Beam POV: Day 50

Current Wealth: 1 silver 47 copper

Being totally honest, I actually did just panic when Xangô dumped me in front of about two dozen people with orders to teach them. My initial instruction, to go and find a suitably large open part of the village, was more to buy time than for any actual requirement to the process. I used the walk over there to think.

Unfortunately, I was thinking slowly. Maybe it was the cold, maybe it was the imminent attack, maybe it was stage fright. You might think years in the Olympics would have prepared me for the latter, but you’d be wrong. God, I wished the rotters would hurry up.

“Alright, you lot.” I called out, with about as much calm as a man who’d just watched his pilot’s wife divorce him moments before takeoff, “I’ve been put in charge of whipping you all into shape. It’s going to be hard, it’s going to require focus, but-”

“We know it’ll be hard.” One of them interrupted, a wiry man who was glaring at me like I personally was responsible for the village’s condition. “We’ve spent weeks fighting off hordes of rotters, what the shite have you done?”

Murmurs of agreement rolled out among the others, and I became acutely aware of how quickly I was losing what thin veneer of command I’d managed to scrounge up. I answered him quickly, trying to hide my desperation.

“I’ve killed rotters.” I told him. “Lots of them. As well as trolls, and plenty of men. And I’ve been fighting with a sword since I was a boy.”

“We don’t have any swords here.” Another one called out, causing another wave of agreement to bristle through the assembled people. “Who even put you in charge, anyway? Your brother? What’s he done?!”

My teeth were grinding at that remark, but I had to admit it had a decent grounding. I was a sword fighter with no sword, I’d told Xangô as much, and he’d not exactly done anything to prove himself to the locals, either. Still, I was running out of ideas.

“Why are you even here, to loot us after we’re all dead?” Another voice called out. I frowned, tried to think of a retort, but heard more accusations flying even as I did.

“Bloody mercenaries are what you are, not heroes.”

“We don’t need foreigners telling us how to take care of our own town.”

“Took you long enough to help, didn’t it?”

It was all ridiculous. Ridiculously unfair, and ridiculously self-destructive. Were these people trying to get killed? Why were they so insistent on driving away the only help they’d get?

Solitaire could’ve probably figured it out, he could practically smell emotion on people, and Xangô would’ve been able to reason everything out with brute logic. I wasn’t either of my friends- brothers, now- though. I couldn’t understand these people.

And, I realised, I didn’t have to. There was one law I’d learned well since coming here, a law that even my brothers’ cleverness had to kneel before. I took a step forward to employ it.

“You.” I said, pointing to one of the dissenters- one who everyone else was looking to hear out more than the rest. He froze, pointing to himself.

“Me?” He asked.

“You.” I repeated. “Step out of the crowd, we’re going to give everyone a little demonstration.”

He did so, hesitantly, even my authority was apparently irresistible while focused on a single target. I could see the man trembling as he approached.

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“I want you to close in and try to bite me.” I informed him. “Not hard, obviously, just give a demonstration for everyone. Sprint like you mean it, like I killed your child. Sprint like you’re a rotter.”

Again, the man was hesitant. Looking back to his friends, and beginning to lurch forwards only when they enthusiastically told him to go for it. I watched and waited as he came on, studying his movements, getting the timing all right and perfect in my head and remaining still as a statue until he was barely two yards away. Then I exploded into motion.

Stepping in, I placed one leg hard forwards and gripped both his arms with mine, helping his momentum along by dragging his body and lowering mine. He hit my hip, then rolled fully over me as his momentum slid off my braced frame and his centre was wrenched to one side. He spun about 180 degrees before finally slapping down into the cold-hardened ground, groaning where he lay.

I turned to the others, and saw, with no small amount of satisfaction, that they were suddenly a lot quieter. Staring with wide eyes and gaping mouths. I was talking before any of them could get a word out, and sounded smug even to my own ears.

“That was a Judo throw, a technique from a style of fighting not known in your lands.” I was, at least, fairly certain that martial arts weren’t as advanced here as they were back on earth. “It’s one of several I know. As you can see it’s good for putting an enemy on the ground, and it works even without much strength, since it involves turning their own speed and weight against them.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw the man starting to stand. I mimed out a stomp to his neck as he rose, freezing him in place.

“A downed enemy can be hurt badly, stomping is always a good choice, but you’ll also have the chance to move and arm yourself if there’s a weapon nearby. At worst you can put more space between you and them to escape. Worth remembering.”

More silence. Stunned silence, impressed. I actually let myself hope, for one moment, that I might’ve managed to shut them all up. But there was a dissenter. Always a dissenter.

“That’s not weapon fighting.”

It was another of the louder ones, apparently eager to pick up where his compatriot- now rolling around and groaning at my feet- had left off. I replied with a smile.

“You’re right, it isn’t.” I told him. “But there’s a lot more overlap than you might think, you’d be amazed how many knights die from throws like the one I just showed off, when they’re followed by a knife between their armour plates. Now who wants to step forwards with a weapon for a different demonstration?”

Unsurprisingly, it took a bit longer to wring some volunteers out this time, and I was sure to go easier on the next few. But they still learned.

We went through everything I could think of, all the techniques and skills I’d learned for applying strength and manipulating motion. Where and how to grip, the particulars of putting that little twist in your wrist for extra power, foot placement, elbow locking. Grappling and counter-grappling, leading an enemy.

Some of it might’ve been useless, I wasn’t sure exactly how often rotters were likely to feint- but it all contributed to a holistic picture of combat, of melee. And it felt good.

After close to two months at the lowest rung of this world’s ladder, without so much as the chance to even hold the weapons I’d actually trained with, I’d started to forget what I was capable of. I couldn’t even be sure I still had all the old muscle memory, but reinforcing that the knowledge was still there at least did something to abate my nerves. And seeing the people stumble their way through everything was oddly satisfying.

But it was slow progress, all the same. I’d never been a teacher, just an athlete, and practically none of the people I was dealing with now had even a tenth of the talent I’d come to expect. I suppose a friend group consisting mostly of olympic-tier athletes would tend to do that to a guy’s perspective.

We continued regardless, working away, persevering. Warming ourselves up with the exertion of it all until the sun was well past halfway across its path through the sky. That was the warning point. Better to end it all well in advance of nightfall, and give everyone a few hours to recover.

The group broke up and started going their separate ways, and I felt an uneasiness in my gut as I watched them. They hadn’t learned much, really. Maybe not even enough to be noticeable. For most it took dozens of hours to start executing moves properly, dozens of hours more to get used to using them against a resisting enemy, months of weekly and daily training to practise snapping out a decent bunch, turning on all the right joints at all the right times, not freezing up and moving past simple reaction.

If every one of them learned as fast as I did, maybe we’d have made fighters of them before nightfall. If I’d been replaced by the entire team of my own coaches, perhaps the same result could’ve been achieved. However, we were stuck with what we had, and what we had, now, would’ve been losing to what we’d had before practice even started at least one time out of three. Being generous.

Swallowing, I turned to head back to wherever Xangô had gotten to. Hoping that he’d managed to get everyone else better organised than me.

After all, he didn’t have the option of just dropping them on their head.