Karaz-a-Karak
The workshop was a mixture of the new and the old. There were several anvils, a rack holding tongs and hammers, wooden benches sanctified by the use of generations and the ceiling bore testimony of the smoke that passed it for hundreds of years. There were also several lathes, electric lighting and other tools that would be state-of-the-art even in Germany. Usually several Dawi were working here but at this late hour only one dwarf was still at it. Grimm Damminson was moonlighting on a project for a friend, making a sword he had promised a while ago while deeply into the ale. The plasma cutter had shaped the high-grade armour steel to a tolerance of 0.1 mm easily. A gas-heated furnace and a drop hammer had made pre-forming the bevels a painless and quick enterprise and now he was standing and the band sanders and shaped the forged parts to his liking. He would do the polishing after the heat treatment and that ended with normalization in a hot oil bath which it could do by itself when he was finally asleep, gas heating and a thermostat would see to that. All in he expected to polish it tomorrow and he could fit the handle the day after. Band sanders are loud when in use and he needed to pay attention to what he was doing, otherwise he`d ruin his job in seconds if he was lucky or lose a finger if he was not. He realised that he a had a visitor only when he turned to the next sander with a higher-grain belt.
His visitor was wearing clothes and gear purely of Dawi manufacture, contrasting to Grimm who wore German googles, shoes and tool belt. He knew the dwarf well, they had been beaten together many times by their trainer during their apprenticeship.
"Hey Durin, what are you doing here at this hour."
"Was in the area and wanted to see what you do about Hunin`s sword. And now I see you cheat."
"I do what?"
"You cheat. This is a sheet metal sword that you bounce upon with machines. It has no soul, it will not last."
"Durin, you are an idiot who does not have the slightest idea what he is talking about. This sword is made from Chrome-Vanadium steel, it has all the hardness and all the flexibility a sword will ever need without me hammering on it for the next two years. I`ll heat-treat the edges more so it will hold an edge. It will be well-balanced; it will be sharp and pointy and it will hold its own. I promised a good sword, not a rune one and that I will deliver. Who are you to call me an oathbreaker."
"You did not make it the very best it could be, you did not work on it by hand, your soul is not in it."
"It is more than good enough for what is required and nobody can say different."
"You are lowering yourself to German standards."
"You should listen to yourself Durin. We use German words to describe steels and tolerances these days because they made things we cannot and now only can because they sell us lore, alloys and machines. This sword will be to 1/10th of a milimeter of what I want it to be, it will not break and by Grimnir it will cut."
"And 1/10th is the best you can do?"
"Of course not, I could do it to 1/1000 but there is simply no need."
"Aha. And you think this "band sander" is good enough? How can you feel the metal`s pattern if you do not sand by hand."
"Because there is no need and because I do not want to spend one year shaping this thing."
"Ha you call it thing yourself, not a sword. If you do not make it as good as you possibly can, if you do not put sweat and pain in it, it has no soul. It is not Dawi and you should be ashamed to make this."
"Durin, there are very few people I would take this kind of crap from and even from you this is wearing thin. And I do have this feeling you are not here because of the sword aren`t you?"
"Ah, yes, it is this other thing. If you want to fake a sword that is one thing, but this assembly line is another."
"Thought you`d bring that up sooner or later. So what has you and your friends in uproar about it? The fact that the workers produce these rifles about ten times faster than if they would use the same machines and each produces their own rifle?"
"No, the fact that none of them can claim he built this rifle and not that one. The fact that the work is repetitive, boring and destroys the soul. The fact that he can no longer call himself a proud craftsdawi but is praised when he is a good little cog in the machine and that you seem intent to make is into bad copies of Germans instead of better Dawi."
"So you do think that hammering on a piece of iron is good for the soul while assembling parts built by another destroys the mind? You do think it is better to remove one's fingernails while grinding and polishing by hand instead of using a good lathe to make many copies of the same part? Is it that what you are saying?"
"At what point do they put their minds into it, where do they give it a soul?"
"Like most things we use in our daily lives: not at all. But you know what, even if you were right about what assembly line work does to dawi I would still support it and you know why?"
"No, why..."
"Because out there there are lads who risk their lives protecting you and me. Because they protect our future and take back what is ours. They risk life, limb and soul for us and we ow it to them to give them the weapons they need now, so that they can do what needs to be done with a minimum of loss. And do you want the Dawi to buy weapons from the Germans for the next 100 hundred years until you have handcrafted the finest weapons by hand. Weapons I might add with no interchangeable parts?"
