“We reaped the yield and we plowed the field
With red and dripping shares,
And you could not fight and you could not run,
You could only die like hares.”
-Verse 8
CIVILIZATION:
Bull of the Rush, frontline fighter in his youth, foremost general of Ar, hated the quick ass cart for fighting. Men of the Bull preferred to come to grips. He rode in the back of the command cart, piloted by his youngest sons. Behind him rode the booty cart, full of shackled Toils who had fled to the rushes when the wild men cut down their overseers. Holding the rails in his armor, his shield on his back, sword at his hip, a tug of doubt—uncharacteristic but alive—threatened his air of command, ‘Bull of the Rush,’ snickered that cunning spirit, ‘propriety called for the shackling of Ar property. Yet, strategy demanded another course!”
Stuffing that spirit down into his balls, he straightened to glance at his line of men marching on either hand. Buoyed again into his bully self, the four asses laboring to bring the command cart back over the rise, up from the Fens, Bully, as he had ever been known, thrilled to see the walls of Ar. Then the snake of doubt hissed in his inner ear, “Fool,” his eyes filling with an image beyond his deepest fears: A troop of Lion Carters were being cut down by a mob of Rushmen who had eluded him. A thousand Toils swarmed up over the walls, monkey-like climbing the bricks set by their forefathers under the lash of his fathers, the Bull gate was choked with overturned Leopard carts, a mob of all seasons surging through. Wolfmen stalked the walls, stabbing the few Lion men on the ramparts. Smoke rose over the Bridge to Iss.
The last Lion trooper fell, their Rushy slayers turning towards him, charging with a roar, joined by scrawny Toils, hoarse Foresters, lean Wolfers and other, unnamed, Huttish scum.
His men halted, wavered—bringing a roar from him, “To the fore!”
He leaped over the rail, knowing that to be seen backing up, even out of the cart to go forward, might cause a rout. Landing with shield to shoulder and spear to hand, Bully roared, “At the Scum—for AR!”
His men rallied and closed about him like the wings of a diving falcon—to wedge formation, taking up the shield song; fifty against two hundred, they would do!
Sandals tramped the mangled earth.
Within though, like an ages old kin stone, the snake of doubting spirit hissed, ‘How good the field, how heavy the shield, sharp the spear ye wield—LORD BULLY! ‘Tis why you ignored the dire signs, why ye abandoned the Gate of Your Fathers, so to battle again?’
In no disagreement with his doubting weird, Bull of the Rush bellowed as the wilds surged inward, “Smash and stab!”
…
BARBARISM—
Foxear danced over the body of the whipmaster, fallen over the body of the plowman, fallen over that cruel ground-eating tool. The song of battle: thudding spears, whistling darts, hissing arrows, cracking stones hailing overhead into the massed ranks of the Brassmen, keened his wit the sharper—“Yes,” hissed he, seeing where the plow blade had come loose from the oaken joint. Tilting the beam, the bodies rolled over and exposed the earth-scaring knife betrayed by its hilt.
Grasping the iron bracket as a hilt, and lifting the blade in reverse of its dirt-eating tilt, Foxear howled and danced, elated to have iron in his hand. Having only slain two and wounded one men, he did not yet rank iron—except taken by his own hand.
A crash of shields and steel, of stone and brass, of stave, plowed earth and sandal leather, brought him about. The arrowhead shape of the brazen shieldmen crashed through the hasty mob of tribesmen, speaking differing tongues, of Toils risen in unthinking rage. Big Paddle, Chief of the Fisherfolk, gored by the spear of a brass men, was shouldered aside, off that dripping point by the great Brass Bull, the Chief they had baited, tricked, harried and now fought.
Foxear rose with the earth-tooth in hand, his trusty auroch-horn knife in his left, and met that brazen gaze. The great Brass Bull Chief roared and charged, his men likewise bulling over those in their path. A brawny Toil, not yet wasted from eating gruel and breaking ground, rose up before the Brassman a snarl, looping his chains over that broad back and biting at the broad brass-framed face. That brass helmet came down and smashed out the teeth of the big Toil… but the wretch held, clawing, squirming like a vine, even as he was twice transfixed by spears of the guard. Still alive, as Foxear was magically drawn to the struggle, the Toil pinned his arms around the spears in his side, falling back, looking to Foxear and the others with eyes of grim departure.
Foxear, inspired by War—that great Wolf of heaven that watched over his kind, sprinted forward, running up the chest of the Toil with a whiplike bark, planting that plow tooth into the top of the brassy head, slamming the horn knife up into that throat—the Big Bull grunted, squirted blood from the ears and eyes, gurgled, and fell.
Silence cast Her spell for a moment—then, thirty bull-faced brass shields dropped—as many pair of sandaled feet running this way and that like giant, hares, coursed by three, four or five of their former slaves and backland prey, now transformed into hounds baying, barking, howling and hooting with blood-mad glee.
Six Wolfmen surrounded him, up-ended the Brass Bull Chief’s shield, placed Foxear upon it, and hoisted him above their heads. A civilized man would not have been able to stand on that bloody brass dish, but there, above the harrowed land, Foxear danced like a jay, iron adz dripping on high-held hand.
