Fanfic:Clobber and Shield
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Ubriel and Pete had been boasting good naturedly at each other for almost a week about what new weapon they intended to learn next and how they would do damage to each other in future spars. Pete had a long held preference for his sword and shield. He was getting pretty good with it. The two would often spar, her with her quarterstaff, and she was beginning to cause as much damage to him as she sustained. It had taken a while for her to learn how to get around his shield. Now he was considering taking up the bow and Ubriel didn’t think she wanted something so cumbersome when her primary weapon already required both hands most of the time. She toyed with the idea of taking up daggers but her few trials at throwing darts as an amusement with Pete were utterly disastrous. That poor wall never saw them coming. Sharp things flying through the air simply didn’t suit her. No, she needed something she could hold on to.
She was reading about the sagas of the Hundred Companions one day in the library and came across the intriguing account of the Axemen. She had of course read of the Ogier using axes as their preferred weapon but this was wholly different. The Axemen had used axes on much shorter hafts and fought in formation with round shields. She was enthralled. She sought out every detail of The Axemen that she could find and had finally compiled and transcribed a thin book of battle engagements involving axes as well as every distinct historical description and explanation of the development of the weapon that the Grey Tower library had to offer. Today, she was taking the advice of one of those explanations and going to learn to chop wood.
The entry read, “The most practical first step in learning the use of the battleaxe is to visit the nearest woodsman’s house. The motions of the body involved in swinging a battleaxe is fundamentally the same as that for using a wood axe. Consider the use of the two-handed battle axe. A man usually holds a two-handed felling axe with his left hand near the end of the haft and the right hand almost next to the axe head. As he swings, his right hand slides down the haft until it is right next to the left hand by the time the axe hits the tree. This sliding motion allows the delivery of a powerful chopping blow with the least waste of energy. Splitting a shield is much the same as splitting a log.”
The entry was attributed to someone named Klaase Montagee. Ubriel had looked for this man’s name and discovered him listed as a Foot Marshall in the early years of the Trolloc Wars. Much of what she had discovered about her new interest was attributed to Montagee. He had preferred a very mobile contingent of footmen under his command whom he had armed and trained with what he called Clobbers. It was a design of his own creation that involved a three pound lump of shaped and sharpened steel. It included a curving blade on one side with a spiking tooth at the top of the blade and a concussive hammer-like spike on the other side. The Clobber was used in conjunction with a medium sized round shield. It was often transported attached to the underside of the shield and the shield was carried on the soldier’s back.
Ubriel had sketched a few versions of her own clobber design into the book and sometimes indulged in fanciful daydreams of riding Peach off to battle with her back protected by her clobber and shield showing her personal sigil. Of course she would have to obtain a sigil but that was a minor detail.
As she approached the servants’ quarters, she asked directions to the woodcutters and then headed off to a low building with a large yard full of felled trees. As she entered the yard, the rhythmic “kthunk” of wood being chopped made her hands itch. An old man in Tower livery with white hair and sun darkened, leather skin asked, “May I help you Ji’dar?”
Ubriel smiled and said. “I am looking for Master Boris.”
The old man ducked his head replying, “You have found him.”
This man possessed the highest rank in this yard and Ubriel was about to request that he become her teacher. She bowed appropriately and said, “I am hoping you will teach me to chop wood.”
Boris gave a startled but delighted grunt of laughter, “What did you do to get sent out here?” He turned and gestured for her to follow him.
Ubriel frowned at his back as she followed. “I don’t understand what you mean, sir.”
Boris glanced back at her as he led her toward a pile of large sections of tree trunks. “You are here to serve a penance for some offense in the Tower, are you not?”
Ubriel understood now and laughed. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude by laughing. I am here during my free time. I want to learn to chop wood. My father never thought I would be able to make much of an impression on the wood requirements of our farm. He often traded for our wood rather than really teaching me much more than how to break the smaller pieces.”
Boris had stopped and turned to look at her with more interest. “Do your minders know where you are?”
Ubriel was surprised. “Not specifically I suppose. I have not left Tower grounds and it is my free time. I was not required to tell them.”
Boris considered a moment, “Nope. I guess not. And you aren’t one of those silly little novices either. I suppose you know a sharp end when you see one.” He nodded and seemed to decide something, “Alright, we don’t mind the help.” He continued to walk and led her to a comparatively small pile of log pieces, each about two feet tall when stood on end, next to a tall stack of trees cut into lengths as long as two men were tall one on the shoulder of the other.