"They would be better."
"These are good enough and we can make them now in quantity."
"These are crude, they are neither as accurate nor as powerful as what even the Germans use."
"Yes and they do not need high-tech polymers and injection moulding, they are always works and they are powerful enough."
"Are you Dawi or human, kilmin?"
Things went decidedly downwards from there. The sword was finished days after schedule as bruised and bleeding knuckles don`t like to go near furnaces and well received. At the same time During thought about whether a band sander for forming was such a bad thing if one did the polishing by hand..
A week later the Karak-a-Karaz weapon`s forge would ship the next batch of rifles to the troops. The Dawi using them would always believe that the "K" in "K-47" stood for the Karak but Grimm honoured the original designer.
Bretonia
Robert de Dubois` looks had changed during the last few months. Campaigning would do that to you anyway, hard work, low temperatures and infrequent bad food meant that a knight would lose weight. He had a set of nasty burn scars, he now shaved his hair short in the style of the penitent and his eyes had acquired an intensity that made others look away when he fixed them for any length of time. He had lost weight, that was to be expected but so had his horse and that was a problem.
His horse was a charger, a special breed capable of bearing knight his armour as well its own and whatever weapons the rider brought with him. It was expected to execute whatever commands the knight gave with his knees only, be fearless and a weapon on its own. It could not do that on grass alone, it needed oat and lots of it. That had not been forthcoming in the amounts that the Lady`s army needed and neither had the refined foods that his fellow knight s deemed important to their well-being.
A transport should have arrived last week and one this one and nothing had made it to the camp. Robert had taken his retainers and a group of Knights Errant who were chomping at the bit to prove their worth in battle. Robert had also taken a couple of trackers from the local baron. He was neither sure if the men were wardens, poachers or both, nor did he care. He needed capable and loyal and these seemed to fear him too much to disobey. That would have to do.
His troop made their way down the road the convoy had to take and simply found nothing. He was about to turn when one of his trackers pointed to the side of the road. The last rains had been heavy but unable to hide the ruts left by the iron-rimmed wheels used by the supply wagons. Why had they taken to the woods? His trackers swarmed out and came back with hints. The longer he looked at what they had to show the less he liked it. The trackers found a number of loose cobblestones with fresh earth underneath. These might have easily hidden a hole under them, one that would have broken a wheel easily. There was a broken-off arrowhead close to the road, there were a few nasty contraptions with spikes in all direction which would easily bore through footwear and there were holes with sharpened sticks in them which smelled of shit.
It took some searching but the dogs found the hole that contained what seemed to be all of the caravan`s guards and probably some of the drivers`remains. There was no hint where the wagons and their freight had ended up but by that point Robert was very sure that nothing of the cargo would arrive at the Lady`s forces.
The hamlet of Petit Omer was several miles from the site of the ambush and of course nobody at all had heard anything or had other useful information to offer. Robert had worked himself into the depth of of a frustrated rage when he saw the tarpaulin. It covered the back yard of a hovel. Probably to protect the firewood stacked below from the rain it was a bit too expensive for a villager to own. The serf who lived in the hovel held out until he had removed the second tooth before the wretched being told a story of strangers who came in the night and who distributed some foodstuff, clothes and a few tarps.
When Robert left the village the burning hovels lit the corpses dangling from the village tree well enough.
Petit Omer, Bretonia
The youth`s eyes bulged outwards, burst blood vessels and pupils which were no longer round said their owner was dead. The tongue lolled out of an open mouth and the rope dug deep into the neck. Even a casual observer would correctly conclude that whoever hung this boy botched the job and failed to break the neck, causing a prolonged, humiliating and painful death by asphyxiation. Said observer would only be half right as the death had been horribly slow but this was caused not by human error but planning.
The cameras view panned back to reveal more bodies in the same shape of the first. They were young, they were old, they were male and female. Death made them equal and the same went for the wailing mourners before them. Andy Thrope had been part of the team who brought the mourners from the next villages the rebels controlled. Yes, it was a staged event but the serfs` emotions were real enough. A German reporter with a middle-aged face and ancient eyes looked like she knew exactly what was happening here and still recorded the horror for posterity.
Andy had feared such a thing might happen, had indeed warned the villagers to flee, but he was fully willing to take advantage of the opportunity that the atrocity provided. Anything that would kill the monsters who had done this was to be praised, anything that hindered that to be put aside. Petit Omer was inside the countryside controlled by the knights, so this was a dangerous undertaking. It was also vital and so it had gotten an ungodly share of the few men with modern weapons and knowledge to use them. Right here and now Andy Thrope would have welcomed a knightly patrol.
