Storm of War by Saye Bryan R

Author:Saye, Bryan R. [Saye, Bryan R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781736886847
Published: 2022-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

17

H endry feared infection and forced me to sit for nearly two full days while the strength returned to my thigh and the army grew as more waves of crusaders arrived. He gave me a whetstone, which I used to repair our weapons. Both Thief’s Prick and his arming sword had taken damage in our fight, and though they’d been cleaned during our travels, they needed to be honed to sharpness again. I dragged each blade carefully across the oiled whetstone, the screech echoing off our tents, until the edges were fine enough to cut hair and any nicks were polished away.

Mud and not a little dried blood crusted Hendry’s mail. We’d attempted to clean it the night we’d camped in the canyon, but water was the enemy of steel, so we’d done little aside from dry scrub the mail and remove broken rings. Now, armed with the proper tools, I used sand to scrub away the thin layer of rust and much thicker layer of grime until the rings shone, then coated them in mutton fat and oil to preserve them, finally riveting in a dozen newer steel rings. When I finished, the mail caught the sunlight and glinted like silver.

I held my new mail next, really studying it for the first time. The rings were lighter, which had allowed Thief’s Prick to slip through, and my fingers lingered on the hole I’d made. A man had died in this, by my hand, and his blood still crusted the rings around the gap in the mail. I found my heart didn’t flutter as much as I thought it would, my hands didn’t shake as they had before, and within an hour, the mail was cleaned and repaired and glistening like Hendry’s.

I stitched my gambeson last. Aside from the gash in the shoulder, there were a dozen smaller tears and rips. Using water now instead of sand, I also cleaned the blood and dirt from the fabric. It didn’t look quite as new as the mail when I was done, but it was functional and whole again.

Hendry and Migliorozzo traveled with small parties of knights and men-at-arms on foraging runs while we waited for Bohemond to arrive with a working supply caravan. I would later learn that “foraging run” was actually a euphemism for looting and stealing from the abandoned homes we’d seen in the plains to the north. I was a former thief, and while I didn’t like the idea of potentially stealing from fellow Christians, I understood we were an army and needed to eat.

I was left alone with Luke, who talked with me very little the first days, being busy in council with Godfrey and Tancred and the others whose names I had already forgotten. When he returned, he seemed fretful, anxious, constantly talking to himself as he fussed over cooking and keeping the camp in order. He didn’t like war, that much was obvious, yet he loved Christ and felt called to be here among the men-at-arms and knights and pilgrims in order to share him with us.

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