by Damien Lake
“Haven’t we been here before?” Marik stood to face the man who had plagued him for eightdays on end. Strangely, he no longer felt apprehensive. What he felt was a weariness at having to step carefully around his new home because of one dumb giant holding a grudge. “You and your halfwits over there want to settle up?”
“That’s right, smartass! The old man isn’t here to save your scrawny neck this time!”
Dietrik whispered furiously, “Are you sure you know what you’re about?”
“I think so,” Marik hissed back. “Are you going to back me up?”
“Of course, mate!” He looked at Beld advancing on them and added, “Though you’ll owe me a good meal and several rounds if we pull this off.”
“Let me try him myself first.”
“There might not be anyone left for me to back up then!”
“I needed that.”
Beld stopped ten feet from Marik. He pulled free the giant blade strapped to his back. “Isn’t a fake one this time!”
Marik drew his sword. “Beld?”
“What?” The larger man paused.
“Have you been to the chirurgeons’ wing yet?”
“You think you got what it takes? That’ll be the day!” Beld’s control over his temper today suffered worse than when they had first fought. Marik thought he could put that to use. “Now!”
This time he prepared for Beld’s surprising speed. Beld came at him swinging the claymore, his massive strength adequate for the job of controlling the huge weapon.
Marik leapt in an instant, dodging away from the steel monster. If he tried to defend himself, it would damage him through sheer blunt force. He needed to avoid the blade as much as possible, blocking only when left with no other choice. The power difference between their two weapons was so great he needed to employ the same strategy Nyla had described for rapier use. Again and again he nimbly dodged. Beld grew increasingly furious. Seeing the rage coloring the giant’s face boosted his confidence.
He finally felt ready after an entire winter of nervous tension.
* * * * *
Dietrik watched his friend dodge the first blow, ready to jump in and help. He knew Marik wished to swim this current alone until he asked for assistance, so Dietrik bounced on his toes, wincing as the giant sword missed his friend by a hair’s breadth.
So far Marik managed a fine job of holding his own. His friend’s skill had grown at an astonishing rate, forcing Dietrik to work much harder than he had ever anticipated to keep pace. While only a handful of years older than Marik, his pride stung enough at the thought the younger man might have the greater talent. They had stayed apace so far…except Dietrik often wondered if Marik worked nearly as hard at it as he.
He took Beld’s challenge now with admirable grace. From his movements, he must have reached the same conclusion as himself and wished to avoid making contact with the mammoth cleaver. Beld was so quick with the huge weapon that the usual weaknesses were greatly reduced. Trying to dash in behind the arc might be suicidal, especially since Marik was known to use that trick.
It left him few opportunities to counterattack, being in awkward positions, but it saved him from the hard impacts through his mail. Besides, blocking such a huge weapon could turn your hands and arms numb, which would be a disadvantageous turn of events.
The two drifted from the shacks while their fight continued. Beld swung with horizontal slashes for the most part. Dietrik watched with interest, deciding the overlarge blade tended to limit the strikes you could successfully employ. An overhead blow crept into the mix from time to time, keeping Marik from capitalizing on the regularity of the other swings as he scrambled to keep his head from being split apart.
Beld’s two lackeys followed as they wandered around the training area, as did Dietrik.
“Come on, lad! You know you can do this!”
Marik concentrated too hard to respond, which was too bad. Beld apparently had a short temper. A well placed insult might blind him further with towering rage.
Though time seemed to stretch while the two fought, only a few minutes must have passed in truth. Marik had done an excellent job of staying beyond Beld’s reach. The effort required to continually swing the heavy weapon had begun to take its toll on the large man. Dietrik noticed this at the same moment Marik switched tactics and went on the offensive.
Watching him work amazed Dietrik, who remembered well the trouble his friend had encountered against this man during the entrance trials. After a bit of talk from the higher ups about weapons and a few eightdays of practice in these training fields, Marik took on his former foe with apparent ease.
Beld’s muscles were already strained from his own onslaught. This sudden flurry of attacks by his agile opponent forced him on the defensive. Marik began with a left slash to the torso which Beld deflected upward, followed by a southwestern strike toward his neck on the rebound. A pair of thrusts followed in quick succession, though the blade Marik wielded was not strongly suited to such attacks. The claymore knocked the first thrust aside but the second came too close behind the last to reposition the large sword. It grazed Beld’s mail when he wriggled to sidestep it.
Angered, he lashed out with his fist at Marik’s face, who dodged the blow. Previous experience must have suggested he watch for such an attack.
Beld left himself open for a moment with only one hand on his hilt. Unfortunately, Marik was unable to recover from the dodge fast enough. He remained off balance, unable to capitalize on the fragmented defense.
Dietrik kept an eye on the other two the whole time. If it looked to them as though Beld would be defeated, they might jump into the fray and change the equation. He watched Marik launch a series of attacks, one he recognized from their practice a short while before.
His hand firmly gripped the rapier’s bone hilt while he split his attention between the fight and Beld’s friends. Despite the cold, sweat ran down the back of his neck. Tension ran high, and so did the stakes, but Dietrik was having fun! The army never offered any excitement at all. Dietrik thanked his patron god for the insights that had prompted him to leave it behind. Already in the short time since arriving, life had been far more entertaining than during both years in his division combined.
