Reincarnated to the Past 6: Trouble Brews (Patreon)

School ended up being … somewhat successful. 

The Kettin people didn’t have a written language, which was unfortunate, but they did have a need for math, and so, all of the children who came to my school were taught math for one of the two hours they spent at my school. All of the maths I taught them for now were subtraction, addition, multiplication, and division. Oh, and to actually teach them this, I had to teach them how to use Arabic Numerals. 

For now, I stayed away from subjects that could net me only anger and not enough progress like astronomy, meteorology, chemistry, and biology. 

What really got the parents involved in sending their kids to my school was the fact that I provided dried beef jerky to all of the children who came, meaning that their own supplies of food were less impacted and children got fed more. 

So the fall and winter saw me rather busy. When I wasn’t teaching, I was hunting games and drying meat. It left me very little time to do some blacksmithing projects that I have been wanting to do.

“Why do you teach them counting?” 

I blinked as I looked at the chief. The short and stout, muscle bound, and heavily bearded man had been watching me teach the children at least once every moon for the past five moons (which was how the Kettins determined time outside of a single day), and he had learned to do as much as the children had in basic arithmetics. While he had known how to calculate a bit, he’d improved and patched up some of his misconceptions about how to do math. 

“Because it will improve their life in ways that are not visible right now.”

“Such as?”

“When they barter, they will be able to get more instead of relying on a foreign merchant to do the math for them. If they have to plan out their farms for more efficiency, then they will be able to use math to help them with such planning.”

“And what you are doing now?”

Today was an odd day because I was able to get a free day where I didn’t have to hunt in the snow. 

Meat was already drying, and I had enough beef jerkys to give to the kids who answered their questions right (of course, I didn’t give the kids the jerkys willy-nilly. They better get simple questions right before they get one!).

“Making a weapon called pillum,” I said as I shoved the long length of iron shaft with a broadhead speartip into the wooden handle. 

“It looks like a waste of precious resource,” he grumbled. While he hadn’t provided me with the iron because I had harvested, smelted, and smithed this myself, I knew that this new weapon he was seeing in front of him just … didn’t sit right with him.

After all, what ridiculous weapon uses such a long length of thin iron? Spears, as far as the Kettins were concerned, should be wooden shaft and iron or bronze speartip, not half of the shaft being iron. He was probably thinking about how many more spears he could have commissioned in place of one pillum.

“It’s meant to stop shield charges.”

The phrase took some time to register, but when it did, he sat up properly on the chair he’d been using to watch me. 

“How?”

“See the shaft?” 

“Yes.”

“It’s thinner than the speartip.”

“And?”

“What happens if a charging shield hits the speartip here?”

“It’ll bounce off.”

“Are you sure about what?”

It took me ten minutes to fashion a slanted and dragging shield holder with a shield held tightly in place. We headed outside - today was a rare sunny, cloudless winter day - and asked him to drag the shield holder towards me as fast as he could.

As he did so, I threw the pillum and watched as the weapon pierced through the shield easily. 

Ghigari stopped and stared.

“How?”

“It’s not just the force of the charging shield, I also threw the weapon.”

“I can see that, but how did it penetrate all the way so easily?”

“Well, the iron shaft is thinner than the speartip…”

Ghigari gawked. “And because it’s not wood, it doesn’t break as easily for the same thickness.”

I grinned. “Yup! And because of the wooden handle which is as thick as your arm…” I said as I untied the rope holding the shield to the shield holder and then held up the shield. I tried to charge, but the weapon weighed me down and prevented the charge. “In this case, I have to throw the shield away because I can’t pull the weapon out due to the size of the speartip.”

He gawked. 

“I like that weapon, but how does it fare against Scythians?”

Scythians? 

I scrambled my head for the information on them and … 

“Horse riders, right?”

He nodded. 

“I suspect it won’t do as well against them. This will work better against Spartans or Athenians or the Pharygeans or even Thracians.” I paused. “Why ask about the Scythians?”

Ghigari grimaced. “It’s been some years since they raided us. It won’t be long before they come raiding us again.”

… Ah, bumbugger.

-VB-

It took a while to learn about the geopolitical situation of the Kettin tribal confederation but the gist of it was that they united not because it was prudent and more productive to do so because such unification stimulated trade and prevented losses by tribal wars and raids, but because the Scythians were the ones raiding them and they needed a big enough force to just meet the Scythians in battle. Otherwise, the tribes had to take it like a bitch.

The Kettin tribe, this tribe that I was part of now whose name I applied to the wider confederation of tribes, was always one of the hardest for the simple fact that they were one of the most eastward tribes. 

Scythians, mountains to the north, mountains to the south, and a sea to the east. 

I was in Wallachia.

Fuck….

I also had a deadline for the next probably raid: next spring.

It was early winter now. 

Double fuck…

I told Ghigari what I knew about cavalry charges. The main reason cavalry was so effective was because untrained recruits and warriors fled and allowed the horses to chase them when horses would not charge into a wall of shields and spears. 

Ghigari grunted and told me that I must know a few things because whenever the Scythians were successful in the battle, it was usually preceded by fleeing warriors fearful of the charge. He asked me how he could defeat the Scythians.

“A wall of shields and spears, and warriors behind those shields who wouldn’t break or run away. Horses don’t charge into a wall of shields and spears.”

My answer didn’t satisfy him, because it wasn’t a miracle, but he accepted it. 

“How do I train them to stand against a cavalry charge?” he asked me while grumbling. 

I didn’t know the answer immediately, but after thinking about it for a while ... I was ready to answer. But by then, Ghigari had already left and the sun had set. 

I’ll have to give him my answer tomorrow.

I slept, woke up, prepared for the children, taught them basic multiplication and then showed them the multiplication table I’d painstakingly carved into wood two days ago, and told them that I would always have the table sitting outside my home if they need help with multiplication.

“Train the warriors as a group?” he asked me when I visited him after I taught the children. 

I nodded. “Instead of having them individually train their skills, gather them all together and practice forming and holding the shield walls. You’ll also need longer spears. The longer spears will help keep the horses back.” 

“That’ll be hard,” he grumbled. “It’s not the right of the chief to tell each warrior what to do, only lead.”

“Then they will die as they break away in the face of the cavalry charge,” I replied with a sigh. “I think it’s better if you force them to train and win, which shows you were right so they follow you more. Better to be right and alive then wrong and dead, right?” I asked.

He grumbled. “I thought your presence would reduce troubles for me,” he mumbled. “Instead, you give me more work.”

I chuckled. Less than a week after my advice to the chief, he began to drill his warriors, and just like he expected, there were some grumbles. 

-VB-

Ghigari was smarter than I thought. He had scouts far to the east and north along the coast who have been keeping an eye out for the signs of Scythians. 

Winter went and spring came.

Dust plumes from the grass plains to the north of the sea told the tribes all they needed to know.

The Scythians were coming.

And I had more than four months to go before I got a new power… which meant… 

Fighting without a third power.

Triple shit…..!