Foreword

Since I know that some readers will find the following scene not believable and I saw a lot of arguing, some good, some idiotic, during the Olympics about the situation in Table tennis, I write an explanation first.

In Table tennis China is what Germany is in Luge. Total winner, defeats rare. Beside China, other Asian nations are really good as well: Japan, the two Koreas, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong (still has it´s own TT Association).

For a time now Germany is the best non-Asian nation (we had several good times before, e.g. in the sixties or the turn of the century). Other nations with success (former and current) are Sweden, Russia, Hungary, Romania, Austria, Portugal and the Netherlands.

On the men´s side, the China lead is not as massive as on the women´s side, but there is still a gap. While non-Chinese top players like Boll, Waldner, Mizutani, Persson, Ovtcharov, Samsonow or Schlager to name some, can beat (or have beaten) the top Chinese players, their teams as a whole do not. They need a bad day of the Chinese for this.

At the moment the Top 3 men teams are China, Germany and Japan, with Japan coming up strongly since they do much for the 2020 Olympics.

For various reasons on the women´s side China´s lead is more massive, but Japan has a really good young generation (e.g. Ito, Hirano) in the pipeline, one has to see how they develop in the coming years. Among the women, Germany. Romania and the Netherlands are the only non-Asian teams in the Top 10.

A dark place, for several reasons, is recruitment among the kids. China and Japan lead here, then comes nothing for a long time until France, Germany, Russia, Korea and Romania show up.

China´s lead developed for several reasons. One is the very intensive training system for professional players, especially in the youth with special schools just for it. For instance Germany has comparable training for the grown-ups, but we loose years of potential training among the youngsters. But beside the sport perspective, nobody in the West would implement such TT schools like in China, of which most operate under the jokingly called SoS system. SoS standing for Sieg oder Sibirien. (Win or Siberia)

An even bigger point is the pool of talent. Table Tennis is a national sport in China. Flippantly speaking, half the nation stands at the table. Even if we count just the halfway decent players, the Chinese pool of talent is larger than the population of many nations.

For comparison, while the majority of Germans play or have played a bit of table tennis at various times in their lives too, for most TT is a recreational sport, they do not play regularly or often.

The DTTB is the third-largest table tennis federation with roundabout 600,000 members. If for some reason Germany had to scramble every halfway decent player (DTTB plus talented hobby players), we might come out with a talent pool of 1-5% the size of the Chinese one. Depending on how strict you are with the definition of talent. And as said, Germany is the third-largest member of the ITTF, the international federation. With the exception of Japan, Russia and to a certain extend France, the ratio is worse for the rest.

In this pool is another advantage for China. Their best players can train literally against every playstyle, a luxury Germany does not have. Germany and the other non-Asian teams have an additional disadvantage. With most of the best players stationed in Asia, in rather closed leagues, the number of top level players outside that continent is small. To raise your game, you have to play against top players, but with few to train with getting good is more difficult. And when China wants to surprise you, they take a talented "backbencher" you never heard of and he is a potential winner you know nothing about his playstyle. On the opposite, Germany (and almost all of the rest) has a limited pool of top level players. We can vary a bit, but China knows who we are sending and can plan accordingly.

This massive gap brings about the flippantly called "Chinese Flood". The Chinese internal competition is so extreme that even very highly talented players have no chance of getting into the national teams without luck. If you do not have, for whatever reason, your breakthrough at age 14-15, you never will. And the pool of talent in China is so great that most players retire in their mid twenties or late twenties for the exceptional ones.

Many of those who do not make it into the national teams get a place in the provincial and league teams, but even then, a lot of talent has no place. So what to do if you love Table tennis and want to keep playing it? You go elsewhere.

And so some Chinese players and trainers go to other countries. In the case of trainers, this is not a issue, just normal like in other sports. e.g. Kasumi Ichikawa´s personal trainer is Chinese and many league teams around the world have Chinese trainers.

