Morgarten (Book 2 of the Forest Knights)

by J. K. Swift

  Thinking of the comfortable shelter, with Thomas waiting inside, drove Seraina’s self-doubts to the back of her mind. Since returning from their journey together, she had spent most nights there with Thomas. During the day, they went about their respective activities: he training Noll’s army, she applying salves and setting bones. Thomas broke the men down and Seraina stood them back up.

  It had bothered Seraina at first, seeing her people hurt so often, but when she realized that Thomas felt just as badly, and was only doing everything he could to prepare them, she grew to accept their delicate balancing act. And when she spent each night in Thomas’s arms, it felt so perfect, she was sure they were both doing exactly what the Weave had intended.

  Seraina had never spent so much time in one man’s bed. Sometimes, when she found herself longing for nightfall and wishing the hours of the day away, she wondered if she was falling in love. It was possible, she thought. But she could not be sure, for that was one path she had never traveled.

  Seraina removed her cloak and shook off the snow before pushing the flap aside and crawling into the lean-to. Thomas sat at the far end feeding a small fire. He glanced up and smiled nervously for a second, before reaching down and pulling a piece of parchment off a stack beside him. He tossed it into the flames.

  “What are you burning?” Seraina asked as she crawled over their bed of fresh spruce boughs and wool blankets.

  Thomas held the edge of another page to the flame and watched it catch. “Lies and half-truths,” he said.

  “Did you write them?”

  “No,” Thomas said. There was a harsh edge to his voice.

  She squinted at the markings on one of the pages. They were meaningless to her and she wondered why anyone would bother with written words when so few could decipher them.

  “Then how do you know they are lies?”

  Thomas looked at Seraina and his dark eyes softened.

  “I just know,” he said.

  He reached out to touch Seraina’s cool cheek and she leaned into the warmth of his hand. He kissed her on the lips and then she slid in close and rested her head on his shoulder. She watched in silence as he resumed feeding sheets of parchment into the fire.

  ***

  Thomas stomped across the snow-covered courtyard to where Urs and Maximilian were talking in raised voices. A crew led by Sutter was cutting down the circle of tall flag poles nearby for firewood to heat the keep. They had all but stopped working, distracted by what looked like a disagreement on its way to becoming a full-blown argument.

  As Thomas approached he heard bits of a conversation that would not be good for morale if the men overheard.

  “…shields will keep them alive,” Max said.

  “They cannot stop dropping their blades as it is. And you want to give them even more to think about?”

  “Keep your voices down,” Thomas said. “The men are looking.”

  Urs crossed his arms and grunted. “I will if you can talk some sense into Max.”

  Thomas took a second to glance over his shoulder at Sutter and his work party. They saw him looking and made a show of picking up their tools and resuming their respective tasks.

  “Now, what is the issue here?”

  “Max wants to equip the men with shields,” Urs said.

  “We do not have any shields,” Thomas said. “So that is not likely to happen.”

  “Then we had bloody well better make some, Thomas,” Max said, his voice once again escalating. “Or we are going to have a mess of dead farmers on our hands!”

  Thomas gave him a moment to calm down. “Out with it. What is on your mind?”

  Max paced a quick circle in front of Urs and Thomas and then stopped inches from them. He kept his voice low. “I cannot teach these heavy-handed farm boys and old men how to use a sword. If we had ten years, maybe then we could get half of them to a competent level. But not in a few months. We are wasting our time here.”

  Thomas looked to Urs. “Do you feel the same way?”

  Urs still had his massive forearms crossed over his chest. He looked off to the side.

  “It might help if they had the same length and type of blades. We have piercers practicing slashing techniques and men with single-edged weapons learning back-cuts. There is no consistency, and we simply do not have the time.”

  They were both right. Thomas had known from the beginning that it would take a miracle to make an effective army out of farmers and shepherds. No matter how hard they worked.

