Thursday, January 15, 2009
Blog: Sword Dance
Blog: Muse
Chapter 16: Back to base
After an early breakfast on braai leftovers the next morning, we were treated to a new piece of kit. Finger Roberts woke us up as usual and when we gathered outside the barracks, he had a pile of back-packs stacked in front of him.
"Good morning all." Finger Roberts greeted us. "We are going to move back to the main base in combat order. Please get dressed in your chain-mail and load all the rest of your kit into these back-packs. Report march-ready in 30 minutes and I will do a final inspection."
I collected one of the back-packs and tried it on. It was, like all the other kit we had received so far, a brilliant piece of equipment. It was lightweight and obviously strong. The shoulder straps fitted comfortably and the waist strap supported the weight of the pack perfectly just above the hips. I was a little concerned that the pack would constrict my movement, especially when I was running, but a little experimentation showed that while there was a slight reduction my arm’s freedom of movement, it was a lot less than I thought it would be. There was also a very efficient quick-release system for dumping the pack in the case of an ambush.
I returned to the barracks room and started packing the kit from the storage chest into the back-pack. Finger Roberts was there already, and he showed us what and how to pack. The bedding rolled up and attached nicely to the bottom of the pack, and the rest of the items that we had received packed away to leave the pack still half empty. That felt about right to me as I knew from prior experience that the bulk of what I would need to carry would be food and water. That was true even taking into account the possibility of living partially off the land.
We were all outside and waiting before the thirty minutes was up.
"March Ready Finger Leader" I reported formally to Finger Roberts. He had appointed me as an acting Finger Leader. The affectionate term for the position was ‘knuckle’, which generated much hilarity and good-natured teasing from the others. Knuckle-Head was about the mildest of the variations on the term that was used.
"Carry on ‘knuckle’" Finger Roberts now ordered me.
"Formation - Arrow-head, Direction - South-East along the pathway, Speed - best speed, Separation - 50 meters. Move out.’ I gave the order to move according to the formal standardised pattern. It seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same. In every army there is an Army Way and the the wrong way. At first it seems confusing and a waste of time, but once you become used to it, it becomes second nature and knowing the format of the various commands it makes it a lot easier to ensure that messages aren’t garbled.
We set out towards the base camp that we had left just over three weeks before and within a few hundred meters we had moved into the mental ‘zone’ and were moving smoothly as a tightly integrated team. We had already learnt the folly of moving on the pathways for tactical reasons as they provided the perfect opportunity for ambush or booby-traps, but in this instance Finger Roberts insisted on it. He had told us that in fact most of the other fingers would be running back in single file, in the same way that we had left the base before, but he felt, and I agreed wholeheartedly, that it was important to start thinking and acting as if we were already operational. Tactical movement reinforced the correct mindset.
* * *
The trip over the five klicks back to the training based took us a lot less time than the outward journey had done. I felt as if we had barely gotten warmed up and we were arriving. Finger Roberts called for a change of formation to a line-ahead and we slowed down to a brisk walk as we came out of the bush and onto the large parade ground. We were not the first finger to arrive; it looked as if there were six or seven fingers there ahead of us. We followed Finger Roberts over to where the other fingers were waiting and he dismissed us with the injunction to remain together and in the area. Finger Roberts then went off to report to Fist Leader Ryon.
While we were standing and waiting, I realised that there had been a huge change in all of us. Looking around at the others, both in our finger and in the other fingers, I could see that there was not a single fat person. Everyone looked reasonably young, and exceptionally fit. I did notice that there were still lots of faces that carried beards and it make me proud of the fact that our entire finger had faces as smooth as babies’ bums. After my initial body-hair accident, I had decided that it was easier, not to mention more hygienic, to keep myself essentially hairless, and most of the others had followed my example. Desrae had to be different of course. She had gotten rid of all her hair, except what was on her head. She had encouraged the growth there so that her hair now fell to midway down her back. Some of the members of other fingers looked something like the ‘Wild man of Borneo’ with big busy beards and long tangled hair. I noticed that those with the facial hair seemed to be less ‘aware’ than those without, so it reinforced the idea for me that a clean-shaven face was a pretty good indicator of mental control.
Over the next hour or so the rest of the fingers arrived until it looked as if everyone was there. This was confirmed when the Finger Leaders all suddenly walked off to the side and formed up in a little squad of their own, and Fist Ryon walked out to stand in front of us.
There was no need for him to call us to attention. I suspect that the situational awareness that we all had would have been sufficient to make us notice him irrespective of who he might have been, but it was clear to me suddenly how much I had changed from the recruit of a few short weeks before. My mental-map of the area had been automatically updated and I had tagged all the leader-types that I could identify on that map. This was made easier by the fact that all of the leader types seemed to have an extra ‘glow’ to them, and Fist Leader Ryon brighter than the Finger Leaders. Off to one side I had another person with a brighter glow than the Finger Leaders, but not as bright as Fist Ryon, and I was pretty sure that it was Hand Leader Evans whom I had met before.
"[Good Morning ladies and gentlemen]" I heard in my head. It was instantly obvious that this was Fist Ryon talking to us on ‘broad-cast mode’.
"[It is good to see you all back here at the completion of the first phase of your training. I am pleased to be able to tell you that of the original 160 of you, 128 remain with us. The rest have been found unsuitable for one reason or another and have either been returned to their homes, or shifted to assisting with various tasks in support of the Fight. We are going to move without delay into the second phase of your training. Your Finger Leaders have been given the administrative arrangements and will guide you to your Hand training bases. However, before we get to that, we will be evaluating your progress in both individual and finger based skills. This will run as a competition and will enable us to as start getting a better appreciation of the level of your abilities. It will also be the first time that you will be able to exercise the skills that you have learnt as a finger, fighting against another finger. For most of you, the difference will come as a surprise. The two best performing fingers will then get to battle a veteran finger to demonstrate that while you are probably all super-confident, there is a big difference between training and fighting. Carry on Finger Leaders.]"
Finger Roberts came trotting over to us with a huge grin on his face.
"[Whats up Finger?]" I asked him.
"[Oh nothing much,]" grinned Finger Roberts, "[I just placed a huge bet on you guys to one of the two fingers that wins the competition today, and an even larger one on you beating the veteran finger.]"
"[Thanks. No pressure huh?]" I replied with a smile.
"[Nope. I have confidence in you. Now follow me.]
We had already been allocated to Hands and we went to join the other four fingers that made up our hand.
"[Right. Mingle and get to know each other. We have about 10 minutes to get ready. I am going to suggest that you go last.]" Finger Roberts told us and trotted off to meet with the other finger leaders.