It became a issue with the players, once some nations, Turkey and Quatar are prime examples, searched for a short way to success and speed naturalised Chinese players. Take Melek Hu, who came to Turkey first in 2007 and that year was not over yet when she got her Turkish passport. And worse, many of the nations speed-naturalising players do not care if the players live and train in their new lands. Quite a number still live in China and only come for tournaments. This loophole abuse makes it more difficult for others.

In men´s table tennis, naturalised Chinese players, speed or normal, are a bit less hot topic, since the numbers are at the moment comparatively low. In women´s table tennis, on the other hand, there are only few top national teams without at least one naturalised player, hence the flood moniker. Evidenced by the US, which despite having a sizable number of native TT players, relies on naturalised Chinese near exclusively.

The DTTB, the German Federation, gets much flak for being an outspoken critic of speed naturalisation and still being the first European team to field that many naturalised players. an example

The 2013/14 team: back row (from left) National Coach Jie Schöpp, Petrissa Solja, Irene Ivancan, (ex-)Director Dirk Schimmelpfennig, middle Assistant Coach Guahoi Wan, Xiaona Shan, Sabine Winter, Zenqhi Barthel, sitting Ying Han, Kristin Silbereisen, Jiaduo Wu

But these nay-sayers overlook one thing, the two points are totally unrelated in Germany´s case.
The DTTB does NOT do speed naturalisation, all Chinese-born players naturalised the normal way and live in Germany. For example Ying Han got her German passport after 8 years and tests, not like Melek Hu,who got her Turkish passport after a few months.
That Germany can field so many naturalised players is in her league system. Despite all problems you have as a "smaller" niche sport, the TT Bundesliga is the best TT league outside Asia and one of the Top 3 worldwide.

As such, the German leagues and cups can be quite lucrative for foreign players. Many come here, play for some years and go back home. Others decide to stay for various reasons. Jie Schöpp, Ying Han, Qianhong Gotsch, Yang Lei, Jin-Sook Cords, to name a few, married here.
Currently, there are roundabout 20 naturalised Chinese-born players in Germany´s two upper leagues, not including several playing in lower leagues or foreign leagues like France and Poland.
Additionally there are some naturalised other Asian-born players.
This has another side effect. Since the naturalisations are real and not false like those in some other nations, most found families and of those who came first, their kids are coming of age now.
For instance Yuan Wan, who played her first caps in the senior team just these months, was born and grew up in Germany. So if you see young Asian- or Eurasian-looking German players, they are not naturalised, they were German from the start.

This link leads to the DTTB site, where you can see the senior national teams and the players currently chosen for them.

Spielerinnen und Spieler – Deutscher Tischtennis Bund e.V.

This did not happen without problems. A small, but outspoken group of "fans" started a wild discussion. While nobody questioned their nationality, some took offence that so many national players were naturalised and questioned if this did not shut out a lot of local born talent. The discussion was heated, racism accusations flew, but it was short. Once the not so easy situation in table tennis was explained and that the naturalisations were not for sport reasons, it was solved. Anyone who visits a match in Germany can easily see how strong the support of the home crowd is for all German players.

Since the Asian-born players and trainers live, play and train here, it has raised the level of our national teams quite a bit. Fellow Palatinatian Petrissa Solja is the highest-ranking non-Asian female player at rank 16, Ying Han is Germany´s and Europe´s best on rank 7. Timo Boll, Dimitrij Ovtcharov and Belo-Russian Vladimir Samsonow are the top non-Asian players on the men´s side.

Our TT team left Rio this year with Silver and Bronze in the team competitions, the only Europeans to do so.

Main Market Weijin, Cathay

Fai Ning, Captain of the Cathayan women table tennis team, was on the way to met her German counterpart. It would be a great week for her chosen sport. Since being introduced to Cathay by the "Longnose" mercenaries around Deguo Tidu Böhler, Table Tennis had developed massively. It was a relatively inexpensive sport, you just needed a table, net, blades and balls, one practised by the Celestial Dragon himself, which meant his subjects did train much in his honour.

