The Pen and the Sword (Destiny's Crucible Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

connections to sources of materials, drilled them to distraction on
safety, and turned them loose. Two months later, after one rebuilding of the
shop structure, several minor burns, one broken arm, one worker replaced when
he decided the work was too dangerous, and only occasional peeks on progress by
Yozef, the shop produced the first functional gunpowder using murvor guano as
the nitrate source.
    Yozef
put aside dreams of rockets, grenades, and mines when he decided that more
development of fuses was needed before handing such products to the islanders.
He ordered a larger facility built a mile from Abersford and focused on
gunpowder for muskets and cannon; then he moved on to his second objective in
being better prepared for the Narthani: himself.
     
     
     

Chapter 4: Self-Defense
     
    Life
in Abersford and St. Sidryn’s returned to a semblance of normal, yet only a semblance. Tradesman worked in their shops, farmers farmed, mothers mothered,
and smithies smithed. Yet confidence in what was normal didn’t recover. Faces
were sterner, arguments erupted faster, Godsday services were more heavily
attended, and the three pubs in Abersford did a booming business.
    Another
difference in daily life was that most men and some women now bore one or more
weapons. They could have gone armed before the raid, but there had been no
sense of imminent danger. No longer. The people felt safer having a weapon at
hand, although the comfort was tempered by not forgetting why they carried a pistol,
a sword, or a knife.
    Another
change was increased formal martial training. The existing three Thirds, the local
levy of fighting men, expanded to add farmers and miners farther distant than
before and required them to take part in training and minimal drills. In
addition, the population of the Abersford area continued to grow to fill
Yozef’s need for workers. Eighty men now composed each Third, compared to the previous
fifty. Also organized was a reserve militia of younger and older men, plus
weapons training for able women, the latter eliciting controversy among some
men until the majority of women made it clear they, too, were defenders of family
and clan.
    Neither
was Yozef immune from a changed attitude. He understood that luck had carried
him through the courtyard fight with only the leg scar. If he’d faced one of
the Buldorians by himself for even a few seconds, he would have died in the courtyard.
Yozef had helped protect Carnigan’s flank, yet he was only slightly more
effective than bales of hay.
    This
wasn’t Berkeley or San Diego, his previous home and where he grew up,
respectively. It was hard enough accepting what had happened and finding a new
life, but more was needed. While he prayed that the raid was the last real
fight he would experience, he needed to be better prepared for even an elementary
defense of himself.
    On
yet another morning he woke to the nightmares and cold sweat dampening the bed,
as he remembered those abbey courtyard minutes that had seemed to last hours: the
yells, the screams, the firearms, the whistling of musket and pistol balls
passing nearby, the clash of metal, the “sssst” of blades swinging and missing,
and, worse, the sound of blades meeting flesh.
    He
got out bed naked and looked at himself in a mirror, not for the first time. The
man in the mirror only resembled Joseph Colsco. In his previous life, he
had never been an active person and had told himself muscles weren’t needed in
a tech society. Then, his only concern was keeping an eye on an incipient pot
belly. That wasn’t who looked back at him now. This body had clearly defined
musculature. He made the classic poise to display biceps. The knotted muscle
existed where it hadn’t on Earth. Harlie had said that the changes the Watchers
made to him would help compensate for Anyar’s higher gravity. Was that what he
saw?
    He
looked harder at the face in the mirror, by now accustomed to seeing and caring
for the beard, but the color