As they walked, Ubriel took note of the obvious stages of the processing of a tree into useful firewood on such a grand scale. What were obviously whole trees were being worked on by men with saws and hatchets piling the smaller limbs to one side and defoliating them. The bare trunks were then being cut into two or three shorter, manageable pieces then further cut into these chunks. There were several men and older boys skillfully and powerfully swinging axes at these chunks, cleaving them into quarter round and eighth round pieces recognizable as firewood. Those ready-to-use logs were being piled into carts with some of the smaller branch pieces of the same length. Different types of wood were being separated as well. Ubriel had never given so much thought to chopping wood in her life.
Boris held up an axe from the rack near the pile and another item she didn’t recognize. “This is a wood cutting axe. It comes about waist high on most of us,” He paused eyeing her up and down, “Its a little tall on you. Still, that is what you use for the cleaving. This,” he indicated the other item, “is a honing slate. Every time you sit to rest, you need to run this down each side of the blade a few times. You use it by laying it almost flat against the metal axe head.” he demonstrated. It seemed she had seen Pete do this with his sword more than once. “Then slide it all the way off the end. Go in both directions.” Boris slid the honing slate down both sides in both directions several times, not hurrying but with an even and relaxed glide.
“When you are ready to chop some wood, pick out your log and set it up on one of these here stumps.” Boris rolled a log over to what had obviously once been the base of a large tree that now stood about a foot tall and was over a pace wide. Bending his knees and catching the log with both of his gloved hands, he lifted it to the top of the table-like stump and sat it on its flat side. “You want to split it cleanly down the middle.” He raised the axe and swung over his head, pulling hard on the axe in its downswing with gravity aiding to cleave the log neatly in two down its center. “Then you want to take one of the halves at a time and do it again so you have four neat pieces.” He quickly chopped both halves and, gathering the pieces, deposited them on a nearby cart.
He went to the pile and chose out another, slightly larger log. Once it too was in place, he halved it with two neat cuts and then said, “Sometimes you are going to need to cut it into six or eight pieces if it is very large like this.” Suiting his words to action, he made several quick chops. On the last, the wood turned and one piece was much smaller than the others. “If you get a dwarf piece, cut down the oversized piece. The ladies and lords in the Tower don’t like the uneven heat of a fire made with pieces of different sizes. Then gather the dwarfs and throw them in that kindling barrel over there.” Boris again suited his own words and walked her to the kindling barrel to throw the pieces in.
Finding a pair of gloves for her to use, Boris stayed to watch her hack at a few logs before wandering off. He was shaking his head at her pitiful efforts but apparently saw no danger in leaving her relatively unsupervised. There were plenty of other people about if she got herself injured. She was woefully bad at this job. Her axe bounced off of the log more often than it cut into it. When it did cut in, it was never centered and it was not often deep. She had made more kindling than firewood. She wasn’t too worried about it. She was there to learn which meant she did not already know.
She focussed on her body movements and adjusting where she was in relation to where she was hitting. Getting the axe to glide through her hands and to sail through the air down to the log was the easy part. Aiming that monster was going to take practice. It was heavy as well. Her arms began to ache far sooner than she had hoped. The thing was at least eight pounds of axe head. She persevered. Switching from one arm in the lead to the other with each new log seemed to help. This was using muscles she didn’t realize she had.
Too soon, her time was up and she had to bid the wood cutters farewell. “I will be back every second day if you do not object, Master Boris.”
Boris sniffed and smiled, a strange combination. “Well I can’t say you were very helpful but I won’t turn you away. If you still think you want to train to be a woodcutter, we will see you have wood to cut.”
Ubriel felt a sense of satisfaction as well as pain in her arms as she wandered back up to the Warder Yards. Her hands had been spared the damage of using such a rough tool and she made a note to bring her own gloves if she could find them for next time. Ubriel spent more than a month learning to chop those logs. She did eventually master the chopping and even gained some speed with it. Boris taught her to use the bottom hook on the blade to catch runaway pieces of wood and pull them back to her. Ubriel ran through the motion in her mind, noting that in her notes, hooking an opponent or their weapon in combat was often done with the counter-blade side. She took it all in and referenced her notes often.