At that moment in time, most Cathayans played with just wood or kork blades and celluloid balls, only few players could aquire German rubbers and sponges for their paddles. For an average Cathayan, the long distance between Deguo (Germany) and Cathay made sport stuff from there insanely expensive.

Due to her talent Fai Ning was one of the priviledged players to get support by his Heavenly Majesty´s government. She would meet the Germans with a halfway modern blade. While the Table tennis culture was growing in Cathay, it was still a new sport and as such some things, like how to mix rubbers and sponges for specific playstyles was in infancy, if available at all.

Some things stayed the same nevertheless. Warhammer table tennis was still played with celluloid balls, despite Earth changed to plastic Germans had heard it during a "data transfer", but decided to keep the old-style balls.

Since this two nations game was as much for sports and entertainment as it was diplomacy, the parameters of the matches were different from Earth. Larger teams than were usual on Earth and more age brackets represented, so more games could be played and shown.

Due to this and bigger staff needs like more security, guides, etc. the German national table tennis teams were fourteen times as large as normally on Earth, like when going to the European Championships. (As a side info: The teams for the Olympics are small with just 4 players each, 3 mains and one reserve player. For the EC you normally go with 6 or seven players each)

There were official events planned, the whole trip was planned through, but today was one of the days were the Germans had a bit of freetime. Unsurprisingly, they were sightseeing Wejin in large groups and had met for lunch at two neighbouring restaurants.

Fai Ning wanted to met and talk with her counterpart a bit more than the official plans gave them, so she tried it today, hoping the German captain had time for her.
It was easy to find the restaurants, since a pulk of people were ringing two houses. and when she neared the location, she could faintly hear foreign voices among the neverending murmur of so many people on the market.

After getting through the throng of people, she stood in front of the security, both Germans and men of the Palace Watch. She went to the nearest German, in hope of being let through. The Longnose was towering over most people in the vicinity and wore a black and white sport uniform over which he had an open silvery rain jacket. Most of the writing on the jacket told her nothing, Ning did not know the German script, but on the left breast side there were the kanji for Deguo.
When she had his attention, she used two of the 4 sentences she had hastily memorised.

"I am Fai Ning...captain team of women. Speak can I to yours?" and showed him a scroll to legitimate her claim. Even if that would probably not help, she doubted the German could read it. Considering how he taxed her and only cursory looked at the scroll, it seemed her hunch was correct. The German looked thoughtful for a moment, spoke something in the air and then told her haltingly.

"See woman ponytail long there? She you search." He pointed the direction and smiled. Fai Ning smiled back and went to the group of Germans, hoping that they had translators.
Had Fai Ning been able to read Latin script, she could have seen, even if the long ponytail obscured part of the writing, what stood on that the back of the German woman´s jacket: Ying Han Deutschland

Ying Han, who funnily got called mostly Han Ying, like it was the norm in China or the southern German dialects, in whole Germany too, since it flowed better with the melody of speech in German as well, was busy finding out what was written on the menu. The fluent Mandarin speakers among the Germans were baffled. The sign on the daily menu board was definitely the one for "turbocharger", but that could not be for several reasons.

Another reminder that while the Empire, Nippon, Cathay or Tilea might be close relatives of their Earth counterparts, not everything was the same.

Berlin, Apartment

Oh the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear,
And he shows them, pearly white,
Just a jackknife has MacHeath, babe,
And he keeps it, out of sight,

Ya know when that shark bites with his teeth, dear,
Scarlet billows start to spread,
Fancy gloves, oh, its old MacHeath, babe,
So there's never, never a trace of red

On the sidewalk, oh, Sunday morning, dontcha know,
Lies a body just oozin' life,
And someone's sneakin' 'round the corner,
Could that be our boy, Mack the knife?