A soft pat on his shoulder reminded him to keep his rifle out of sight, it was thought that the rebels should not look too well armed.
The video would hit German television a week later and made quite an impression on a public not too well disposed towards the Breton nobles anyway. The grisly bits left in the cutting room were available in all their gut-wrenching glory in the internet for those so inclined. It increased the pressure on the German government to "do something" and filled the coffers of those who collected donations for the rebels considerably. There had been a network for the "Underground Railroad" anyway and a large part of that now provided support for something that promised to put an end to the serf`s plight for good.
German weapons laws were quite restrictive, so that buying arms for the rebels there was out of the question, but there were other states and actors who offered more modern arms as long as the money was there.
Nagashizzar, coast of the Sour Sea
This was the mightiest fortress in the old world if one did not count the Citadel of Lead and by far the biggest. Countless undead and cultists had worked ceaselessly during the millennia and transformed the crater made by a warpstone meteor into a fortress. Its walls rose hundreds of meters above the sea, towers, war machines and trenches threatened any potential attacker. Like an iceberg the fortress was far bigger than the visible parts and the many caverns and tunnels below were fortified to an even larger degree than their aboveground counterparts. Countless skeletons, constructs and cultists patrolled in case the Skaven would ever try to renew their assault.
Taking this fortress would be impossible for most factions in this world and devastatingly costly for the few with the capabilities. And if this fortress was hard to assault it was even harder to obtain any intelligence on what went on inside. Most denizens communicated without any speech, most activities happened indoor at least and underground usually. There were no disgruntled servants to be bribed, no human could apply for work, there were few documents written by those inside, no ideology by which their deeds could be interpreted and no creed but for the advancement of Nagash.
The skeleton was of the lowest class. It had been a lowly slave when it was part of a living body and most of the mind it had then had made its way towards the empyrean. It could perform simple tasks if they were painstakingly described in a lengthy ritual and would be utterly confused if anything unforeseen hindered it to fulfil its duties. As this class of undead was the easiest to resurrect there were many thousands of them doing the jobs that needed little to no smarts at all. If a necromancer wanted more from it he had to establish a channel through the realm of Morr, look through what passed as the eyes of the undead and use its limbs while neglecting his own. To a good necromancer such a control would be easily detectable and child`s play to exploit and this skeleton was moving through the domain of the world`s first and most powerful necromancer. Such undead were going all about the fortress, carrying supplies and waste, cleaning floors and whatever other task needed no brain. The wicker basket on this skeleton`s back made him a carrier and for the denizens of Nagashizzar it was simply a part of the background and invisible.
The feeble mind inside was barely able to move its limbs in accordance to the superior`s mind wishes. Said mind rested inside the skull and the upper part of the thorax. It calculated its position inside the fortress from the number of steps taken from a very compact set of laser accelerometers and gyros. Whatever passed by the skeleton was recorded on several cameras and other detectors and committed to silicon memory. Whenever the meandering paths took the undead outside it transmitted its findings to a relay some kilometers away from it, a relay that transmitted the data to a communication`s satellite whenever one was above. The data would be downloaded by Manfred von Carstein`s human servants who was quite pleased with himself. When he had seen the computer-guided skeletons in the employ of his nephew Hermann he knew he finally had acquired a tool to spy on Nagash.
Karaz-a-Karak
The cavern was huge, well-lit and -ventilated. It was filled with strange machinery which did its level best to torture the ears of anybody inside making the Dawi wear protecting. The cotton balls dampened the clamour of drop forges, of drills, lathes, mills and sanders. Hundreds of dwarfs stood at the workstations working on bits and pieces that were brought from one station to the next by carts and placed the fruits of their labours on a conveyor belt that ran through the length of the room. When one of them ran low on parts to work on he placed a flag in a holder, prompting one of the apprentices to bring him more. There were always several machines clustered together served by a gang working together. One of these was watched by two Dawi, one in an overall, the other in more traditional clothes.
"This is where we mill the receivers, they are much stronger than the stamped ones used in some of these weapons. There are several workstations and the lads can change between them as they like. That way it is less boring and they can take a break at times."
"And why do they work so badly that they need their work checked?"
"They do not work badly at all and I suggest you do not tell them you think so, they are proud at what they do. Problem is that we want interchangeable parts so these can be repaired easily in the field. And that means any part has to be true to the template within a 10th mm or even less. And that kind of thing we have to check, otherwise the guys who assemble the rifle at the end of the line will not make a good weapon."
