The sergeant’s horse wanted to follow the others, for it was an uncut stud and wanting to take the lead. But the off-kilter weight dragging at it’s stirrup bothered it. After only a couple of hundred yards, it gave up the game and stopped, circling its dragging burden once or twice, snorting nervously before settling down. The blood smell was strong, but nothing else was moving and the men were gone. Tossing its head, it sidled away from the bloody lump at the end of the stirrup, blowing through its nose. Then it became distracted by a clump of sweet grass almost beneath its forehooves. With a last snort of annoyance, it lowered its head and began to graze.
A low groan and one of the bloody lumps stirred itself. The horse snorted and moved off a few paces, its dead rider thumping along behind. The ragged figure of the ‘golem’ pulled itself to hands and knees and shook its head.
Three, he thought muzzily to himself. One of them an officer. He lifted his head and surveyed the roadside through weary eyes, even this simple act pulling cruelly at torn muscles. So where were the other nineteen and why was he still alive?
Long moments he knelt there, trying to draw together the disjointed pieces of himself from where they’d taken shelter from these new pains, scanning the edge of the prairie through slitted eye. The arms were the first to return, bruises and abrasions awakening to fiery awareness. The cracked rib was next to announce its return as the adrenalin surge of battle continued its retreat. The legs were the last, still half numb from the punishment he’d heaped upon them these last days. The whole body of a piece now, other priorities moved to the head of the line and he staggered to his feet.
The river was better than two days behind, and water was once again becoming very important. Neither he nor either of the bodies on the ground had any. But there was a horse over by the road, and there would likely be a canteen of some sort on the saddle.
The stud didn’t want anything to do with the shambling, blood-soaked demon at first, but a soothing voice and slow movements eventually won it over. It helped when the new friend removed the bloody thing from the end of the stirrup.
The canteen was less than half full —about a liter remaining— and not particularly clean. But after licking the dew off of leaves or out of stone hollows for two days, it was heaven. Picket pin and rope were found in the heavy saddlebags, along with another gift from God in the form of a cache of hardtack and some sort of jerked meat. The rest of the contents he’d have to examine later when the weight of haste pressed more lightly upon his shoulders.
The sun was climbing slowly to its zenith, and for the first time seemed warm and friendly. Funny how much difference a bit of human food and a splash of tinny tasting water made. The sky still hurt, although he couldn’t quite put his finger on just what it was about the color that wasn’t right.
Horse seemed normal enough — a good looking palomino with a white splash and one white stocking. About sixteen hands, it had a good deep chest even if the head was bigger than the books said was proper.
And these dead guys around him were certainly human men. Short, stocky, dark-haired, dark-skinned. Northern Mediterranean, maybe, if he had to compare them to an archetype.
He sat back at the edge of the wood, well away from the scene of the short battle and gnawed on the half-rancid meat, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. In the back of his mind he knew that his time was short. He’d proven to his own satisfaction that he wasn’t in friendly territory, and although he had no idea why the remaining soldiers had failed to kill him, he had no doubt that they’d be back at some point for another try. Back with assistance, most likely.
When the jerky was securely stowed between backbone and bellybutton and the last of the water was on its way to the sweat glands, he levered himself to his feet with the aid of a captured and cleaned lance and ambled back to the impromptu killing field.
The horse nickered, and he moved to shift the picket pin so the beast could access more graze.
The body of the officer lay where it had been dragged by its former mount, the broken shaft of the lance still transfixing it. Examining the dead officer, he felt himself falling deeper into disbelief.
The man wore a conical helmet with nasal and earflaps– what was the term...? Barbute? No, spangen something. Fifth or sixth century European, right?
School was a long way back and ancient history hadn’t been his best subject in any case. Nor did his personal database cover it. He was more a student of weapons than of armor, and while he had given over considerable disk space to weaponry down through the ages, he hadn’t bothered to collect much serious data on armor beyond the entertainment vids or adventure fiction pieces.
Helm, gorget, pauldrons, and breastplate worn over red and white striped, high collared, long sleeved linen, and constructed of passable steel, brightly polished where they weren’t enameled with more of the stripes. Half arms and legs of chain mail with steel plated leather vambraces and enameled greaves.
The device emblazoned on the breastplate was raised, and also worked in enamel. Some sort of bird or dragon — hard to tell which with the wooden pole sticking up out of the middle. Black leather breeches were stuffed into thigh-high soft boots with high rider’s heels. He wore spurs without rowels, mildly decorated, with none of the bells or danglies the soldier seemed to remember from the old vids. The mess of curlicues clustered about the neck and shoulders of the armor made no sense at all, and there was no telling if they represented rank or merely a flair for the elaborate. Only the man’s actions and attitude had revealed him as an officer at all. The whole of the uniform was set off with a wide, woolen sash, dyed a deep maroon, with more symbols or insignia blazoned across it.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Somebody’s procurement department, somewhere, really wanted to impress the rabble with these guys.
There was a scabbarded sword hanging from the heavy belt, and a knife that must have been forty-five centimeters long all by itself.
He drew the sword clear, examining it closely. About ninetyish centimeters at the blade by maybe six across, with wide, shallow fullers running about half its length. Possessed of fairly straightforward lines and a decent amount of etching of the type you’d expect on an officer’s blade, if not a little more elaborate. Typical fourteenth or fifteenth century Earth-norm, Eurocentric cut and thrust specimen with emphasis on the cut. Made of decent steel and wickedly sharp.
