Morgarten (Book 2 of the Forest Knights) (20 page)

“What are you burning?” Seraina asked as she crawled
over their bed of fresh spruce boughs and wool blankets.

Thomas held the edge of another page to the flame
and watched it catch. “Lies and half-truths,” he said.

“Did you write them?”

“No,” Thomas said. There was a harsh edge to his
voice.

She squinted at the markings on one of the pages.
They were meaningless to her and she wondered why anyone would
bother with written words when so few could decipher them.

“Then how do you know they are lies?”

Thomas looked at Seraina and his dark eyes
softened.

“I just know,” he said.

He reached out to touch Seraina’s cool cheek and she
leaned into the warmth of his hand. He kissed her on the lips and
then she slid in close and rested her head on his shoulder. She
watched in silence as he resumed feeding sheets of parchment into
the fire.

***

Thomas stomped across the snow-covered courtyard to
where Urs and Maximilian were talking in raised voices. A crew led
by Sutter was cutting down the circle of tall flag poles nearby for
firewood to heat the keep. They had all but stopped working,
distracted by what looked like a disagreement on its way to
becoming a full-blown argument.

As Thomas approached he heard bits of a conversation
that would not be good for morale if the men overheard.

“…shields will keep them alive,” Max said.

“They cannot stop dropping their blades as it is.
And you want to give them even more to think about?”

“Keep your voices down,” Thomas said. “The men are
looking.”

Urs crossed his arms and grunted. “I will if you can
talk some sense into Max.”

Thomas took a second to glance over his shoulder at
Sutter and his work party. They saw him looking and made a show of
picking up their tools and resuming their respective tasks.

“Now, what is the issue here?”

“Max wants to equip the men with shields,” Urs
said.

“We do not have any shields,” Thomas said. “So that
is not likely to happen.”

“Then we had bloody well better make some, Thomas,”
Max said, his voice once again escalating. “Or we are going to have
a mess of dead farmers on our hands!”

Thomas gave him a moment to calm down. “Out with it.
What is on your mind?”

Max paced a quick circle in front of Urs and Thomas
and then stopped inches from them. He kept his voice low. “I cannot
teach these heavy-handed farm boys and old men how to use a sword.
If we had ten years, maybe then we could get half of them to a
competent level. But not in a few months. We are wasting our time
here.”

Thomas looked to Urs. “Do you feel the same
way?”

Urs still had his massive forearms crossed over his
chest. He looked off to the side.

“It might help if they had the same length and type
of blades. We have piercers practicing slashing techniques and men
with single-edged weapons learning back-cuts. There is no
consistency, and we simply do not have the time.”

They were both right. Thomas had known from the
beginning that it would take a miracle to make an effective army
out of farmers and shepherds. No matter how hard they worked.

He looked over and caught Sutter staring at him. The
innkeeper turned quickly away and resumed chopping at the thick
flag pole that a short time ago had displayed the Habsburg pennant.
These men of the forests were a sturdy lot, and they had heart. But
they would be up against professional soldiers, and even worse,
knights. Men who had been swinging swords since childhood, their
bodies growing to accommodate the blade. Armor and weapons would
become such a natural part of them that they would limp and feel
less than whole when unarmed.

You cannot teach a man something in a few months
that another has spent his entire life learning.

Sutter stepped back from the tall pole and said
something to the Rubin twins who were sawing another log into
firewood on the ground nearby. They put down the two-man saw and
walked to stand behind Sutter, then Sutter reached out with his
hand and gave his pole a gentle touch. Nothing happened at first,
but then it began to slowly fall, picking up speed as it went. It
bounced once and shook the ground when its full length hit. One of
the twins picked up his own ax and began chopping at another
pole.

“Axes…” Thomas said.
How much time had he
wasted?

Urs and Max had started arguing with each other
again and had not heard him. Thomas left the two men and walked
quickly over to the forge. He retrieved Pirmin’s blanket-wrapped ax
and carried it over to Sutter’s work party. With Sutter and the
twins looking at him with curiosity, he unwrapped Pirmin’s ax.