"As good as this thing can be said to be."
"It does everything we can ask of it every time you pull the trigger, what more do you want."
"Better made better designed, more accurate, more powerful."
"None of which is needed."
"Didn`t you tell me that we have bought all this expensive stuff and ask these lads to work in hell so we can make our own weapons, as good or bad as they might be?"
"Yes, so?"
"So why do we then buy our ammunition from the Germans then, these oh-so-great "assault rifles" will not work without it, won`t they?"
No, they won`t. Problem is that black powder will not do in these, it would foul the rifle in no time at all. And making really good smokeless powder and good primers is not that easy. We`ll get there, but not this year or next one."
"So you think the Germans are so much cleverer than us or won`t they share their secrets?"
"Durin, I think you believe that the Germans are mainly good at mechanics, a bit like us, right? That fine mechanical things are their "hat" as they would say?"
"Right."
"Wrong. Not totally wrong but wrong enough. The Germans are at least as good in chemistry, especially at making stuff in bulk, than they are at mechanics. If you ever get to Germany try to get a tour at BASF or so and you will see what I am talking about. We might have even more to learn from them there than in mechanics. And there is the added little problem."
"Which is?"
"If that lad over there has a bad day he might ruin a couple of barrels which will be caught by quality control. On a very bad day indeed he might damage his lathe. If he were making smokeless powder and he has a bad day he would bring down the bloody ceiling and bury us all. You have to be perfect in that, no excuses allowed."
"When you told the King we needed all of this to make our own rifles you said that the Druchii and the Frundarr make their own ammunition."
"They make a stuff our Germans call Cordite which is not very nice to barrels, does not have the same punch and which degrades under the wrong circumstances. They also have a great lot of slaves they can kill handling the mercury for the primers and stuff. Won`t do for us, don`t you think."
"Well, no. So what do we make?"
"We make our own brass, our own projectiles and we assemble the rounds ourselves. We buy the smokeless powder and the primers presently and we bought so much we can make quite a lot of ammo. As soon as the number of rifles is big enough I believe the king will see the need to buy a plant for these."
"And you say we have to buy that from the Germans?"
"Did I tell you about that other German hat, called plant engineering?"
Games Workshop, Nottingham, Earth
The dice dropped for the last time, the models were removed from the table and the points count began. It was done soon enough; all players were more than a bit experienced with them. It was Phil Kelley who spoke up first.
"Matt, can you now that you overpowered these "Marauders"? I mean they are 200 points and a Leo2 is close to 1000 so if you send five of them against a MBT they should win roughly half of the time and not nearly all the time. And really now, the cannons are not that powerful, we have to reduce the AP a bit."
"Yes, yes…"
"Means kick my ass. Matt I understand that you love that new Chaos Dwarf army, I agree that it is worth paying some royalties to Creative Labs to use the Mech models, and the units are really really cool. But we cannot overpower them so much as to break the game. If we release another Codex like that the customers will come at us with forks, tar and feathers."
"Hey, we can sell a new Codex for the Reiksbund. Looks like these guys have some new toys as well and we have to change the rules for aerial combat anyway. Who would have thought that any Warhammer faction could make something with so much kick as these flying saucers."
"Yes, but a supplement, not completely new Codex. Say it with me Matt, no "D" cannon on the Marauder and not on that Warhammer either. These are not Titans damn it."
"Only of we nerf those arty trucks the Imperials have. That gun is not the same as a Panzerhaubitze anyway."
"Sigh, let`s see, we increase dispersion?"
"Sounds good, but by how much?"
The latest data provided by the Versailles link had given Games Workshop a lot to think about. They really hoped that what they cooked up this time would pass their MI6 minders.
ZharrNaggrund
Mathias Hartig was usually called Martina these days, but his German compatriots into his face and by the slaves behind his back. Mordred had transferred his mind into the body of a slave girl when the Germans demanded his body and had pushed him into a crisis ever since. He was inside this body for years now and still it did not feel "right" and not like his own. That the formerly hard-core sadist had problems finding satisfaction in acts that before roused him added to the problem as this had been his main motivation to attach himself to the "Black Company". That he could hardly go back to Germany or change anything about what irked him made things highly frustrating and he found himself nearly unable to get excited about anything.
