Empire's Legacy- The Complete Trilogy

by Marian L Thorpe

  The group planned for another hour. I said very little. Food had been placed on tables against the west wall. We took a break to eat. I nibbled a piece of bread and some cheese without appetite. My mother came over to me, her look questioning. She handed me a mug of sweetened tea. “You need to drink,” she said, “and eat a bit. But drinking is more important.” She studied me. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. She was beginning to say something else when someone interrupted us. I nodded, and she moved away. Others spoke to me, and I answered but did not encourage further talk.

  After lunch, Gille asked us to sit again as a large group, so Casyn could address us. We settled, and he began speaking, I noticed, from inside the circle.

  “Thank you,” he said. “You have worked hard this morning, truly, and I know that your decisions have been made wisely. My job here is only to teach and to advise. I am not here to lead. You already have leaders, and they are admirable.” He inclined his head to the council leaders. “You have some skills with the tools of war, with bows, spears, and knives, but they belong to the hunt and to husbandry, not to combat. You must all train for part of every day to learn to use the weapons of war, for war. I will teach you to do that.”

  Gille raised a hand to still the chatter. “To allow time for this instruction,” she said, “you will work only half-days unless the immediacy of a task demands otherwise. Half of you will train in the mornings, half in the afternoons, until there are women among us who are skilled enough to teach. We begin tomorrow.”

  Before dawn the next morning, I untied Dovekie’s ropes and began to row away from the dock. I took Freya with me, as Dessa had suggested. Quiet and competent, Freya had eighteen months left in her apprenticeship. We sailed north to the edge of the waters where the pilcod schooled, accompanied by the little boats Petrel and Dunlin, and Dessa, fishing from her second boat Avocet. A light fog hung at the chopline. We maneuvered the boats along the line where the cold waves of the north broke on the warmer southern waters and dropped sail.

  Quickly, we moved to the stern and picked up the first of the fine, weighted nets. “We’re shallower than Curlew,” I explained to Freya, “so you’ll need to throw upward a bit, so it goes far enough out and doesn’t foul.” I considered. Freya stood half a head taller than me, and her shoulders carried muscle. With Maya, I held my arms lower, to compensate for our height difference. “Drop your arms a bit,” I instructed. She nodded, and we threw. The first net landed and sank, well out from the boat.

  “Nicely done,” I offered. Freya simply nodded again. We stood in silence on the rolling deck. I noticed her glancing at me a time or two, but she didn’t speak. After ten minutes, we drew in the ropes that ran through the metal rings at the edge of the net, pulling it tight. “Tie those off,” I said. Freya wrapped the ropes around the cleats with no wasted effort.

  When Freya picked up one of the boathooks, I grabbed the other, and we hooked them into the net. “Pull!” I yelled. Together, we hauled the heavy pursenet close to the boat. “Hold it,” I said, and Freya kept her boathook in place. I attached the winch rope and untied the rope from the cleats. Immediately Freya dropped her boathook to run to the winch, winding up the rope to bring the dripping catch over the side and onto the deck. “Wait,” I called, pushing the net away from the gunwales with my boathook. The little boat rocked, but Freya stood steady, and we brought the catch up without incident.

  “Not bad,” Freya said, looking at the catch.

  “About half of what we would get in another month or two,” I estimated. “But I agree, not bad. We’ll keep fishing.” We dumped the catch into the hold and refolded the net to throw it out again. After that, the routine took over: throw, draw, haul, dump, fold. We had two nets going: hard, slogging work, and not without danger, but the hold filled steadily. The work focused me. A lack of concentration could mean a full net fouling and a boat capsizing. I had long ago learned to ignore physical pain or emotional turmoil. The world shrank to sea and net and fish, the shriek of gulls, and the burning in my muscles.

  In early afternoon, we returned from the northern banks, leaving the catch and the care of the boat to women who had spent the morning in training. At the house, I stripped off my scale-smeared fishing gear and found bread and cheese to eat. Then, as instructed, I found my hunting bow and its quiver of arrows and climbed up to meet the others at the flat field behind the meeting hall. No one had washed. Collectively, we smelled of fish and byre and sweat.