From a tug boat, down by the river, dontcha know,
There's a cement bag just dropping on down,
That cement's there, it's there for the weight, dear,
Five'll get ya ten old Mack, he's back in town

D'ja hear 'bout Louie Miller, he disappeared, baby,
After drawing out all, his hard-earned cash,
And now MacHeath spends, he spends just like a, like a sailor,
Could it be, could it be, could it be, our boy's done something rash?

Now Jenny Diver, oh Sukey Tawdry,
Look out Miss Lotte Lenya, and ole Lucy Brown,
Yeah, the line forms on the right, babe,
Now that Macky's back in town

I said Jenny Diver, woah, oh Sukey Tawdry,
Look out Miss Lotte Lenya, and ole Lucy Brown,
Yeah the line forms on the right, babe,
Now that Macky's, back in town...

Look out, old Macky is back, wow!

Bobby Darin`s lyrics filled the apartment and relaxed its sole participant. The man relaxed on his ottoman and held his high-end Siemens tablet in one hand and a shot glass in the other. A loose sweater and a pair of well-worn jeans had replaced suit and shirt. Ottokar Proktor was relaxing as much as he was capable of.

He could not let go totally of course. He had left his assignments in office but he had one little thing that nagged him. The Empire had been quite riled up by the attempt to assassinate "Altdorf`s" captain, an amateur moment if there ever was. Given that the Empire was nine years away from being a state with one leg in the middle ages this was bound to have repercussions. Soldiers would be sent, ships chartered and the Reiksbund as a whole would be called for aid if things would not be resolved quickly and satisfactorily. All in a regrettable waste of resources that should be spent elsewhere and the German agent was looking for a way out. He had searched for info in various sources and two of them had indeed replied.

He swirled the amber contents of the glass a couple of times before inhaling deeply and then savoring the taste. The warmth that ran through his chest and belly soothed a mind that never stopped at least a bit and when the glass came down he used the freed limb to scroll through the last mail he had received. The smile that formed in his lips had nothing to do with the tone of the mail and neither did humor play a part.

Calling up then virtual keyboard Ottokar wrote a short mail by his own that would change the lives of many people. Some to the better, many to a different place and many to the grave.

Hamburg, Altenwerder harbor

Alarik Stonehelm stepped off his ship and was greeted by a sight that might be from a nightmare. The containers were taken from the ship by crane all right, even if he could not see the operator in more than 60-meter height. The containers were loaded on flatbed platforms with no driver who moved them to a storage area where unmanned cranes stored them diligently. The quay was empty of people, indeed he was forbidden to enter, and still it handled more cargo in one shift than Barrak Varr in one year. It was badly disturbing for the Sea Engineer who had problems telling himself this was high technology, not magic.

Alarik had been an accomplished Engineer ten years ago, working on the Dawi steam engines for more than 60 years. He had come to know the foibles of the triple-expansion units better than his own body. Simply by listening he could tell which bearings needed to be tightened and the taste of a drop of water from the condenser would allow him to say where the leak was. All of that was well and good and he had been earmarked for the honor of serving in one of Barrak Varr`s dreadnoughts when the first German ship called to the dwarven port. He had been one of those who had been invited to the ship`s engine room and what he saw there blew his mind. The diesel engine had a power he found hard to imagine and ran on the foulest of fuels the Germans called bunker. While his beloved engines would be hard pressed to transform 25% of the heat put into them into mechanical effort these engines were close to 60%. The dawi ships needed a small army of stokers who worked hard under horrible conditions. The German ship usually left their engines alone for at least one shift per day. While he could measure the tolerances of his piston rings with a simple ruler the diesels had injectors built to the tolerances of a fine watch working under pressures usually found in firearms.

