The Hammer Unfalls

1.16 One Good Turn

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Glim woke up cold. Father had quenched the fire. He groaned and sat up, stretching. Dressing quickly to conserve warmth, he walked out into the chill morning.

“Thought that might get you out of bed,” his father said, leaning on the railing of the wall overlooking the mountains. “You’ll need your cloak. The heavy one.”

“For my lesson?”

“You don’t have one today. I need you to accompany Garrick on a mission.”

Glim stared at him, excitement and dread stirring in his stomach.

“A mission? What sort?”

“The compost piles need turning.” Father laughed at the expression on his face. “Cheer up. There’s something in it for you. Anyway, I might be out of line, but it seems like you could use a change of pace?”

Glim ran over and hugged him, slamming his head against his father’s ribs, which drew an “oof.”

“That would be wonderful.”

“Take this.” Father handed him a bar of dried nuts, oats, and apple. Just when he’d finished breakfast, Garrick tromped up the stairway.

“Ready then? Alright. Let’s head to the armory.”

“What for?”

“You can’t walk to the compost piles unarmed! What if hinterjacks break through the wall? I need ye sharp, lad!” Garrick winked at father.

Glim could not tell if he was kidding or not. In any case, he’d never been armed before. Not counting the one time he’d been sent to collect mushrooms with a pocket knife. He hoped this time would be different. No more mushrooms.

“We need to turn the compost piles to nurture the mushrooms,” Garrick told him as they walked.

Glim groaned. Not a casual groan, like when he’d woken to a cold room. A deep, abiding growl of discontent.

“What’s got ye so grumpy?” Garrick asked.

“Not more mushrooms. I’m sick of them.”

“Without mushrooms we’d all be dead. What do you think is in your porridge every morning?”

“Despair?”

Garrick laughed, which sounded like the bark from two tree limbs scraping together. “That’s the boy I know and love. Glim the Grim. Now come on. Pick a sword.”

The armorer led him through the garrison dining hall into a storeroom. Racks of spears and swords lined the walls. “A short one, now. You’re still a wee thing.”

Glim picked up a short sword and tested it by cleaving the air with a practice swing. “This one?”

“That one’s too nice. We need a beater for this mission.”

Garrick went into a side room and returned with a dull, slightly rusted sword. “This one’s perfect.”

“How am I going to fight off hinterjacks with this?”

“I’m more concerned ye might hack off your own shins. It’s perfect. Let’s fetch you a scabbard.”

Garrick hummed and harrumphed to himself as he belted a leather strap around Glim’s waist and slung the scabbard from it.

“Comfortable?” he asked.

“I feel like I’ve grown a third leg. A useless one at that.”

“You’re getting the hang of it. Now let’s go.”

Tightening his cloak, Garrick walked out to the gate, where a handful of young men and women stood, blowing frosty breath into the air. Each had a sword and wore the dark-gray cloaks bearing the insignias of Wohn-Grab guards.

“Alright, you sorry lot. Follow me, then.”

He led them through the gate, then immediately turned to the left. He led the squad up a slight incline to a wide field bordered with goat pens. The scents of moldy hay, goat dung, and animal fur mingled on the breeze. Glim took a deep breath and smiled.

What a lovely change of pace!

He followed the group to a line of stone bins as high as his head. Gray granite cubes, with no fronts or tops. Just a long wall, with half-walls jutting from it at right angles, like a comb. Each bin had been filled with logs and branches. A woman in a light gray cloak walked along the wall, looking down into the bins. Daryna, the gardener.

“Alright! Listen up!” Garrick yelled. The guards lined up in front of the bins, and Glim tried to fit in.

Daryna looked down at them, from the shadow of a wide-brimmed felt hat. “Our food waste, old bedding hay, and the dung of these fine animals here,” she shouted down at the guards, waving towards the goat pens, “eventually turn these branches into mush. That mush, or compost as we call it, is what nurtures the plant beds and produces our food. Compost needs air to thrive, which is what these branches provide as they break down. Your job is to make the compost I dump into these bins trickle down to the bottom. So they can help the branches break down over time.”

Some of the guards looked confused. Garrick sighed.

“Ye need to bash these branches with your swords ’til the goat dung falls all the way to the bottom.”

