Levelled Spears
Amandus had gotten used to running alongside of Seth, which he did whenever he wasn’t with his wife. He was thrilled with how easy it was, as a Spearmen. They were standing now, though, discussing, as they had been doing for days, the newest marriage, and working on their plan for the next hunt.
“We spent a lot of energy arranging for the great charge. But was it necessary?” Seth asked the Hunt Leader.
“What do you mean?”
“Our hunting arrangement is predicated on the idea that we are trying to drive a large number of creatures in front of us into a trap, creatures that normally flee our approach. But this animal did not fear us, did not flee. Thus...
do we need to do that?”
“What could we do instead?”
--
The scouts, including Seth, with Amandus running at his side, fanned out. This time the search didn’t take long.
“We have them surrounded with Horsemen on all the hills around them. And they aren’t moving.”
“How many of them are there?”
“About a dozen; smaller animals than last time.”
Seth looked at Amandus, “It is time, then, get your Brothers.”
Amandus ran off to tell Quirinus, and then grabbed his own spear.
“Have we found them, then?” Constantina asked.
“Yes, a dozen. Are you going?” he asked, seeing her gathering up knives and sheets.
“Of course.”
“But, you…?” he said, nervously “Ha,” she said, laughing at his nervousness. “Worry not about me, my husband, worry for your own self.”
Amandus grinned at her, and then, seeing the other men hurrying off, ran to join them.
When the Spearmen came in view, and then came closer and closer, the Beasts all stopped grazing and watched them. As they got closer still, they turned to face them. At this the Spearmen broke apart into two lines and, keeping a respectful distance, moved around the group of Beasts. Then the Horsemen began to move in as well.
There weren’t enough Spearmen to form a solid line around the Beasts, but the Horsemen filled the gaps. The Beasts had now formed their 172 Vonsbooks.com own circle, facing outward with their horns, but not moving, not charging. The Spearmen had judged the distance well. Once the circle was finished, they began moving forward.
The Beasts seemed confused. Never had they faced this situation before. The Spearmen had taken several slow steps inward when one finally reacted.
The Horsemen, with their horses, seemed larger than the Spearman, and so the Beast, not unnaturally, charged toward the latter − a mistake, but an understandable one. If it had charged toward the Horsemen, these might have had to pull aside. But the Spearmen merely set their spears and waited.
The charge of the Beast hadn’t time to get near its full momentum, and the sight of the leveled spears caused it to first hesitate, and then turn. The Spearmen had paused when it charged, but they now resumed their inward march.
Amandus walked slowly forward with the others, walking alongside his Spearfirst, a Telumata named ‘Stabilis’ or ‘Firmly Standing’; a name which Amandus hoped he would live up to in the coming battle. Amandus felt like a Dwarf among the other men.
As they moved inward more and more Horsemen were able to move out of the line and form a second rank, and the first one, the Hunt Leader himself, came and walked behind Amandus. Soon another Beast charged, with an even more abortive result. Time and again they started to charge, only to be stopped by the leveled spears. Eventually the circle had contracted as far as it could, with the leveled spears mere feet away from the noses and horns of the circle of Beasts. These pranced, shook their heads, and played their horns back and forth against the spears.
Amandus began to feel much better. It helped that he now had two Horsemen behind him, but, faced directly with a Beast, he began to feel… good: brave, strong, eager to kill; eager to dart out and plant his spear right in the nose of the Beast facing him. But he knew he shouldn’t. The plan called for him, for all of the Spearmen, to wait. And he could do that. Spearmen were good at waiting.
Everyone waited until the Spearmen were completely set. And then the Horsemen began the next phase of the plan. Leaving their place around the circle, a few yards away from Amandus, several young Horsemen trotted off.
The other Horsemen opened a gap in the circle, the Spearmen at that section kneeling. Then those who had trotted away came racing back, one at a time.
When they had ridden in as close as they could, they launched their spears, stopping their horse at the same time, and then moving out of the way for the next rider.
