among the corpses at the ambush site. It was not altogether uncommon for raiders to take infants and very young children and raise them as their own, since a proper woman would never agree to bear a child for such a ruffian.

  The thought of a child being torn from its mother’s lifeless bosom so that it could become one of these parasites was more than Nikomedes could bear, so he held up a forestalling hand as he altered the original plan.

  He had originally accepted the responsibility to kill the fourth scout, so that he and his allies could slay the bandits from the perch provided by the narrow, canyon-like passage between the hills. But if he did manage to entice the bandits into the canyon for a javelin attack from high ground, the child would be in danger.

  So he did the only thing he could think to do: he scampered down the rocky hillside toward the caravan, doing his best not to stand at his full height or move too nimbly as he did so. He needed the bandits to think he was one of the scouts long enough for him to close distance with them.

  “Get back up there, runt,” the leader bellowed, “or I’ll feast on your liver before your heart stops beating!”

  He could only hope that Vasikus and Herodotus were able to improvise and adjust to the new circumstances, since he knew that very soon the road would be covered in blood—and how much of that blood was his depended greatly on the efforts of his comrades.

  As Nikomedes approached, he counted the same eleven men he had seen on first sighting the caravan. Three were pulling hand carts while four more sat atop the wagons, driving the cattle which drew the grain-filled transports.

  That left four, including two rear guards who stood ten paces behind the last wagon, and the two in the front—including the well-fed leader—who now approached Nikomedes as he hobbled toward them. He had abandoned the bow at the top of the ridgeline, instead opting to keep his sword hidden beneath the furs to his left side which required him to hold it there with the hand he would have used to carry the bow.

  The bandits acting as guards wielded spears made from green saplings with obsidian tips lashed to the thicker ends—ends which measured about two inches in diameter, while the opposite ends tapered to well below an inch.

  “I told you to get back up there, Silas,” the leader growled in a thick, Tegean accent as he gripped his own spear—a weapon which was significantly heavier and of better quality than those of his cohorts, with a fine, metal tip securely fastened to its fire-hardened shaft.

  Nikomedes feigned a coughing fit as he approached, doubling over in false agony as he concealed his blade from them. If either one of them came within five meters, he would kill them before the other knew what had happened.

  He could only hope that the leader would be the first to approach.

  But as fate would have it, it was the other bandit who approached. “What troubles you, Silas—” the man asked as he approached, and Nikomedes lunged forward with his blade, driving it through his ribs and wrenching the weapon to the side hard enough that it nearly came out of the man’s body entirely.

  “Ambush!” the leader bellowed, but Nikomedes was already moving toward him as fast as his legs could consume the ground that separated them. Bringing his heavy, iron-tipped spear into a ready position, he managed to block Nikomedes’ first flurry of attacks as his men took up their bows.

  “No javelins near the wagons!” Nikomedes cried, briefly meeting Herodotus’ eyes as the other man prepared to cast his first missile. He then returned his attention to the brutish warrior before him, who stood nearly as tall as Nikomedes but whose frame was slightly broader.

  Pity for his sake that he had not taken better care of Men’s gifts, as his arms were of completely average size and his belly protruded even further beneath his piecemeal armor than Nikomedes had initially thought.

  A series of thrust, parry, thrust, and slash from Nikomedes was easily countered by the warrior, which suggested he had received proper training at some point in the past.

  Almost glad that the fight with the bandit would not be over in the first exchange, Nikomedes slammed his weapon into the leader’s spear haft in an attempt to shatter it.

  But the spear was not made of any ordinary wood—its dark, red luster suggested it was one of the rarest types of wood in all the land. It was called by different names in different regions, but Nikomedes had grown up knowing it as Spirewood for its traditionally straight, pointed appearance which tapered heavily from the base to the tip with barely any enduring limbs sprouting off its body.

  Unfortunately for Nikomedes, Spirewood was harder than most stone and his sword actually broke in two against it! The awkward, unexpected vibrations sent up to the hilt nearly saw the half-sized remains of his sword rent from his hand, but he managed to keep a grip on it as the smugly satisfied warrior thrust his spear’s tip at him.

  He barely had time to block with his shield, but even doing so barely managed to save him from the punishing power of the spear as it drove completely through his wooden shield, sending wooden splinters into his eyes before he could close them.

  The only thing that kept the spear from skewering him through the eye was the flared knob which joined the tip and the shaft of the spear together, as it drove partway into the breach created by the weapon’s tip but did not pass completely through it.

  Acting purely on defensive instinct, Nikomedes launched a kick with his shin aimed at the leader’s hip just as an arrow thunked into his shield while another quickly followed, whistling as it sailed past his briefly exposed head.

  His shin buried into the leader’s upper thigh but, before Nikomedes could fully withdraw his own limb, his enemy brought the haft of his spear down onto his leg with enough force to drive his leg all the way to the ground. Were it not for his incredible flexibility, Nikomedes would likely have endure
d a serious groin injury from the unexpectedly powerful blow. But as it was, he nearly did frontward splits as he allowed his body to lower to the ground before scrambling back away from the leader’s range.

  He felt his foot hit something long and wooden, and without looking down to see what it was he gripped his sword, took aim, and hurled the ruined weapon end-over-end at the nearest bow-wielding, wagon-sitting bandit who had nearly loosed an arrow in his direction.

  His sword’s pommel smashed into the bandit, knocking his aim off-line at the instant before he loosed the arrow which saw the missile clatter against the rocks to Nikomedes’ back. Leaning down, Nikomedes collected the frail-looking spear his foot had struck, having been dropped from the first bandit’s body, and tested its weight before assuming a traditional stance with it over his battered, but not yet sundered, shield.

  “You’re quick,” the leader growled before driving his spear tip toward Nikomedes’ midsection. Nikomedes parried easily enough with his own, lighter spear and managed to block yet another arrow with his shield which would have taken him in the leg.

  A brief glance at the far ridgeline showed that Vasikus had closed to grips with the last remaining scout, while Herodotus had already scrambled down the hillside.

  Nikomedes snapped his spear forward in a series of short, stabbing attacks which were easily parried by the other warrior. The potbellied raider slammed his spear against Nikomedes’ shield again and again until it was reduced to little more than a pair of boards connected to his grip strap.

  He hurled the now-useless shield at the warrior just as one of the raider’s fellows leapt into the fray with his own spear. Nikomedes had no choice but to give ground to the pair of attacking warriors, and only narrowly managed to dodge an incoming arrow from one of their fellows to the rear of the caravan.

  Nikomedes adjusted his grip on the spear so that his right hand was nearly at the slender butt of the long, flexible weapon, and continued to give ground while parrying and dodging their coordinated attacks with his now longer-reaching weapon.