Unfortunately for him Jasla was not too interested in what made him happy but in that he did what needed to be done. And if he did not feel enough interest in his job she would substitute that by fear of not achieving results. Jasla`s "motivation sessions" had been nasty before but ever since her son Mordred showed his true colours she used them to work out some of her frustrations. Anybody on her staff knew they were to be avoided at all costs. Mordred did not mind as long as she did not incapacitate the Engineers who made his dream possible.
Mathias had allowed his depression to pull him under to the point where he did not care about these sessions sufficiently only to find that he feared them very very much when he found himself unable to avoid them. Hanging upside down meant that he had a harder time of getting unconscious but did not improve his outlook in life any.
"So let us recap your failings again. The flowers my son graciously provided will have cleaned up a lot of soil next year. Then we can plant the seeds that will make our sponsors independent from Reiksbund food shipments again, but only if the soil is sufficiently fertilized. For this we need the fertiliser you promised to make in huge amounts. We need to, this is what Lord Astragoth expects us to do, this is what my son wants us to do and most importantly this is what I told you to do and you fail to do it. I do not care if you have no working pecker any more, I do not care of the workers are too stupid. I promised you could perform and if you do not you make me look bad. That is unacceptable and this is why you will learn to fear me again.
The whip hit Mathias backside with precisely the force that exacted the maximum amount of pain without pushing subcutaneous fat into the blood vessels. That would have caused a fatal embolism and would be counter-productive. It also served as an entre into what the German could only experience as an hour in hell.
Manfred`s cries and Jasla`s admonitions managed to go through her suite`s door and we caught by Mordred`s sensitive ears. He was eager to see if the little surprise he had planted in the obnoxious chemist when he transferred him finally bore fruit. It was pretty hard to tell from the screams and pleading even if he thought he heard the right things but that might be wishful thinking. Finally, he heard an exasperated complaint.
"You are …oh Khaine are you little trollop enjoying this?"
Article in „Spiegel" by Sophie Wagenstein-Vos
We will have a Diesel Navy or We cannot afford anything that we wish for, even not for defence. The purchase of more than 40 "Flensburg" class escorts, the ones that are based on the "Altdorfs" built for the Empire, was a strong hint, the contract awarded to TMK Bremen for the new Sea Control Ships probably cinches it. No ship built for the Bundesmarine will be powered by gas turbines in future. These engines have many proponents, citing their good power-to-weight ratio, their lack of vibrations and their simplicity. If the navy would still have the need to go to more than 30 knots as they might be part of a carrier group they would be indispensable but this need has vanished with the Weltensprung, at least for the time being.
The new Sea Control Ship, AKA the first purpose-built carriers will do 26 knots at full speed and that negates the need for our escorts doing far more than that. And this kind of speed, indeed more if needed, can easily be provided by the new turbocharged medium-speed diesels that have been developed by MTU and DMR both. And while they are heavier, produce more noise, vibration and have more parts than gas turbines they have far better consumption. But that isn`t the real reason for the switch as the gas turbines were rarely lit during the last years and their consumption was not so bad one could not continue. The real reason is that we would need so very few of these engines. The German navy has need for maybe 40 of them or so, 60 on the outside. For this very slim market these engines and the capability to build them completely in Germany would have to be retained, for these few an own school for machinists and stocks of spare parts would have to be maintained. If there would be a sizeable foreign market or if civilian operators would use them the costs could be borne by more than one operator, this way it is far too expensive.
There are of course those who state that it would be very hard to rebuild that capacity when needed and the rapid advances made by potential enemies warrants the continued use of marine gas turbines. When I asked Admiral (ret.) Lerbs about this he simply stated that this was certainly true but also said that in 20 years "totally different" engines would power our ships. I asked him about what that might mean and he simply stated that most of this was classified. He also started talking about the new fusion reactor that is undergoing tests in Greifswald presently but refused to comment if that meant that future ships might be fusion-powered. If that is correct than our navy and by extension the Federal Government took a huge risk in letting a capability fall fallow before a new one is fully developed.
The fact that such articles were of actual interest to the readers of one of Germany`s largest newspapers where they would not have bothered ten years ago never failed to amaze Sophie Wagenstein-Vos.
Bretonia, 250 kilometres from Soreil
Robert de Dubois hated the sight before him, it was an affront to the Lady and the Bretonian way of life. The campaign season really grounded to a halt these days and if the Lady`s troops wanted to make any headway it had to be now, before more snow and more mud made further fighting impossible. And now his knights faced the kind of combat which some feared while it might make other snarl in frustration. Before the favoured of the Lady a block of pikes rose to the grey sky and to both side of it archers readied their bows. He could not see them, but Robert was sure somewhere bottles of flaming, liquid, cowardly death was prepared for his knights. He had seen this before, at Marais Jardin and a few other places. The horses would simply not charge the lowered pikes and if a knight managed that feat his charger would impale itself on these cowardly weapons. And if he dismounted the long pikes would still make combat a nasty proposition as he had to lead his troops through a hail of arrows and other missile weapons. Even then it was not easy to combat the pikes as he had to fight his way through the weapon before he could strike at their wielders.
