So that’s how we met, me being an idiot, standing out and showing off, him being the overachieving swordsman recruit number 2.

We didn’t immediately become best friends and go roaming off as an adventuring duo. Nor did we hate each other but become friends due to our mutual respect for each other’s skills. This was not a buddy cop movie.

As to me showing off … I was good at swordsmanship, instinctually good, a natural. I don’t think that it was built up resentment from always staying below the radar, never standing out, always achieving 78% when 80% got you an A, had anything to do with it. The Walk had largely made me forget my ego. The 1800+ years of walking had given me a much longer perspective and those sorts of thing seemed, (I don’t know how to say this without sounding like I am showing off) unworthy.

I don’t think it was the appreciation or the adulation either, I actually found that distasteful. Like with pride, it seemed too much to me, too sweet, cloying. I think the closest term I could think of to describe why I was “showing off” was that I thought it was necessary. John, a time traveller, had left me with a trove of weapons and an imprint of how to use them. On some primal lizard brain level this must have registered as must learn fighting for safety reasons. Hence, I thought it was necessary.

So anyway, back to the actual story.

We didn’t become best friends immediately, actually immediately afterwards I was promoted to sword instructor for Private David’s team. David was healed and locked inside an old crumbling leftover roman building from when Leicester used to be used as a garrison station by the romans. It must have been the roman brig as well, the windows had iron bars and the door only had locks on the outside.

I finished the sword practice for the day, by this point everyone was familiar with the basics of sword play and could probably be trusted to not stab themselves with the sword, and we had started to incorporate shield work with the sword practice.

After we were dismissed from sword practice, I re-joined Mark’s team as a recruit. We were led through a 10 lap run around the camp ground, to help improve our endurance. This as I said before, was thought to be the most important thing.

The endurance training had obviously started to work; the others weren’t as utterly exhausted after a day as they used to be. We washed up after our run and had our supper. Isiah and I decided to head out to the local tavern. Some, like Josiah went whoring. Even Fred had found things to do, talking to the farmers at the evening Markets.

We were through our third pint of mead (for me) and ale (for Isiah) when we were joined by Corporal Mark and the injured Corporal Robert. Rob was recovering well, having followed my advice and we were starting to become friends. “I heard you bested three today” Rob said with his ever present smile.

I coughed and looked down. Isiah looked to the left and away from Mark. It was embarrassing for a recruit to beat his own instructor, let alone in a 1 vs 3 fight.

“I wasn’t even the final man alive” Mark said with fake anger.

“Was the other newbie really that good?” Robert asked surprised, he had heard of the victory but not the play by play.

“He wasn’t as skilled as the Corporal, maybe as good as Private Thomas, but he had real battle experience as fighting as a part of a team. He knew how to throw off my timing. And that first parry which saved the Corporal… it wasn’t something you could do without having some experience in group battles.” I said analysing the fight

“The Corporal, here, almost won, he should have won. Any other strike and it was an assured victory. It took an incredibly lucky kick for me to win.” I said humbling myself.

“You won 1vs3, of course you got lucky” Isiah said. “With those odds the only way to win, is to win lucky” he said to me in a condescending manner. “I hate the sword, give me my bow back and I could just kill you from a hundred yards away.” He complained.

Isiah didn’t actually struggle with the sword. In actual fact he was probably in the top 5 of all recruits in fighting with the sword. He hated the shield, he was wiry and agile. He used his speed and wits to win. The big heavy shield slowed him down and took away his biggest advantage. Also his wiry build meant he couldn’t hold up the shield for as long, which meant he got hit a lot by the instructors, this added to his hatred of the shield and by extension any weapons used with the shield, like the sword.

“Funny you should mention that, the Staff Sergeant has decided that we can stop practicing the shield in the morni-”

“Thank fuck for that!” Isiah interrupted Mark in the middle of his sentence

Mark cuffed him lightly on the back of his head and continued “in the mornings in favour of archery. Wipe that grin off your face Isiah. Shields are now to be practiced with both the sword and spear. And you’ll all be getting your mail armour tomorrow, that’s another 20 pounds to carry with you all day.”

We retired to our tents pretty soon after that. it was going to be a tiring day.

The day went pretty much as Mark said it would. We got our short sleeved chain mail armour in the morning: it was heavy, rusty and surprisingly restrictive. I mean compared to all other types of metal armour this was probably a million times better at not being restrictive. But it was still pretty restrictive. It was the difference in dexterity between barehanded and thin woollen gloves; it’s minor, but definitely noticeable.

