Erasmum Hobart

by Erasmum Hobart

  ‘Today,’ he said, ‘we’re going to see about sorting you out a weapon. Perhaps we should start you with a sword.’

  Erasmus looked uncomfortable. ‘Aren’t they awfully hard to come by?’ he said.

  Robin shrugged. ‘Not really. People ride into the forest with them all the time – usually they don’t need them after that.’ He reached into a bush and pulled out three swords, two complete with belts and scabbards. ‘Any of these take your fancy?’ he said.

  Erasmus looked at the swords. It was rather like choosing a hockey stick from the school stores – he had absolutely no way of knowing which one was going to fall apart in his hand – so he decided to opt for the one which had the most comfortable looking grip on its hilt. On the whole, a sword seemed like a pointless weapon – if Robin’s men found them so easy to detach from their owners, they obviously weren’t the perfect weapon for an invincible warrior.

  He picked a sword, grasped the hilt and pulled it from Robin’s grasp. As soon as Robin let go of his end, Erasmus felt the full weight of the weapon pull at him; the blade hit the ground with a thunk and sank into the soft undergrowth. Erasmus, surprised, let go and the sword stood hilt upright in the ground and quivered slightly. All it really needed was a motif to the effect that anyone who pulled it out was welcome to the kingdom. He grasped the hilt with his right hand and pulled with little effect, then tried with both hands. This time the sword came out of the ground and he staggered back, trying to hold the sword level in front of him.

  Robin surveyed the teacher critically. ‘Perhaps a lighter one,’ he said, taking the blade from Erasmus’ hands and substituting another. This one was light enough that Erasmus could wield it with one hand and he rested his other wrist gratefully.

  ‘How does it feel?’ said Robin.

  Erasmus waved the sword around in a manner which betrayed a distinct lack of training. To modern eyes, there were profound similarities to the way in which one would shake an umbrella; to Robin it appeared to be some exotic sword-fighting technique of which he hadn’t previously been aware.

  ‘It’s lighter,’ said Erasmus.

  Robin deposited the rest of the swords back into the hedge then drew his own. ‘Just try a swing or two,’ he said. Erasmus adjusted his grip on the hilt and tried to conjure up a mental image of a swordfight. Unfortunately, most of the swordfights he’d seen had been in films where everything was shown at double-speed and it had been difficult to work out what the protagonists were doing, beyond trying to skewer their opponents. He lunged forward like a fencer and Robin leant to one side, reflexively bringing his sword up to deflect the blow.

  ‘What was that?’ he said.

  ‘A lunge,’ said Erasmus.

  Robin shook his head. ‘I don’t know what you’re used to,’ he began, ‘but these swords are designed to be swung. Like this.’ He brought his own sword around in an arc, with the edge parallel to the line of his shoulders. Erasmus stepped back and watched the blade whistle by.

  ‘There’s no way you could get enough force behind your lunge to penetrate mail,’ said Robin, ‘so you try to hit them hard enough to break a bone or two.’ He turned to where the other outlaws were rousing themselves. ‘Will,’ he called. ‘Would you like to show our friend how it’s done?’

  ‘At this bloody time in the morning,’ said Will. ‘Can’t it wait?’

  Robin grinned and walked over to where Will was slouched against a tree. He waved his sword lazily in front of the ruffian’s chest, looking for all the world as if he was going to sign his name. ‘Attack could come at any time, Will, you know that,’ he said. ‘They wouldn’t wait until we were ready to be killed.’

  Will groaned and closed his eyes. ‘Well, at least if they killed me I’d get some peace and quiet,’ he grumbled.

  Robin prodded at Will’s chest with the tip of his sword. Will didn’t bother to respond, so Robin prodded at his stomach, with slightly more force. Again, Will ignored him. Grinning mischievously, Robin dug the tip of his sword into Will’s waist, just above his belt. And gave the blade a twist. Will frowned, but made no move to open his eyes.

