The Burning Sword (5 page)

“You want us to fight?” Martha repeated. “Fight who?”

Faith sighed. Her first instinct had been to ask Martha what she thought about her idea, but she was now regretting it slightly; her best friend was struggling to understand why a sword alone gave them a reason to form an army.

“The squatters, of course,” she explained. “Our villagers are outnumbered by the squatters. Now we have an invincible sword, we have a much greater chance of forming a successful army.”

Martha frowned. “Okay. But we can’t all use the same sword, can we? We don’t have any weapons. I don’t think fighting with our bare fists will get us anywhere, Faith .”

“We’ve got spears,” Faith said, but she agreed with Martha. Spears were not going to be enough. “And knives, I think. We can take it in turns with the sword.” Even to her it sounded ridiculous- an army whose soldiers each had five minutes with a sword, then passed it on to the next soldier? It sounded like a joke.

Martha nodded, and silence fell between them. Snowflakes were still falling lightly, now settling atop a thick white blanket of snow already spread across the floor. Faith and Martha were sitting in the doorway of Faith ’s hut, drawing swirls and patterns in the snow with their feet. The cold air was icy as Faith breathed in, and the crisp freshness kept her feeling alert and awake.

They remained there for quite some time. The hunters had already been out, and come back again, with four rabbits. They were lucky to have got that; the snow meant that many creatures were sensible, and tucked themselves up in their burrows or nests, and stayed there to wait out the bad weather.

Sibyl wandered past them a few minutes later. Faith beckoned her over, deciding she might as well get another opinion.

To her surprise, Sibyl agreed immediately, and asked when the first meeting of the army would be.
Faith, who hadn’t been expecting anything near such an enthusiastic reaction, looked helplessly at Martha, and said, “Tomorrow, after we’ve been hunting.”

“Good,” said Sibyl, “we haven’t got time to waste. I’ll let as many people know as I can.”

With that, she marched off, her purposeful way of walking showing that she was indeed off on a mission. Faith and Martha looked at each other.

“I think that’s a yes then,” said Martha.

*

Faith spent the rest of the day trying to work out a plan for what she was going to do tomorrow. All of her hunters had informed her excitedly that they wanted to come, and many of them were bringing friends who weren’t hunters, but had been awed by the sword, and wanted to find out more about what they could do.

When the next morning finally arrived, the snow had stopped falling, but there was still several inches piled up on the floor, which the girls trudged through, sometimes pausing to make snow angels, or have a brief snowball fight. Faith was glad she had her hunter friends to enjoy the snow, or she might have been more conscious of the fact that usually when it snowed, she would have played in it with all of her brothers, building a snowman (or snowwoman, as her persuasive begging often got the better of her brothers, and they let her give it hair and eyelashes.)

Eventually, they’d caught three rabbits, and as they made their way back through the snow, there was an atmosphere of excitement in the air. Faith could only hope that what she had planned wouldn’t disappoint them.

Faith had arranged for them to meet in Martha’s hut, as Martha’s mother was in on the secret, and fully supportive of it, whereas Faith was pretty sure that her mother would have scolded her for even thinking of training the girls as soldiers.

At the specified time, Faith sat on the corner of Martha’s straw mattress, Martha next to her, and they waited nervously.

Sibyl and Isabel came in first, and took seats, followed by the giggling Marian and Annie. Helen ducked to get through the door, and took up a large space by the fire, accompanied by Daisy, the height and build difference between them even more pronounced by their thick winter coats.

More and more of the hunters came through, many of them bringing sisters and friends whom Faith barely knew. The room filled, until people were squashed uncomfortably all around it, three girls sat in the doorway, others resorting to sit on each other’s laps to fit in. Faith looked at Martha in disbelief, but her friend merely shrugged, as if she’d been expecting this many people anyway.

When the room was so full that Faith was wondering if it was physically possible to fit another in, she stood up, and was greeted with rapturous applause. Her cheeks flushed red with all the attention.