We ran around the camp 15 times instead of our now normal 20 laps. By the end of which, everyone was completely and utterly exhausted. Apparently, those 20lbs really added an extra challenge to the morning run.

After breakfast, we were given our bows. Isiah was very excited. He needn’t have been. We spent that morning learning how to maintain our bow, how to make string from gut and how to string our bow. That as it turned out was unbelievably hard the first time, the bow kept slipping out underneath my foot as I tried to string it. Eventually I got the hang of it after about an hour of struggling. We were meant to be able to string our bows in a battle situation in under 30 seconds, consistently. At the moment sometimes I could do it in 30 seconds if I got lucky but most of the time it took me around 5 minutes. This was going to be a work in progress.

Then we spent the rest of the morning learning how to draw the bow, the proper technique of holding the bow when releasing. This turned out to be important because if you didn’t hold the bow properly, when you released the string it clanged you right on the forearm holding the bow. Most of us found that out the hard way. It left us with deep, ugly red pulsating welts. After about 2 hrs of practice, we were judged to have been able to fire our “arrows” without hurting our forearms

We hadn’t actually been given any actual arrows, these were rudimentary sticks made from split lumber, roughly turned into a cylinder. These sticks weren’t sharpened or fletched, they weren’t wasting glue on practice arrows. they didn’t even have a notch for the string. We had to carve those nocks into the sticks ourselves. We figured that out by watching the more experienced archers, who had previous experience of using bows to hunt.

After most of the recruits had at least one welt, we were given our forearm bracers. And a leather glove, this glove was basically a cylinder with a hole for the thumb. Cheap and nasty, but effective. At least according to Isiah.

The instructors were sadists. most of the recruits couldn’t even put on the bracers for the next week. The welts on their arms made it too painful to put on that coarse leather bracer. The bracers also wouldn’t have been necessary if we were given full sleeved chain mail instead of short sleeved chain mail, but conscripts don’t rate good armour.

For me, the crack stung my forearm but it barely even caused my new and improved skin to redden. So to all the others it just looked like I was following the proper technique like the more experienced archers. More experienced archers like Isiah, who had been demonstrating his perfected technique with over exaggerated movements: flexing his back, pretending to adjust his aim, generally showing off.

Isiah was looking mighty pleased with himself, rubbing the bow with hands, petting it like it was a cat. Josiah was looking furiously at both mine and Isiah’s unblemished forearms. His were covered in several deep welts some of which had even opened up and he was bleeding.

I looked at him whilst unstringing my bow and told him “Josiah go to the medic, those wounds need treatment.”

“Who put you in charge?” he snarled at me.

“Just go to the medic, joey. Unless of course you want to lose that arm to sepsis.” I replied back not even looking at him. I was more interested in my new skin’s resiliency than Josiah’s latest dick measuring contest. I was noticing that the redness was fading already, and my skin was returning back to its natural dusky olive shade.

Josiah must have been more hurt than I realised (or he was a wuss), he came at me like a mad, hurt bear, charging at me with a loud roar. I turned around and whacked him on his injure left arm with the stave. I was about to snap the stave back and whack him on the head. But, he disappeared. Like one second he was there snarling then *poof* gone. It was magic. My carefully aimed strike missed.

I became instantly alert, looking out for his attack, when I heard “Enough little brother, do as he says and go see the medic. He is never wrong about medical things. And you are bleeding a lot” Isiah said rather imperiously whilst looking down. I followed his gaze and saw an upended Josiah. Isiah had used his bow to snag one of Josiah’s feet and yanked him off his feet.

“Impressive” I said looking at his bow. “You’ll have to show me how you did that” I said curious

“Only when you teach me that weird fancy sword fighting technique you used to practice in secret. The stabby one” he replied back. Isiah had seen me practice? How? I had been very careful. Fucking wood ninja.

“Wish I could, but that technique is still beyond me.” I said with my arms out in an I-am-hiding-nothing gesture. “I was taken to the city of Winchester by my father, I saw some travellers from the Far East. They said they came on something called the Silk Road. They had performers, one of them, a swordsman, had an open challenge. I saw him win 20 consecutive fights with that swordsmanship. I have been trying to recreate it for 10 years.

Growing up I would fight against my brother trying to imitate that style. I got beat up a lot, but I also got pretty good with the sword.” I said spinning a yarn which both explained my weird style and why I was so good with the sword. “I also got hurt a lot, so I spent a lot of time being healed by my mother; I learnt the healing arts from her while she mended me” further expanding on my mysterious background.

