The Patchwork Knight (Chapter 3)
I rose before the sun the next day. I was tired and sore from the journey home from the Kingdom, but I was determined to do everything I saw at the arena. I squatted, I stood on my toes and hands in a plank, I found an old log from the fire pit and carried it around. I didn’t have a barrel, and I figured that a good sized fire log would be the same weight as a barrel.
It wasn’t until years later that I found out that those barrels were full of rocks, with one of them being empty. The boys weren’t allowed to show any sign of who got the unloaded barrel. They were all to act as though they had it. I missed that bit of the training.
I ran around the village and then sprinted to the tree line and back. I did each of these exercises a dozen times. For my sparring training, I found a good size tree, and a stick that felt about sword length, and attacked it until I was tired. I did this for several months. My father watching all the while from his forge in the mountain side. This would take me about an hour each morning, when I was done I would go to the forge to help my father.
“You’ve been at that for months now boy, are you so determined to be a Knight?”
“Yes father.”
“I guess I should start showing you how to fight with a blade then. You look foolish slapping around that tree out there. What did it ever do to you to deserve treatment like that?”
I was excited. I couldn’t believe my own ears. My father was going to train me how to use a blade.
“Will you father?”
“If you are this focused after a few months, I may as well show you how to use that stick you’ve been slinging around. I have something for you though that might work a bit better.”
He went over to his workbench and there was a large burlap sack laying over something. I hadn’t noticed it there before. He flung it off of the bench and exposed a sword underneath.
“Here lad, this is a practice sword. The edge is blunted, so that you won’t cut yourself, but it can still do some damage if you don’t wield it right.”
The sword was indeed blunted. When I think back on it now, it was an ugly excuse for a sword. The blade wasn’t true, and dinged in all possible ways. the guard was misshapen and lopsided, but it was the most beautiful thing I had seen in my life. It was a true sword.
“I thought you couldn’t make swords father? Won’t you get in trouble with the King?”
“This will be our little secret, and if any discerning eye laid upon that sword, I doubt they would even allow it to be called as such. If you are going to be determined to go through with what you are calling training, I can at least guide you in the right direction, and that direction is going to need a sword.”
My father handed me the ramshackle sword, and I nearly dropped it. It was heavy, so heavy that I needed both hands to hold it.
“Yes, it’s heavy boy. If you train with a heavy sword, when you get a real sword, it will feel like you have nothing in your hand. I will expect you to be using one hand to wield that sword. You will need the other to brace your shield.”
I could’t imagine holding this sword in one hand. It weighed as much as a goat. I did see my father hold it though, so I would do it as well.
“For now though, that sword will stay here in the forge. There are some things you are going to need to learn how to do first, before you get to swing that around. You’ve been a big help around here for me, but it’s time you take on some more responsibility. Every morning, instead of those foolhardy exercises you’ve been doing. I want you to take the axe and go to the forest and fell a tree. You’ve seen the ones I fall daily for the forge?”
“Yes papa.”
“They can’t be green, and they can’t be too old. You have to get one of a moderate size, so that we can cut a cord of wood for the wood pile. Once you’ve cut the tree down, you have to drag it up here to the forge, then you will start cutting it up for the wood pile. You will do this every morning from here on out, until I tell you otherwise.”
“Yes sir.” I had never cut a tree down before, but I had watched my father do it on several occasions.
“Also, once you have stacked all the wood on the woodpile, you will oil and sharpen the blade on the axe. I will show you how to do that after you’ve taken your first tree. Then you will hang the axe right were it is hanging right now. Do you see it over there on the wall?”
“Yes sir.” The axe hung to the right side of the old workbench. It was then that I noticed just how big the axe was. It was always in my fathers hands when I saw it before, and my father was a large man. I slowly walked over to the axe, and it got bigger and bigger as I got closer.
“I see a look of concern on your face. Don’t worry lad, I’ll be with you tomorrow morning, to guide you through things. You will cut your first tree down, I have no doubts of that.”
If my father said I would do it, then I would. I still stared at that axe though. It looked heavier than the sword, with it’s massive doubled edged head on it.
Tomorrow morning arrived and I was ready. I looked all around our hut, but I couldn’t find my father. I walked outside, and he was sitting on the step. He grumbled a little and said,”You’re late.” It was still twilight and the sun was nowhere to be seen for at least another hour. “Come on boy, quit your lallygagging.” He took off in a sprint towards the forge. I had never seen my father run before, and he was fast. My father as I said, was a big man, he was by no means fat, but a man that size should not be able to move that fast. I took off after him, but he was increasing his lead on me as we went. He made it to the forge a full minute before I rounded the final corner to go up the path to the entrance in the mountain.