Note:
5 warriors = 1 Finger (+ 1 Finger Leader)
5 fingers = 1 Hand = 25 warriors (5 Finger Leaders and 1 Hand Leader) = 31 total
5 Hands = 1 Fist = 125 warriors (25 Finger Leaders, 5 Hand Leaders and 1 Fist Leader) = 156 total
5 Fists = 1 Fight = 625 warriors (125 Finger Leaders, 25 Hand Leaders, 5 Fist Leaders and 1 Fight Leader) = 781 total
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Chapter 15: Sword Dance II
The next morning’s routine started out as normal with a run through the forest. This time I entered the meditative state as soon as we started running and monitored the area around me constantly, building up the map-model in my head as we went and checking what I sensed against what I saw. The process was slowly becoming entirely automatic and I found as we ran in various formations that I could shift the mapping to the back burner of my mind. I was slowly integrating this new skill and I started seeing the fruits of it within a few short klicks.
We were running in the arrow-head formation and I rotated to the left point position. I felt as if I was running incredibly fluidly and had to really think about to discover what was different. After a while I realised that I was not crashing through the bush, but rather I seemed to glide through it without interfering with anything. I was running almost silently with very few breaking sticks or branches snapping back into place behind me. I decided that this was a very nice development: fast and silent movement, especially through the bush, was a gem without price in any jungle based combat.
I was shaken from my thoughts by a sudden question in my mind.
"[You hunt?"]
It was S’Alor. I recognised his mental ‘taste’ instantly. This time, probably because I was not expecting him to be a human, I paid more attention to the subtleties of the query, and the underlying feel that I got was that of feline.
"[No. We practice.]" I replied.
"[Why?]"
I thought about the question before answering. As I turned it over in my mind, S’Alor came into range of my mind-mapping and this time he wasn’t hidden from me. I stumbled slightly in shock and then recovered and ran on as I considered the image I had seen and compared it to the image that Finger Roberts had added to his description on the first run we had taken. If I wasn’t mistaken, S’Alor was a Smilodean. One of the predator cats that we had been told to watch out for. The ones that ate humans. There had been no hint that the cat might be sentient. I decided I needed to be careful, as I didn’t know what I was getting into, but at the same time, the over-whelming sense I got from S’Alor was one of curiosity and even friendliness. Not aggression. There was also a sense of things being very simple in S’Alor’s mind. He had even made the point to me the first time he contacted me, pointing out that he thought I was a predator and not prey. it seems he divided the world up into those two camps. In the light of that, I decided to answer him as simply as possible, but to try to ensure that I didn’t scare him off.
"[To make sure we learn how to do it properly.]"
"[You are not a cub. Why do you have to learn this?]"
I had to consider my answer carefully.
"[The lessons I learnt as a cub are not the same lessons that I need to learn here. Finger Roberts {image} is acting as our mother while we are acting as ‘her’ cubs to learn what we need to know.]"
There was a slight pause as S’Alor turned this concept over in his mind.
After a while he asked "[You ‘taste’ like a hunter. I watched in your mind the memories of ‘men-prey’ that you hunted before. {puzzlement}]"
"[I was a soldier/hunter before. That must be what you saw. I was thinking of past fights where I had to kill and comparing them to what I can expect to face in the future.]"
"[You are not the same as most of your litter-mates. They ‘taste’ almost like true cubs. They have not tasted blood; not felt the thrill of claws striking and their prey struggling to get away. Why is this?]"
I was very surprised by this. I thought about it and tried think about it from a cat’s perspective.
"[Maybe it is because they have not killed from up close. They might have used a rifle {image} to kill from a long way away.]"
"[True. I do not know about rifles {image} but that ‘tastes’ similar to what I see in some of their minds. I do see one other. She has also ‘tasted’ blood. She {image/taste} tastes like a mother though.]"
That was a surprise. The image and mental taste that S’Alor shared with me was definitely of Desrae. I still had not had much of an opportunity to find out her motivation for coming to War World and had assumed that it was simply because of the fringe benefit of regaining lost-youth. I had wondered why someone who had not been a soldier was recruited. I resolved to follow up on that because now I was really curious about her history.
"[I don’t know. I will have to ask her.]"
"[I go.]" said S’Alor and he disappeared from my mind and mental mind-map at the same time. As he did so, Finger Rogers called for a breather.
We paused at a stream. Finger Roberts called for the temporary halt, and it took just a gentle reminder that we had to move from our tactical formation (arrow-head) in a dog-leg and then take up our laager positions for all-round defence.
Once we were settled, and Finger Rogers was satisfied with our formation, he asked me "[Cy, what have you been up to?]"
"[What do you mean Finger?]" I wasn’t going to volunteer anything until I had had a chance to mull it all over for a while.
"[I can see that there is a huge difference in you. The hair-loss showed me that you have started making progress in the mental control of your body, and I can see that you have already started to apply it to your movement through the bush. What puzzles me though is that I could sense that you were busy communicating with someone during the run and all your comrades weren’t, yet there was no-one that I could sense that was within your range.]"
"[Finger, I was talking to someone. He calls himself S’Alor.]" I deliberately kept the taste/image out of the communication. For some reason I didn’t think it was right to share the fact that S’Alor was a Smilodean with Finger Roberts until or unless he specifically asked me what he was.
"[I find it strange that I cannot sense him. We will discuss this later.]"
We moved out again after a short rest, and eventually returned to our camp.
After lunch, Finger Roberts started us on practicing the sword forms again. There was no connection between the forms and I found it very difficult to adjust to doing each movement separately. I had discovered the "Sword Dance" the evening before, and I wondered why we weren’t taught anything like that. I decided to take the bull by the horns and ask.
"Finger, please could you tell me why we practice each of the sword forms as a single exercise?"
"What do you mean Cy?"
"Well, I was practicing on my own yesterday, and I sort of joined them all together into a series of movements, almost as if I was doing a mock fight. I haven’t studied martial arts at all, but I tried to do something similar to the katas that I have read about."
"Why don’t you show us what you mean?"
"OK."
I spent a few seconds getting myself into the meditative state that I had discovered and started the Sword Dance. As before, I started fairly slowly, then rapidly speeded up until I was going full-blast. After a few minutes, I heard a mental enquiry from Finger Roberts, "[Cy, stop please. Let’s talk about this.]"
I came out of the mental state and stopped. I gave Finger Roberts an enquiring look.
"Where did you learn to do this Cy?" Finger Roberts asked.
I started out just putting the forms together Finger, then I started imagining a series of enemies and used the forms to practice fighting them. I have started calling it a Sword Dance." I answered him.
"Mmm this is something that I haven’t seen before with these weapons. I have had some comrades who have had previous training in Kendo and other martial arts who performed something similar, but I never thought I would see anything like this with our weapons. Do you think that you could teach this to others?"
"I am not sure Finger. I would be happy to try though."