The guards looked at each other and groaned. But Glim felt positively giddy. Not only did he get to wield a real sword for once, but he got to enjoy sun and fresh air for a change. Well, sort of fresh, anyway.

Daryna left the wall and pulled a lever. Massive scoops of metal lattice, filled to the brim with dark brown dung, bits of potato peel, and other food waste rose up and over the wall, dumping piles of slop all over the bins. Steam rose into the air. A wave of acrid, rotting stench hit Glim like a wall.

“Get to it, now,” Garrick shouted.

The neophyte guards unsheathed their swords and started stabbing the branches, shaking the compost loose so it could fall through the maze of tree limbs piled haphazardly into each bin. Glim reached for his sword, too.

“Not so fast, Garrick said, walking over to him. “Let me tell you what you’re doing first. Remember the three modes of swordplay?”

“Yes,” Glim replied, thinking of the recent spar he’d witnessed between Garrick and his father.

“This exercise is meant to teach you aeolia. You need to know when your opponent is strong or weak in the bind. To detect when you have enough room to sneak your blade around theirs. You need to learn what the sword is telling you. When you engage with an opponent, you need to know the angle of their weapon. The pressure they assert. Try it now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, take out your sword and stick it in there. Get a feel for your opponent.”

Glim looked at the solid wall of half-rotted food scraps and goat dung in front of him. “You want me to stab my sword in there and tell you what I feel?”

“Exactly.”

Glim unsheathed his sword, which took an unexpected effort. At first, the blade refused to budge. He tugged it hard, and got it a third of the way out. He tugged again, and it extended further from the sheath. His arms were not long enough to pull it all the way out.

“Here you go.” Garrick pulled his sword out the rest of the way and handed it over.

Glim got into the ready stance. He focused, sizing up his opponent, then thrust his sword into the heap, directly in a 1-1 upward slice.

His sword quivered violently in his hands and fell to the ground.

Garrick sighed. “You cannot just slash wildly. You need to sense what the branches are telling you. Seek openings. Slide your blade along the pathways they offer. This is about getting a sense for what your blade is telling you.”

Glim tried again. He got into his ready stance and thrust straight ahead. Almost immediately, he met resistance.

“You’re blocked. Now try again, slightly to the left. Feel out the pressure, and gauge the size of the limb from its response. Find the gaps and thrust into them.”

Glim tried again. This time, when he thrust his sword into the dark mass of the pile, he found the edge of the limb. His sword skittered along it, halfway into the pile, and stopped when it met resistance.

“Okay now. What kind of defense is it? Is it weak? Can you tilt your blade up or down and get around it? Or is it a massive trunk that will stop your sword?”

With a twist of his wrist, Glim tested the unseen thing blocking him. Vibrations ran down the sword into his hands. His mind made a map of the thing blocking him.

“It seems small. Like a thin branch.”

“Alright. Move past it!”

Glim planted his back foot and lunged. His sword tip slithered over the limb and crashed against the granite wall. The pile of compost shuddered and settled a bit.

“That’s it! Now do that a thousand more times until you can see the top of the wall.”

Glim squared up against his opaque opponent. He thrust his sword in, finding a seam between two branches, and pressed his advantage. He came against an obstacle. Testing it with mini thrusts, he determined it to be the crotch of two branches joined, which he’d not be able to force his way between.

He withdrew his blade and tried again. This time he found a seam, snaked along it, and powered his way to the wall behind with a satisfying clang of metal against stone.

Over and over, Glim thrust his blade into the compost pile. Each time, his blade told a different story. A patch of thin twigs. A stout limb, but curved enough for him to thrust underneath and find the wall. A split limb that caught his blade in its pinchers. Each stroke of his sword painted a different picture in his mind. The vibrations trembling along his hand into his arm gave him more information. By the time the chore had finished, Glim was stabbing into the pile like a madman, engaging with a thousand unseen swords.

“Alright! That’s enough,” Garrick yelled to the group.

Glim took one last stab and sheathed his sword awkwardly. Clumps of compost rattled their way through the labyrinth of limbs his efforts had uncovered.

When he looked up, Glim found the eyes of several guards on him, watching his attacks in surprise. And no small measure of envy.