“Well, e
rr, hello,” she said awkwardly. “I think you all know, um, why you’re here.”

Enthusiastic nods were her response. “Okay, good,” she replied. “Well, you all saw the sword, so you know what we’ve found. Now, I think that, with training, we could fight well enough to go and help our brothers and fathers.”

“Do they need our help then?” asked a rather small girl named Lucy. Faith wondered how old she was, and looking around the room at all the younger girls.

“Err, yes, they do, I think.” There were a lot of young girls, actually.

Lucy looked tearful. “I don’t want my daddy to die,” she murmured.

“If we fight, we can prevent him from dying,” Sibyl broke in, glancing at Faith to check that she didn’t mind her interruption. Of course, Faith couldn’t be happier- she’d never been any good with children.

“But I’m a terrible fighter,” Isabel said, bashful. “I’m so clumsy, and the men are so much better at fighting than we are.”

“That may be true,” Faith said, “but we’ll take our time learning. And anyway, I, for one, am not happy about just sitting here on my backside, waiting for them to die fighting.”

Lucy properly burst into tears this time, and was promptly crushed into a hug by the nearest mob of people. Faith hoped she wasn’t trampled.

“I think we might need to introduce an age limit,” Martha mentioned, when the meeting was over, half an hour later. They were sat in Martha’s hut still, marveling at how big it now looked now it was vacated of all those people. Sibyl and Isabel had remained behind, and they were sitting together, talking about the meeting.

“Yes,” said Sibyl. “The younger girls can’t handle a war- just the idea of death made Lucy burst into tears- think of how they’d be if they saw an actual person die!”

Faith nodded. “I’m not sure, really. I mean, we could let them train, but when we actually go to fight, we’d have to talk to their mothers first.”

“Would any mother let their nine-year-old fight?” asked Martha thoughtfully.

“You’re right,” Isabel said, “they wouldn’t. But we can’t deny anyone the chance. We need to be a group who will let anyone join, any age, any gender (not that we have much choice.)”

Someone at the doorway snorted. All four of the girls’ heads snapped up, and they looked over at the entrance to the hut. It was Eli.

He limped in. “Any gender? I’d have to dress up as a woman before you let me join.”

“Thanks for knocking, squatter,” Faith grunted, irritated.

“No problem, mountain goat,” Eli replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Look, this is none of your business,” Faith said, getting to her feet. “So get out.”

“Okay. I’ll just get out and go and tell Margaret all about what you’re doing here. See you.” Eli turned to the door, looking as if he was fully ready to go and tell her, but Faith reached out and grabbed his arm. Hard.

“If you dare, Eli,” she growled, leaving the threat hanging in the air.

“So what?” he said. “Let me join, and I’ll keep it a secret.”

Faith stared at him in surprise. “You want to join? Our army?”

“Yes, I do,” Eli said, his bored tone suggesting that the fact was extremely obvious.

“Why?” Faith breathed. Whatever she’d been expecting, it had definitely not been that. She was finding that she often seemed to feel this way around Eli- the boy was about as predictable as the weather in April.

“Because, if you hadn’t noticed, I’m a squatter. I mean, I’m from your enemies’ camp. So I know how they fight.”

“How?” Faith asked. “You told us that you weren’t allowed to join.”

“Yes,” Eli said slowly. “But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t see what they were doing, does it?”

“So you spied?” Sibyl put in, her eyebrows raised.

“So what if I spied!” Eli defended himself with an agitated gesture of his hand. “You would have done the same!” He looked guilty.

Faith watched him, her eyes narrowed as she remembered what Martha had said about the parallels between Eli’s story and hers. She wondered whether he felt as humiliated as she had done when she asked to join the male army, and for the first time, felt a stab of pity for the boy jolt through her hatred of him.