  Robin lowered the sword still further and was just about to jab at his comrade, when Will opened his eyes and rose to his feet, moving so quickly that his sword was in his hand by the time he was standing. He deflected Robin’s blade with a dismissive swipe then swung forcefully at his chest. Robin stepped back on to his left foot and parried the blow, then directed his reply at Will’s shoulders. Will parried, adjusted his grip and came at Robin like a whirlwind, delivering blows at a speed that would have made Errol Flynn wonder if he had fallen asleep and woken up inside one of his own movies. For every blow, however, Robin had the speed to respond and the sound of sword on sword rang out across the clearing, rousing the other outlaws, who sat up and watched the bout through bleary eyes.

  ‘Stop playing with him, lad,’ John called out, although it was unclear whether he was directing this comment at Will or Robin.

  The two combatants danced forth and back across the clearing in a swirl of flashing blades and Erasmus was forced to duck behind a tree to prevent himself being trampled. Robin’s expression was light and humorous, and every so often he would add a slight flourish to one of his blows, in order to distract Will’s attention. Will, for his part, was a picture of steely determination: his facial features were contorted by concentration and his no-nonsense blows showed more experience than artistry. After a few minutes, he managed to bring a blow to bear at such an angle that Robin was only just able to deflect it and the edge of Will’s blade glanced off his shoulder. Robin grimaced and his humorous mask dropped: the two men stepped back and circled each other cautiously, blades held at an angle to their bodies and their off-hands held to one side to balance themselves. Every so often one of the two would test the other’s defences, but each blow would be met with a defensive response.

  There was no smiling now: it had become a serious contest and Robin’s eyes darted around, looking for an opening. He swung at Will’s chest, but Will’s blade moved to deflect it. Will replied with a hack at Robin’s waist, but Robin stepped nimbly to one side. Will stepped back to his defensive position to guard against a counter-attack.

  Erasmus watched the pair with a mixture of worry and fascination: clearly the legends of Robin’s prowess with the sword were well founded, but the fight seemed to have evolved from a simple exercise into something that, if it wasn’t for real, was certainly being used to work out a few enmities between the two. He wondered how many people got killed in such practice bouts – how did someone know to pull a blow that would actually strike tellingly on their opponent? This was a far cry from a couple of people in wire masks prodding at each other with sharpened foils.

  He watched as Robin tapped Will’s sword casually with his own before converting the move into a series of rapid blows that Will expertly parried. Eventually Robin, evidently losing interest in the exercise, gripped the hilt of his sword in both hands and brought the blade over his head in an arc. Will caught the edge of Robin’s sword on his own and the two blades slid along each other with an ear-splitting squeal until the two swords were locked, hilt in hilt, between the men’s heads. The two men frowned at each other and were just beginning to turn the fight into a trial of strength, when an arrow shot across the clearing, hammering into the haft of Robin’s sword and ricocheting off. The shock of the impact jarred through both swords, causing Will and Robin to drop their blades and turn their heads as one to identify the source of the shot.

  John lowered his bow and leant on it casually, causing it to bend slightly under his weight. ‘Don’t take it too seriously,’ he said. ‘We might need you both later on.’

  Robin rubbed at his sore shoulder then picked up his sword. He looked at Will soberly for a moment or two before breaking into a smile. ‘Good bout,’ he said.

  ‘Not bad,’ said Will, picking up his own sword and looking to where Erasmus was emerging from behind the tree. ‘Think you could do
that?’ he said.

  Erasmus shook his head. ‘Not really,’ he said.

  ‘Have a go,’ said Will, tossing his sword lightly from hand to hand. ‘Just a couple of blows.’

  Erasmus shrugged and adopted the stance he had seen Robin take. Will took up the same stance opposite him and waited for Erasmus to act. Erasmus examined his opposite number cautiously – in his day someone like Will would either be the kind of professional soldier who preferred to be at the heart of the action or a football hooligan – to Erasmus’ eyes there wasn’t a lot of difference. He was evidently experienced with his weapon and certainly willing to use it. Erasmus aimed a cut at Will’s side and Will deflected the blow, gently by his standards, but still with enough force to send a pain up Erasmus’ right arm. Erasmus drew the sword back and tried again with similar results.