"OK. It is actually very early in your training, so I am a little concerned that you start to do things that turn out to be inappropriate to our fighting style. Let’s discuss some additional things and then we can see whether we can apply your Sword Dance to it. Colourful phrase by the way."
"Thanks Finger."
"Alright, we haven’t started working with the parry dagger yet. Those of you who have studied military history will realise that our choice and combination of weapons and tactics might seem a little strange. We are configured essentially as shock infantry, very similar to the Roman Legions, and yet we have no shields. The use of the parry dagger is also not a normal addition to this configuration. We have been concentrating so far on individual weapons and have barely scratched the surface of the way that you will co-operate as a unit in the battle-line. Most of you have grasped the essentials of the use of the short-sword, and with more drilling in it’s use, you will soon be competent. We rely on mental ‘shields’ to protect us from projectile weapons, but personal shields or bucklers were normally used in the line for individual protection as well as for a weapon to knock your opponent off balance. We introduced the parry dagger for a specific reason. In the first place, the parry-dagger is essentially a short-sword in it’s own right, as it is just over half the length of the sword, so you will find that it is particularly useful when you are up close in the line-of-battle, and in a general meleé it becomes a second sword. When you become competent in it’s use, you will be able to catch an opponent’s sword in the grooves on the back and use that to slow your opponent down, or even, to break his sword. Remember that you, and your opponents, have reflexes and abilities which far outstrip those of the original users of these weapons and tactics, and this makes a big difference to the way that the fighting plays out. Each person in the finger, and in the line, is usually individually extremely skilled. We are not talking about two lines of brutes bashing at each other with pokers. We are also not like the Roman Legion confronting the Picts where the skill and weaponry on the two sides is completely different. We are often very closely matched in abilities and weapons, and we tend to use pretty similar tactics.
"Some people have tried to use other weapons such as maces or axes and we have taught them the error of that pretty quickly. Those weapons are just to unwieldy in the tight confines of the line-of-battle, especially when you consider the ability of the finger to work so closely together, and the space needed to wield them is just not available which slows them down and makes them vulnerable to the sword. In a traditional meleé they would be very effective weapons against soldiers without shields, but remember that even in a meleé, you will fight as a finger, not as individuals. Think of it as the old infantry square. On the breakdown of the line, each finger becomes a fighting unit in it’s own right, so you never lose the benefits of fighting with your war brothers.
"Something else that you will experience in the intense bonding that happens within a finger. Some of you have experienced close relationships before, either from being married or even with comrades-in-arms. All of those relationships pale into insignificance when compared to the bonds you will develop with the members of your finger. That’s why we talk about ourselves as war brothers. This is something that has to be experienced though; no amount of explanation will prepare you for it.
I listened to Finger Roberts explaining about the weapons and tactics, and while it made complete sense to me, I figured that I would have to experience it for myself before I really believed it. Unfortunately, the way my mind works is that when I hear something, I immediately start to either question it’s validity or try to figure out some way of countering it, and my experiences commanding modern Zulu soldiers started to play on my mind. I wondered idly whether an impi with long-shields and stabbing assegais wouldn’t provide more of a threat to the tactics that Finger Roberts had described than what he thought. It seemed that there was a huge European bias to doctrine that seemed to assume that it was the only valid one. From watching the Zulu soldiers playing at stick-fighting, I figured that they had skills that would translate pretty well to the two-handed sword fighting that Finger Roberts had mentioned. I had also played around with them with recreating some of Chaka’s tactics of the head and horns of the bull formation as well as the use of the long-shield and the stabbing assegai. I thought that they might well be able to disrupt or defeat the short-sword line. I decided to keep my mouth shut though as I was, in this situation, still a neophyte.
"OK. With that in mind, will you see if you can show us the Sword Dance CY?"
"Sure. It started for me in the mental preparation. I tried to do the thing where you empty your mind, but failed dismally at that. What I then discovered was that if I allowed everything to flow through me as I tried to sense everything around me, it dropped me into a meditative state. The first thing I did was to create a mind-map of my surroundings, and from there I moved on to focus my attention on various things. That led me to putting the Sword Dance together. Let me try something if you don’t mind; let’s see if I can communicate what I experienced mentally to see if that makes things easier to explain."
I closed my eyes and entered the meditative state, then reached out tentatively to connect to all the rest one by one. I started out with Finger Roberts, then Desrae and then added the rest. Once I could ‘taste’ them all in my mind, I sent them all {images} of what I meant. They all lined up in a row in line with me and I started going slowly through the sword forms. As I did so, I showed them in my mind what I was doing. The first person to grasp it was Finger Roberts. It only took a few seconds for him to match up to me and then it seemed as if my awareness of him and his actions flared up to be in the fore-front of my brain, before subsiding below the level of conscious awareness. I could still ‘taste’ him there, but it was an awareness similar to that of being aware that your hand is at the end of your arm somewhere; not something I had to make a conscious effort to do.
I concentrated on Desrae next. She felt as though she was flailing around in the dark.
"[Just forget about thinking about anything consciously Des. Let it come to you, don’t reach out for it.]" I told her.
"[I’m trying Cy. It’s difficult. I can ‘taste’ what you mean, but I can’t quite grasp it.]" Desrae answered.
"[Think about it as if it was looking with your eyes. Your eyes accept the light that comes into them. You don’t have to reach out to see.]"
I could feel a sudden change in the way Desrae was doing things and heard an excited "[I think I’ve got it!]" from her.
"[That’s it. Now narrow your focus to the individual movements of your body. Concentrate on them one by one, like this {image/taste}.]"
As Desrae thought about each part of her body involved in the movements, I ‘tasted’ them as an extension of mine. I sent her {images} of my movement, overlaid on hers and she worked slowly on making the {images} from me match the movements she was making.
It took some time, but it suddenly clicked and she flared up and subsided in my mind in a similar way to Finger Roberts.
Now I had some experience teaching someone else, I reached out to all the others at the same time and guided them through it in the same way. One by one they all got it and after a while it felt as though I was one person with six bodies, all moving through the forms in perfect sync.
Once I had achieved this, I started putting the forms together into the Sword Dance I had developed and on each iteration I ramped up the speed until we reached a level that I thought was the best we could do, at least for now. It must have looked surreal; the six of us moving in perfect harmony and with blinding speed.
As we progressed, I found I could pull more forms for the sword and movements from Finger Roberts; including a lot that were more advanced that he had not taught us yet and I started including those in the dance. I simply pulled the {images} from his mind as he offered them, and passed them on to the rest of the finger. I could feel that we were moving way beyond what was simply instruction into the area of battle experience as the textbook forms were slightly modified by what Finger Roberts had learnt in battle. It occurred to me that this was a process of rapid learning of real experience that would prove to be beyond price when translated into battlefield experience. Somewhere during this process, Finger Roberts started guiding me to {images} of the forms for the parry-dagger used in conjunction with the short-sword and I passed this on too.