  He looked over and caught Sutter staring at him. The innkeeper turned quickly away and resumed chopping at the thick flag pole that a short time ago had displayed the Habsburg pennant. These men of the forests were a sturdy lot, and they had heart. But they would be up against professional soldiers, and even worse, knights. Men who had been swinging swords since childhood, their bodies growing to accommodate the blade. Armor and weapons would become such a natural part of them that they would limp and feel less than whole when unarmed.

  You cannot teach a man something in a few months that another has spent his entire life learning.

  Sutter stepped back from the tall pole and said something to the Rubin twins who were sawing another log into firewood on the ground nearby. They put down the two-man saw and walked to stand behind Sutter, then Sutter reached out with his hand and gave his pole a gentle touch. Nothing happened at first, but then it began to slowly fall, picking up speed as it went. It bounced once and shook the ground when its full length hit. One of the twins picked up his own ax and began chopping at another pole.

  “Axes…” Thomas said. How much time had he wasted?

  Urs and Max had started arguing with each other again and had not heard him. Thomas left the two men and walked quickly over to the forge. He retrieved Pirmin’s blanket-wrapped ax and carried it over to Sutter’s work party. With Sutter and the twins looking at him with curiosity, he unwrapped Pirmin’s ax.

  “What are you going to do with that?” Sutter asked.

  “Not me,” Thomas said. He tossed it to Sutter, who caught it deftly in one hand. Thomas pointed to a fresh pole, thicker around than a man’s waist. “Cut it down.”

  Sutter shrugged. “I can try. But the length of this handle is going to make it a tad awkward.”

  Max and Urs came up behind Thomas. “Are you thinking what I think you are?” Max asked.

  Thomas did not answer, but his pulse quickened as he watched Sutter step back from the pole and line up his distance. He set his feet and swung.

  The ax head went past the pole and the shaft clanged against the wood. The vibrations tore the ax out of Sutter’s hands and it fell to the ground. Sutter shook the sting out of his hands and cursed.

  Urs and the twins laughed.

  “It was a nice idea,” Max said, touching Thomas’s shoulder.

  Thomas held up his hand and pointed at Sutter. The innkeeper had already retrieved the ax and was readjusting his feet.

  He swung.

  The blade hit the pole with a whump that Thomas felt deep in his stomach. He swung again and Thomas felt the force of the blow in his entire body this time. A thick wedge of wood spun off into the air. Sutter kept swinging. He settled into a rhythm, his movements were fluid, graceful, and appeared effortless. Less than a minute later he pushed the pole over.

  Thomas had spent all of last summer cutting down trees for his ferry, and he knew it would have taken him five times as long. And he would have been winded, probably exhausted. But Sutter’s mouth was not even open. He was about to lay into the next pole when one of the twins convinced him to let him have a go. The result was similar. After a couple of swings to get the new distance figured out, the young man seemed to be finished in seconds.

  Urs and Max looked at Thomas with wide eyes and their open mouths slowly turned into grins.

  “Not bad for an innkeeper,” Thomas said.

  Urs picked up one of the men’s axes laying on the ground. He fingered the head of the ax and held it up
to his right eye. “This is good steel,” he said. “Who sharpened this blade?”

  The twin holding Pirmin’s ax replied. “I did, of course. Who else is gonna sharpen my ax for me?”

  “Not me, that is for sure,” his brother said.

  “What do you think Urs?” Thomas asked.

  He nodded. “They can use their own heads. All we have to do is fashion handles. They will have to be wood, though. Do not have the time or material to make them out of steel like Pirmin’s.”

  “If we melt down all the old swords, can you make spikes for the ends? Or maybe hooks?” Max asked.

  “You know the answer to that,” Urs said. “And by the way, you still owe me for shaping the sword that you carry.”

  “Well, you better make damn sure nothing happens to me, then,” Max said.

  The two men continued their casual bickering, but Thomas no longer heard them. He was too focused on Pirmin’s ax.