  Casyn waited with a sword held loosely in one hand. “Welcome,” he said. “If you have brought a bow, please put it to one side, then sit. You will be watching for some time and sitting will give you some rest after your morning’s work.” I lowered myself to the dusty ground and crossed my legs. Across the circle, I saw Tice drop gracefully into a similar position in one move.

  “The first thing you must do,” Casyn said without preamble, “is hold your sword, or your knife, firmly but not too tightly.” He took his sword with both hands, holding it out from his body, pointing down, the tip just brushing the ground. “Look at my hands,” he directed, as he turned slowly through the circle. His right hand gripped the sword just below the crosspiece, his left, just below the pommel. “If I hold tightly, if I clench my hand,” he demonstrated “there are two results. My wrists and forearms become less supple, which means I have less control of the sword, and, my hands and arms will tire more quickly. You know this,” he added, “from the tools you use every day. You must learn to handle a sword the same way.”

  “Now,” he said. “Look how I stand, at the position of my feet and legs.” Casyn’s left leg extended forward, his knee bent slightly and his left foot directly under his hands; his right leg angled back with the foot turned away from his body. I nodded in recognition: the stance provided balance and stability. I stood the same way, hauling nets on a rocking boat, or rod-fishing for big sea-fish.

  “How I stand, and how I hold the sword,” Casyn continued, “is called a guard. You protect yourself while judging what your opponent might do. There are five major guard positions and five minor. Additionally, there are five major strikes, which are used to counter the cuts and thrusts from your opponent. Watch.”

  He held the sword up, in front of his right shoulder. “Eagle’s Guard,” he called, swinging the sword down and to the front, keeping the point upward. “Scythe strike, into the Horn Guard.” The sword thrust forward, twisted upward, “Thrust and cut,” Casyn called, pausing with the hilt at his left shoulder and the point slightly down. “Bull’s Guard.”

  He kept going, turning slowly through the circle, calling the guards and strikes. Gradually he swung faster, and faster again, until the swordblade blurred against the sky. I saw the power and control from his years of discipline, but like the stoop of a peregrine or the leap of a wildcat, beauty and grace lived in this lethal dance. I realized I was holding my breath. I’ll never be able to do that. Never. And if Leste fights like this, what chance will we have?

  When he finally slowed and stopped, sweat matted his hair and stained his shirt. Tice spoke, echoing my earlier thought. “It’s a dance,” she said. “Just a dance.”

  Casyn considered. “Not just. Dancing and sword fighting do have many things in common, but your partner may not take your lead. Also,” he added drily, “he is trying to kill you. Never forget that.” A few women laughed. He wiped the sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand. “Under the tree are the wooden practice swords I made in the past few days. Find one that is the height of your waist and hold it the way I showed you. Try the Snake’s Guard—like this.” He held his sword out in front of him as he had when he first demonstrated the placement of the hands.

  We went to the practice swords, neatly ranged in order of height. I held one beside me: too tall. The second one I tried seemed right, the crown of the pommel reaching to just below my hip. I moved away from the women still testing swords for size, holding it as I thought Casyn had. The sword, with a blade the width of my closed han
d, had a cross-piece a bit more than two hands-widths down from the curved pommel. Tightly wrapped leather covered the grip. I hefted it, surprised to find it heavier than I had expected.

  He came over to where I stood. “Move your left hand back,” he instructed. “Good, now turn your upper hand just a bit. Now grip more with your littlest fingers, and let each finger after relax just a bit, until your forefingers and thumbs are the loosest, but not loose.” I tried.

  “Like holding a rod,” I observed, “when fishing for braidan.”

  “Is it?” he asked. “I’ve never sea-fished. Now, let’s see how you’re standing.” He looked at my legs and feet. “Good. Bring the sword up to the Eagle’s Guard.” He moved my arms up to the correct position with the sword at shoulder height, pointing slightly down. “Now bring it down like a scythe to the middle of your body, or just beyond, with the point just upward, like a bull with its head down.” I tried the move. It had similarities to rod casting, but as I brought the greater weight of the sword down, I stumbled, embedding the point into the ground. I grunted, feeling the shock of impact through my body.