One excerpt from an account of an Ogier history book dating from the War of Power spoke in detail of the uses of hooking in battle. It was vague about where this took place and with whom but it was a useful description. “Hooking is a very useful mode of attack with the axe. Jusmin proved that when he encountered the Trolloc Horde outside the village. He and a small group of his men were set upon just before dusk. In the heat of the battle, the diminutive man lost his seat and was forced to battle afoot. Using his axe, he cleverly overshot the heads of the beasts he faced and, one by one, slid the haft down their shoulders to catch the beak of his weapon in their horns, hides and clothing. Even a chain mail shirt was a good anchor for that beak. Directing them as they propelled forward and dragging them low, his stiletto took each swiftly in the throat. He was accounted with eight of the total kills this way before the Myrddraal blade that pierced his side removed him permanently from that long fight.”
One day Ubriel met Boris in the yard and asked him if she could learn to fell trees with an axe. Her request caused him to widen his eyes and sigh deeply with one hand massaging the back of his own neck. “Well, I can’t see why not. You can go out with Merle and Joni. Just do what they tell you and try not to let a tree fall on you.”
Ubriel grinned and nodded. The next time she visited, she found Merle and Joni waiting for her and they began explaining the direction a tree would fall and how to know where to stand out of the way. They refused to leave the yard until she convinced them that she had learned what they were trying to teach her. Apparently, Boris hadn’t been joking about having a tree fall on her, It was a thing that really happened. Ubriel adjusted her attitude toward the men to include gratitude that they wanted to keep her safe.
Once they were out in the woods, Merle explained, “This little area is going to become a new goat pen. We need to clear all the trees in a circle where they have been marked with paint.” He indicated the wide swath of trees of various sizes that travelled in a large circle around where they stood. “Joni and I are going to bring down those big fellas after the three of us take out as many of these little ones as we can.” He nodded and Joni moved up to a tree trunk about as big around as Ubriel’s two hands together were wide. He began to swing at a place just under his waist height, about waist height on Ubriel. “You watch how Joni angles his cuts. We always start with a down cut, at an angle to the trunk. That notches the wood. Then a cut straight at the base of the notch you just made. That one pops the chunk of wood out.”
Ubriel watched attentively. She was amazed at how quickly Joni’s powerful strikes chewed through the wood. In sixteen strikes, the tree was down. Ubriel watched as Joni and Merle both targeted another tree each. She noted the lack of much turn in their hips and shoulders as they made the initial notching strike. Both shoulders moved forward and down in concert to drive the axe. They seemed to lean in from the hip to drive the axe head deep into the wood. The lower cleaving chop was altogether different. Their shoulders moved in opposite directions. The shoulder on the side of the swing moved forward as the opposite shoulder swung back pulling the side-arcing swing all the way through. Their hips twisted similarly to their shoulders.
When Ubriel stepped up to a trunk only about as big around as her upper arm, she expected failure. She planted her feet and swung. Her aim was a little too high. She tried again this time closer to the correct mark. As she called it close enough and swung to cleave the notch away, the axe landed lower still in the spot that her notch should have ended. She tried to make the notch meet the already cut cleave and finally got it. She shook her head and began to chop away, reminding herself that she was here to learn to use a battle axe, not to be great at chopping down trees.
She concentrated instead on having her shoulders and hips move as she had observed. She began producing much more powerful strikes but her aim was still unreliable. She stopped to rest after cleaving about a third of the way through the tree successfully and making great gouging marks above and below her target area. She had only just poured the water onto her tongue when humor overtook her and she almost choked on it. She thought, “It looks like something that a sleep-walking beaver might do while having a nightmare.”
For the next month, she went out with Merle and Joni as often as she stayed in the cutting yard. Both men found her efforts amusing and were very supportive even if they did not know her motivation. She practiced the two new cutting movements and even felled a few trees for them. Joni was quick to point out, “Every one of these you take down is one that we don’t have to do ourselves.” She was grateful that they had such a good attitude about her attempts. It would have been much more difficult to practice without their patience.
Ubriel began again to study the theory and history of the weapon. Now from her own notes, she would read at night before she blew her lamp out and went to sleep. She didn’t have a roommate and was glad of it. The extra bed in her room housed an assortment of study materials that she fondled in the name of research on a regular basis. She had a large map of the known world tacked to one wall and enjoyed moving pins in it to recreate the strategic advances of this battle or that. Her current battle recreation involved the Last Stand of Terad’vol. It was an obscure battle that employed a regiment of Clobber Foot.