  Chapter 18

  It had been a mild winter, or so everyone kept telling Thomas. But to a man brought up in the scorching sun of the Levant, he thought he would never be warm again. The long winter months had been almost unbearable, and Seraina often joked that he would have perished if she had not taken it upon herself to keep him warm. Although she said it in fun, he suspected it was closer to the truth than she knew.

  When the season ended, and the snows receded, he felt reborn. Now that it was spring, he had planned to redirect all efforts from military training to working on the defenses. One cloudless spring morning he made his way to the training ground and was surprised to find it deserted. Puzzled, Thomas sat down, wondering where everyone was. A half hour later Noll walked up with a bucket in hand on his way to the well.

  “Morning, ferryman. What are you doing here?”

  “What do you think? Where is everyone?”

  Noll scratched his head. “What do you mean?”

  Thomas waved his arm over the empty training yard. “The men. Did we give them a church day?”

  Noll laughed. “You really do not know? I thought we talked about this.”

  “About what?”

  “Planting season. We agreed that we had to allow the men to return to their homes to get their crops in the ground.”

  “Oh.” Thomas did recall something about that a couple months ago.

  “Everybody has got to eat,” Noll said.

  “Well, how many days before they come back?”

  “Days? We will be lucky to see any of them for at least a month.”

  “A month? Leopold could be here in a month!”

  Noll shook his head. “No, he will not risk marching an army over passes still wet from the winter thaw. I suspect it will be past midsummer before we have to worry about any Austrians crossing our borders.”

  An entire month of training lost. This did not bode well, Thomas thought. Last week he had introduced the men to the fighting formations he had decided would serve them best. A variation of a Greek phalanx. He had divided his army into groups of one hundred men and arranged them in squares ten men wide by ten men deep. With their long-handled axes, or halberds as Urs called the new weapons, held before them, the square would prove difficult for cavalry to approach and with training, maneuverable enough to make them almost impossible to outflank.

  At least that was his hope. The men had taken to the new squares well enough, but they were still too sluggish when they had to move and reform. It would require many weeks of drilling yet before they could be called proficient.

  “What about their families? Perhaps the women and children could see to the farms,” Thomas said.

  Noll’s face went dark. “And just who do you think has been feeding our army, and us, I might add, all winter? You really know nothing about the life of a farming family, do you ferryman? It is thanks to the men’s wives and mothers that we have any army at all to train. It is they who have shouldered many times their regular burden so that their husbands and sons can escape farm work for a few hours every day, in the hope that their men learn enough to keep them alive.”

  Thomas felt suddenly foolish for making the suggestion. “And what about work on the palisades?” he asked.

  Noll shrugged. “The roads are still too wet to move the material we salvaged from the fortress. We will not lose any time there.”

  Thomas knew Noll was right, although, he still could not help thinking they were losing valuable time. But what else could he do? If he did not allow the men to tend to their animals and get their crops planted, the Austrians would be the least of their worries.

  “Very well. I need you to get word to the men then. We cannot allow them to forget everything they have learned thus far, so make sure that not one among them uses a short-handled ax for anything. If the job requires an ax, they must use their halberds. Can you do that?”

  “Easy enough. Of course that might mean they will be gone for a month and a half then,” Noll said, his cocky half-smile turning up the corners of his mouth.

  “You look like you are happy about all this,” Thomas said. “Or are you just pretending because you know how much it bothers me to sit idle?”

  “I would be lying if I said I was not looking forward to a month’s break from your miserable drills. But I, for one, do not plan on sitting idle,” Noll said.

  Thomas’s eyes narrowed. He did not ask for any more information, but Noll offered it freely.

  “I will go to Schwyz and help out Sutter around the inn for a while,” Noll said. That same half-smile found its way to his face again.

  “You mean you aim to help out Mera,” Thomas said, crossing his arms. He was not the only one who had noticed Noll and Mera spending a suspicious amount of time together over the winter.