My father made his forge in an old miners cave at the foot of the mountain. He said that with all the natural stone it would be safer for the village. No house could catch on fire if the fire was no where near a house. It made sense to me.
“Grab the axe and let’s get to the forest. I need to have this forge fired up before the sunrises or I won’t get anything done today.”
I looked at that axe, and groaned a little to myself. I was already winded from the run, and now I had to pick up an axe that looked the size of a horse. I had to stay focused. I walked over to the axe and grabbed the smooth wooden handle. I lifted it from it’s perch on the wall, and was shocked by it’s weight. It couldn’t have weighed more than a chicken. “Is this a joke papa?”
“What do you mean boy?”
“It’s so light. This won’t be able to cut a branch much less a tree.”
“Oh ye of little faith boy. It is the real thing lad, just you wait and see.”
I slung the axe over my shoulder as I’d seen my father do and we walked to the forest. We couldn’t stay at the tree line because it would wake up the other villagers, so we went a few hundred yards in, so that the trees themselves would muffle our chopping.
“Alright boy, I wan’t to see how well you were watching me, pick out a tree. Walk up to it and put your hand on it first, I don’t want you to start hacking away at it till I’ve had a chance to look it over first.”
I did as he told. I found a tree that looked like the ones I’d always seen him cut down, and placed my hand on the trunk.
“It appears you’ve been watching with a sharp eye, good lad. Before you get started, I want to show you how to use the axe, and where to cut. This is very important for a couple of reasons. The first being, so that you don’t cut off one of your own limbs, and the other being, that you don’t fell the tree on top of you. You have to make the cuts so that it directs the tree where you want it to go. I had seen my father notch a tree before but I had no idea why he was doing it. He then showed my how to swing the axe properly. Letting it slide in my hand as the other gripped tight at the base. It was almost like my own little version of the dance with the swords, that I saw the young knights in training perform. Even though the axe was light, it was still exhausting. It took me until the sun was fully up in the sky before the tree went down. I still had to drag it through the woods and to the foot of the mountain.
I’d never given thought to how heavy a tree was. This tree was about 20 feet long and as thick as a mans leg. I hadn’t noticed, but my father had a length of rope around his shoulder. He showed me how to put notches in the tree on either side so that the rope would not slip, and then he tied it around my waste. “You’re going to get tired boy, but at least this way, you will still be able to lift your arms. I tugged and pulled at the rope and after an hour, I was at the foot of the path to the forge. That is when my father told me one last secret about pulling the tree up the hillside to the mountain.
“Tomorrow, I want you to clear all the branches off first. That will make it easier to get it up the hill. Make sure you stack those branches though, the villagers often come into the woods later in the day and get those branches for their own fire pits to heat their kettles.”
I know that he did that as a lesson to me. I wasn’t sure what it was then, but now I know that he wanted me to ask questions. He would have told me about the branches if I’d only asked if there was an easy way to get it to the forge. He never told me to ask questions, but I soon learned that there was always some little piece of information that he would withhold in the hopes that I would ask the right question.
I cleared all the branches, cut the tree into manageable sized logs for the fires, and then took all the branches down to the tree line for the villagers. I then hurried back up to the forge to finish my task. I still had to learn how to sharpen the axe. My father was waiting for me when I walked through the entrance of the small cave. He pulled out a small grind stone, and a bottle of oil. He showed me how you only need a very small amount of oil on the stone and to make circular motions on the blade. He watched over me as I sharpened both edges of the axe and checked it on the nail of his thumb. “If it catches on your nail, it’s not sharp enough. Make sure it glides across it, but don’t push to hard, you only want to cut your nail, not chop your finger off.” He showed me a fine line in the middle of his thumb nail.
“Off you go now boy. Spend some time playing with your friends. You won’t become a Knight in a day, so you should spend your childhood being a child when you can. I’ll be lucky to get a single horseshoe done today, with getting these fires lit so late.”
“I’ll stay and help father, it’s my fault you are so late.”
“Don’t worry boy, you will be helping here soon enough, but for now, go play. You don’t know it yet, but you aren’t going to be feeling too good by tomorrow morning. Off you go now.”
“I did as my father said, and I ran off to play, it was already late in the morning, and nearly mid day, so I went looking for Arial. I’ll tell you about her at another time though.
For Chapter 4 follow link below.
