“But suppose there were more than one swordsman,” Felis said. “If you have more than one coming in, you can’t just poke one. The other one will poke you.”
“That’s what the formation is for,” Gird said. “If it works.” This time he and Cob lined up facing Felis and Arvan. When they lowered their sticks, and jabbed, the two “swordsmen” found themselves giving ground, flailing uselessly with their shorter weapons.
“Just remember,” Felis said, “that even an accidental blow with a sword is going to take chips off that stick. It won’t last forever. Can you do real damage with it?”
“I don’t know.” Gird tapped him in the chest again. “If I did that much harder, you might fall down; I might even break your breastbone, or a rib.”
“You’ll have to swing it to knock someone flat, most times.” Triga, watching, entered the discussion. “And if you swing it, that gives time for a fast swordsman to slip in and kill you.”
“And if you swing it,” Felis pointed out, “it can foul on someone else’s stick who’s fighting another opponent.”
“Mmmph. I thought we could try this—hold still, now, I won’t really hit you hard.” Gird jabbed at Felis’s face, then tapped his chest, and then slid his bands down to swing the stick like a flail. But Arvan chose that moment to dart in and put his “sword” to Gird’s neck.
“Like that,” Felis said, grinning at Arvan and Gird both. Gird glowered at Cob.
“And where were you, partner?”
Cob looked rueful. “Standing watching you, when I should have been watching Arvan. We have more to learn, yeomen.”
“We could whittle a point on these sticks, and fire-harden it,” said Triga.
“It’s still not going to go through any kind of armor. Even if it did, it would catch there, and I’d be standing there with a dead soldier on the end of my weapon, looking foolish.” Gird scratched his beard vigorously, as if that could clear his head. “I thought if we hit them in the chest hard enough—or in the belly—that would knock them down, maybe even out.”
“Hit them in the face—that makes ’em back up, and they’ll worry about losing an eye—”
“True, but—” Gird thought about that. “We need a way to kill them, or we’d be standing all day poking poles at them. I did think of some farm tools—the shovel, the mattock, the scythe—but they all have to be swung. And you’re saying, aren’t you, that anything we swing will be clumsier than a sword?”
Felis half-closed his eyes, and began swiping the air. Gird stared, then realized he was imagining himself swinging various farm implements. Gird tried to guess which, from Felis’s movements, but except for the sickle (a short swing, with a snap to the wrist) he could not be sure which was which. Felis opened his eyes, made a few passes with his “sword,” and grinned. “I think there’s a chance with a mattock—and even a scythe, though the grips would have to be moved around. But it wouldn’t be easy.”
Gird heaved a dramatic sigh. “None of this is easy. If it was easy, someone would’ve done it long ago.”
Rahi spoke, for the first time in a drill session. “What if two or three worked together? One with the stick, to force the swordsman’s attention, and one or two with weapons more likely to kill, but slower.”
“That’s fine, if we outnumber the enemy,” said Felis. “But in battle—”
“Wait,” said Gird. “That might work—and we had better outnumber them, Felis, facing steel with wood. Let’s try it.”
Felis shrugged, but stepped forward again. This time Rahi stood beside Gird with one of the sickles. She was on his left, but then looked at her sickle and quickly changed sides as Gird lunged at Felis. Felis backed, his attention necessarily on the stick in his face. When Rahi came forward, he tried to swing at her, but the pole caught him in the angle of neck and shoulder. Arvan swung at Rahi, but missed as Cob’s pole got him in the chest, and then poked again at his face. Rahi could easily dodge Felis’s wild strokes, and she swung, stopping just as the sickle tip hooked into his side. Then, slow for the exercise, but smoothly, she swung back, pivoting, to come forward again and take Arvan in the belly. They all stopped and stood up.
“It works in slow motion,” said Felis doubtfully. “And I don’t know how we’ll practice it fast, not without killing each other.”
“We still need someone with a stick for every swordsman.” Gird scratched again, and stared at the stick. “And some behind with the other weapons, the killing weapons. Not that the sticks can’t kill. But there’s something I’m not seeing. Anyone else?”
“Well—you ever see that old-style stickfighting, on fair days?” asked Cob.
“No—the only fair-day I ever went to had one wrestler not as good as you, and a man who could throw knives.”
“They started it like a dance,” Cob said. “One man tapping a drum, and them tapping the sticks together. It was pretty, like watching horses in a field, tappity-tap. Then they started going faster, and faster, and about then I realized it was a kind of fighting. I’d have learned more, only I was there to make a few crabs wrestling, and my friends had bet on me. I asked one of them later, and he said it was old, something our great-great-grand-das would have known about.”
“Do you remember any of it?”
“Only the first bits, the slow part. But it’d be good practice, anyway. Get us used to the feel of something hitting the sticks.”
It took longer than Gird would have expected before he could match Cob’s pattern; his knuckles felt as if he’d hit them with hammers. And that was with both of them being careful. Triga, who’d been to the same fair, and thought he remembered the stickfighting very well, tried to start fast and ended up sucking his split knuckles ruefully. At least he wasn’t angry—but there had been no frogs to eat for days. Arvan picked up the movements quickly, as did Felis, but Padug, who had been Felis’s other star pupil at swordsmanship, was slower than Gird. By the time Fori came back, to announce that Midwinter Feast should be celebrated in eight days, most of them were still fumbling their way through this new drill.
Midwinter itself was the coldest and darkest Gird had ever known. No one was sick—Alyanya’s grace—but that meant no excuse for any fire whatever. And the rituals of Midwinter had always involved the whole family: each member had his or her assigned role. He had asked the men, and located an eldest son, youngest son, the oldest and youngest overall. Rahi had to take all the women’s roles; Gird hoped the gods would understand and accept their intent, and not demand the precision only a whole family could provide.
At dusk on the first night, all their fires were quenched, and the hearths brushed clean. Water, fire, ritual earth (though they had no garden or ploughland), each handled with due reverence—the icy air breathed with respect and affection both. Rahi, not surprisingly, remembered all the women’s verses: she had been, once, the youngest daughter, then the eldest, and with Mali’s death and her marriage, Alyanya’s representative in Gird’s home. Together, finally, hands cupped around symbolic light, they sang the Darksong. That was in the middle of the night, when Torre’s Necklace stood high overhead. From then until dawn, they huddled together, telling old tales of their childhoods, their fathers’ tales as far back as any could remember. Their breath steamed silver in the starlight, each speaker like a tiny chimney. Then—best of omens—a clear dawn to Midwinter Day, and Rahi set the circle pattern of twigs for the new fire. In a great circle, hand to hand, they watched her light it, on the lucky third spark.
They had their feast, as well, for Gird had hidden a comb of honey, and dripped it liberally over hearthcakes and grain mush. Besides that, they had deer, hunted safely long after the lords had gone back to their city. They feasted in comfort, around the roaring fires, and spent the second long night singing more songs than Gird had ever heard. All it lacked was ale; he missed the warmth in his throat and belly, though not the aching head when he woke.