Eventually I could feel that we were reaching our limits. I could feel the fatigue of the others, just as clearly as I could feel it in my own body, so I started slowing down and eventually stopped.
As I emerged from the meditative state, there was a pause where all six of us were dead quiet and just looked at each other. Desrae broke the moment with a heartfelt exclamation of "Wow. That was awesome!" I couldn’t have agreed with her more.
"Cy, that was incredible. By my estimation, we have been busy for close to three hours, but we have whipped through at least three weeks worth of instruction, never mind the fact that the way that what we just did translates to muscle memory, it means that we have achieved what normally requires many hours of repetitive drill." exclaimed Finger Roberts. "I am going to report this up the chain of command, but I suspect I won’t be believed. I think that the proof of how effective this will be will be shown when we get to practice against other fingers. I suspect that we will blow them away. What is interesting Cy, is that you were essentially acting as Finger Leader during your "Sword Dance" and that is not supposed to be possible without a lot more training and experience."
We took a bit of a break and then continued with training. Finger Roberts did tell me later that he had reported what we had achieved and had been politely dismissed, so he was looking forward to seeing us put this to use. Over the next three weeks, Finger Roberts went over the theory of everything we were supposed to cover during normal lectures, then we would do the practical part in the meditative state of the Sword Dance. We continued with our morning runs, although the whole finger slowly developed the ability to apply the meditative state to the way that they moved through the bush until we would move extremely fast and with almost perfect balance. We started playing war games with some of us being attackers and others being defenders, and if we listened just with our ears, the movement was almost perfectly silent; almost indistinguishable from the natural sounds of the forest.
We started applying the Sword Dance state to combat practice as well when we fought against each other. Watching combinations of the others in this state was frightening. They were moving so fast and with such precision that it was difficult for me to believe that I was also capable of doing that.
We also got the opportunity to practice our bush-craft skills; tracking animals and each other; eating what we found in the bush; making shelters and camping out at night. S’Alor contacted me a few times during this period, but Finger Roberts never mentioned it again so I never got to tell him that he was actually a Smilodean.
At the end of the three week period, Finger Roberts told us that the first collaborative training would start the next day. We were to rejoin the Hand to train as complete Fingers in combat against others and to start working towards coordinating with other fingers so that we could fight as a Hand in the Battle-Line. We were looking forward to this as we felt that we had progressed as far as we could in isolation. Finger Roberts warned us though that he didn’t think that things would go smoothly as our level of readiness was a lot higher than was normal, which meant that he thought that we would blow the other recruit fingers away in finger-on-finger combat training. He thought we might even beat a veteran finger.
We cleaned up around the camp and had a last braai. It was with mixed feelings that I thought that we would be leaving this camp.
{Thanks to "Echomadrid" for thoughts and comments on weapons and tactics which prompted Finger Roberts to give his little lecture :-) }
Friday, January 9, 2009
Chapter 14: Sword Dance I
After Finger Roberts let us stop for the day, I walked a short distance out of the camp to get a little time alone. I found a little clearing in the under-growth about 700 meters from the camp and sat down to practice the meditation that we had been taught that morning. I struggled for a long time to clear my mind but found it to be absolutely impossible. Every time I thought I had got it right, I found myself drifting off on some tangent, thinking about something that we had done that day, or remembering where I had come from, or just feeling the general aches and pains that I had gathered during the day.
After a while of this I decided that it wasn’t going to work for me and just relaxed. As I sat there I started listening to the sounds of the forest around me and after a while it felt as if the peace of the forest had crept into my mind. I wasn’t paying attention to any one thing, but just allowing everything around me to soak into me. Slowly I felt more and more as if I was becoming almost a part of the forest, instead of an intruder. As I thought about it, I realised that I had built up a mind picture of the area around me; almost a 3D map of the terrain and the flora. I decided to experiment a bit and found that I could treat it as if it was a virtual computer simulation, and turn it around and around in my head to examine each part of it. I started to get excited when I realised that I could look at everything from any angle.
I wasn’t sure exactly how I had accomplished this; whether it was a live image or it was something built up from observation of the area while moving through it. After some experimentation, I saw that it must be ‘live’ as I found I could ‘zoom in’ on any area and observe from close up the insect and animal life there.
I concentrated on the process that I had gone through to get into this state and to call up this image to make sure that I would be able to duplicate it, then deliberately shook it clear and started again a few times. On the third time I did this, I realised that it was actually a permanent image in my mind, and it seemed that it had been there all along. I had simply not known it was there or how to access it. I stood up and started to move around while trying to keep the image in my head and discovered that with a little effort, it started to feel natural to have this image and I thought that with time and practice it would be there constantly almost as an extra sense like sight or smell.
It struck me suddenly that this might be the situational awareness that I had observed in my first meeting with Roger de Vries.
With the success that I had achieved in a direction wholly unexpected from the meditation, I thought I may as well try to apply what I had learnt to using the sword. I drew the sword from the scabbard slung over my shoulder, and took up a stance in the first position. I closed my eyes and centered myself, slowing my breathing and narrowing my focus to the feel of the sword in my hand and my awareness of my surroundings. Once I had done that, I started moving slowly through the forms that we had been practicing that day. As I moved, I ignored the sword and concentrated on my body; on the way that the muscles in my arm moved, how my back swiveled and arched; the way that placing my feet differently effected my balance and how the combined movements of my body effected my control of the sword’s movement and the speed and power that I could apply.
As I went through the forms again and again, I started to adjust the way that I moved all the different parts of my body as I could feel that subtle changes made an effect. I experimented with what worked and what didn’t and slowly I felt myself coming into balance. That’s the only way I can describe it. It was as if I had been off balance all my life, and I had only discovered the true meaning now for the first time.
I started moving slightly faster and and then speeded up again and discovered that once I was in balance, going faster was simply a matter of nudging my balance slightly so that it became natural for my body to move in that way.
It suddenly struck me that I was feeling euphoric: I had mastered something that I had heard of but never really seen or believed before. It was as if I had moved into a mental place that I had glimpsed like a far off shore seen through the mist. A place of peace and power. I let the feeling seep into me and spread throughout my mind and body and I moved with joy. I decided I liked doing this Sword Dance.
I slowly became aware that someone was impinging on the edge of the area that I was holding in my mind; someone who was watching me. I kept up the movement while trying to see who it was. I found it strange that I couldn’t make out the person watching me even though the trees and plants around him were very clear. I tried to speak to the person with my mind.
"[Who are you?]" I queried.
"[I Watch]" came back.
The ‘taste’ of the person was strange. I thought about it for a few seconds then realised that this might not be a person at all. Maybe it was some sort of alien; one of the members of the other races that we had heard of but not really been introduced to as such.