  “You bent too far forward,” Casyn said calmly. “Stay straight. Keep working on it.” He moved away to work with another woman. I walked a bit further away from the group to try again.

  I stumbled several more times. On the next stroke, I brought my hips forward and leaned back as I did when playing a sea-fish on the line, and on the scything downstroke I fell backward. I sat for a moment where I had landed, flushed with humiliation. I glanced over at the others. Casyn moved among the women, correcting a stance or a hand hold. I saw Freya stumble, falling forward, and Dessa drop her sword on the sidestroke. Tice, though, turned as she swung and thrust, already graceful, in control of her body and the sword. I set my jaw, wiped the sweat from my hands, and stood to try again.

  After an hour, Casyn called a halt. “You’ve done well,” he said. “Wipe the grips, and then oil the blade and pommel and leave them propped up to dry. The oil and cloths are under the tree. After you have had some water, we will start on archery.”

  I found a rag to wipe the leather, then poured oil on the cloth, rubbing it in into the wood. Dessa came over to work beside me. “I’m sore,” she said. “I feel like I’ve been fighting a king braidan for hours. I’ll need the baths, tonight.”

  I flexed my shoulders. “I’m not too bad.”

  She snorted. “You’re less than half my age.”

  “Do you think we’ll ever learn this?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “We will. Some of us faster than others, and to different levels of skill. But we must, and so we will.” She wiped the pommel, propping the sword against the trunk of the nearest tree. “Let’s give Casyn a hand setting up the butts. You won’t have much to learn, here.”

  The butts—the frames that held the targets for archery—belonged to the village. Many of us knew how to use a hunting bow. Herds-and-hunt apprentices, of course, had to, but others of us, me included, had learned for the pleasure of the hunt. We placed the withy-and-straw stands at the eastern end of the field, with the sun behind us, and hung the painted targets, woven of straw, on the butts.

  “Who can shoot?” Casyn asked. Several hands went up, mine and Casse’s among them. “Show me.” Those who had no skill in archery settled down at the edge of the field to watch.

  Casse shot first, using a light bird bow. Three arrows, short-shafted and tipped with a fine, single bone point, flew from her bow. All landed in the central ring of the target. Casyn nodded in approval. She walked forward to pull out her arrows. “I can’t see to fletch them properly anymore,” she said, “but the target is as clear as it has always been.”

  “Can you handle a hunting bow?” Casyn asked.

  “No,” Casse admitted. Casyn had excused her from learning the sword, I knew, beyond the basic holds and thrusts. “The big bow is too heavy for me now. But I can teach its use still, as I always have.”

  “And you will,” Casyn said. “Lena?”

  I stepped forward. I had strung the bow as Casse and Casyn talked, bending the curved frame back to loop the gut string over the ends. I strapped the quiver on my back and pulled an arrow out. Meant for killing deer, my arrows had a thicker, longer shaft, and a wider point; a groove ran down the shaft to create a blood-trail if an animal did not fall immediately. The deer hunt occurred in the fall, although we would take animals throughout the winter and even later if the food supplies ran low. I hadn’t shot for half a year.

  I raised the bow and nocked the arrow, feeling my muscles remember the task. I pulled back the bowstring, sighted along the arrow, and released. I felt the arrow speed by my cheek, flying true to the target. With pleasure, I saw it hit the centre. I nocked and released two more in quick succession. The second one hit the target just outside the centre ring. The third landed beside the first.

  “Can you use a bird bow as well?” Casyn asked as I retrieved my arrows. I shook my head.

  “Not as well,” I said, “and better on rabbits than birds.”

  “We’ll need both. Practice with the light bow, but you will teach with the hunting bow.”

  I watched as several others shot, using a mix of light and heavy bows. Almost all hit the centre at least two times out of three, pleasing me. I wanted Casyn to see our skill with the bow. He spoke briefly to each archer as she finished, and when all had shot, he gave us our instructions.