* * * * *
Marik could tell Beld had started to slow down, and wondered why. They had only been exchanging blows for a few minutes. Surely the big man’s stamina could hold out longer than that. The first time they had fought had lasted longer than this.
True, they had been wielding wooden weapons that, no matter their weight, could never replicate a real sword beyond a certain level but Beld had showed no signs of slowing then. Were there other factors in effect here?
Marik backed off momentarily to get his bearings. It startled him to see how far they had strayed from the shacks. Surely they could not have come so far already, could they? Perhaps they had been fighting longer than he thought.
Oops! Beld’s catching his breath. No time to admire the view.
He pressed his attack, instinctively adjusting his angles, grip, speed and direction, launching into a different combination of blows. Beld had proved to be surprisingly inept at dealing with it the first time. Marik bet the man learned slowly.
Side slash to the torso from the right, rebound upwards, curve and return the blow from the northwest. Blocked and stopped, point thrust once, now again. Almost got him! Pull back and switch, accelerate into the southeast slash. Dodged! Keep up the speed, shift the weight to the other foot, rotate the arm and—yes!
The flashing strokes directed the blade onto an upward path. Marik rotated his sword into a downward strike that Beld was unable to avoid. His blade crashed into Beld’s shoulder, the mail protecting him from the sword’s edge. Except the blow’s force resulted in a severe loss of mobility through his left arm.
Beld almost dropped the sword he clutched in both hands as he struggled to maintain his grip. Marik would disallowed him time to recover. He stepped for
ward quickly to land a hard strike with his pommel against Beld’s unprotected head. The dull thud rolled back his eyes and his body slumped to the ground.
Marik mentally congratulated himself while he wondered why the fight had been so much easier than expected. Then the twin shouts from Beld’s friends caught his attention. They were angry and wanting to advance, their quest for retribution hindered by Dietrik, his thin sword standing between them and their target.
“Now, now boys. Fair’s fair, but two on one is going a little far, don’t you think?”
“Move it little man, ‘less you want the same!”
“Hmm, a tempting offer, to be sure.” While Marik quickly stepped forward to stand by his friend’s side, Dietrik answered the query. “Yes, I think I will have a taste.”
The two shouted in rage rather than responding with words. Marik found himself confronting a huge threat bearing a horse killer sword for the second time that day. He began his evasions anew, worried because he had already fought far longer than he must have realized. His own stamina surely could not hold out much longer.
* * * * *
Dietrik enjoyed fighting the gits they had been avoiding for eightdays. Having to stay away from them had gotten under his skin in the first place, though he’d carefully avoided letting on to Marik, who had not seemed ready to face their challenge yet.
He adopted a similar strategy to Marik’s by letting the fellow he faced wear himself out with his own weapon before moving in for the kill. The difference in his strategy lay in the weapon he held. Rapiers were built for speed and thrusting, two capabilities that helped immensely in the current situation. After stepping back to avoid a wide swing, he could easily reverse direction and thrust inside the man’s guard.
The attempts to dodge the thrusts quickly sapped the strength in the giant’s legs. Soon he bore several small cuts along his limbs, each oozing small bloody rivulets. None were deep, yet they looked bad, unnerving his hulking enemy with the sight of so much of his own blood. Dietrik’s foe slipped after one last attempt to dodge the rapier’s liquid movements. He landed hard, then held up a hand to Dietrik in surrender.
“Maybe the next time you fellows get itching for a brawlabout, you’ll look elsewhere then? Good!”
Dietrik turned to see that Marik still faced his second adversary. Worry suddenly touch him with icy fingers; Marik seemed to be running low on energy and had been backed to the point where his feet entangled with the unconscious Beld.
He charged to aid his friend, loudly crying out, “Avast-hooooo!”
The startled giant glanced over his shoulder to find a grinning maniac descending on him.
Dietrik was really having fun!
* * * * *
It ended soon after. The simultaneous front and rear assault quickly brought the last foe down, as unconscious as Beld.
“Avast-ho?”
“I sort of allowed myself to get caught up in the moment,” Dietrik admitted sheepishly, though his broad grin still split his face.
“I suppose so! Hey, you!”
Dietrik’s sparing partner looked sharply at them from examining his wounds. He exhibited no fear but seemed wary all the same.
“I think you need to trot over to the chirurgeons’ wing and get help for your friends!”
The idiot scowled at him, making no move to leave.
“It’s up to you,” Marik shouted to end the one-sided conversation. “Let’s go.”
“Yes, let’s. That’s worked up quite an appetite.”
“I want to find a place to sit for awhile.”
They left the field and crossed the short distance between the Fourteenth’s and Fifteenth’s barracks.
“I think we’ve both improved to the next class level. You didn’t make any mistakes against Beld the Ox!”
“They were there. I’m still not used to this long-armed guard. It interfered with the sword strokes I was trying for.”
“It did not show at all.”