The spears did terrible execution. The animals were large, and their hide tough, but they were immobile targets, and the spears came in with the momentum of a full charge. Many glanced off the horns, or hide; but many of the rest came in straight enough and hard enough to pierce the hide of their target. Others even managed to hit the eye, nose, or, in one case, bury itself in the open mouth of its target.
The circle kept opening at different spots, targeting different animals.
Amandus himself got to kneel a half an hour later, and enjoyed hearing the riders come galloping up and stopping almost at his shoulder. Soon half of the animals were bleeding visibly, and the one which had been hit in the mouth, was down on its knees. All of the Beasts were agitated, plunging up and down, seeking a way out.
Suddenly one of the Beasts panicked and came racing right at Amandus, his nose to the ground. Amandus lowered his spear, trying for the nose, but the Beast was shaking his head back and forth so violently that all he managed to do was hit the forehead slightly before having one of its horns slam against him, knocking him out of the circle and underneath one of the Horsemen.
He rolled over, and would have gotten up, but the Horseman was urging his horse forward into the gap that Amandus, and his Spearfirst, who he saw some yards away, had left. Stablis had blood running down his side, but stood, looking for his spear, ignoring his wound.
Between the Horsemen and the spears of the other Spearmen, the Beast had been stopped, and was plunging his head back and forth. Amandus crawled forward, under the Horseman, and shoved his spear up against the Beast’s underside. The Beast snorted, and waved his horns down, but Amandus just ducked and shoved again. This time the Beast moved back slightly, and Amandus had to creep further forward, moving between two Horsemen, in order to thrust again.
This time the Beast caught him with his horns, tumbling him over, but Stablis used that opportunity to thrust against the Beast’s neck, and the Beast backed up into the circle again. Amandus stood back in his place, holding his side and struggling to catch his breath. Luckily the Beast had turned its anger against one if its neighbors, and Amandus had nothing to do for a minute or so.
The fighting grew contagious, and one Beast after another started to rip at its neighbors with its horns. Amandus and the others stood and held the circle, watching as the exhausted Beasts fought, and bled, and died.
Two hours later, the men parted to let the women in, and to allow the butchering to begin.
“Are you sure?” Seth asked, studying Hadassah.
“My Husband, Aviovamen have been having children for a hundred years at least. What makes you think that I will be any less able than any of the others?”
“You are the most capable Wife any man has ever had, but you can’t blame me for being nervous. We are talking about my first child. And we weren’t exactly born Horsemen.”
“Perhaps not, but we conceived this child as Horsemen. And we have plenty of help. Indeed, there are more women around who know how to help an Aviovamen give birth than there are those who have helped Farmers.”
“Well, it’s up to you. Childbirth is a female thing anyway.”
Hadassah looked a bit concerned, “Well, actually, not as much among Horsemen.”
Seth looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“Well, typically a woman rides off from the herd to have a baby, accompanied by all of her children. But since I am First Mother for our herd…”
she looked at Seth. But he didn’t understand.
So she finished, “It will be just you and me. The others have told me how it happens, as is appropriate for a Wife to tell her Daughter before she leaves the herd. But, for our first, we just ride off from the hunt, off into the prairie… and I have the baby, and we ride back.”
Seth looked panicked, and Hadassah knew what was bothering him.
As a Farmer lad it had always been impressed on him that lads had nothing, nothing whatever, to do with childbirth. Farmer lasses would come from miles around… friends, enemies, kin, strangers − during childbirth it didn’t matter.
But lads, Husbands included, were excluded from the entire process.
“But, what of the Beasts?” he stammered out.
“I asked that, and the girls said they would ask their Husbands,” she replied.
In the end a compromise was reached. A compromise that came as close as they could to the tradition of the Horsemen. Seth and Hadassah ‘borrowed’ a family; the Hunt Leader’s family, to be exact. He was one of the few to have brought his entire family, and among his many children his Wife found four older Horseboys and three Horsegirls. These began to ride in ‘herd’ with Seth and Hadassah, so that when the time came they could ride off together. The Horseboys could then ride out (along with Seth) to guard ‘the herd’, and the Horsegirls could provide moral support for Hadassah, and aid in the birth.
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