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What?s got into her? he thought. Aloud: ?Well, careful while it?s still weak, acushla -you always did push yourself too hard when you were injured.?
She nodded without meeting his eyes and continued the routine she?d started with a light wooden practice blade. This was an overcast day and chilly, but sweat was still ru
Over to the archery range…
Edain had just lowered his bow after a ripple fire that left the pop-up targets shaped like outlaws and Eaters neatly feathered. ?And how?s Aylward the Archer?? Rudi asked. ?Doin? well enough, Chief. Just showing these lads and lasses how it?s done, so to speak, and keepin? me hand in.?
That got him a chorus of groans and hoots from the locals; he gri
The former wild-men had also become noticeably better archers with Edain to instruct and bullyrag them; already they were as good as the average run of the Readstowners.
Rudi took a deep breath of the chilly late-October air laden with the damp smell of fallen leaves and turned earth; it smoked when he exhaled. Then he passed on to the practice circles where the trainees worked with the sword; they were sensibly marked out on sections of irregular pasture, complete with low brush in some or set around trees or big rocks. In his experience, battles rarely took place on neatly level ground raked and rolled for good footing. The Readstown arms master-they called him a Drill Instructor here-gave him a slight wink. They?d already met.
He was a thickset man about ten years older than Rudi and three inches shorter, with hair of dark yellow closer-cropped than most locals and the tip of his nose missing. His father had been a retired Marine noncommis sioned man, like Rudi?s sire, Mike Havel, and had run a martial arts club and store in Racine before the Change came and set him on a road that ended here. His son had fought in some of the same wars as Ingolf, but returned home to inherit his father?s employment and pass on what he?d learned. A scar from the slash that had marred his nose also split a lip and drew a corner of his mouth up into a constant sneer, turning a face not notably lovely to begin with into something most men would blink to see. ?Hello, Mr. Mackenzie,? he said.
Then he indicated three big young men in practice gear. That meant mail shirts to the thigh here, and helmets like brimmed hats, with round shields and wooden drill shetes. ?Care to give some of our local boys a bout?? he said, elaborately casual.?I see you?re kitted up.?
The Mackenzie was wearing his brigandine, plus mail sleeves, mail-clad leather gorget, plate vambraces and greaves, visored sallet helm and breeches beneath his kilt with mail on the outsides. It was all more elaborate than anything Readstowners were likely to have seen before and enough to let him fight like a knight afoot or ahorse, though it gave a bit less protection than a modern suit of articulated plate and weighed slightly more. The gear did have the advantage of being modular, and you could put it on yourself. ?It would be less than a guest?s duty should I refuse,? Rudi said gravely.?That being the work of the season.?
October wasn?t exactly the easy time of year here. There wasn?t such a thing, amid the thronging tasks of a farming settlement that also made most of what it used and wore. But it was as close as any, with the grain and root crops in, the last hay and silage cut, and stock culling over and the meat steeping in the vats of pickle brine or turning in the smokehouses or freezing amid underground blocks of ice. What was left was the sort of thing that could be attended to anytime, mostly even in the hard dark cold of winter.
That gave time for the arts of war; like any manual skill, they rusted if not used. Their main rival in the fall was hunting. Which also trained you in fighting, and doubly if the quarry were boar or bear or wolf. ?Just a moment, then,? he went on, and hung up his sword belt.
He?d had a training sword made up in precisely the length and balance of his longsword, an oak batten around a rod of old rebar, the wood thickly wrapped in wool rags. Now he tossed it up spi
He snapped down the visor, and the world shrank to the narrow horizontal bar of the vision slit; by reflex his head began to turn slightly right and left, to make up for the way it cut his peripheral vision. The Readstown youths suddenly looked a little thoughtful as his smiling face disappeared, and left them confronting only the smooth curve of the steel. The visor tapered slightly on the bottom edge in a way that suggested a beak, and its surface and the helm as well were scored and inlaid with niello to hint at raven feathers. A real spray of those black pinions stood up at either temple. Rudi went on: ?Why waste time when we can all fight at once? Ready??
They spread out uncertainly, looking at each other. Another breath, and he attacked. His face suddenly twisted and the racking Mackenzie shriek burst from him stu
The oaken practice sword glanced off a Readstowner?s kettle helmet, twisting it half around to break the chin strap and dropping him like a steer hit between the eyes with a sledge. Rudi stepped back and sloped the steel-cored oak lath over his shoulder.
One opponent was down, curled up like a shrimp and giving faint hoarse gasping whoops as he tried to draw breath through a diaphram half paralyzed by a thrust to the pit of the belly; another rolled about with his hands to a head still ringing from the blow that had set his helmet flying with a sound like some dull unmusical bell, and the third was white-faced and shaking from the hard rake across his leg just below his crotch, and from the thought of what it would have meant with live steel-which thought hit more like a message, flashed from gut and balls. ?You fellows are far from bad,? Rudi said.
His breath was deep but not panting. The world came back in its autumnal bleakness as he flicked the visor back up. ?But you?re being too much the gentlemen there. If you?re fighting a man three on one, just surround him and flail away, get in more strikes than he can block; even the Sedanta couldn?t fight two, as the saying goes. Don?t give him a chance to deal with you one at a time.? ?Listen to the voice of experience, you lambs still sucking at mommy?s tit,? said the Readstown arms master.
The three youngsters were all big rangy young men, but a few years shy of twenty. Even in their discomfort they managed to look sheepishly embarrassed. Their fathers were Farmers hereabout, which gave them more time to practice than common folk, and they were well equipped and supposedly well trained. In Rudi?s judgment they were on the better side of middling, as far as formal drill was concerned. Certainly they were strong, quick and fearless. ?He doesn?t use our moves,? one of them complained, when he could stand and speak.?And he?s a southpaw.?