One of the few commentators she had found with a passionate voice on the subject of that particular set of battles described the resistance of most military minds to the idea of employing so many axes. He said, “The first axes and hammers to be put to martial use were not very different from the practical common variety they were parented from. The later designers of these weapons fitted them with longer hafts and stronger fastenings, often armoring the hafts. The great powers of military tactics by and large still preferred the more traditional noble weaponry. This is why the plainly evident effectiveness of these weapons is largely overlooked and ignored by historians who document such innovations.”
He went on with the same heartfelt expositions often describing in detail the other battle axe and war hammer designs that rose and fell in use. The thing Ubriel found most notable was the assertion that weight, balance and distribution of the substance of these weapons was almost useless for efficient utilitarian work. They were designed specifically for combat, lighter and with the full force of a swing being directed into a much smaller area of impact. He made the illuminating observation that, trees being much more difficult to cut than flesh and bone, “...even this much lighter axe with it’s force concentrated, was mightily destructive.”
During her third month of wood cutting, Ubriel began to feel restricted in her uniform across her shoulders and chest. The work with the axe was building up muscles in places that she had not exercised before. She was forced to request a new set of uniforms. When she did, the thought came to her that she needed to be practicing using a more refined battle axe shape as the wood cutting versions that she was using were not going to feel the same as the battle axe that she would eventually get. She went to see the Armory Master. He looked at her quizzically, “Why don’t you just use a practice halberd?”
Ubriel tried to resist becoming frustrated with the man. He knew his post and he knew his weapons but he was set in his ways. “It is too long, Sir. I need an axe with a haft of two feet and a head that is basically a halberd head.” It was imprecise but it would do for her to begin to practice. The man was resistant and grouchy. But finally, her patient explanations and determination produced a sigh and a snappish, “Come see me tomorrow afternoon. I will see what I can do for you.”
Upon returning the following day, Ubriel was very pleased to find that once the man had been persuaded to try to provide what she needed, he put every effort into getting it right. He presented her with a wooden construct with a haft just under two feet and a balled end. The halberd head attached to it, also made of wood and riveted into place, was a scaled down version of the most common design with the sharp edge having horns on either end and the counter-weight shaped like a squared hammer head with a short toothy protuberance. Ubriel took it immediately to the practice yards with her heartfelt and sincere thanks to the grouchy man.
Pete met her as she walked to her favorite, shaded and neglected corner of the yards. “What in the Light is that?”
“It’s a practice Clobber.” Ubriel grinned at him. “Do you want to spar with me and help me get used to it?”
Pete arched an eyebrow at her and, after a moment, agreed. “Do you want to use shields?”
Ubriel nodded and they pulled a couple of round, wooden shields from the equipment racks. Walking together toward their sparring ground, they butted their shields together playfully. Ubriel turned in walking circles, swinging her shield against his as she pirouetted. They hadn’t quite made it all the way to their goal when Pete grinned and swung his practice sword in a fluid motion to meet one of her shield butting twirls. She crashed off and laughed as she caught his thrusting shield with the beak of her axe and pulled hard. Pete’s eyes widened and then his grin cracked to show teeth. He rolled forward over his dropping shield and came up with his sword aiming for her knees.
Ubriel lept over his sword, whipping her axe above her head and down at an angle similar to the notching strike she practiced on the trees in the woods. She would have dealt a painful and bruising blow to Pete’s shoulder if he hadn’t leapt to his feet and parried with his shield. Ubriel used the momentum of his parry to carry her axe back out and up in a high arc overhead. She pushed her shield forward into his sword arm as the force of her attack crashed into him. He was better with his preferred weapon than she was with this new weapon, though and he met the attack with a swiftly readjusted shield. Pushing her off, he swung his sword high and advanced on her with his shield held before him at chest height.
He landed a blow to her shield arm at her shoulder. No longer grinning, but concentrating and perspiring with the effort of their spar, they exchanged a nod without pausing in their fluid movements. Ubriel had stumbled at the blow but recovered quickly with an adjustment to her stance. She found as they went through the spar that the practice with the wood cutting axes had developed a set of movements that her body wanted to perform.
She also found her feet wanting to take her through more quick steps and reversals. She let them. She darted in and around Pete, turning him in a circle as she harried him with shield thrusts and great circling swings of her axe. Then she rebounded off of Pete’s shield from a high overhead swing and allowed the axe to carry her arm back and in a much tighter swing, pivoting mostly at her wrist. The return blow from Pete was met with Ubriel’s shield much as the last four sets of blows had been. She pressed her advantage. His sword was busy on her shield and his shield was far to the other side of his body. She pushed upward and in the opening created below, completed her rebounded swing up and into his lower abdomen.
