Chapter 3

The spring festival on the Juxan southern frontier was unusual that year because there were two brides below the customary age when women in the tribe married. Ethanda was one, and a girl of high birth named Henna was the second. Women of the tribe rarely married until they were twenty or older. It was thought that big strong women gave birth to big strong warriors.

Men were similarly constrained by their society. They could not go to war until they were at least eighteen, and they rarely married before their fighting career was over, although that was usually for economic reasons. They couldn't afford a bride price much earlier.

Henna, the daughter of a clan council member, married Lorgar Blackspear, who was a middle-aged thane, and a houseman of Engruth. Lorgar was a berserker who had made his name and fortune long ago, fighting alongside Engruth in the battles that pushed the Nwevii and other tribes out of the area.

Henna was Lorgar's second wife. His first had died leaving behind three daughters, the oldest of which, Marin, was the same age as Henna.

He had gotten his first wife pregnant and been forced to marry her when they both were relatively young, and because she had only bore him daughters before her death, an old seer said that he needed to marry someone much different than her if he wanted a son and heir.

His first wife had been a tall buxom blonde, with much the same coloring as Lorgar himself, so he had sought out a slim dark-haired green-eyed girl. The substantial bride price Lorgar paid convinced Henna's father that she was old enough to get married, even though she was barely seventeen on her wedding day.

Henna's family had a large farm near the frontier and preferred to live there instead of in Angelsot, the filthy town that served as the clan capital. That was why Lorgar traveled to that particular spring festival to marry. Henna liked that festival and wanted to attend one last time. Lorgar brought his daughters with him, along with a large retinue. He wanted to make an impression on the country folk. He had a farm closer to the capital and preferred to stay in town so that he could frequent Engruth's mead hall, which he did far more than the forty days a year that was required of him. He was a houseman more of his making than of Engruth's request, but then again, so were many others. Engruth saw it as a sign of loyalty.

Ethanda and Henna were the same age and had met at the spring festivals once or twice, but they were of different social classes, so they had never become friends. Ethanda too was getting married young for somewhat the same reasons. Mathen, her husband-to-be, was a first son set to inherit a profitable farm, and thus one of the most eligible men along the frontier. He was also one of Fexrem's oldest friends, and he came from an extended family with many proven warriors. It would have been stupid not to make the alliance.

Finding themselves set apart from the other brides, Ethanda and Henna struck up a quick friendship. And when she saw Wilhan walking past, Ethanda introduced Henna to her 'favorite' adopted brother.

Wilhan had been making the rounds flirting with all of the pretty girls at the festival, and he thought that Henna was just about the prettiest girl he had ever seen, so he talked to her more perhaps than he should have. Separately, Wilhan had met Henna's future step daughter, Marin, and flirted shamelessly with her too, much to the chagrin of her father who had seen that taking place. Lorgar was busy at the time so he let it pass, not knowing that the same farm boy had been paying similar attention to his bride-to-be.

Fexrem stayed home that summer to help Valeret ease into her position as lady of the farm, and to do his best to start the next generation growing in her belly. She was twenty but had always worked under her mother's supervision before, so that summer was her first try at running a household by herself. To make things easier on her, the three younger brothers went off to serve their king who was having trouble on the western border. They didn't have much of a choice, really. Each clan chief was responsible for providing a certain number of fighting men at the king's request, so as younger sons, the brothers were more or less required to go.

It was the first true military action that the boys had been in. Fexrem had given Tarmiz the family sword to carry, and that marked them as being from a better family than they actually were. All three of them showed up with short hair. The presence of the sword cut down on some of the comments about their hair; their fists stopped the rest.

In their first battle the boys stood side by side in the second rank of the shield wall facing a force from the neighboring Helvezi tribe. They were good enough that they used their spears to stab over and around their comrades in the first row until it was their turn on the front line. Then they worked as a team by keeping their shields close together and attacking not only their own, but also their brothers' opponents, whenever they saw an opening.

When the battle lines were broken, the boys showed themselves to be natural leaders with an eye for taking advantage of weak points. Their commander saw that and made each of the boys a squad leader in charge of twenty men for the next battle.

Few of the warriors had the discipline to work as a team, and some took it as an insult when another man killed the person they had been fighting, but a few were either skilled enough, or wanted to be skilled enough, to give three-man teams a try. Another problem with discipline was that many of the older men felt that they deserved to be squad leaders instead of "those snot-nosed kids."

The second battle of the summer brought the bulk of both armies together to face one another. In that battle, both sides moved forward at a run, hoping that they would be the ones to crash through.

From what little experience they had, the brothers knew that they had a better chance if they stayed shoulder to shoulder, so they urged their men to stay together on the charge and then to work as shield teams

The shield teams consisted of two shorter men with shields who would stay together in front of a taller spearman whose shield was be slung over his back as he fought. Each squad was ordered to hold together no matter what until the enemy line was broken. And then they were to go after smaller groups of enemy in shield teams. They were never to break apart for single combat.

The enemy had slingers while the Juxani had archers. The charge was ordered following a hail of arrows in one direction and rocks in the other. It was the first time that the boys had seen the effect of a heavy stone flung at high velocity. Shields were cracked, iron helmets were dented and shinbones were shattered. A stone to the thigh often damaged the muscle enough that a warrior could only hobble after that. Arrows, by contrast, didn't seem as effective. A man could often fight with an arrow sticking out of his arm or leg, at least for a little while. And if a stone hit a bare-chested man it would penetrate through ribs and leave a gaping hole behind, especially deep penetrating were the lozenge-shaped fired-clay bullets some of the Helvezi slingers used.

The men of the three squads quickly saw the benefit of shield teams when the hail of missiles came at them. Three shields held together were much better than one.