Alarik had seen the future and he loved it. He demoted himself to apprentice and spent nearly a year at MTU in Augsburg, acquiring a horrible Bavarian accent and a lot of knowledge. He had been able to get a job on board of "Palena" a container freighter usually plying the Cathayan route. It had been a very mixed experience so far. He had learned a lot, the Chief was willing to share knowledge, especially when he showed he was not afraid to work very hard. He had made voyages that would have been the stuff of legends before in nine weeks of drudgery, too much work and boredom. The amount of work, the very few people on board who came from different nations and the absence of any other Dawi made the last nine months a hardship and he understood why some seaman called it "Prison at Sea". On top of that all the facilities were built for humans and tall ones at that and he had come to hate to sit on chairs that kept his feet off the ground.

And now he had been given time off, glorious six hours of it and he did not have the slightest inkling of what to make with that time. He had entered the bus that tended the terminal just to see something different and as the two others in the Volkswagen was driven to a bricked building with the letters "Duckdalben" at its front. He expected some kind of expensive tavern but things were not so. There was a hall of light wood, of mementos of the sea from two worlds, of telephone booths useless to him and of people who seemed to smile even when no money was asked for. He located the bar quickly enough and found again that German beer was actually acceptable, that the sausages were as least as those he was used to and that German bread was hard to beat.

He was served by a giant of a man with long hair going to gray and a matching beard.

"Had a rough trip?"
"Had worse than this one manling."
"So simply too long or too few friends?"
"A bit of both I guess. How did you know?"
"We care for the sailors here and not exactly since yesterday."
"Seems so."
"So you want to see something different besides steel walls and machinery."
"Depends."
"Head upwards, then you`ll find out."

Alaric was curious enough to try. Expecting some drugs or maybe a lady of negotiable value he got shrines. The simple unadorned room held better than a dozen shrines to various deities. Some seemed unused for quite a while, others were probably recent additions. He saw a swarthy human in German clothes kneeling before a cross, two Imperials pleading with Mannan and what seemed like another attending Sigmar. None of them seemed to be disturbed by the proximity to the other shrines. Interesting but something caught his attention. There was a huge stone at one of the walls, rounded and smoothed by natural forces. It bore Valaya`s Master Rune, the rune that protected the Dawi settlements from Chaos. He had heard rumors that Valaya`s priestesses made these runes in Germany but this was the first one he had actually seen. He touched the stone and found that the rumors and his first impression had the right of it, this was a real rune. He did not go on his knees, this was not the Dawi way, but he stayed for quite a while and for the first time in nearly two years he felt at ease with his surroundings.

An hour later he was back at the bar again.
"I did not get you name the first time around man."
"I am Jan Oltmanns and you might be?"
"Alarik Stonehelm. Well met Herr Oltmanns. A question if I am allowed: What is this place?"
"We are a Seaman`s mission, we care for those who travel the seas."
"Uh, why?"
"Because many seamen are very far from home, because they often have nearly no spare time and because they are often in dire straits financially. We provide food, we drive them from the quays and back to their ships, we provide medical services when needed, and we try to help with their spiritual needs."

"And that you do and that you do well, thank you Jens Oltmanns. I would like to stay, but what am I due?"
"The three beers is five marks, the rest is free."
"Do you take me for a beggar manling?"
"No, I don`t. This is not a tavern, this is a mission. We want to help, not make money and that is most people here are volunteers and why we run on donations."
"Wait one, the driver who picked me up from the pier is not paid?"
"No, and neither is the lady who served you the bread and sausages nor the people who keep up the Room of Silence."
"Uh, you Germans are totally touched you know that? But in a good way I think."
"I hope so Alarik Stonehelm."

When the Sea Engineer left he passed the drum for collecting donations. Dawi are notoriously tightfisted and Alarik was no exception. He estimated that the golden coin that ran down the funnel was cheap for what he had learned today.

