The Tale of Krispos by Harry Turtledove Read Free Book Online

wanted it to.
    He was already doing a man’s work in the fields. Now, though, Varades and the other veterans let him start using real arms. The wire-wound hilt of a steel sword felt nothing like the wooden toy he’d swung before. With it in his hand, he felt like a soldier—more, like a hero.
    He felt like a hero, that is, until Idalkos—the veteran who had given him the blade—proceeded to disarm him half a dozen times in the next ten minutes. The last time, instead of letting him pick up the sword and go on with the lesson, Idalkos chased him halfway across the village. “You’d better run!” he roared, pounding after Krispos. “If I catch you, I’ll carve hams off you.” Only one thing saved Krispos from being even more humiliated than he was: the veteran had terrorized a good many people the same way—some of them Phostis’ age.
    Finally, puffing, Idalkos stopped. “Here, come back, Krispos,” he called. “You’ve had your first lesson now, which is that it’s not as easy as it looks.”
    “It sure isn’t,” Krispos said. As he walked slowly back toward Idalkos, he heard someone giggle. His head whipped around. There in her doorway stood Zoranne the daughter of Tzykalas the cobbler, a pretty girl about Krispos’ age. His ears felt on fire. If she’d watched his whole ignominious flight—
    “Pay the chit no mind,” Idalkos said, as if reading his thoughts. “You did what you had to do: I had a sword and you didn’t. But suppose you didn’t have room to run. Suppose you were in the middle of a whole knot of men when you lost your blade. What would you do then?”
    Die,
Krispos thought. He wished he could die, so he wouldn’t have to remember Zoranne’s giggle. But that wasn’t the answer Idalkos was looking for. “Wrestle, I suppose,” he said after a moment.
    “Would you?” Krispos put down the sword. He set himself, leaning forward slightly from the waist, feet wide apart. “Here, I’m an old man. See if you can throw me.”
    Krispos sprang at him. He’d always done well in the scuffles among boys. He was bigger and stronger than the ones his own age, and quicker, too. If he could pay back Idalkos for some of his embarrassment—
    The next thing he knew, his face was in the dirt, the veteran riding his back. He heard Zoranne laugh again and had to fight back tears of fury. “You fight dirty,” he snarled.
    “You bet I do,” Idalkos said cheerfully. “Want to learn how? Maybe you’ll toss me right through a dung heap one fine day, impress your girl there.”
    “She’s not my girl,” Krispos said as the veteran let him up. Still, the picture was attractive—and so was the idea of throwing Idalkos through a dung heap. “All right, show me what you did.”
    “A hand on the arm, a push on the back, and then you twist—so—and take the fellow you’re fighting down over your leg. Here, I’ll run you through it slow, a couple of times.”
    “I see,” Krispos said after a while. By then they were both filthy, from spilling each other in the dirt. “Now how do I block it when someone tries to do it to me?”
    Idalkos’ scar-seamed face lit up. “You know, lad, I’ve taught my little trick to half a dozen men here, maybe more. You’re the first one with the wit to ask that question. What you do is this….”
    That was the start of it. For the rest of that summer and into fall, until it got too cold to spend much time outside, Krispos learned wrestling from Idalkos in every spare moment he had. Those moments were never enough to suit him, not squeezed as they were into the work of the harvest, care for the village’s livestock, and occasional work with weapons other than Krispos’ increasingly well-honed body.
    “Thing is, you’re pretty good, and you’ll get better,” Idalkos said one chilly day in early autumn. He flexed his wrist, winced, flexed it again. “No, that’s not broken after all. But I won’t be sorry when the snow comes, no indeed I won’t—give