  Noll let out a nervous chuckle and looked away. It was the first time Thomas had ever seen him display even a hint of embarrassment.

  Noll recovered quickly though, and held up the bucket in his hand. “Sorry, much as I would like to, I cannot stand around all day chatting. Chores to do, and all.” He gave Thomas a crisp salute. “See you in a month, Captain.”

  As Noll walked away, Thomas shouted at his back. “You just tell Sutter that if he decides to chop off your head he has to do it with his long-handled ax.”

  Noll waved his bucket-holding hand but did not look back. Thomas thought it may well have been the first time he had gotten in the last word with young Arnold Melchthal.

  When Thomas arrived back at his lean-to, Seraina was just coming out. Her traveling cloak was fastened about her shoulders and she wore a pack on her back.

  “Going somewhere?” he asked.

  Seraina offered up a weak smile. “I will be gone for a few days. I was just on my way to say goodbye.”

  “Would you like company? It seems I have lost most of my army for the next month and suddenly find myself with a lot of time on my hands.”

  Seraina shook her head quickly. Too quickly, it seemed to Thomas. “No, you should stay here and help Urs finish crafting the rest of the halberds. I will only be gone a few days.”

  Now Thomas was sure something was wrong. When Seraina first heard about his plan to melt down the swords of her ancestors, she was furious and had threatened to throw them all back in the lake. It had taken Thomas a long time to explain how the swords were not being destroyed, but just reshaped into weapons the men could actually use. After a while, she had accepted his explanation, but was never truly happy about it.

  Thomas looked at her, but she avoided his eyes and busied herself adjusting the strap on her pack.

  “Seraina.”

  “Hmm?” She leaned down and retied one of the laces on her boot.

  “Look at me. Please.”

  Her hands stopped moving and she slowly straightened up. She lifted her head. Her green eyes lacked their usual brilliance, and the skin around them was puffy from recent tears.

  “I have to go,” she said.

  “Is it because of your visions?”

  She nodded. The mov
ement of her head almost imperceptible. “I cannot remember ever having gone so long without one.”

  “I wish I could fully understand why they mean so much to you,” Thomas said.

  She shrugged. “They are as much a part of me as any of my other senses. And without them, I feel like I have hidden a piece of myself, but I cannot remember where.”

  “Perhaps it is a good omen that you have not had any all winter.”

  Seraina looked at him and her face turned pale. She shook her head. “No, Thomas. To lose one’s sense of the Weave is most definitely not a good sign.”

  “And how will running away help solve any of this?”

  Seraina was quiet for a moment, like she was considering her next words carefully. She placed her hand on Thomas’s arm.

  “I know this is difficult for you, but please try to understand. Never before have I spent so much time in one place, with so many people I truly care about. I think their voices have played a part in drowning out my visions. If, for a time, I could put some distance—”

  Thomas felt a lump form in his throat. “You mean me. I am the cause.”

  She shook her head and Thomas saw regret flicker behind her eyes. “No, that is not what I meant. Not at all.”

  “Then stay here. With me.”

  Thomas held his breath and waited for her answer. But Seraina was not the only one who could see things, and he knew what she would say before the words passed her lips.

  “I cannot,” she said.

  ***

  Seraina walked all day, setting a furious pace that left her exhausted with the approach of dusk. She built a fire near a small chattering stream and brewed a pot of tea to have with her evening meal. Later, she spread her bedroll in a clearing filled with lillies of the valley. She lay there for some time breathing in the sweet smell of the bell-shaped flowers and listening to the sounds of the forest before sleep came for her.

  And with it, finally, a glimpse into the patterns of the Weave.

  A mist came and went, leaving her standing in a lightly treed forest. The ground was flat, with warm summer sunlight breaking through the canopy of leaves far overhead. The soil smelled of midsummer, and the leaves rustling against one another in the wind were thick and green. And nestled amongst the sound of wind and leaves, were children’s voices.