“Okay.” Her decision was made. “You can join, Eli. But only-” she saw him open his mouth to say something, his expression surprised, and cut across quickly. “Only if you promise to be much more civil. We won’t call you a squatter, if you don’t call us mountain goats. Any nonsense from you, and we’ll kick you out, okay?”

Eli nodded dumbly, for once unable to think up a response, it would seem. He turned, and limped through the door, leaving an air of stunned silence behind him.

“You let him join?” Isabel said, sounding as if she was in disbelief.

“Yes,” Faith said, still staring at the door, as if it would provide answers. “I did.”

“Why?” asked Sibyl, but her tone was not accusing.

“I didn’t have much choice,” Faith replied, looking at her friends. “You heard him- he would have gone straight to Margaret if I hadn’t.”

Martha nodded. “Yes, and I’m certain that he would have done too.”

“Right,” said Faith . “Also, he knows what the squatters get up to. He can tell us if we’re fighting to their standard.”

Sibyl nodded slowly. “I see. Do you think he really knows what they get up to?”

“I reckon so,” Faith answered. “We’ve just got to make sure that he’s definitely on our side. I can just see him being a double agent, or something.”

“Yes,” agreed Martha. “I don’t trust him one bit.”

“Oh, me neither,” Faith replied. “He’s a strange boy, but as we don’t have a choice…”

Her unfinished sentence hung in the air between them.

When they eventually got up to leave, tidying up the
disorganized chairs and mattresses, Faith realized something.

“At least Eli’s taught us that we can’t meet in the middle of the village. I think we need to use a clearing in the woods,” she mentioned.

Sibyl nodded. “Definitely. We need to cover everything- we don’t want to make any mistakes.”

Faith couldn’t help but hope that it would all be okay. Part of her dreaded that the entire thing would go irrevocably wrong, but the other (and the bigger) part was flooded with hope, hope that had begun as soon as she saw all those people sitting excitedly in Martha’s hut, not caring that they were crammed in, just eager to learn. Yes, she felt extremely hopeful indeed.

“That’s it, Daisy! You’re doing well!” Faith called out, over the racket of people
dueling with sticks. Daisy had just got Helen in the stomach, nimbly dodging the larger girl’s attempt to get her in the chest.

“Thanks!” Daisy called back, breathless.

The girls and Eli had originally been unenthusiastic to start with mere sticks, but, as Faith had explained, seeing as some of them had never even held a weapon before, it was probably the safest move.

A cold wind blew languidly past Faith , as she paced up and down amongst the fighting girls, trying to praise them as much as possible; after all, encouragement was the almost best thing to help them improve, second only to practice.

As Faith watched, Marian and Annie fought half-heartedly, poking weakly at each other and giggling. “Come on, you two!” she urged. “Pretend that you hate each other, or something. This isn’t the time to be kind to each other!”

Marian looked at her stick. “I don’t want to hurt her,” she said, her eyes not meeting Faith ’s.

Faith went over to them. “You won’t hurt anyone, trust me,” she told them, gently. “This is just a practice. You’re both strong girls, you can take a tap on the arm. But anyway, how about a swap of partners?” she suggested, raising her voice.

People hurried about, looking for someone new to duel with, no one wanting to be the one left without a partner, like Isabel had been last time. Isabel this time was paired with Martha, the latter of which looked rather concerned about her safety.

Eli was left alone this time. A rather cunning and sly girl named Mabel had opted to go with him last time, thinking that his wounded leg would slow him enough to make him a feeble opponent. Bruised physically, her pride in tatters, she had limped away herself from her encounter with Eli, who had seemed to sense her motives for pairing herself with him, and, as expected, had not liked them one bit.

Faith sighed as she realized that that meant that the pair of them would have to go together. Brilliant. She half wondered about using the sword.

She went over to join him, picking up the sturdiest stick she could find. Eli looked at her, stony faced. She had no idea what he was thinking, but she was pretty sure she didn’t want to know.