"[What is your name?]" I asked.
"[{Amusement} S’Alor]"
"[I am Cy.]"
"[Well met. You interest me. You are not prey. I will watch again.]"
And the ‘person’ was gone.
I suddenly found that my concentration was faltering and I opened my eyes and discovered that I was exhausted and drenched in sweat. It was a surprise to me to realise just how fast I was moving. My sword was a blur and I could feel that I was performing the sword forms perfectly. I slowed down and eventually stopped. I decided that was enough for one day so I sheathed my sword and walked slowly back to our camp.
* * *
I dropped off my sword and the rest of my kit in the barracks room and grabbed my towel and soap and headed for the stream.
Once I had rinsed off the sweat and dirt, I realised that the cut that I had picked up during the day’s training was completely healed. I also noticed that I was slightly more muscular and all the remaining body fat was gone. I had a six-pack stomach for the first time since I was eighteen or nineteen. I thought about that and got an idea. I sat down on the edge of the stream and concentrated to get myself back into the meditative state that I had discovered while practicing my sword forms. I dropped into that state very quickly. Once I felt ready, I focused on the problem that I had with the hair on my face. Once I had achieved that, I focused on my body discarding all the hair that it found there. I felt a funny sensation that seemed to shiver the skin all over my body. I opened my eyes again and jumped back into the water. When I emerged, I rubbed my hand over my chin and found I was completely smooth; I didn’t have any more stubble. I was very happy about that.
I climbed out of the stream and was drying myself off when I was surprised by the sound of loud hysterical laughter.
"What have you done NOW Cy?" gasped Desrae when she could stop laughing for long enough to talk.
"Got rid of the stubble." I answered, puzzled at her amusement.
"Not just the stubble you fool... you look like a billiard-ball!"
I reached up and rubbed my hand over my head. She was right. I seemed to have made a mistake. I had no hair on my head. As I explored further, I discovered that there was not a single hair left on my body. Even the hairs on my toes had disappeared.
"Oops!"
"Oops is about right" Desrae laughed, "I came to see if you were here to tell you that the food is ready."
I got dressed and followed her back into camp where I was the butt of numerous jokes from the others. Finger Roberts just gave me a wry grin and told me I would have to improve my control.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Chapter 13: Meditation and the Sword
Waking up the next morning involved going through what was fast becoming routine. Ice-cold water for washing was just as unpleasant as it had been the previous day and I decided the the water-heating skill better be something I learnt very soon.
We started out the day’s training schedule the same as the day before with a two hour run. Finger Roberts spent just as much time imparting his knowledge as the previous day. The one big difference was that he showed us how to move tactically while moving through the forest so we found ourselves running in formation and not on the pathways. The formation of choice, we were told, was the ‘Arrow’ which involved two people out to either flank in line with a third who ran on the path. The rest were in single-file about thirty meters back on the path. The reason for this formation was that the arrow-head would hit contact with the enemy first, and the ‘shaft’ would remain free to react without being caught in any ambush. This all made sense to me from the immediate-action drills I knew from before. The big difference though was one that I didn’t consider until it was pointed out to me: there was no provision made to counter projectile weapons. It was Desrae who brought this up.
"Cy," she asked, "what happens if someone has a bow-and-arrow? They could just pick us off one by one."
That caught me. I realised that I had simply assumed that with no rifles, the projectile threat didn’t exist.
"I dunno Des, lemme ask."
"[Finger, we were wondering about projectile weapons. It seems you don’t give them any thought?]"
"[True. We don’t. It’s because a well functioning team, from a finger up in size, generates a shield against projectiles automatically. That’s another of those things that you will find developing automatically as a consequence of growing personal skill, but more importantly, a growing sense of ‘team’ and bonding.]"
"[Thanks Finger.]"
"[Don’t get complacent about that though. The shield is something that you will have to be aware of as part of the functioning of the team. If you find yourselves operating on your own, or seperated from the rest of the finger, then you become vulnerable to any projectile weapon; even a thrown rock."
***
At the end of our run, Finger Roberts sat us down and demonstrated a meditation position and explained the technique to us. He told us that this was the best way to focus on mental disciplines and develop those skills, but also how it would assist with the ability to fight.
Finger Roberts encouraged us to talk about this. During the discussion I mentioned that durng a ‘contact’ in my previous experience, I had felt a sense of time dilation, with everything slowing down around me. Finger Roberts latched onto that and told us that we needed to develop two different skills; one was to speed up our thought processes during battle - to create the time dilation effect - and the other was to guide and enhance the body’s fighting ability.
"I don’t know whether any of you have done any martial arts before, but we make use of some of their techniques. One aspect is the idea that your body must be so well drilled that actually thinking about what you are going to do slows you down. The ideal is to enter a ‘zone’ of peace and tranquility when you fight so that your body’s reactions are faster and more instinctual. Meditation can help you promote and extend that ability."
We spent about an hour practicing.
"OK," said Finger Roberts, "let’s move on. We have covered the basics of fighting formations, and started on patrol formations. We have gone over the basics of grappling with it’s holds and breaks and we have made a start on the mental aspects of what you have to know. Tactics we will cover more as we move forward and we can consider various scenarios as they arise in training situations and terrain. The one gaping hole in this is the actual weapons used to fight.
"You need to know that any of the Medieval weapons are theoretically available. We, in the ‘War Brother Fight’ have made certain choices both of tactics and weapons that suit those tactics. Other Fights have made other choices.
"Our choice is to use the short sword in the right hand together with a dagger in the left. We will start on how to use the sword now."
Finger Roberts then spent over an hour introducing us to the short sword. This started with a classic ‘Naming of Parts’ and moved on to the different ways to hold the sword and how to adjust the grip depending on what stroke we were going to use. Once we had all absorbed that, he moved on to explaining the different strokes themselves. This was reminicient for me of tennis grips and strokes, and I used that metaphor to help myself understand what was required.
We spent what was left of the morning practicing the various strokes of the sword. Finger Roberts insisted that we concentrate on getting the forms perfect at a very slow speed. Once we had them perfect, then we could increase the speed gradually.
We got to practice all all the forms, strikes and counters with the sword for a couple of hours before Finger Roberts put us back into fighting formations to practice the forms with the swords while in formation. It was not easy: a couple of us ended the day with hastily bandaged wounds suffered in the process of getting it right. The slice wound on my back and shoulder was incredibly sore, but this proved for us the fact that we healed fast, basically just having to sit out for twenty minutes or so for the wound to make a good start at healing itself, and then being able to get right back into training.
