Chapter 4

Naomi was a good student. She listened to my critique and promised to do better next time. Well, I doubted that she would unless she had a chance to practice more, but that had to wait.

We reached Albany before dark and had time to find a comfortable place to spend the night. That translates to “spend the night with sex.” We had not missed a night so far, and neither one of us was getting the least bit bored with the repetition.

Neither of us was familiar with Albany, so it took some time to find the address that was contained in the records. Amazingly enough, the building we found could be said to resemble a cave because of all of the stuff piled on and around it. It took us a couple of hours to dig through the mess piled in front to find the door into the building. Once inside, we did find a multitude of crates, some of which were very large. At first, we looked through the crates that were sized to act as storage for swords, knives, and bayonets.

Oh, my God! This was a gold mine of useful weapons. Most of the swords could be classified as sabers because they were gently curved and had a sharp cutting edge on only one side. These were serious weapons that were heavy enough to put that silly saber that Naomi was using to shame. These were obviously cavalry weapons, possibly intended for dragoons because of the extended length.

Both of us immediately swapped our current swords for the sabers. There were no shields or bucklers, so we both took two of the sabers with the appropriate sheaths. We wore them with baldrics because that let us hang the longer swords down our backs and kept them from dragging the ground.

The smallest crates contained knives, and we selected the kind that resembled Bowie knives. Hell, these things were almost short swords! One each went on our belts.

The larger crates contained pikes and halberds. Naomi took a pike and I took a halberd. We shortened the shaft of her pike to make it easier for her to handle, mostly by reducing the weight, but I made no changes to my halberd. I found the added weight comforting, and I was sure that my added strength and stamina would mean that I could easily handle the long weapon. The spike, blade, and thorn appealed to me aesthetically, so I took one. The overall length of nearly 10 feet also appealed to me.

There were enough weapons here to equip 200-300 fighters. I started to say “men,” but it dawned on me that Naomi would inspire women to join us, and that could influence how we parceled out the weapons. There was some armor there with the weapons, but nothing that we had an immediate need for, so we left it.

When we left the building, we did our best to restore the litter around the door so as not to excite the curiosity of the demons. Now we needed to start recruiting our first brigade of human warriors.

Naomi asked, “Doug, how are you going to recruit fighters if you don’t have any weapons to show them? Very few people are going to join you simply on faith, and that is what it amounts to if you don’t give them a weapon as soon as they join you.”

“Dammit, Naomi, you just shot me down, and I deserved it. How could I be so foolish as to think that I could recruit fighters if I had no weapons to give them? We need to find some sort of cart to use to haul around sample weapons that we can show off while we are recruiting. Let’s check the shops in the business section of Albany to see what we can find.”

Well, that was a very discouraging search. Many other people must have had the same idea of where to find a cart. The best I could do was a two-wheel dolly that could hold a crate of swords with a few knives thrown in for seasoning. It had taken us almost three days to find this one two-bit dolly, but it was all we had. Oh, well, better this than nothing.

We loaded a crate of swords onto the dolly and tossed in a few knives, more on principle than anything else, and trundled to the small park in the center of town. There was a concrete slab there that I climbed on and began to shout. “CITIZENS OF ALBANY! COME JOIN THE FIGHT AGAINST THE DEMONS! I HAVE STEEL WEAPONS TO DISTRIBUTE TO ANYONE WHO WANTS TO FIGHT! BOTH MEN AND WOMEN ARE WELCOME! COME SEE WHAT WE HAVE TO OFFER! THIS IS NOT A TRICK!”

I had to repeat my shout over and over for about 45 minutes before anybody showed up. It was a girl about 10 years old. Naomi went up to her to open a conversation. We hoped to use this girl to circulate our message wider than my voice would reach. Naomi talked to her for a few minutes and gave her a knife as a sign of our good faith. She ran off with the knife, and we wondered if we would ever see her again.

I resumed my shouted invitation when the girl disappeared. It was a good thing that my throat could repair itself because I could feel the stress I was placing on it. After about 20 minutes, the girl returned, and she was leading three men and a woman. These were some of the girl’s relatives and friends who were sick of the demons and looking for a way to fight them.

I jumped from the podium, such as it was and went to hand out the sabers along with basic instructions. Meanwhile, Naomi had mounted the podium and was shouting out her own version of a recruiting speech.

She said, “THIS IS THE CHOSEN ONE WHO HAS COME TO DRIVE AWAY THE DEMONS. I WAS RESCUED FROM THE PIT BY HIS ACTIONS! I SAW HIM SINGLE HANDEDLY DEFEAT 16 ERGLETS AND 8 GRAMPITS IN THE PROCESS! HE USED A SWORD LIKE THIS ONE, AND YOU CAN DO THE SAME AFTER HE TRAINS YOU! JOIN IN THE FIGHT JUST AS I HAVE!”

Naomi continued to call for people to join us with variations on my speech and hers. During the next half hour, six adults and two boys showed up. I handed out knives and swords as was appropriate. By dark, I had given nine swords and four knives to interested volunteers.

I promised to show up at the park the next morning to begin the lessons on fighting with the swords and knives. I asked everyone who had received a weapon to show it around and to bring anyone interested to the park tomorrow. I promised to hand out more weapons to new people who showed up.

That evening, Naomi and I went back to the weapon cache to pick up some pikes. It dawned on me that the pike would be the easiest weapon to teach and would probably be adequate for fighting Erglets and Grampits. Every recruit, so far, could manage a pike, so I had high hopes of having an effective little army pretty soon. I just hoped that my expectations were not inflated.

The next morning, 12 of the original 13 recruits showed up ready to learn. There were four more men who showed up, and I gave each of them a sword and a pike. The only one of the original group not to show up was one of the boys, but he finally arrived. His excuse was some chores he had to complete, and I couldn’t argue with that. I gave him a pike and had him join the line of trainees. There were now 18 recruits with pikes when I counted Naomi.

I put them through a simple training exercise to introduce them to the advantages and liabilities of the pike. It didn’t take them long to realize that the one with the pike had an advantage as long as the enemy didn’t get too close. At that point, the situation changed drastically. An enemy close by meant that you had a lot more problems getting in an effective jab at your enemy, and he might be in a position to slice you into giblets before you could counter or even run away.

I also introduced them to the concept of marching and fighting in formation so that it was easier to maintain mutual support. Of course, this sort of activity got boring very quickly, so I tried to mix it in with other activities such as fighting with the sword or knife. Dammit, it was hard to get these people to take all of this marching around and jabbing at thin air seriously enough. I was going to have to give them a taste of real battle before they would believe in what I was trying to teach.

I asked, and one of the boys knew where to find some Erglets and possibly some Grampits. A little blood was needed to turn these people from timid civilians at heart into warriors. I asked for volunteers to join me in an attack on the demons, and everyone agreed to participate. I wasn’t really very worried about losing people because I had the Water of Life to fall back on if any of my fighters were badly wounded.