Marais Jardin, Bretonia 2022 ad/2530 Imperial

Robert de Dubois had known he was right all along and nobody had listened. Or, they had listened and had been too lazy to do something around it. Or they had listened, nodded politely, made more polite noises and had thought him motivated by his stay in the German gaol. And now that he had been proven right did they take up the advice he had given? Of course not. Everybody could see it was these never-sufficiently-damned Germans who incited the serfs to rebellion and one should do something about them. And the serfs would not rebel if they were sufficiently frightened of the punishment. He had demonstrated the latter on his own serfs and it worked, so much that the Servants of the Lady protested but nobody rebelled.

So had his methods been copied, had an army been sent to Germany? Of course not. Instead the King tried to cure the symptoms and not the epidemic and sent the army to Ànguille to stomp that uprising flat before it could take hold. It was futile but he was honour-bound to obey even such stupid orders. When the king called, nobody would find Robert de Dubois wanting. And he would work off some of his frustrations off on these traitorous serfs in ways that would make the rest cower in fear instead of rebelling.

He stood up in his stirrups and looked along the column, it stretched beyond his horizon on both sides. A worthy army for sure that was taking the meandering road to Soreil. There were Knights of all calling, bedecked in impenetrable armour, possessing weapons often passed down for generations. None of this mattered without of the Knights themselves. Spared from the drudgery of everyday work they had trained for war since their early childhood. They were so far above these treacherous serfs that these scoundrels had to be possessed somehow to think they stood a chance against their betters. Even the lowliest Knight was armoured beyond what the improvised melee weapons could pierce. A good set of armour costed the same as a small village and so none of the rebels would be able to withstand the righteous fury of a knight. And surely none of them had the courage to stand in the face of a mounted charge. Once the army had passed through this narrow pass they would spread out and hunt these vermin..

And that was when the though struck him: The army was in a very narrow pass, there was a chasm to one side and a steep wooded slope on the other. If there was any place where the traitors could strike with some hope of success this was it. Surely the Duc de Lac had sent scouts into this area to clear it hadn`t he? He very much hoped so but he was not so sure when this recognizance should have happened. The knights had made their best speed as the campaign season was about to close and it was important to stomp on this disgrace as soon as possible.

He slowed down the little bit that allowed his seneshall to close up with him.
"Milord is there anything?"
He knew Georges since childhood, he had been his tutor in most things and had swatted his not-so-knightly backside many times. So typical of the man to call him Milord still and how very appropriate.
"I do not like this place Georges, not one tiny bit. Spread the word to be ready in case of ambush."
"Yes Milord, immediately"

And of course nothing happened, not in the next fine minutes and not in the next hour. No one came screaming from the bushes, no trap closed on the strung-out column. Robert de Dubois was starting to breathe easier when the slope became less steep, more rocky and the brushwork receded.

He was slowing again when small dust clouds rose all along the slope and flat "cracks" assaulted the ears. For a second nothing seemed to happen and then the boulders started to move. Slowly at first but with ever-increasing speed an avalanche gathered speed and made its way towards a knightly army that could not evade. Robert watched with dread as boulders crashed into armoured riders, as a mass rubble forced a troop over the edge into the abyss. Within seconds huge gaps had been ripped into the long column and both ends were isolated from each other.

When Robert could take his eyes from the massacre he found that the so-far denuded slope had grown a forest after all. Where there had been only rocks and crevices now a multitude of spear arose, the strangest spear he had ever seen in his life. Spears could be for throwing or they could combine slashing and stabbing. These could surely do none of it as they were longer than any weapon that the knight had heard of. At least six meters of not longer they were probably the effort of cowards who did not want to close with the enemy. If they`d really attack with these they would find they could be flanked and would be unable to defend themselves. They would pay for what they had done, Robert would see to that.

"Allons enfants de la Patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!"