By the end of the day, we all realised that we had made good progress in learning how far we still had to go before we were even approaching competent.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Blog: Back from Holiday
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Blog: Holiday
Chapter 12: Recognition
"Cy, I contacted Hand Leader Evans this morning when you managed to communicate with me using your mind. I will leave you to speak with him." Finger Leader Roberts told me once the others had left us alone. "If you will excuse me Hand Leader?"
"Certainly." Hand Leader Evan replied. "Nice to meet you Cy." He shook my hand. "Walk with me." He turned and walked away. I scurried to catch up and matched my pace to his.
"Do you have any idea why I wanted to speak to you?" Hand Evans asked me.
"At a guess I would think it is because I was a little early for me to get the mental communication thing right?"
"Yes, well, that’s why your Finger Leader contacted me at first, but that was just for information. Early use of mind powers is a marker of higher than normal potential, and we like to watch such people as they are potential leaders. That would have been fairly normal. The real reason I am here is because in your second attempt to communicate, it seems that two other members of your finger heard you."
"I did notice that it seemed to be a little different at the time." I was puzzled about what made this so important.
"[Cy]" I heard in my head.
"Yes Hand Leader" I replied.
"[Mental communication please?]"
"[Yes Hand Leader]" I tried again.
"[Do you find that difficult to do?]"
"[No. The first time took some real concentration. Now it seems entirely natural . I have been listening to Finger Roberts all morning, and I think that his use of Mental Comms has made it feel almost normal for me now.]"
"[All right. Try to send a message Finger Roberts and I at the same time.]"
"[Do you hear me?]" I called in my head, trying to feel the mental taste of both Finger Roberts and Hand Evan at the same time.
"[Yes Cy, I hear you.]" It felt like a double echo. Both replied almost simultaneously but I had no trouble keeping their replies separate in my mind.
"Ok Cy. Thank you. I have seen enough for now. I will leave you to return to your training. I just want you to know that the ability you have demonstrated is very unusual so early in training and if everything else works out, then it indicates that you have the potential to rise very far in terms of leadership. I look forward to watching how things turn out for you. Thank you for your time." With that, Hand Evans turned and walked away.
I headed back to rejoin the others.
As I got back to the others, I realised that I hadn’t had an opportunity yet to ask about shaving, so I approached Finger Roberts and asked him what I should do.
"I think everyone should hear this." Finger Roberts said. "Gather round please. Ok, this is a little early in the program, but I want to explain something to you. Cy has just asked me how he can shave. That leads us to another aspect of the processing. As you have experienced, there are changes that have happened to your bodies since you woke up which have been stimulated by exercise. This has been pretty much involuntary. It is also possible to direct the changes deliberately. The first test of this ability and control is with body hair. All of you will be growing your hair until you learn to control the change simply by willing it. While the men have beards, everyone who sees them knows that they haven’t gained this ability. You will notice that a lot of the veterans have large and fancy moustaches. There are two reasons for this: one is that it demonstrates control and the other is based on history. Napoleons veterans were recognised by their moustaches. For the women it is a little more difficult, although hair on the legs is often the indicator."
"Does that ability extend to other things?" I asked.
"Yes. The start is facial hair. Once you have that under control, then I will teach you how to extend that to other things. You can change almost any physical aspect of yourself if you have sufficient skill." he replied. "Now, enough of that, today we are going to concentrate on a few more grappling holds: the neck and waist holds and the head lock."
Finger Roberts went through the process of demonstrating each hold in turn, and we spent a number of hours practicing these holds and the techniques for breaking them.
Lunch-time arrived eventually, and we discovered to our delight that we had been provided with fresh bread-rolls and sliced meat, so it involved very little preparation.
After I had eaten my lunch, I decided that I wanted to tackle the water-heating issue. I approached Finger Roberts and explained my concept based on what we called a "Donkey" which was a field water-heater made out of a 40-gallon drum. Essentially the principle was very simple, the drum was placed over a fire and it had a source of water that filled it. The hot water would rise to the top and pour out of a hole in the drum, while cold water took the place of the hot.
Finger Roberts complimented me on the idea, but explained that water heating was also one of the mental "magic" tricks that we would learn, and bathing in cold water was a major incentive to develop the skills.
Once everyone had finished eating, Finger Roberts instructed us to fetch our training swords. We returned to muster in front of him very quickly and he started explaining how we would be learning to use our swords.
"The first thing that you need to know," he began, "is that you work together as a team. We carry no shields. The warrior next to you is your shield. The principle of battle for you is extremely simple. You concentrate on striking the warrior in front of you to disable or wound him, and if you do so aggressively enough, you will put him on the back-foot and beat him before you need to worry about defence. We will teach you both attack and defence however as they compliment each other, but the focus is on teamwork.
"Our basic Finger formations are based on the concept of three up and down. The standard formation is to have three warriors in the line fighting, and three directly behind them in reserve. The Finger Leader fights with the Finger in this formation. There are a number of variations of this, where we can put more up front and less in reserve, or vice versa, depending on a number of factors. For example, if we have to fight in an enclosed space, then we might want only two to fight up front. This also allows for better husbanding of our strength as the reserve warriors can be swapped out. If we are required to cover a wider front, we can put four warriors up front, and have only two in reserve. We also have formations where we are all paired up and we swap and protect our buddy in the line.
"What we are going to do for the next while is learn the standard formations and drill in them; how to get into formation; how to change formation from one to another; how to replace each other in the line and what to do in various situations when one of you gets struck down and we have to react to reinforce the line. We will also practice the relief in the line; advancing to contact and breaking contact. There is no more square-bashing for the sake of pretty parades. Here drilling returns to its roots where it is a means to exercise control over formations in the midst of battle."
And that is what we did. We drilled for the rest of that day in the various formations. Finger Roberts drove us mercilessly through endless variations of the formations. He interspersed periods of formation drill with the various grappling holds and blocks. By the end of the day I was bone tired and collapsed into bed at the earliest opportunity.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Chapter 11: Training
I woke up in the dark. I reached out for the alarm clock and fell out of bed. The alarm clock wasn’t there. As I sat rubbing my head, I remembered that I wasn’t at home anymore.
I looked around and saw the other members of the Finger stirring in their beds. I wasn’t sure what had woken us up, but I figured that this was going to be just like the army I was used to where I would have to get out of bed at oh-dark-thirty.
"[Now that you are awake, you have half an hour to get ready, then meet outside.]"
I identified the voice in my head as being Finger Roberts. I decided to try something. I had been doing the concentration exercises constantly the previous afternoon and evening without knowing if they had helped me make any progress, so I concentrated hard and sent back "[On the way Finger-Leader.]"
There was a startled "[...]" and then "[Was that Cy Peters?"] from him.
"[Yes Finger Leader]" I replied.
"[OK. Good!]"
