John stepped back to prevent the dead man's blood from staining his boots. The liquid pooled and flowed towards you. Then he ran to catch up with King Joshua and his men.
The "Bear" was the first man that John murdered in battle, and was far from being the last, many more came in the following months. Joshua and his company, along with the rest of those who managed to escape the disaster at Chippenham, retreated to the island of Athelney, in the south, near Somerset. The islet offered a bottleneck that protected them from the type of frontal attack suffered at Chippenham and gave Joshua time to regroup his men. Not that there were many left to regroup; most had been killed or captured, and the small force that remained could barely defend itself, let alone perpetrate a counterattack. But Joshua refused to be cornered, even after an overwhelming defeat and with so few resources at his disposal. He sent a message to all the villages and towns nearby, ordering the men to organize under his banner. And so they did. After several long months rebuilding his army, Joshua took him back to the field and faced the full power of the Danish horde in Ethandun. It was supposed to be a bloody morning, not least for young John, who, from the first blood drawn in the battle with the bear, had discovered that he had not only a talent for killing, but also enjoyed the battle. After the fall of Chippenham, the Nordics pursued the retreating army from Joshua through half of Wiltshire until they finally stopped the hunt. Halfway there were several bloody skirmishes, in which John claimed more barbarian heads. With each battle, it was as if some intimate savage who usually remained asleep inside him woke up and took control until the fight was over. After all the killing, John could feel nothing but remorse for the lives he had taken. But when he was in the middle of the fight, the bloody sword in his hand, it was as if he had been born to do that, nothing more. No one who would fight with him, who had witnessed this transformation, could disagree.
And as time went by, John's nickname, taken as a joke after that first day in the training yard, began to seem to his comrades in arms totally inappropriate. But that day, in Ethandun, they saw something completely different. Walfric had already killed at least twenty barbarians in battle - the royal insignia on his tabard had already disappeared under a thick layer of barbaric blood - when he realized that Joshua was nowhere to be seen. Lost in the furor of battle, he had broken a rule that his weapons master had given him. "Stay with the king!" He examined the battle, striking any unfortunate barbarian who was lost within reach of his sword, until he saw the king on the horse. Even fifty feet away, John could see that Joshua was in trouble. The Nordics were gathering in their position, taking down the personal guard, getting closer and closer to the man John had sworn to protect. John advanced in fury and caught up with the king the moment a powerful barbarian in fur and chain mail knocked Joshua off his mount. With the king defenseless on the ground, the Norseman raised his ax, preparing for the fatal blow. That was when John got into the fight, piercing his opponent's chain mail with his sword. The barbarian slid over John's blade, dead, while three more moved to finish the job he had started.
John, panting, took a defensive position between the Norse and his king. The first man to attack fell quickly: John dodged the Norseman's sword stroke and cut the enemy's back with his sword. The second and third launched together against John, wanting to improve their chances. What happened, but not very well. John ran the sword through the open mouth of one of them, but when the blade got stuck behind the man's skull and he didn't want to let go, he left it and advanced unarmed on the other opponent. The third and last man carried a rough club, little more than a heavy piece of wood with embedded iron tips, but deadly enough, especially at the distance of a weapon. John, driven by the warrior spirit that possessed him in battle, knew that the best chance was to get closer. He waited for the thug to deliver a big, heavy blow, dodged under him, and then jumped on the man, knocking him over. The Nordic was still much stronger and will undoubtedly prevail in a hand-to-hand fight
John would not give up, not after reaching that point. He pulled a small dagger from his boot and pierced the barbarian's right eye, pierced his eye with all his strength, wanting to cross his skull with just a small blade, the barbarian will fall to the ground lifeless and John fell back on the ground, exhausted. More and more of Joshua's soldiers were now gathering beside the king, surrounding him and two men helped Joshua and get up from the ground. No help was offered to John. They hadn't witnessed the find for them, he was just another ordinary infantryman, unworthy of his concern. But someone had noticed Joshua. When escorted to safety, the king did not take his eyes off John, the young man who had just saved his life.
Joshua continued until the great victory at Ethandun, and the war turned after that. The king tracked the barbarian horde and chased the surviving crowd to Chippenham, where the other Norse were stationed. With barbarian king Guthrum isolated inside, Joshua saw the chance to take them down once and for all. So, with his entire strength spread across the walls of Chippenham, he began a slow siege. After four weeks, the Nordics were starving, their desire to resist was already highly broken. In desperation, Guthrum pleaded for peace, and Joshua offered the terms that would bring the war to an end.
After the triumphal return home, the first order of business was to have the young infantryman brought in to save his life in Ethandun. John had no idea why he was summoned to court, and was surprised when he was told to kneel. Then he felt the flat blade of Joshua's sword touch one shoulder first, then the other.