“Well that does help explain somethings” Corporal Mark said from behind me, apparently he had been eavesdropping. I needed to start paying more attention to my surroundings.

We went to get cleaned up and then had our lunch, halfway through lunch we were joined back up by a heavily bandaged Josiah.

“That looks like a lot bandages” Isiah said to his little brother (only in age, by weight there would need to be at least two Isiahs to match up to that barrel chested fucker)

“I won’t be able to do any bow work for the next two weeks. I was never any good with ‘em anyhow” he said sulkily. “I can concentrate on the shield and spear. A proper man’s weapons, no sneaky attack from a hundred yards away or flashy twirly sword shit” he said putting both me and Isiah down.

We ignored the comment

Fred, bless the daft fool, popped into the conversation with “didn’t Emris beat you with the spear as well?”

Josiah snarled and back handed Fred in the face. Fred fell backwards, whilst falling Fred grabbed the back of Josiah’s tunic dragging him to the floor as well. Josiah lost it; he started trying to wail on Fred with wild clubbing blows. Fred was hit a couple of times, then something strange happened, Fred dodged the injured left and sharply punched at the wrapped arm with his own left. Josiah howled in pain, Fred bucked underneath him and shove-punched Josiah off him. He rolled over and perfectly UFC mounted him

Both I and Isiah were struck dumb by this, but we still reacted, jumping over the dining table trying to separate them. I was bigger than Isiah so I took Josiah, while he took the new and improved Fred.

Never try to separate fights; it is a good way to get hit. Seriously, this is an actual piece of advice. Don’t try to break up fights.

I caught a two piece wing on the back of my head from Fred and a wild swing from Josiah which I managed to block. With my face.

Don’t try to break up fights.

I was pissed. I first turned around and open claw jabbed Fred in the throat and then back kicked Josiah in the chest. I slowly turned around towards the fallen Josiah, walked over to him, grabbed him by the neck and pulled him up. I calmly waked out of the tent whilst dragging an utterly stupefied Josiah by the neck. I threw him back, he took a moment to calm down then charged, using a wild right hook, I bent my knees ducked underneath the punch and then punched him in the gut. He bent over puking his gut out on the floor.

I bent down and said in to his ears “You are big bastard, who believes that his superior strength makes him better than the rest. You believe that might makes right. It does.” I kicked out his legs; he fell in his own sick. I kneeled down carefully avoiding the sick and grabbed him by the hair. “I am going to teach you today that you are a frog in a well, looking up at his tiny view of the sky and believing that he is the strongest under the heavens. I am going to teach you that there is always someone, bigger, stronger, and faster than you. In this case, it’s me. Every time you think that your strength means you can bully others remember this, I will do to you double what you do to others.” I said rubbing his head in his own sick. He kept trying to stand up but I used my supernatural strength to hold him down. “Do. You. Understand?” I asked slowly

He struggled harder trying to swing his arms at me, I grabbed his flailing right arm in mine and twisted it applying a very painful thumb lock “Do. You. Understand? I am not going to ask a third time without breaking something” I said

“YES!” he screamed “yes, I understand.” He sobbed out

“Good, get up. I think the Corporal wants a word.” I said letting go of him

Mark looked at me and nodded “20 laps” he said simply. So we ran, Isiah and Fred were also running, Isiah looked at Josiah and sighed.

“That throat punch really hurt, I wasn’t trying to punch you, that was an accident.” Fred complained.

“Since when can you fight?” I asked not apologizing

“Handling the animals. The sheep don’t like being shorn and no animal likes the abattoir so they struggle, sometimes you have to punch ‘em to keep ‘em in control” he said shrugging.

Who knew handling farm animals could teach you hand to hand? Certainly not me

By the end of the 20 laps the others were exhausted, but before we could even recover we were called into formations. We rushed over, not wanting to have to run laps again. Today was spear practice, so we did that. Shield in our left hand, spear in our right. Marching and thrusting in a line, advancing a step, raising our shield to block, squaring our body, moving the shield and thrusting with our spear. Repeat for 10 paces. Then take a step back block, stab and repeat.

We repeated this sequence for hours, until it was around 5 o’clock. We were then made to run around the camp for 15 laps. The others were exhausted; I hadn’t seen them this exhausted since the first day of training.

We washed up, ate and turned in for the night.