I got up from the floor and grabbed my towel and soap. I scratched through my locker to see if I could find a razor, but there was nothing like that there. I decided that if I hadn’t been provided with one then I would just have to go without shaving and ask the Finger-Leader about it later.
I had a fast wash in the stream. It was seriously cold and I started thinking about how I could arrange to warm the water for the future. I would have to see whether I could arrange some kind of fire-heated donkey.
I was a little reluctant to pull on the same outfit as the previous day, but when I inspected it, I was surprised to see that it was clean. I decided that this was either a technological marvel, or some sort of magic, but as usual when you had no idea what caused something then the two were functionally equivalent.
Washed and dressed, I waited for the others to join me. Finger Roberts was standing and waiting, but he had a distracted look to him and I guessed that he might be in the middle of a mental conversation with someone else.
Once we were all present, Finger Leader Roberts turned and started running with a "Follow me" tossed over his shoulder.
We ran for about two hours. Only the first few hundred meters was on a pathway, then we headed off into the jungle. We ran between trees, jumped over logs and rocks and waded through streams, all at what I would previously have thought of as a pace suitable for a 1500 meter race on the track. As we went Finger Leader Roberts kept up a constant mental commentary on the terrain that we were moving through as well as the flora that surrounded us. I was surprised at his encyclopedic knowledge, but soon realised that he was giving us very valuable information; information that could assist us to live off the bush if necessary.
At one point, he stopped and waited for us all to catch up, then pointed at the ground. "That’s the spoor of the most dangerous predator other than man on War World. It is a large cat we call a Smilodean that is similar to a cross between a jaguar and tiger. Take note of the spoor. I would recommend that you make every possible effort to avoid tangling with them. They are very efficient hunters of humans whom they consider to be a delicacy." He looked at us with a wry smile on his face.
"[Finger Leader?]" I decided to try the mental contact again. As I did it, it felt slightly different and I saw Desrae and Lian jerk in surprise.
"Yes Cy?’ Finger Roberts answered aloud. Then he noticed the reaction of the other two.
"Did you just hear Cy?" he asked them. Both Desrae and Lian nodded.
"Ok." Finger Roberts gave me a strange look as he asked "What is your question Cy?"
"I was wondering what the Smilodean ate other than humans?"
"Look closely at the spoor. It looks as if this Smilodean is tracking a buck. They are not exactly the same as what we have on Earth, but they are a close equivalent. They make good eating for us too."
With that he turned and started running again.
"[An important lesson for any soldier is that the terrain is the most important aspect of the Art of War.]" Finger Roberts was in lecture mode again.
"[The terrain determines your tactics. It will guide you to water and food, and where you go to look for those, your enemy is likely to do the same. It can give you the advantage by allowing you to see your enemy, or to hide you from the enemy. Remember that there are two sides to the coin, and your enemy will, if he has any sense at all, make just as efficient use of the terrain as you. You need to get into the habit of thinking tactically about the terrain as a continuous, unconscious reflex.You will only learn to do this if you practice it until you no longer have to think about it. Build a map in your head as you move. Look for clues about what the terrain will do based on what your experience is. Use the vegetation to guide you. For example, these trees here on the left only grow where the soil is constantly wet. Those up on that hill there will only flourish when there is well drained soil. Just by seeing those trees, you can predict that there will be hills or valleys, and knowing that you can predict dead ground and high ground.]"
He went on like this constantly. An incessant flow of valuable information. I remembered the advice that Roger de Vries had given us to listen closely during our training, and I was realising how apt that advice was. A lot of what Finger Roberts was telling us was universal, and something that I already knew. I already had the habit of evaluating terrain constantly with an eye to tactical deployment and advantage, and also specifically to predict possible ambush sites. What he was giving us though was that basic framework together with sufficient detail to make it applicable to this environment. I was determined to remember everything that he told us, although I started to realise that the mental communication seemed to make it a lot easier to store and organise the information, and thus easier to remember. If I concentrated, I could see that not only were his words coming into my brain, but that somehow, when he thought of something specific when he spoke in this manner, then that image was transferred as well, so I was slowly building up a mental reference of the flora that included images as well as the description of it’s use and characteristic.
"[A lot of what a soldier does depends on how he utilises terrain to his advantage.]" Finger Roberts continued, "[The actual fighting is often only the culmination of a long process. Often the outcome of the fight is predetermined by the success of the manouevring that has taken place leading up to the battle. If any of you have read Sun Tzu before you came here, you will remember that he speaks about the best victory being one where you don’t actually have to fight. That’s the best outcome.]"
This information continued throughout our run.
***
When we got back to our camp, there was someone waiting for us. We stopped at Finger Roberts’ command while he greeted the guy, then turned to us and introduced him, "This is Hand Leader Evans. Cy, could we speak to you please? The rest of you take some time to get refreshed."
Monday, December 15, 2008
Chapter 10: Getting to know you
We all got up and moved over to the sleeping side of the barracks. I decided to introduce myself around and find out more about the people who were now in my "Finger".
Other than Desrae and myself, there were two other men and one woman. The first guy I spoke to was tall and thin and told me he was from Michigan. What was interesting was that he was black and described himself as "African" and I was white and described myself the same way. His name was Geraint. His buddy was Elaine, a fat woman from Montreal, Canada. The other guy was Lian from Hong Kong.
"I am ravenous." I declared to everyone, "I am going to see what I can do about getting something to eat."
"Another braai I suppose?" Desrae asked.
"Well, I suspect that is a skill that is going to turn out pretty handy if we have to do a lot of our own cooking. Let’s see what’s available," I replied. I left the barracks and looked around. I had spotted what looked like a primitive Lapa to the side of the barracks-house and I strolled over to it to investigate. Sure enough, there was a box of some sort on the floor, which I opened. It seemed that this was a cooler-box of some sort. I couldn’t see any mechanism to cool it down, but I had already had enough experience of this place to just ascribe that to some sort of "magic" and ignore it. I unpacked the contents and found that we had been provided with some utensils, and under them there was a stack of steaks. In a sealed bowl I found the makings of a pretty decent salad.
"Excellent," I thought to myself, "just perfect for a braai."
The next step was to create some sort of braai-place. I decided to look in the storage area that I had seen earlier and found what looked like a metal grid which I thought would do very well for a braai-grid and hauled that over to the Lapa. I hunted around the area and hauled a bunch of stones back and proceeded to build a braai with a circle of stones that would hold the grid. Then back to the storage area where I found an axe-like tool and I set off into the surrounding forest to search for wood. I found plenty of dropped branches from the trees and within twenty minutes I had enough firewood stacked in the Lapa to keep a fire going for some time. Now for some way to start the fire.
I walked back into the barracks and asked if anyone had any lighters or matches, but had no luck, so I went back into the class-room area where I found Finger Roberts sitting at a desk doing some paper-work.