Was that their battle cry? The enemy indeed advanced and as Robert expected lost all semblance of formation when they made their way down-slope. Amateurs on their way to a slaughter.
"Georges"

Was that their battle cry? The enemy indeed advanced and as Robert expected lost all semblance of formation when they made their way down-slope. Amateurs on their way to a slaughter.
"Georges"
"Yes my Lord."
"Signal form up and then signal the charge."
"Yes my Lord."

There was not much space to be had but but six other knights formed on Robert de Dubois and there were many ranks behind him. He was about 100 meters from the point where the enemy would enter the path, which was about the distance his horse needed to go to a full gallop. There would be more than a half ton of rider, horse and armor moving at better than 30 kph behind his lance, there were very few things that could stop such a charge, the traitors had none of them. Best to attack before they were fully formed then.

"With the Lady and no quarter."

This was what Robert lived for, this was what he trained his life for, this was he did best, the knightly charge. There was nothing to compare with it, nothing that would lift his spirits higher, neither wine nor fair lady would give him such a buzz. The horse started to walk under him, walked faster and started to canter. By that time the enemy mob had arrived on the path in time for the glorious slaughterAnd then came the sublime moment.

"Charge."
The great horse went into the gallop, his view reduced itself to a tiny tunnel and all thoughts, all emotions and all training amounted to keep his charger in formation and the tip of the lance on target.
That was also the moment when the enemy wheeled about and formed a block across the path. That was the moment when the long lances came down and crude spear tips were lowered in his way. The enemy stood shoulder to shoulder and by now he could see their threadbare clothes, their eyes and their faces. What he did not see was neither fear now wavering. The first line pressed the butts of the long spears into the ground, the other held theirs above their shoulders. No, they could not feint, they could not parry and they would not have to as long as there was somebody to their side.

This was not unlike other battles he had been in, the charge of two mounted units was rarely resolved by a full crash into each other, instead mostly one side broke before contact. The fearless side would win and here it was the same, and how could these serfs with no honor stand in the way of a charge.
By now he could see the whites in the eyes, he could see open mouths and wide eyes, he could hear the shouts of encouragement from what went for their officers. They would run, any second now, wouldn`t they? They had to because if they would not his horse would run itself directly into one of these spears and that was a vision which did not bear thinking about.
Robert de Dubois knew that this was madness, that this would lead to ruin and he did not stop the charge, he pressed in. Neither the Lady not his peers would find him wanting.

And they would not. It was not him or the other knights who broke off the charge, it was the horses which did. They definitively had more sense than the knights who rode them and were not going to impale themselves on the pointy things that would not go away. They went up on their rear haunches, they went sideways they refused to do another step. It was a big compliment to the training of their riders that most kept in the saddle even when a a couple of rear-enders made that definition a bit questionable.

Robert had the time to look at the battle again and he did not like the look of things. In at least two places the knights had not made it to the path in time and now the black of spears closed with them. The knights lances were much shorter and so were the swords and maces they used to fend the speartips that wanted to reach them off. Just that that was not the real threat, their horses could not defend themselves and they stepped aside every time a lung threatened their legs until their was no longer a path to be had. The horses`s screams burned their way into Roberts soul and a hate blossomed that kept him steady even in the face of the new threat.

"Vite Vite."
Jean of Dubois led his "platoon" through the maze of rocks which was between them and the latest group of knights that were having a stand-off with another group of pikemen. He had to do something about them before those knight remembered that pikes had been important weapons in the Empire and that the usual way to get rid of them were archers. And to combat some of the best trained warriors in the Old World he had 30 men and women who had been looking at these knights as religious icons a few weeks ago and the weapons of Germans had not been willing to sell modern arms to the Bretonian rebels even when they were making sympathetic noises. There were some back-room deals, some weapons "disappeared" from the Nipponese splinter but there was nothing to arm an army. There was no money to buy them wholesale and no time to train.