There were no good options the knight could choose but he would be damned if he would not choose the best of these. And these days he had an aide to make good decisions. He opened the leather holder that hung from his horse`s saddle and extracted the strange contraption he had taken from a rebel he had killed a while ago. It worked like one of the fables telescopes he had seen but was much shorter, provided a view to both eyes and had no false colours. Even if this "Zeiss" craftsman was a German he had known what he was doing.
When he placed the thing to his eyes the enemy seemed to jump at him and the rebels were all too clear to see. Their mismatched, often patched clothing, the lack of trousers and decent shoes, the scrawny build of most, the missing teeth and the many warts and blemishes. Where was the honour in fighting their likes? This was exterminating pests, not glorious combat. But through all that Robert saw other things, smaller details and a smile lit up his face. The tugs he felt on the burn scars he had received from their likes made him smile even more. This would be more than combat; it would be revenge.
He pushed his charger close to the one holding Isabeu, Damsel of the Lady.
"Mylady, you see us on the eve of combat. Please do us the honour to lead our prayers. If you could also help the tasks set to us we would be eternally grateful."
"The Lady will always help her honourable knights."
Robert`s Knights all dismounted in full view of the enemy, kneeled in the cold mud and folder their hands in supplication. They prayed to a goddess who would grant them protection from harm, who would reward the most worthy with powers beyond what mortals achieved on their own. A goddess who asked for a way of life that divided man into the honourable and the worthless by the station of their birth, a goddess who perpetuated a system of oppression that tortured women and children if their family members were rebelling. And the goddess heard them, she granted them protection and eased their doubts."
"Knights, mounts your chargers. We are knights, we are the protectors of the realm, we are the chosen of the Lady. We will not do what our enemy wants us to do and wrestle in the mud like the pigs they are. We will charge them, we will impale them, we will trample them into the ground. Knights, today I am your leader. Charge."
Any doubts that Robert had dropped when the horses started to walk. His heart lifted with the cheers of his knights and the exhilaration on the ride on a fast horse will bring. The closer he got to the enemy the clearer it became he was right. Not that he could have changed anything if he would have been wrong, once the charge was sounded there was no breaking off. The horses went through the canter and into the gallop smoothly and Robert`s view was reduced to a tunnel, his sight fixed on the enemy he had picked.
He knew how he would look to that wretched rebel, far taller than him, his human face hidden behind a visor that presented an inhuman façade, the armour that practically nothing could punch through and the lance that came his way. All of that against the background of an enormous flock of crows that rose where none had been before, of crows which made their way towards the archers and covered them in a deluge of bodies, beaks and claws. Robert heard the cries and was not sure whose were shriller, the crows or the rebels. And that was the moment of decision, the moment that would either vindicate or kill him. And when the pike weathered, when its wielder tried to run, when he stumbled and broke ranks, that was one of the proudest moments of his life. He did not put his lance into the enemy he had chosen, that one perished under the hooves of his horse, he managed to impale a hapless rebel from the line after that and it was his charger who blew clean through the enemy lines.
He had trained for far too long to need to think about combat now. He released the lance after it had pierced a serf all the way and drew his sword. Now that the rabble had broken like he had known they would they were defenceless before the knights. He had to lob off a spear tip or two, his horse managed to kick somebody who wanted to hamstring it, but apart from that the rebels were running. No matter how fast they tried to run, the knights were faster. Those who tried to surrender usually died as quickly as those who tried to fight. They were the lucky ones given what Robert intended for the survivors and the village they had tried to defend.
Breath had come again to Robert de Dubois as had a modicum of sense when Godfrey de Malaise brought his charger besides the knight who cleaned his sword.
"Sire, a brilliant victory. How did you know that they would break?"
"Godfrey do you see that pike over there?"
"Yes Sire, what of it?"
"Last week its tip was on a scythe. And that one over there has been forged from something else. The shafts have not been cleaned up any and when that rabble moved it was like a herd of swine. These had just heard of pikes and how they would make them the equal of their betters. They were not drilled, they were not trained and that is why they died like the rabble they are."