“What are you going to do with that?” Sutter
asked.

“Not me,” Thomas said. He tossed it to Sutter, who
caught it deftly in one hand. Thomas pointed to a fresh pole,
thicker around than a man’s waist. “Cut it down.”

Sutter shrugged. “I can try. But the length of this
handle is going to make it a tad awkward.”

Max and Urs came up behind Thomas. “Are you thinking
what I think you are?” Max asked.

Thomas did not answer, but his pulse quickened as he
watched Sutter step back from the pole and line up his distance. He
set his feet and swung.

The ax head went past the pole and the shaft clanged
against the wood. The vibrations tore the ax out of Sutter’s hands
and it fell to the ground. Sutter shook the sting out of his hands
and cursed.

Urs and the twins laughed.

“It was a nice idea,” Max said, touching Thomas’s
shoulder.

Thomas held up his hand and pointed at Sutter. The
innkeeper had already retrieved the ax and was readjusting his
feet.

He swung.

The blade hit the pole with a
whump
that
Thomas felt deep in his stomach. He swung again and Thomas felt the
force of the blow in his entire body this time. A thick wedge of
wood spun off into the air. Sutter kept swinging. He settled into a
rhythm, his movements were fluid, graceful, and appeared
effortless. Less than a minute later he pushed the pole over.

Thomas had spent all of last summer cutting down
trees for his ferry, and he knew it would have taken him five times
as long. And he would have been winded, probably exhausted. But
Sutter’s mouth was not even open. He was about to lay into the next
pole when one of the twins convinced him to let him have a go. The
result was similar. After a couple of swings to get the new
distance figured out, the young man seemed to be finished in
seconds.

Urs and Max looked at Thomas with wide eyes and
their open mouths slowly turned into grins.

“Not bad for an innkeeper,” Thomas said.

Urs picked up one of the men’s axes laying on the
ground. He fingered the head of the ax and held it up to his right
eye. “This is good steel,” he said. “Who sharpened this blade?”

The twin holding Pirmin’s ax replied. “I did, of
course. Who else is gonna sharpen my ax for me?”

“Not me, that is for sure,” his brother said.

“What do you think Urs?” Thomas asked.

He nodded. “They can use their own heads. All we
have to do is fashion handles. They will have to be wood, though.
Do not have the time or material to make them out of steel like
Pirmin’s.”

“If we melt down all the old swords, can you make
spikes for the ends? Or maybe hooks?” Max asked.

“You know the answer to that,” Urs said. “And by the
way, you still owe me for shaping the sword that
you
carry.”

“Well, you better make damn sure nothing happens to
me, then,” Max said.

The two men continued their casual bickering, but
Thomas no longer heard them. He was too focused on Pirmin’s ax.

It had been a mild winter, or so everyone kept
telling Thomas. But to a man brought up in the scorching sun of the
Levant, he thought he would never be warm again. The long winter
months had been almost unbearable, and Seraina often joked that he
would have perished if she had not taken it upon herself to keep
him warm. Although she said it in fun, he suspected it was closer
to the truth than she knew.

When the season ended, and the snows receded, he
felt reborn. Now that it was spring, he had planned to redirect all
efforts from military training to working on the defenses. One
cloudless spring morning he made his way to the training ground and
was surprised to find it deserted. Puzzled, Thomas sat down,
wondering where everyone was. A half hour later Noll walked up with
a bucket in hand on his way to the well.

“Morning, ferryman. What are you doing here?”

“What do you think? Where is everyone?”

Noll scratched his head. “What do you mean?”

Thomas waved his arm over the empty training yard.
“The men. Did we give them a church day?”

Noll laughed. “You really do not know? I thought we
talked about this.”

“About what?”

“Planting season. We agreed that we had to allow the
men to return to their homes to get their crops in the ground.”