  “As yet we do not have enough bows for everyone, but Kyan tells me she and her apprentice will soon rectify that. For now, each teacher will work with a small group who are close to her in height, so that you can share the bows. Today, you will only string and unstring, and learn the fingering on the bowstring. That will be enough.”

  Mella joined me along with two others. Mella’s breasts had swollen with her pregnancy, and the others too had large breasts. “You’ll need to see Kyan to be fitted for breast straps. Otherwise, the breast on your shooting side interferes with the shot. And it hurts, too, I’m told.” I held out my bow. “This is a deer bow. It’s made of hazel. Kyan made it, of course. Pass it around. Feel its weight.”

  “It’s light,” one of the women said.

  “To string it,” I explained, “you loop the bowstring around the notch at the lower tip, steady the bow with your foot, then push down on the upper limb and loop the bowstring over and into the upper notch.” I demonstrated. “Mella, you try.”

  I unstrung it, handing her the bow and cord. Awkwardly, she looped the string into the lower notch, stood the bow upright, and rested her foot on the curve of the limb. Then she pushed on the bow, hard.

  “Stop!” I cried. I took the bow from her to examine it. It appeared undamaged. “Push gently, but steadily,” I explained. “Otherwise, you can break the bow.”

  “You didn’t say that,” she said angrily. “How was I to know?”

  “I’m sorry. Try again?” She took the bow from me, looking unhappy, and repeated the actions, this time pushing much more gently. She nearly had the string into the upper notch when it slipped from under her foot. The rebounding bow hit her hip.

  “Ahhh!” she cried, rubbing her hip. “Lena, you didn’t warn me that could happen. What if it had hit my belly and hurt the baby?” Her eyes filled with tears of pain and fright.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. Why did Casyn think I could teach? Just because I could shoot a bow? “I’ve never shown anyone how to do this before. Maybe if we do it together?”

  She shook her head. “No. Let me watch someone else. I’ll try again later, maybe.”

  I asked another woman. This time, I stood beside her, steadying the bow myself, and guided her in pushing down to loop the string. We strung and unstrung the bow three times in that manner, and when she tried it alone, she got it on the first attempt. By the time the other two had also strung the bow successfully, Mella had overcome her fright, and using the same guided motions, strung the bow without mishap.

  Once everyone had strung the bow two
or three times, I took it back, holding it in the shooting position. “I’m right-handed, so my left hand grips the bow here.” I indicated the grip, the wood shaped for a hand and cross-hatched to make it less slippery. “I use the first two fingers on my right hand to draw the string back.” I drew, bringing the bowstring back to just below my ear where I held it for a moment before releasing. “Mella?”

  She hesitated, then took the bow.

  This time I stood behind her. I helped her discover how to hold the bow, showing her where to put her fingers. Then I stepped back. “Pull now,” I said, and she did, the bow wobbling a bit in her inexperienced grip. “Keep pulling,” I urged when she stopped with the bowstring still in front of her head.

  “It’s hard,” she said, pulling further and biting her lip in concentration.

  “Release,” I ordered, once she had got the position right and held it briefly. She let her fingers slip off the string too slowly. Had she nocked an arrow, it would have tumbled harmlessly to the ground a foot or two in front of her.

  I asked her to repeat the action several times. By the last attempt, the bow shook noticeably. “You’re tired. That’s enough.”

  “Oh, thank you,” she said, breathing hard. As she handed me the bow, I considered: Mella spun wool and kept bees, for honey and for candlewax. Neither resulted in the type of strength she needed for the hunting bow, regardless of her pregnancy.

  “I think you would be better learning the small bow.”

  “So do I,” she agreed. “But so many went to Casse, and the others with small bows are shorter than I am. So I came to you.”

  “I’ll speak to Casse. Someone can switch.” I said, wondering who.

  “Thank you,” Mella said. “I’m sorry I spoke angrily earlier, Lena. But I thought I would only be learning the knife because I am so clumsy in this pregnancy. Then Gille told me to try all the weapons because I might need to know how to use them. I am trying,” she spread her hands, “but I’m not doing very well.”

  “I fell over my sword at least a half-dozen times, earlier.”