“Ouch,” Kane replied. “Good point.”
In the meantime, I’ve a town to defend and that’s what I really wanted to talk about.”
“Oh?”
“I need two things and I think that you’re the right person to handle both. The first is that we need some cavalry scouts and eventually we’ll need some heavy cavalry. Good cavalry is as hard to come by as good archers and good legionnaires. In fact, I don’t think you’ll find it possible; it’s the one arm I’m willing to admit will need at least a few generations to develop.”
“Agreed,” Kane said with a sigh. “And bow archers are even harder. I’d love to have a squadron of them. But this area will never develop the skills; too much woodland, not enough plains.”
“True. But I want you to start working on it. They don’t have to be full, professional quality cavalry, just the best that you can do. Start with the group that helped in the roundup. The main thing I need is cavalry scouts and those just need to be able to find their way around and stay on a horse.”
“Okay, I’ll start with Herzer,” Kane said with a grin.
“Well, you’ll have to discuss that with him,” Talbot temporized and then chuckled. “He’d probably make a damned fine archer from evidence, Jody has been asking to have him back on his clearing crew, you want him for cavalry and from what I saw of him in my forge the other day he’d make a damned fine smith. The only person who’s not asking for him is John Miller who called him ‘a hack-handed idiot.’ ”
“So who gets him?” Kane asked with a smile; the sawmill manager was well known to the old re-enactors.
“He told me he wants to be a legionnaire,” Edmund said with a shrug.
“Does he know about the cavalry?”
“No, but I doubt you’ll change his mind,” Talbot replied. “Actually, I think that once they’re done training, we’ll probably want some of the archers and infantry to get used to riding. But not as true ‘cavalry.’ ”
“Okay, I’ll work on it,” Kane said with another grin. “Even without Herzer.”
“The second item is like unto the first,” Edmund said, starting to walk the horse sedately back down the hill. “I need someone to organize the militia. You can delegate that as you wish, but you’re well known in the ‘fighter’ portion of the reenactors. And I just don’t have time. I have Robert for the archers and Gunny for the legionnaires but I need someone to organize the disorganized militia.”
“Fun, are you giving me the cavalry in compensation?”
“Something like that,” Edmund chuckled. “Again, you can delegate it to others, but I want you to manage it in your munificent free time.”
“Since the roundup I’ve actually had free time,” Kane grumbled. “So much for that.”
“We’ve all got our crosses to bear,” Edmund said as they reached the flats. They were about a kilometer from the fences and that caused Edmund to grin. “Race you.”
“Herzer, you have visitors,” Rachel said, from the doorway of his bedroom.
Herzer looked up and smiled as Courtney and Mike came in the room and Rachel faded away. “Ah, visitors from far away lands,” he said, setting down the book he had been reading. The visit to Edmund’s forge had, not too unexpectedly, taken it out of him and he had suffered a small relapse. But he was feeling well again and getting tired of being confined. Fortunately, Master Talbot had a fine collection of old books so while the time was not passing pleasantly, it was passing.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Courtney asked.
“Never mind,” Herzer chuckled. “I’d say ‘pull up a chair’ but it’s more like ‘pull up the chair.’ I haven’t been getting a lot of visitors,” he continued. “So tell me all the news.”
“How are you feeling?” Courtney asked, instead.
“Fine. I wish they’d let me out of here.”
“You took a really bad hit,” Mike said, leaning on the wall and crossing his arms. “You nearly punched out on us.”
“Yeah, well, that was then, this is now,” Herzer replied with a frustrated tone.
“Trust me, it’s better than working,” Courtney sighed, tossing her hair. “That’s why you haven’t been getting many visitors; we’ve all been running around like a chicken with its head cut off. And having seen a chicken with its head cut off, that now has a whole new meaning to me.”
Herzer chuckled at the image and shook his head. “So, come on, what’s been happening? I understand I missed quite a party at the big slaughter.”
“Yeah, well, we did gorge ourselves for a couple of days there,” Mike admitted.
“But we paid for it,” Courtney said with a shudder.
“Pretty bad?” Herzer asked.
“You know that creek behind the slaughter buildings?” Courtney said and waited for a nod. “It was running red with blood. We ended up with about six hundred carcasses and it was like an assembly line. Hanging them, skinning them, cutting them up, separating out the guts…”
“Offal,” Mike interjected. “It sounds better. Especially when you end up eating it.”
“But we rounded up a lot of feral domestics,” Courtney pointed out. “And tons of food that’s being smoked. And that’s part of what we wanted to talk to you about.”
“Oh?”
“The class has been breaking up,” Courtney said. “Emory ended up going to work with Jody clearing land and burning charcoal and Shilan has joined the weavers. We’re in the farming portion of the class but… after that we’re planning on quitting as well and we’re nearly done. They’re starting to parcel out the land for farms and there’s a lottery for the domestics that were captured. Anyone can apply for land and everyone who was involved in the roundup gets tickets for the lottery.”
“You see,” Mike said. “They’re going to take all the animals and parcel them out. There were a lot rounded up, but not enough for everyone to have what they want and everybody wants certain kinds.”
“Am I in this lottery?” Herzer asked with a smile.
“Uh, yeah,” Courtney replied with an embarrassed expression. “And we kind of wondered…”
“What I was planning on doing with whatever I got?” Herzer asked.
“Yeah.”
“Well, I didn’t even know it was going on, so this is all kind of new.”
“You can apply for a land parcel, too,” Mike said. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea or not. But if you apply for one that is next to ours, I can try to break and work both of them. You have to pay for the land in increasing size of payments. I don’t know if I’d be able to work both of them, but I could try. And if it does work, I can split whatever profits we got off of it with you. And that would give you another source of income. Someday.”
Herzer thought about it for a minute and then nodded his head. “Okay, hang on a second. Tell you what I’ll do. Courtney, there’s a pouch in the cupboard. Could you pull it out and toss it to me?”
She handed it to him and he dumped out the tokens that were in it onto the bed.
“I’m going to go for soldier,” he said, sorting out the money that was in it into full tokens and change. “And from what I’ve been told, everything is going to be issued to me. But I got paid for the day before the roundup, the roundup and three days of convalescence. As a ‘skilled rider,’ no less. So I got a bonus on the roundup.” He pulled out a full token and change and handed the rest to Courtney. “You guys can have whatever I get off of the lottery and I’ll file a land grant alongside yours. That,” he continued, pointing to the chits, “is a loan. There ought to be enough there to get you a few spare farm tools. And a few decent tools might a big difference.”