“Oh.” Thomas did recall something about that a
couple months ago.

“Everybody has got to eat,” Noll said.

“Well, how many days before they come back?”

“Days? We will be lucky to see any of them for at
least a month.”

“A month? Leopold could be here in a month!”

Noll shook his head. “No, he will not risk marching
an army over passes still wet from the winter thaw. I suspect it
will be past midsummer before we have to worry about any Austrians
crossing our borders.”

An entire month of training lost. This did not bode
well, Thomas thought. Last week he had introduced the men to the
fighting formations he had decided would serve them best. A
variation of a Greek phalanx. He had divided his army into groups
of one hundred men and arranged them in squares ten men wide by ten
men deep. With their long-handled axes, or halberds as Urs called
the new weapons, held before them, the square would prove difficult
for cavalry to approach and with training, maneuverable enough to
make them almost impossible to outflank.

At least that was his hope. The men had taken to the
new squares well enough, but they were still too sluggish when they
had to move and reform. It would require many weeks of drilling yet
before they could be called proficient.

“What about their families? Perhaps the women and
children could see to the farms,” Thomas said.

Noll’s face went dark. “And just who do you think
has been feeding our army, and us, I might add, all winter? You
really know nothing about the life of a farming family, do you
ferryman? It is thanks to the men’s wives and mothers that we have
any army at all to train. It is they who have shouldered many times
their regular burden so that their husbands and sons can escape
farm work for a few hours every day, in the hope that their men
learn enough to keep them alive.”

Thomas felt suddenly foolish for making the
suggestion.
“
And what about work on the palisades?” he
asked.

Noll shrugged. “The roads are still too wet to move
the material we salvaged from the fortress. We will not lose any
time there.”

Thomas knew Noll was right, although, he still could
not help thinking they were losing valuable time. But what else
could he do? If he did not allow the men to tend to their animals
and get their crops planted, the Austrians would be the least of
their worries.

“Very well. I need you to get word to the men then.
We cannot allow them to forget everything they have learned thus
far, so make sure that not one among them uses a short-handled ax
for anything. If the job requires an ax, they must use their
halberds. Can you do that?”

“Easy enough. Of course that might mean they will be
gone for a month and a half then,” Noll said, his cocky half-smile
turning up the corners of his mouth.

“You look like you are happy about all this,” Thomas
said. “Or are you just pretending because you know how much it
bothers me to sit idle?”

“I would be lying if I said I was not looking
forward to a month’s break from your miserable drills. But I, for
one, do not plan on sitting idle,” Noll said.

Thomas’s eyes narrowed. He did not ask for any more
information, but Noll offered it freely.

“I will go to Schwyz and help out Sutter around the
inn for a while,” Noll said. That same half-smile found its way to
his face again.

“You mean you aim to help out Mera,” Thomas said,
crossing his arms. He was not the only one who had noticed Noll and
Mera spending a suspicious amount of time together over the
winter.

Noll let out a nervous chuckle and looked away. It
was the first time Thomas had ever seen him display even a hint of
embarrassment.

Noll recovered quickly though, and held up the
bucket in his hand. “Sorry, much as I would like to, I cannot stand
around all day chatting. Chores to do, and all.” He gave Thomas a
crisp salute. “See you in a month, Captain.”

As Noll walked away, Thomas shouted at his back.
“You just tell Sutter that if he decides to chop off your head he
has to do it with his long-handled ax.”

Noll waved his bucket-holding hand but did not look
back. Thomas thought it may well have been the first time he had
gotten in the last word with young Arnold Melchthal.

When Thomas arrived back at his lean-to, Seraina was
just coming out. Her traveling cloak was fastened about her
shoulders and she wore a pack on her back.

“Going somewhere?” he asked.

Seraina offered up a weak smile. “I will be gone for
a few days. I was just on my way to say goodbye.”

“Would you like company? It seems I have lost most
of my army for the next month and suddenly find myself with a lot
of time on my hands.”