“Okay, everyone!” she called, deciding to just ignore him if he was going to be childish. “We’ll try that again. Make sure that you block your opponent!”

The clatter of sticks soon rang out through the forest clearing, and Faith turned to meet Eli with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. He was waiting, arms folded.

“Ready?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “Aren’t you going to disadvantage yourself? I’ve got a… well, a bad leg, so you have to have something taken away to make it fair.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake, Eli!” Faith couldn’t believe her ears. “In battle, it’s not going to be fair. The person you’re fighting won’t take your limp into account! Don’t be stupid, you know full well that you’re being unreasonable.”

“You should have one arm behind your back,” Eli said, stubborn as ever.

“Didn’t you listen to a single word I said?” asked Faith furiously. “I said that in battle, your opponent will-”

“Yes, I heard what you said, idiot,” Eli growled. “Just shut up, and stop acting as if you’re so above us all. If anyone should be leader, it should be me. At least I know what I’m talking about.”

The weight of Eli’s words hit Faith with considerable impact, and she found herself feeling weak. It was clear that Eli hated her, but she had never realized just how much he detested her. The unfairness of his words stung at her- she hadn’t elected herself leader, the others had all just clung to her for guidance, which she had been attempting to provide as well as she could.

“Eli, if you’re going to be a child, you can just go back to the huts, and stay there,” she said, as firmly and as steadily as she could. She was relieved to hear that her voice had not shot up in pitch as it usually did when she got angry.

Eli scowled. A loud snapping of wood interrupted them, as Isabel broke her stick clean in two. Martha appeared to be cowering in fear, but then Faith realized that she was in fact nursing a black eye. She sighed.

“I think we’ll call it a day!” she shouted, above all the noise. She went over to help Martha up, as Isabel seemed to be too busy frantically apologizing.

“I knew going with her was a bad idea,” Martha muttered darkly, as Faith hauled her up.

*

It took them a while, but soon Faith ’s fighters were fighting… well, much better than Faith had ever expected. Some days were an improvement on others, other days were dismal, but on the whole, it was all going fantastically well. Every day, after quickly doing their assigned jobs, they would train. Faith pushed them harder each time, and was sporting several large bruises from fighting the other, especially Sibyl, Martha and on one occasion Eli, who had some bruises now himself from that particular match.

Eli was becoming a lot more helpful now.
Thankfully, he was working on keeping his childish tendencies to himself, though Faith would often catch him scowling to himself. However, she thought that he might just be enjoying the training; once or twice, she had seen him looking exhilarated after a particularly good fight, and more often than that, she had caught him actually smiling for once.

They learnt from Eli that battle wasn’t just a case of finding an opponent and injuring them as much as possible; that it was more important to be well organized and have a plan. He advised Faith to appoint what he called ‘generals’, though Faith though calling her friends generals might be a little too formal. She decided to put forward some candidates, and ask the rest of the army to vote for the three overall generals. Eli told her scornfully that this was not how it was done, but she told him just as scornfully that she didn’t care.

She had had to put forward Eli in the end. It was only fair- he was one of the best fighters, and knew the most about battle techniques. Out of them all, Faith put forward Sibyl, Eli, Martha (who was becoming one of the best fighters of all), Daisy and Helen. To her surprise, Eli received a large amount of votes, almost as much as Sibyl, who had come out with a clear majority. Martha came third, to Faith ’s delight, and so her three generals were appointed.

Eli explained that each general was usually in charge of one part of the army each, and so Faith , after a lot of mulling it over, divided the fighters into three equal groups, one to go under each general.

As they all stood in their groups, Martha, Sibyl and Eli at the head of each, with Faith at the front, admiring how neat it looked, she noticed something. No longer did they feel like fools, practicing swordplay with twigs, no longer did they feel like they couldn’t even fight off a mouse. Now, they looked like an army. They looked ready for business, ready to answer the slightest call. Faith smiled. It was time for the next stage of the plan.