"Get up, Sir John," said the king.
Young John, who in the past had vowed never to raise a sword, rose to knight. John was an ordinary man with no noble heritage. They explained that all knights must have a coat of arms to identify their home. With few heraldic precedents to draw inspiration from, John decided to take a beloved childhood memory as a symbol of his home. His father had taught him, as a boy, to identify all species of curious beetles and insects, and John's favorite was the beetle. His father explained that his carapace made him strong and resistant to all kinds of hostile conditions.
John, who knows the toughness of a peasant's reality, liked that, also liked to know that the scarab's favorite hobby was collecting manure, and that was how, years later, pondering the fact that he was no longer a commoner, but a knight of the kingdom, he thought of the way he could remember his modest beginnings. For what could be more humble and irrelevant than an insect that spends its days half buried in shit? As soon as John got a coat of arms for which his house could be known, all he needed was a house. Joshua gave him the opportunity to choose castles and land across the kingdom, John did not accept any of them. Instead, he decided on a house and a lump of earth where he could grow turnips and carrots and perhaps find a woman for himself. If God so wished, he might even be able to raise a son or daughter, but John didn't ask for anything he didn't yet deserve. In his mind, all he had done was to kill men in battle, and he saw no reason to be rewarded for these simple bloody actions.
***
When John came through the door, his wife Lisandra turned in surprise from the oven where she was cooking soup.
"Came back early," she said suspiciously. "Did you forget anything?"
'My God, what a good smell that soup has,' thought John when the aroma hit him. Of all the reasons for choosing Lisandra as his wife, his culinary skills were only in second place. Well, maybe third, he thought to himself.
"I forgot, just for a moment, that I never paid my debt to Joshua."
Lisandra didn't seem to like that phrase at all. He put his hands on his hips and frowned.
"Please don't make that face," said John as he sat down. "Can you give me some soup?"
"No. It isn't ready yet," said Lisandra, without relieving her next words in the slightest; "Those horsemen I saw on the column, were they Joshua's men?"
"Joshua invited me to Wythchester." John said quietly.
"And of course you said no." Lisandra said with an expression and a steady look.
"If it were any other, yes. I couldn't say that to Joshua. Not after everything he's done for me. I should at least go to him and see what he wants from me."
Lisandra walked around the kitchen, her belly was getting bigger with each passing day. The child would be born in just a few months, so John was out there - despite that clever mare having diarrhea - preparing the field for planting. When his son came to this world, there would be no lack of food, nor any of the things that John lacked as a child. It would be the son of a knight. Perhaps John would ask Joshua for that castle, after all, so that his son could grow comfortably in it.
"You rocked, you took a step back," said Lisandra seriously, "Always taking a step back. Joshua is the one who is indebted to you, not the other way around. I would be dead if it weren't for you."
"I just did what I had sworn to do," said John. "What any soldier would have done in my position. But Joshua didn't have to give me the knighthood, nor provide me with my whole life the way he did. See everything I have, it's much more than I ever dreamed of. My home , my land "He got up from the table and took his wife's hand" My wife, the most beautiful in the world. "
"Save your flattery," said Lisandra, although the faintest hint of a smile suggested that the compliment will work.
"I'm sure Joshua didn't give it to you"
"True, but I wouldn't have won it if he hadn't made me a knight."
"I at least knew you were Sir John the Savage when I agreed to marry you."
"If I were not, I would never have the courage to propose marriage to your father." he said, close enough to kiss her. And then he kissed her. After many hours of fun and fatigue, John finally got that soup. They both ate together by the fireplace.
"Just don't think…" Lisandra started to speak, looking up from the bowl, "that some pretty words and a quick lying on the bed can stop me. You won't be participating in any campaign. I want you here when our baby is born. I need you here! With me and with our son! "
"Who said anything about the campaign?" Asked John
"Do you think I'm a fool? Why, but Joshua would send for him. I heard that the barbarian king is in his last moments, that the Nordics can start another war campaign at the hands of a new warlord."
"This is just rumors, that guy owned a bear's heart, even dying will be just as strong when he was in his youth." Said John.
Lisandra knew him well enough to know that, while John wished it wasn't true, deep down he didn't believe his words. She saw John getting up every night and walking up the hill and looking around for signs. Lisandra reached out and took her husband's hand; "John, look me in the eye. I know Joshua and his best friend, but I am your wife and your son is here." Lisandra placed her other hand on her protruding belly. "I want you to promise me, here and now, that you will not allow them to dispatch you to a new war against the Norse."
John squeezed her hand tightly, looking into her eyes, and said in a deep, resolute voice; "Promise."
Satisfied, Lisandra smiled and went back to the soup.