At the start of the battle, the missile barrage forced both sides into a charging run. Most warriors ran at the enemy at full speed while screaming their war cry. That resulted in the fastest men getting cut to pieces at the line even if they did bowl over the man they hit, because not only were there flankers on each side of the man that was pushed back, but there were also men in the second, third, and fourth rows behind the line waiting to jab their spears into someone.

One reason that the inexperienced men were put in the first row was so that the enemy would be distracted while they were occupied killing those men, and the veterans could then take advantage of that. Another was that they couldn't turn around and run. Even in a warrior society, you never knew how a man would react the first time he faced death.

The three squads arrived a few steps behind most of their fellow charging warriors and did manage to crash into the enemy shields more or less at once. The taller spear men found that they had relatively easy targets. Their spears struck at the faces and throats of the men in front of their shield bearers while the shield bearers struck low at the legs and feet in front of them. The round shield preferred by the tribes at that time was designed for single combat, and it was not good at defending against such a high-low attack.

The three squads were doing well, but the line was broken by the enemy on both sides of them. That rolled the ends of the three squads back on themselves, but the brothers simply ordered their men to circle up. The rest of the Juxan line broke apart in that particular battle area, and there were some sections where men turned and ran. That forced the clan war jarls, with their units of cavalry and heavy foot soldiers, to rush to support the weakened line.

The reinforcements found themselves acting as a hammer against the anvil of the circled men, and they quickly turned the tables on the Helvezii in that small part of the line.

What followed was near chaos. The part of the Juxan force that broke and ran was now followed by Helvezii, who were in turn followed by Juxan cavalry.

The three squads remained at the site of the original clash, and they moved to support and then absorb pockets of Juxani who had held their ground. Most stable parts of the line simply centered on groups of experienced fighters who were smart enough to keep close to others for mutual defense. Others were centered on berserkers; those men who went crazy in battle and fought like madmen until they were utterly exhausted. Berserkers were almost always excellent with weapons, because any that were not got killed early in their career. The king even had units of berserkers, who were usually held in reserve.

With their own cavalry now behind them, the three squads now drew the Helvezi cavalry to them, and it was only by again getting into tight formation with some of the heavy infantry and presenting a wall of spear points at the horsemen that the brothers didn't get wiped out.

Eventually another reserve force came to the rescue, and after a long day of fighting, the Juxan forces finally prevailed.

The commanders of those sections of the line that did not break and run were given accolades and gifts by the king for their role in the victory. The brothers had to content themselves with loot gained from the bodies of the dead. Both Tarmiz and Ranis picked up decent swords from dead noblemen, and in the days that followed all three gained quite a bit of wealth from pillaging the countryside.

The three also gained the devotion of the men who they had held together during the battle. Most of the men were frontiersmen from the Elksen Clan, and they would be easy to find in the future. Others were from other clans but swore themselves to the brothers if ever they were needed.

At the next spring festival Tobsil's family found out that over the winter there had been more raids by the Nwevii on frontier farms. The raids were scattered, so it most likely wasn't one band of raiders that was responsible. Fexrem had a wife and a baby on the way and he wanted a safe place for his family to live, so he and his brothers volunteered to go with Engruth's forces to punish the Nwevii. That was when he found out that Engruth had no plans to send a force after a few raiders, because they "surely were long gone across the river."

Fexrem didn't care how far the raiders had gone. He wanted them to know that there were consequences to raiding Juxan land, so he spent the summer calling in favors, contacting every warrior in his new extended family and those who had sworn themselves to his brothers the previous summer. While he was doing that his younger brothers were scouting the lands to the south.

Each of them searched a third of the border along the river from the Turtel to the mountains, and each found a Nwevi hamlet -- all three of which Engruth's hunting party would have found years before if he had looked a little harder. Additionally, Tarmiz reported finding the ruins of another castle. This one was at the far southeastern corner of Juxan land, near a section of rapids where the Aydren River became too fast for boats to continue upriver.

On the way out on his reconnaissance mission, Wilhan visited his sword and was sure that he was close to having it free. He could feel more wiggle than usual, but he didn't want to chance breaking the blade by forcing it. On the way back he felt that he had more time, and he was determined to get the blade free. He knocked himself out three times putting the full burn onto the blade.

When he was certain that it was almost free, he put both feet on the tree for leverage, grabbed the handle with both hands, and pulled straight back with as much force as he dared, but the blade was still stuck. He tried it again, closed his eyes, and imagined his next pull. He was still imagining when he tensed his muscles and began his second pull. Suddenly the sword was free and he was flat on his back. He had felt a slight sensation of the blade sliding out of the wood but nothing like he was expecting. It was more like the tree had just let go.

Wilhan was familiar enough with the sword to suspect that it, and not the tree, had done something because the tree had certainly never been accommodating to him before. He tried the thought pattern he was using when the sword came free to see what would happen. When he did that he saw the tip of the sword fade out of sight. And then when he relaxed, the tip instantly reappeared. Next he did the same thing but with the muscle tension he was using when he tried to pull the blade from the tree. That time the blade faded out of sight beginning at the tip and moving back to about halfway, almost as if an invisible sheath was sliding over the blade. When he relaxed, the end of the blade reappeared with a snapping sound. Then he tried tensing his muscles with all of his might while he imagined the blade pulling back; and that time the blade dissolved back even further.

Not wanting to chance getting the blade stuck in the oak tree again, Wilhan pointed the sword at a two-inch thick sapling. When he relaxed, the blade snapped back into existence and penetrated the wood with no sensation of impact. To get the blade free he tried the burning blade, but that just caught the tree on fire a little, so he did the new trick again to get the blade out. On a whim, he turned the sword so the flat of the blade was horizontal when he relaxed. That time when the blade reappeared it severed the trunk and the sapling toppled over.