Christos, noticed, as Chest Cut and Big Boy pushed off, that the big man had a crusader sword in scabbard laced to his arrow case, the arrows as long as the sword. He was shocked how long the arrows were. He pushed off and took the rear paddle, kneeling and thinking as he worked, trusting One Ear to scan the forested shore line. They took to the center right off. He kept his voice low, between dips, “Why don’t we use their swords?”

One Ear whispered, “Our fathers Long Knife Ware Ago. No more; no good run, no good hunt, no good canoe.”

“Fine—I don’t know how to fight with a sword. How do you fight them?”

The one ear hole turned followed by a crusty grin, “Strongbow show…” With a nod to the men ahead, all thoughts and words of tactics were put aside as they negotiated the hazards downstream and considered the hazards unseen among the trees with wary eyes.

It appeared to be eight in the morning, suggesting he came into this place, on the other side of Panther Mountain at about dawn…

Within the hour they glided past the easy going Shenandoah, which caused the Potomac to swell as it flowed in from the south. “Or is it this big damn rock to the left, pushing this water up?”

One Eye nodded in agreement, pulling him back into the world where his thoughts were manifest in word. He asked, “The Monacacy, any one living at the mouth, on the north bank?”

One Eye slowly shook his head, “Ironhides, Sin-clar, burn Manoc town. Manoc leave up.”

Noon had them well down river above where the Monocacy disgorged its waters into the massive flow of the Potomac. A blackened stockade stood sadly on the northwest point, above cattails and tall grass, willows weeping across the mouth of wide, shallow stream. There was movement there. A chill coursed his spine as they glided toward the point, a hundred yards upstream.

‘Trust me,’ welled up some instinctual will in his soul. He hissed to One Ear to put in, to the north bank “NOW,” and turned the rear of the canoe with his paddle, both dipping silently as One Ear nodded to Strongbow and Chester [the cleaved man growing on him to the point of endearment] who cut in smoothly and silently under the looming willows.

The bark canoes were lighter than fiberglass and slid easily up the bank. Leading the men up under full cover, he pointed to the sword, “How do they use them?”

Strongbow handed his bow off to Chester, slid the sword in the scabbard out of the rawhide lace around his arrow case, held the arrow case up on his left arm like a shield, and slowly chopped down from a high right guard with the sword, stopping above Christos’s left neck. He then pushed the ‘shield’ arm forward, withdrawing the sword on high, and then thrust down for the heart, stopping short. He then stepped back, held the left on high and slashed down at the knees, cutting through and returning to a high guard by drawing the sword up behind the shield to the shoulder, ready for a thrust.

Christos assigned Chester with the bow and One Ear to watch for the enemy. He then stepped back, motioned “slow” with his ax and hammer, and entered range. For an hour Christos and Strongbow danced, adapting his boxing to the ax in his right and hammer in his left. The ax had a simple bearded head on a 24 inch haft, wrapped in leather and cordage a foot below the head. There was nothing on the back of the ax head, just the iron hafting ring.

The hammer, in contrast, was twice as heavy, about three pounds, hafted in oak wrapped in sinew from hammer head to butt. The butt had a carven eagle head curving forward to help with retention, and a lariat for his wrist. The head itself was forged into a chisel point with four facets on the face. The back had a wicked spike three inches long.

Strongbow, stopped after the first slow motion bumrush, and took off his moccasins to muffle the ax and hammer heads. Training progressed, with Christos keeping in mind that Strongbow did not know how to fight with a sword; but was feeding him strokes that he and his had faced in battle, strokes that had been effective based on how many of their fellows were left lying dead among the dozen crusaders.

The sweat was coming on. He nodded and saluted to Strongbow and bowed out, turning to One Ear, who had something to say. Chester was up above behind an oak watching down river.

One Eye: [making walking sign] “trace down river, one canoe, one Ironhide, one Blackhand [makes signs for paddling, and comically, floating before the wind], two Lenape.”

He pulled their heads all together in a huddle, “Put one of the arrows you took in the leaky canoe and push it down stream. We take the trail and then their canoe.”