  Obviously, simply copying Robin’s techniques wouldn’t best Will unless he was an improved swordsman. That meant he had to do something unexpected. Thoughtfully, he lowered the sword until its blade was pointing back towards his left foot. He knew that was lowering his guard and he wouldn’t be able to parry a blow from the position, so he moved rapidly from there into an upward swing. He was about halfway through the upswing when he realised that the rapidity of his action meant he hadn’t bothered to adjust his grip and the sword was beginning to twist the muscles in the back of his hand. He couldn’t twist his arm round whilst swinging the sword, otherwise he’d probably stab himself in the stomach, so he tried to adjust his grip as he moved. He loosened his grip… and watched as the sword sailed past Will’s face and embedded itself in the branch of an overhanging tree, dislodging twigs and acorns and raining them down on to Will’s head. Will winced under the assault then looked up at the sword, which seemed to be quite comfortable in its new home.

  ‘You’re not really a sword person, are you?’ he said.

  Erasmus had never had much of an interest in weaponry: although the play of history often turned on the balance of technology on the battlefield and the evolution of the army had been a major part of the shaping of society, the actual nitty-gritty of developments such as the flintlock was not something he’d studied in any great depth. That’s not to say he was entirely blind to the field, of course: he knew that the sharp bit of the sword went into the opponent and he was well aware that the business end of a gun was not a good place to stand, but his technical interest only went as far as noting that weapons technology tended to advance in two ways: first, each development was designed to allow an increase in enemy deaths with a smaller attacking force and second, perhaps unintentionally, weaponry became increasingly difficult to use. Projected along logical lines, Erasmus imagined the ultimate weapon would be a bomb that could wipe out the universe, but which nobody would understand enough to be able to set it off. Where his own ability to use weapons was concerned, he stopped somewhere in between the club and the javelin. Projectile weapons were undoubtedly a great advance in the tactics of war, but it helped if the wielder had good enough eyesight to see the target from a distance.

  ‘Look along the arrow and aim just above the target,’ said Robin. Erasmus held the bow in his left hand and struggled to cope with the concept of holding both an arrow and a bowstring in his right. Ahead of him, a skin jug full of water hung from a tree branch. Erasmus attempted to line up a shot on the target, but the bow was pulling on his arm and he felt sure the tension was killing him.

  Robin watched the teacher critically. ‘In your own time,’ he said, taking Erasmus back to a memory of throwing javelins when he’d been a schoolboy. It hadn’t, he felt, been entirely fair that he’d been punished for the incident. Knowing his sporting prowess, the teacher should have made sure that everybody had stood back from him – not just kept them out of the path between him and the target. Fortunately, the wound hadn’t been fatal and Atkins had been discharged from hospital the same day, but the memory still lingered on and undoubtedly, if Atkins was still around, the scars were equally present.

  Erasmus closed his eyes and released his grip on the arrow. Unfortunately, his grip was such that the string snapped forward before he’d totally disentangled his fingers from the flights and the missile spun crazily off to one side as he caught the force of the bow across the knuckles of his left hand. He licked the back of his hand to soothe the pain then picked the arrow up from the floor. His second attempt went forwards, but only about two feet. John, watching the display with interest, approached Erasmus and gently guided his hands into the appropriate position. Erasmus, feeling slightly more comfortable, released his shot and watched as the arrow burrowed into the undergrowth about ten feet short of the target. A bird settled on the branch holding the target and began to preen itself.

  ‘Try aiming a little higher, lad,’ said John. ‘You’ve got to aim over the target to hit it.’

  Erasmus felt like pointing out that he did know about projectiles – he was, after all, a physics teacher – but the outburst would be meaningless in a century when physic still meant medicine and Newton’s apple tree hadn’t even been planted. Instead, he set an arrow to his string, squinted in the direction of the waterskin, then aimed above it. It should have been a perfect shot: it left the bow at a remarkable speed, without so much as a wobble, and arced neatly through the air. There, however, the demonstration fell apart: the arrow flew low over the branch, causing the bird to duck instinctively, and disappeared into the woods beyond, impacting with not so much of a thud as a howl. A few minutes later, Deloial limped into the clearing with a familiar looking projectile protruding from his left leg and his sword in his hand.