“It worked out all right, but only because Beld has the brain of a donkey. I need to improve my speed; I missed a couple openings because I was too slow.”
“Listen to you! You just made sport of that fool and all you can say is how bad you still are!”
“I know I need to work harder. I can feel it when I fight!”
“Well, from the outside, you looked impressive. You can fancy yourself a lucky chap all you want, but the truth is if you stopped right now, you’d still qualify for the band next spring.”
“You seemed to be doing well too. I didn’t see much of it myself, but that fellow was chewed up something fierce.”
“Thank you. It’s mostly the work of the sword I’m wearing rather than anything else, but as long as the job gets done I’m satisfied.”
“I wonder, though.”
“You wonder what?”
“I don’t know. It’s funny that Beld came in as a C Class at minimum, since he’s not with us in Mylor’s sessions.”
Dietrik glanced at him, reading his thoughts. “He was judged ‘adequate’ by the panel, is that what you’re saying? He skills are acceptable, so he has not been training overmuch. Meanwhile, all of us ‘lower’ fighters have been working our bloody arses off, and look at us now!” Dietrik laughed loudly. “Maybe the band should hire on more D Classes than Cs!”
“At least we won’t have to worry about Beld any longer.”
Dietrik’s expression fell, turning grim. “Don’t be so sure about that one. Chaps like him learn slowly, if they ever do at all. I’m sure by tomorrow morning he’ll have convinced himself he lost by an unimaginable stroke of chance. His friend didn’t look much humbled to me either.”
“He can only fight us in the training areas though. Not unless he wants to be hauled off to the holding cells by the Homeguard.”
“Is that supposed to be comforting? Knowing that we might have to face those three every day after exercising?”
“I guess not. But I’m not worried about him anymore. If he acts up, we can put him down.”
“It’s how he’ll choose to act up that has me worried. He could decide to play underhanded.”
Marik shrugged. “Watch your back and it won’t matter.”
“If life were that easy, it wouldn’t be this hard.”
* * * * *
Five days later, a delegation arrived at the town gates. Marik and Dietrik were perusing the shops along Ale House Row looking for thread and waterproofing wax among other items when it arrived, so they saw most of the action.
Or rather, they saw what little action there was. Two men rode in on horseback dressed in fine livery accompanied by six guards with leather vests displaying a family crest of the aristocracy. Dietrik and Marik went unnoticed by the two as the gates opened and they were admitted onto the Marching Grounds. Their eyes fixed firmly ahead until they crossed the empty field and dismounted at the command building.
A man emerged to greet them, then called another from inside. The second led the guards around to the back, probably to the guest quarters, while the two in finer clothing were allowed inside.
“Must be the first of our clientele for the coming fighting season, arriving to hire extra swords for their disputes,” Dietrik thought aloud.
“I guess it’s serious if they rode all the way to us during winter.”
“Perhaps not. Hayden told me contracts tend to trickle in during the last half of the winter months. By the time spring finally arrives, most of the band could be committed to hires already.”
“First come, first served, right?”
“I do believe that’s the flavor of it. Might be a local lord who wants to ensure he’ll have the men he wants.”
“Or try to at any rate. The band doesn’t take every contract that’s offered.”
“Another reason to jump in early, I suppose. If you can’t get us on your side, you’ll need to scramble and find others.”
The noon bell sounded. Marik jerked from his study of the horses the
delegation had ridden in on. “Oops! We’re going to be late if we don’t get a move on! We told Kerwin and Landon to meet us at noon.”
“Yes, we’d better go.”
Kerwin and Landon were two fellow unit members. Of the twenty-three men in the Fourth Unit, they had gotten to know around half on friendly terms. There were no hostilities between them and the other unit members, and the worst those men could be accused of would be a strong desire for solitude.
The four had agreed to meet on the archery range to settle a friendly bet that had arisen from Landon’s confidence in his marksmanship. As an archer, he possessed greater skill with a bow than most men in the unit. He had been raised in a hunting family.
Teasing over the supposed degradation of his skills during the winter lull had forced him to prove himself. Kerwin, Marik and Dietrik had a quarter silver each against Landon being able to outshoot all three of them.
“I already know how I’ll do on the range. I’ve been on it exactly once before,” Marik confessed while they trotted to the northwestern corner.
“I’m not too worried. Kerwin says he’s spent as many marks on the archery range as anyone else in the unit. And it’s not as if we spend every copper of our stipend each eightday.”
“Mine’s been piling up in the safe drawer in my closet. I could probably make a steal at Sennet’s bargain sale before he carts it all to Thoenar without having to tighten my belt any.”
“I’m going to try getting this rapier for my own. I may need to borrow a coin or two if he’s attached to them.”
“I’m not spending them. You’re welcome to them. You can pay me back when our pay doubles during our first contract.”
Since they were fed in the barracks and housed for free, the band only paid the men half wages during in-town residency. As the only establishments where a man could spend coin in Kingshome, the shops and taverns along Ale House Row received most of it. Men were free to visit the other nearby towns to spend their pay in pursuit of luxuries unavailable in Kingshome, the most notable of which was women, but the two friends had been too busy in their training exercises to travel.