Chapter 13: Cleanup

We spent the next several days cleaning up. Millie, Gina, Jim, and I were all unscratched, but Henry had a broken collarbone where a pirate had thrown an axe at him. His hardened leather armor had kept it from slicing into him, but the blow had still broken his collarbone. He would be unable to work for weeks, but he was alive because of his armor. He had good reason to be proud of that as he had made his armor himself.

Both of our wagons were damaged, but it was all minor and not worth worrying about. Simple wear and tear would do more to them than the pirates had. In fact, they got beat up more in the following days, going around the surrounding areas and collecting everything taken off the dead bodies.

There was a lot of work to be done. The town’s hunters were out trying to track down and kill the pirates who had escaped. We needed to collect and dispose of all the bodies, and we had to rebuild, replace, and repair everything that the pirates had damaged or destroyed in the surrounding area. For only having been here for less than two days, they had done an amazing amount of damage to the farms and buildings.

All the dead bodies had to be taken care of first. Somehow, they had to be disposed of before they caused a plague. Just the spilled blood would be bad enough!

We had about twenty prisoners. We put them to work in teams of three or four, doing whatever dirty work no one else wanted to do. At first, that was mostly picking up the bodies of their shipmates and putting them in wagons, then dumping them in the river. We didn’t even worry about carrying them downstream, we just got them to the river by the easiest route.

We guarded them with people from the attack force, those who had lost neighbors and friends in the fight so they weren’t too compassionate. They knew that if they didn’t get the prisoners to do the work, they would have to do it themselves, so they were more than willing to do whatever it took to get the prisoners to work so that they could lounge around watching.

We went ahead and let the prisoners strip the bodies for us, too, putting everything in other wagons for us to look through later. We knew they’d find money and knives and who knows what and cause trouble, so we let them know that when they were done with that task, they would themselves be stripped to verify that they hadn’t picked up anything they shouldn’t have. When we announced that, most of them put things that they’d already picked up back down on the wagons.

We were almost done getting rid of the bodies when we got a rider back from the coastal road. The men we sent after that group of pirates were coming back with reinforcements. They’d met an armed force coming the other way, and the pirates had been crushed between the two. Some had probably escaped, but we had another 43 confirmed dead pirates and one more of our own dead with three more wounded.

When the Commander heard that the other group was commanded by a Sir Tony, he told me that he was like me, come from somewhere else to teach them how to fight, and sent me out with an escort to meet him. I guess I get some more practice riding a horse.

That was kind of odd, going to meet someone who was probably another Earthman. When we met up with them, one of them came out front and said “I am Sir Tony of Gronhinne, commanding an expedition from Bridgetown to assist the town of Widemouth. Who are you?”

“I am, apparently, Lord Jason of Topeka. Where the fuck have you been? These people sent for help a month ago! If Eric and I hadn’t happened to choose to rescue Leslie Clerk and enter at Widemouth, these people would all be dead by now. They were attacked by an overwhelming force, and if we hadn’t been there you’d be marching up to a big pile of burnt ashes by now.”

There was a “Hear, hear!” from behind me, and that got followed up by a lot of “You tell him!” and the like. Plus a couple “What’s a month?” Dammit, I have to get away from ‘month’ and ‘week’.

I turned my head and said “That’s enough. They may be so fucking late that they’ve completely missed the party, but they did come a long way to help us.” Right, only the guy in charge gets to be a jerk and I’m the guy in charge.

Then, to Sir Tony “We will welcome you and feed you today and give you a place to sleep tonight, but we will probably send you back tomorrow. We have a lot of damage to our farms and we aren’t going to have much food left over for visitors. Still, I’m not in charge here and that’s only my opinion.”

Sir Tony smiled. “And, does your opinion carry any weight with those who ARE in charge?”

“A little.”

“Very well, Lord Jason, please allow us to follow you back to Widemouth. Do you mind if we talk on the way?”

“Not at all, please do. Just don’t distract me so much I fall off my horse. I’m not a very good rider yet.”

“It’s hard to be good at everything. I understand you built some engines?”

“Two trebuchets, a pair of catapults, two arrow-engines, and a huge crossbow we used as a cruise missile launcher. Well, three trebuchets but the first one didn’t work well and we took it apart again. They all helped, but the townspeople did most of the work. The pirates landed several hundred men to attack from the land side, and then tried to land more on the docks behind the defenses. My engines took out the ships, and these men were able to deal with the landing force.”

“Allow me to tell you that I am very impressed with your men. You have combined the Roman legions’ shield wall with spearmen from the old Greek phalanxes. As long as they stand their ground and work together, they can only be defeated by artillery or archery.”

“Or air power. I kept wishing for a ground support run by Warthogs.”

“I keep wishing for a lot of things. Yes, a squadron of your A-10s would solve almost any problem here, but we can only have what we build ourselves. So, are you supposed to be looking for a Damsel somewhere around here?”

“No, that’s Eric. He’s the Hero. He brought me in as an assistant when he came for Leslie Clerk, then left me to help defend the town. Next time he comes through he’ll take me back if I want to go. I don’t think so, I’m a lot happier here than I was on Earth.”

“I didn’t think we could bring assistants. I’ll have to ask about that.”

“It’s legal, just no one wants to do it. Eric’s Caretaker said that these days, most Heros are loners who want to work by themselves, but when this system was first set up during the Middle Ages, most Heros were knights who wanted to take their squire and a couple of men-at-arms, plus a woman to do the camp work and keep him warm at night. Officially, I’m one of Eric’s men-at-arms, or in today’s terms I am a Hero’s Assistant.”

“How is that working out for you?”

“I’m having a great time! Or, I would be if I could teach them something about hygiene and cleanliness.”

“You’re preaching to the choir, brother. You get a big ‘Amen’ there from me.”

We spent the rest of the ride back to Widemouth talking about our experiences back on Earth, just getting to know each other. I also told him about my first swordfight, with Aaron. He offered to help me with my sword work, and I just had to accept that. I could use a spear well, but that was only good if I had a shield man in front of me. If I was ever going to be on my own I needed to be a better swordsman.