  ‘Who the hell fired that?’ he said. Erasmus lowered his bow and felt an almost instinctive urge to go off to the headmaster’s study.

  ‘We’re giving Erasmus some lessons,’ said John.

  ‘Couldn’t you have started him with something a little less dangerous?’ Deloial found his gaze drawn to the tree branch which had taken the brunt of Erasmus’ previous lesson. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well, what about the staff – that doesn’t have any sharp edges.’

  ‘I’ve already seen him with one of those,’ said John. ‘He’s not exactly an expert.’

  ‘As far as I can tell, he’s not exactly an expert in anything,’ Deloial grumbled. ‘How he’s survived as long as he has is a mystery to us all.’

  Erasmus felt somewhat indignant at this remark. He wondered how long Deloial would last in front of form 3C on a Wednesday morning. ‘You can’t judge someone purely by their skill with a weapon,’ he said.

  ‘In my experience, people who don’t have any skill with a weapon rarely live long enough to be judged by any other criteria,’ said Deloial.

  ‘Perhaps you should try talking to them before you kill them,’ said Erasmus, feeling he was on relatively safe ground with Deloial limited to a fast limp.

  Deloial looked at Erasmus curiously. ‘You’re a very strange person,’ he said. ‘Where exactly do you come from?’

  Erasmus decided to treat the question as rhetorical and passed his bow back to Robin. Deloial, however, kept his gaze fixed on the teacher. ‘You appear from nowhere, claiming to have been rescued from Nottingham Castle; you say you have an interest in Robin Hood, yet you haven’t told us what this interest is; you even claim that Marian (he spoke the name with some distaste) has treated you with favour. Why should we believe a word you say?’

  Erasmus thought about the mysterious meeting with the two soldiers that morning. He looked around the faces in front of him: Robin was alert and quizzical, Will his usual sullen self, the twins and Much just curious. Only John appeared to be regarding him with any genuine friendliness. ‘How do I know I can trust you?’ said Erasmus. ‘How much have you told everyone about yourself?’

  Robin broke into a grin. ‘He’s got you there,’ he said. ‘You haven’t told us much about your past.’

  Deloial frowned. ‘This isn’t some kind of marketplace,’ he snapped, ‘we aren’t here to exchange gossip about each other.’r />
  Erasmus pressed home his advantage. ‘But you expect Robin to trust you, based only on what you’re prepared to tell him.’

  ‘Of course. That’s true of all of us.’

  ‘Then I think you should extend the same courtesy to me.’

  Deloial fell silent. Erasmus’ logic was, after all, irrefutable. Looking darkly at the teacher, he turned and limped off towards the corner of the clearing. Robin walked beside him, the two talking quietly as they went.

  John raised an eyebrow at Erasmus. ‘You’ve not made a friend there, lad,’ he said.

  Chapter Twelve

  In a clearing, deep within Sherwood Forest, a doe watches over her fawn as he frolics, letting the pattern of light and shade run over his russet-red back, dancing between shadows and occasionally glimpsing back for his mother’s approval. Suddenly, the doe’s ears prick up – something is coming through the forest and she hurriedly herds her charge into the safety of the thicket, where her baleful eyes can watch the arrivals unobserved.

  ‘I tell you, we’re bleedin’ lost.’ The voice of Will Scarlet had its usual humourless edge, but fatigue was adding extra aggression.

  ‘Patience, Will,’ came Robin’s voice. ‘I told you it wasn’t a short walk.’

  ‘Well, I’m telling you I’ve seen that tree before.’

  ‘It’s just an ash, lad,’ John cut in, ‘the forest’s full of ’em.’

  ‘I know it’s an ash,’ Will snapped, ‘but I’m telling you it’s the same ash.’

  The party stopped to examine the tree. To the untrained eye it was, as John pointed out, just another example of a relatively common tree. If there were any distinguishing features, then the other outlaws couldn’t see them.