The grip looked Earth-norm as well, with a good tight fit and finish. The hilt was a basketless, cruciform, with long, gilt quillons and a single, thin knuckle guard. The grip was some sort of fine-grained leather, and wrapped with gold wire, with a golden ball pommel worked into some sort of beast he couldn’t identify.
He might as well have taken the thing from a Terran Museum display. Drawing the dagger, it was obvious that the blades formed a suite, and a fairly expensive one.
He took a few passes with the sword. It reminded him a bit of the practice blades they’d used at the academy before graduating to spool swords. The balance felt off, probably due to the heavier, longer blade, and lack of a proper basket. He could probably use it if he had to. Practice would help, of course — it wasn’t like he’d never had cause to use a solid blade outside of the academy, was it? He resheathed both blades, shaking his head in disbelief.
The belt pouch held half a dozen heavy coins of silver and one that might have been gold, along with a handful of smaller silvery coins that looked like cheap alloys, sprinkled with a few of copper. There was a small comb made of ivory or something very like it, and a cloth pouch filled with some sort of tobacco and a gizmo that he couldn’t quite identify.
It had a bowl at one end that had had something burned in it to judge from the char. From the lower end of the bowl a tube ran in a sort of S-shaped arc. The far end had what looked like bite marks. A sniff of the bowl told him that this thing must be the way these guys smoked the tobacco. Weird.
He found the powder horns and his face lit up. Yep, patch box around behind the body. Where was the weapon? Not on the body, it turned out. Backtracking, he found the pistol lying in the grass near where the officer had taken the lance. Another elaborately gilt etched vanity piece. Smoothbore; caliber around fifteen millimeters or so, exposed lock of some unfamiliar type. It almost looked like a wheellock, but didn’t quite match the graphics in his database nor his memories of museum visits. Also, it was on the wrong side of the gun.
A few minutes of study showed him that the lock slid clear of the wheel along a raised bar rather than rotating on a pivot like those he was familiar with. He pulled the cock back carefully, hearing some catch inside snick into a notch in the bar. But how did you— ah, you cocked it with your thumb, sliding the mechanism up and clear of the notch where a flat spring forced the chunk of pyrite against the wheel. That explained the lock being on the wrong side. He had no idea how reliable it might be, but it certainly looked to be quicker than a Terran wheellock.
The Lyrran skivvies, while they had proven themselves through whatever ordeal he’d been caught up in, were on their last legs and offered little in the way of support. The dead man’s leather breaches looked vastly more useful, but the officer was considerably smaller than he, and had soiled himself into the bargain. Nor was he particularly interested in trying to pry off the perforated armor for the sake of a bloody shirt that would no more fit than the pants.
Still, he belted the suite of blades around his waist, transferring the pistol to the rudimentary loop where it apparently belonged. The key to rewind the wheellock, he found on a chain about the dead man’s neck.
The boots, now. The boots seemed like they might fit. Even better, in pulling them off, he revealed a pair of narrow, elaborately engraved throwing knives, fitted into sheaths sewn into the top of each boot. Hmph. No socks. Curling his toes and thinking about the blisters, cuts, and tears already there, he thought of sharing the dead man’s sweat and didn’t much care for the idea. Then an idea struck. He looked up at the dead man’s shirt. Perhaps he could use it after all? The sleeves, at any rate.
His first kill had been larger than the officer, and the leather breeches almost fit, although they were too short, and tight enough to make a man worry about future reproductive capability. The armor was too narrow across the shoulders, though, and the silk shirt beneath clotted with enough blood to render it unuseable. The boots held no treasure, and the weapons it bore weren’t as good as those he’d taken from the officer, though of roughly the same type. Nor was the remaining body any more useful. Oh, they’d had a handful copper coins between them, and a few of those small alloy ovals, but neither had had anything else worth the effort of taking.
The sun was well up in the sky by this time, and heeling around toward afternoon, increasing his nervousness. He’d better be leaving if he wasn’t going to wait for the welcoming committee to return. With a last look around, he climbed less than easily into the high cantled saddle, ignoring his body’s protestations. He brought the animal’s head gently into the wind.
Now which way to go? He’d no desire to meet up with the soldiers again, but neither did he know which way they’d gone. Had they been heading out or in when he’d found them? Then he remembered the canteen. Less than half full, and the food he’d found wouldn’t make a full meal for a coyote.
So they were either almost home or ready to resupply. Neither possibility gave him comfort. Both meant they wouldn’t have far to go for help. So, since they’d been heading upspin when he’d first caught sight of them, he turned the horse’s nose away from the setting sun, ready to put the heels to it, fighting the urge to wave goodbye to the two pairs of eyes he could feel burning into the back of his neck from within the trees. Fighting even harder the urge to reach out for them simply for the sake of their touch.
He brought up short, shaking his head clear. He’d better start thinking like a soldier again or he was going to end up with a spear in his guts.
The road was paved, although the terrain was wild. Post road or highway, right? Why should there be only a single patrol on it? And who was to say that there weren’t way stations close enough together to obviate the need for extended rations?
The forest stood brooding barely a stone’s throw away. Seven local days he’d been buried in that mass of greenery, lost and wandering without a single glimpse of the sun. But he’d not seen a single patrol in there either. And so he turned the horse toward the wall of foliage and clucked it forward.