“White Christos,” they hissed, making his heart pang in embarrassment. But something deeper and darker awakened within his being with a tingling in all of his fingers, toes, eyes and nose, along with a big rush of saliva past his teeth and dripping down his stubbly chin. He never knew that growling could feel so good—so right.

They spent a minute waiting for Strongbow to return. Christos signed for Chester to keep the bow and for Strongbow to use the sword, asking if he could throw the ax and hammer. The big man grinned affirmative.

It took a couple rounds, maybe ten minutes to stalk the game trail down river. By that time, he noted that an armored knight and a black-handed sailor, were standing on what should be a natural fishing jetty on the east side of he Monocacy, near a tied up boat, not a canoe, but a rowed skiff. On the west side two Indians were examining the canoe they sent down river.

Christos signed to Chester to shoot the sailor, and to Strongbow and One Ear to rush the Indians, silently, and “NOW!”

Christos walked down the path to the river across from the burnt town, looking at the knight, who was a pretty big man. The sailor next to him, sprouted an arrow from the chest, then one in the guts, and went to his knees clutching at what was transfixing him.

He did not look right, confident that his men were taking care of business. He dove in, swimming with a hammer in his right hand and an ax in his left, kicking hard and angling upstream so as not to emerge with a sword in his neck. One breath and he was across and walking up the silt and stone bank at knee deep, looking at the knight. The man was placing his helmet on over the hood of iron rings. He did not wear the white coat with the cross that went over the armor. Nor did he heft a shield, of which there was none in sight.

The ring of steel, chopping, crunching and grunting were heard to the right back across the river. An arrow transfixed the head of the sailor, putting him out of his misery. The knight drew his sword and held it on high in two hands—of course nothing they had been able to practice.

“Shit, this will be like kickboxing with Semmy Shilt if I play around,” he spoke as he walked forward. The knight was calm and sure.

Setting his spirit on an X block with both weapons on high as he dove to keep his legs from being cut out from under him, Christos charged.

One, two, three, four strides, and the man stood tall, lowering the guard to forward, point to Christos chest. “Read this!” he yelled, dropping to his left knee as he heaved the hammer at that armored chest. He heard the clang and was already shooting the single leg, hopefully under the sword, but not under enough, as it cut a channel down across his right lat.

His right shoulder hit the hip, his left hand picking the knee with the beard of the ax rather than his hand. He drove hard. A steely fist holding a door nob hammered his head. Sparks flew from his right eye with that dull thud, driving the rage within him to a roar, “RRRR!”

‘Trust me,’ rose the blood dripping voice within, and he did. Despite the fact that he felt this knight reversing the grip on his sword and posting up his arms to run him through, he drove up, ran forward, and dove. For a moment they fell from the jetty of charred stone and fresh weeds beneath his feet, his knee knocking aside the dead sailor’s lolling head, all of their feet separated from the earth, the sword point pricking his bottom rib, then his ass, then cutting his left thigh. That final touch of the cold steel felt kind of nice, as that helmeted head crashed into the oak bow of the skiff and that knightly neck snapped like popcorn.

He rode the armored corpse to the stony bottom, a mere four feet down. He pushed off the iron ringed chest, crested the lapping water, and heard a hiss, a great big hiss, “White Christos,” as four hands belonging to three men hoisted him from the water like a minnow on a string. He was being checked for wounds, patted dry, ointment smeared into the cuts.

“What is that?”

One Eye hissed, “Wolf fat, you brudder,” as he did the doctoring.

The Lenape were stretched out, scalped, on the far bank.

He looked down at the short, emaciated man with black hands and wondered, “Imagine what he’s been through. Let’s put the rest through worse. We use their boat and ditch north of the ship, as soon as we see the mast. Our attack needs to be at midnight, which my guts tell me is when Norman and his crew will be river side. We’ll attack from the land side.”

…

Guiding the skiff with the rudder while One Ear and Strongbow paddled and Chester spied the banks felt so normal he stopped thinking in dream and began sinking into its substance.