The Germans had not restricted the export of glass bottles, of soap and gasoline. Holding his arm up Jean stopped his band when he reached the next boulders and chanced a look around one edge. There was a milling group of knights in front and to the left of him and nobody seemed to have noticed him so far. Crawling back a few meters he got his people together
"Many knights before us on the path. We do it like we trained, qui? Say it with me:
Uncork the bottle, put in the wick, light it, throw it and and then run away. And you do remember the rally point right?"
"Right."
"Then let us do it."
A couple of cheap lighter ignited the rags that had been hastily pressed into the bottles and the platoon stared at them with fear.
"Now, now is the time."
It might have been the training, it might have been the thing the Grail had done to his voice at times, it might have been the zeal of the converted. The serfs, the lowest of the low, they ones who had been told they were not worthy to defend themselves rose behind the stones that had so far sheltered them.
30 arms drew back, 29 threw the bottles forward, one fumbled and dropped it behind its user. A couple of bottles wasted themselves on the slope before the riders and one sailed above their heads into the chasm.

The rest went down where they were supposed to. The glass bottles all broke when they crashed into the ground, the horses armor or the knight upon them. The petrol inside was spread thin all of a sudden, there was so much more oxygen to support the conflagration and a flame to ignite it. Normally thin as water the additives mixed with the fuel made it sticky and slow to run off, even when frantic limbs swatted at it. Burning gasoline went into armor, clung to limbs and animal.

The horses were some of the best, trained to react to their riders knees and were willing to carry them into the thick of battle. Now they reacted with panic, now they tried to gallop here and there, now they collided with each others. The knights were dropped to the ground or dragged behind by the stirrups, many of them screaming from being burned alive.

Normally the grail was reserved for the knights, for men who had been blessed by the Lady for many years. They were prepared for what they would become, so many had prepared themselves for the day and so few would achieve it. If somebody who was not prepared drunk from it the results were much more wild. Some became leaders, some became stronger, others became more resilient.
Andy Thorpe had become a better shot. Which was probably selling him a bit low. The battle raged for all of ten minutes now and he had been through six magazines on the G3 he had bought. Not a single shot had missed and while chaos reigned below him he had the presence of mind to look for those who wanted to bring order to this chaos, who wanted to organize and were dangerous, they had to go. And that they did, one shot after the other. The only problem was that he could not be everywhere at once.

Robert of Dubois was looking at hell. The well-appointed army had broken into small pieces, well-trained knights fought their horses more than their enemies and all semblance of cohesion was lost. Something had to be done, right now, or the flower of the Bretonian army would die here and now.
And then he saw what needed to be done, clear as anything he had ever seen in his life.

"Georges, dismount the men, we need to attack on foot. We simply cannot attack these on a horse, then we will do it without them."
"Yes Sire."
"And get these archers here, now they can show why they are here."

It was a sign of the desperation that his knights were willing to obey this order as quickly as they did. They assembled before the wall of spears before them and now they could bring so many more to the fight. Robert made them wait till he heard the whistling above and behind before he started the was a strange thing, running on his own instead of letting the horse do it. It was as much a madness than before, but men were less clever than horses, they would run onto the spears before them. And then the first arrows struck the unarmored spearmen, and a few gaps appeared. No horse would ever fit into these gaps, but a desperate man could. Robert pushed, hacked, stabbed and screamed. His armor was hit several times by the spearmen of the back rows, his face covered in blood from a close miss but he managed to throw himself into the enemies who could not fight back at such close quarters. All the frustration, all the hate of the last hours tinged his vision red and he hacked and stabbed till his blade was bent, till his arm was red from blood and till the enemy finally broke.

He chased them till they dropped their spears, he cursed them when they outran him and he cleared a gap when the army needed one most. He fought on foot till many a knight had passed his position, he fought when most of his men were dead, he fought till no Knight he could see was moving. It was then that he head the clinking of glass, the whoosh of igniting fuel and then that he felt the heat on his left arm, his neck and his face.

He did not remember much after that but when he woke up in the tent provided by the Lady`s helpers he found that people now listened to him.