"I'm sure there is nothing to worry about," said John.
"Perhaps Joshua has been burning another batch of feed and wants you to serve as chief farmer for your fields." Lisandra laughed and kissed him on the forehead, standing up to get another bowl of soup for the two of them.
Early the next morning, John left the house with a saddle and provisions on his shoulder for a long day of riding. He opened the stable door and his mare Carpeado peered out of the gloom inside.
"How are you today, old woman?" He asked. Carpeado did not react until John took the saddle off his shoulders and placed it on the animal's back.
Carpeado hit a hoof and snorted coldly, apparently she was unhappy.
"An, stop complaining," said John as he fed her a handful of oats. "He already had his day off yesterday. Today, with a stomachache or not, we are going to ride. We are going to see the king. And I bet the provisions for the royal horses are much better than ours."
John arrived in Wythchester earlier that morning. He had been riding tirelessly all day, having lunch on the saddle, stopping only so that Carpeado could rest for a while, drink water and eat oats. John hated the idea of getting away from Lisandra and the little one who was not born even for one night, and would do whatever he could to avoid a second night. Perhaps, he thought, Joshua wanted only one simple thing, and as he traveled the distance in that good weather, he could return home and family the next day. Perhaps. It was not the king's habit to send mounted soldiers to summon his most trusted knight for a pittance, but John still entertained himself on the journey, wondering all the reasons why Joshua wanted to see him and that would allow him to return home before the next sunset. Sun.
Upon seeing Joshua's castle appear on the horizon, John was forced to accept the dark truth that those motives he could think of could be counted on one hand. And none of them seemed likely. The guard guards on the castle battlements accompanied John as he came down the road some distance, and the gates of the great fortress opened with a crash as he approached. With Carpeado's hooves they crackled across the drawbridge, and when John passed under the gate into the outer courtyard, he remembered why, as much as he loved Joshua, he rarely liked to visit his friend's royal headquarters. The guards and other men-at-arms who met him upon entering, looked at him with silence and fascination, as if some mythological incarnate hero were before them. For many of those young men, of course, it was exactly what John was. Sir John the Savage. The man who killed more Nordics than any other man in barbaric campaigns - more than twice as much. The man who had butchered with a single hand a dozen barbarians in defense of the king's life and abundant lands and riches offered as a reward. The human being in whom, they said, to overcome the degree of importance of the words of the queen herself, someone that Joshua trusted above all others.
Even John himself tried to avoid the eyes of the young, and took Carpeado's reins when he dismounted, but he could feel them watching him. That would be his story of his visit there, he knew that fact as soon as he entered Joshua's castle.
A persistent stop of obeisances and jokes, which would make John yearn for his return home, more intensely than before where the simplest suggestion of any of these demonstrations would make him deserve a firm knock on his hands with a wooden spoon. I liked that a lot more. At least he hoped to escape going to the barracks and seeing that horrendous painting of himself, John refused to pose for him the artist who was not interested in painting him based on all the descriptions and drawings he could collect with other people. The result, John when he first saw him, was just ridiculous. It was painted by raising a shining sword in an absurdly heroic and fair pose, all puffed up with pride, a trait that John strove to avoid all his life. The artist even went so far as to restore part of his ear, lost to a barbarian ax in Ethandun, as it would be better to look invulnerable. But John liked his ear like that. It served as an ever-present reminder that death was just inches away. Even the most celebrated warriors were as deadly as any other. Perhaps it was useful for young soldiers who passed by to have that memory too; as it was, the painting instilled in those men only the naively romanticized notion of heroism, one that would be dispelled without mercy in the first real battle.
The only thing that had been represented with any precision, so John thought, was the scarab pendant that hung from his neck - if only they had done it right. 'Yes, definitely avoid the barracks, it was forewarned.' He thanked the man who housed his mount and set off across the courtyard towards the inner stockade and the castle's central fort, where Joshua resided. Being there, in the royal residence, with all its traps, was enough to make John uneasy.
The idea of royalty had always seemed uneven to him, an attitude he had undoubtedly inherited from his father. By birth, no man is greater than the other, he will teach the boy. But John was also a man of God, and kings and queens, many believed commas that were chosen by the God of Himself, for only He knew who, among the people, had what was necessary within them to lead their country to the right destiny .
Having testified firsthand and that Joshua had won, John found this belief difficult to challenge. Joshua was crowned at a very young age, after his brother's sudden death, and with pure courage and audacity he transformed years of bitter and bloody defeat at the hands of the barbarians into the most unlikely of victories. It took Auriana from the brink of annihilation. At that time, thanks to his government, the kingdom was safer and stronger than ever. could any other man have done such a thing? Could John do it? He doubted it.