Pete went down. Ubriel bounced on her feet waiting for Pete to get back up. He shook his shield off and dropped his practice sword, reaching for the place she had hit. Ubriel saw the small stain of blood rising and dropped her weapons. She threw herself to her knees beside him and began to pull off his uniform tunic. “I am so sorry, Pete.” On the verge of shouting for a Healer, Ubriel felt Pete’s hand on her arm. She looked at his face and furrowed her brow with concern.
Pete bellowed, “Ow, you addle pated cow!” Ubriel laughed. Finally seeing the damage she had caused, she slapped him lightly on the chin.
“Quit whining you big baby. It’s just a little cut.” The cut was actually a small puncture caused by the top horn of the blade of her wooden practice axe. She waved for the Accepted standing in the shade to come Heal her friend. “I should probably blunt those horns some more.” Pete gave her a flat look and didn’t say a word as the woman in banded white knelt to Heal him.
The incident had frightened her for a moment. Only a short moment. Once she realized that Pete was fine, she started thinking about how the injury had occurred. She referenced her notes during her study hours and began to formulate patterns of movement to make the various strikes of the battle axe. There were no less than five types of attack for her to study with her new weapon. The most obvious was the bladed edge to chop and slice. That was what she had been primarily focussed on in her practice and sparring. The second was the hooking beak that she had discovered was as useful for forcing shields out of her way as it was for pulling an opponent off balance.
Additionally she had discovered in sparring with Pete that first time, the thrusting strike with the horn of an axe were surprisingly damaging. In her reading she found the unexpected ferocity of the wound attributable to the flaring aspect of the horn point. Once the puncture was made, the widening of the blade ripped open the flesh. The axe made a fine bludgeon as well, hefting the head sideways and using the weight to crush a skull or jaw or knee. Finally, when coming out of a blade-end strike, allowing the bottom of the haft to come up and strike or bringing it down from above, was another useful blunt attack. It would be especially useful when she needed to knock someone unconscious but not kill them.
She was beginning to have trouble reserving her free periods for trips to the wood cutting yard due to activities that she wanted to participate in with her friends. She asked Master Boris to request her for chores there. This let her practice and exercise the chopping and swinging motions each day rather than only every second day. She had realized in her reading and practicing and particularly in her spars with Pete, that if she switched her hands, using the axe in her left and the shield in her right, then she could come up under his sword and around his shield very easily. This is when it was pointed out to her that she was equally skilled with both her left and right hands.
It was also pointed out to her that using her left hand as her primary attack hand, put her shield on the opposite side from the striking weapon of her opponent. She consulted her research and began to employ the Avoid and Close method of defense. According to the writers of the observations of historical battle axe combatants, blocking and parrying with an axe was far less effective than simply moving out of the way of committed attacks and closing in too close for effective attacks when appropriate. The light weight of the battle axe allowed faster and more dexterous movement than that of say, the sword. Equally important, that same light weight was not as effective in stopping those committed attacks.
This defensive tactic frustrated Pete to no end. In their spars, Ubriel habitually fought left handed. She used the axe to redirect swinging attacks of Pete’s sword when she couldn’t avoid them entirely. She developed a habit of advance and retreat and sidestep that kept Pete moving to adjust his stance to brace for the weighty swing of his sword. At random intervals when the movement matched up with a move of avoidance, Ubriel would pirouette out to the left so that the shield on her right forearm would lead. Turning it parallel to the ground and extending her arm as the turn completed, she developed an effective bludgeoning tool from the edge of the shield. Were it sharp, she was sure it would be deadly all on its own.
Occasionally, that pirouetting attack brought her into the close circle under Pete’s optimal attack range. During one such occasion, Ubriel saw her moment and struck to her right with the beak of the axe. Catching the edge of Pete’s shield, she made that spinning turn outward and pulled the shield out to open up his torso. Completing the spinning motion and bringing that shield in against Pete’s trunk, she pushed away. The force of the impact into Pete and the leverage of the hooked edge of his shield let her propel herself away though the perimeter of his optimal strike zone.
After a few weeks of getting steadily more bruised during their spars, Pete asked, “When are you going to go back to your quarterstaff?” Ubriel laughed and decided that it was time to see Zacharyn about creating a Clobber and shield of her very own.
“Don’t worry, Pete. When you need to practice with the bow, I will be your target. Then we will be even.” Ubriel laughed and they ambled back to the mess hall for a snack before classes.