"Finger-Leader, I am trying to get a fire started to cook our meal for tonight. You don’t happen to have some matches do you?" I asked him.
"Take a look in the storage-locker under your bed Peters. You’ll find what you need there." He answered me.
I thanked him and went to take a look.
When I knelt down to look under my bed, the others all stopped their conversations to watch what I was doing.
"Lost something?" Geraint asked.
"No. The Finger-Leader told me to look under my bed." I answered. With that I pulled out the storage locker that I found there. All the others watched with great interest when I opened it.
Inside I saw that there were a number of interesting things. I scratched through the contents until I came across a flint and striker gadget that I recognised as vaguely similar to ones that I had used before. I also hauled out a Dixie and a knife and fork. I decided to leave exploring the rest of the contents of the locker for some later time. I returned the locker to it’s place under my bed and returned to the Lapa. As I left the room, I saw most of the rest all getting down to check out their own lockers.
After about half an hour, Desrae came out to join me.
"That smells incredibly good!" she told me.
I smiled as I turned the steaks on the braai. "Yes. I know. Funny how I knew that would draw you out here."
"The rest are on their way." she laughed.
"Great. The meat should be ready in another ten or fifteen minutes. You could help get the salad ready."
I didn’t have to call anyone. The five of us were joined by Finger Leader Roberts and I dished up for everyone.
After we had finished supper, Finger Roberts told us to gather out front again.
"You have all been issued with training swords and have gathered from what you have been told that is the primary weapon used here on War World. We are going to start training you to fight, and eventually, we will get to using the sword. I want you to put any of the romantic, swashbuckling ideas of sword-fighting completely out of your heads. You need to understand that the sword is a great big cleaver designed to inflict maximum damage on your enemy, it is not designed to clash against your opponent’s sword with a loud noise. The point of fighting is to disable or kill your opponent.
"We use a short sword within the Finger that is designed to suit fighting in close quarters. The sword is just one of your weapons. Your others are your hands, head, feet and elbows. Before we start with the sword, we will start with teaching you how to Grapple. This is the oldest known human fighting style. We have found that there is no better way to teach the concepts of timing and distance as related to fighting.
"Grappling will allow you to develop some of the the basic skills needed for fighting with the sword in formation, as well as in the general mêlée. It will help you to develop both strength and speed as well as teach you about how to break arms and legs, how to bind or lock an opponent’s arms, what places to strike including the eyes, nose, under the chin and the groin.
"We will work on Grappling first, interspersed with cardiovascular training and general endurance, and then we will move on to other forms of fighting.
"We will start with a shoulder hold."
I was surprised by this. I had expected to start immediately with training in the use of the sword. What he had to say though about not hitting someone else’s sword, made sense to me and I wondered why I had never thought of that when watching Errol Flynn or the Pirates of the Caribbean.
Finger Roberts gestured Lian to come forward and demonstrated a basic shoulder hold and the rest of us paired off and copied what he showed us. He then demonstrated the counter; how to break the shoulder hold and we practised applying the hold and then breaking it for the next hour.
Finger Roberts moved around constantly, acting as the partner for each of us in turn and ensuring that we rotated partners every few minutes. I got the feeling that he was evaluating us constantly.
At the end of the hour he called a halt. "That’s enough. You’ve had a long day. Knock off and we will continue tomorrow."
It suddenly struck me that it was still the same day for me that I had started at dawn at Greefswald, although I had no idea how long I had been out during the ‘processing’. I supposed that could have been any length of time. I decided it wasn’t important to think about. The priority now was the feeling of fatigue, and the fact that I was sore and dirty.
"Finger Roberts, is there anywhere for us to wash?" I asked.
"The stream is just behind those bushes." he pointed out.
When he said that, I realised that I had been subliminally aware of the the sound of running water. I returned to the barracks to retrieve the bar of soap and a towel I had noticed in the storage-locker under my bed, then I walked around the large bush and found a short pathway that led to a small stream. I stripped off my clothes and waded into the stream.
Desrae called out to me "Cold?"
"About this big" I answered her and held my index finger and thumb up about two millimetres apart.
She laughed and stripped off her clothes and joined me. As she walked into the stream, I took a good look at her and decided that she no longer looked like the ‘granny’ I had dubbed her. She looked like a twenty year old woman. Even her grey hair had regained it’s hazel colour. The rest of the members of the finger followed Desrae and I after an initial hesitation. I thought I could see that Elaine looked substantially less fat than she had a few hours before. Once I thought of it, I looked down at myself and saw that I had already lost my boep. In fact, there was a definite hint of muscles showing on my stomach. My arms and legs had also firmed up substantially. I hadn’t developed any large bulges of muscle, but I was definitely a lot trimmer than when I had last looked.
When I was finished I dried off and returned to the barracks room without waiting for the others to follow. I lay down on my bed and I must have fallen asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, because I certainly remember nothing of the evening after that.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Blog: Keep on Trucking
Well,
It seems to be going pretty well. I still get the odd negative comment about the length of my chapters, but I am just pointing people to my blog post about that and that seems to help.
I have had some really, really encouraging and helpful comments from a few people which have been brilliant to get. Constructive criticism, encouragement, ideas for improvements and more. I am overwhelmed at this support and appreciate it incredibly!
I think that with Chapter 8 & 9, we are finally starting to get into the sort of detail that people have been asking for, although I am still finding it incredibly difficult to avoid explaining what I want to convey without long monologues. I hope that the character development and plot can/will be balanced by the explanations. It is a really difficult balance. I would appreciate comments on how effective(or otherwise) I have been at this.
ATB
BoonDock
PS: I have caught up with the blog entries, which are now listed as the first entries in this blog. I cheated and changed the date on the entries to get them earlier than the chapter posts. From now on new blog entries will be interspersed with chapter posts.
Chapter 9: Introduction to Training
Once Finger Roberts saw that he had all of our attention, he told us "Pick up your kit and follow me."
We all hurried to keep up with him as he set off at a rapid pace across the parade ground. I assumed that we would be shown to a barracks of some sort and then, hopefully, to a mess-hall so that we could get something to eat, and I was hopeful as we walked towards the buildings on the other side of the parade-ground that completed the horseshoe arrangement. I was puzzled when I realised that we were approaching the end of the buildings and we hadn’t entered one, and even more so when we left the parade-ground and started following a pathway that wound between some trees and into the bush.
We continued along the pathway for a long time, I would guess that we walked at least five klicks before Finger Roberts finally turned off the pathway at an intersection and headed through some bushes before finally stopping and saying "This is home for the next while. Find a bunk and meet me out here in ten minutes."
We were standing in a clearing in the bush about thirty meters wide and on the opposite side of the clearing from us there was a long low building. It had a roof made of some natural material that looked like woven leaves and was raised from the ground on what looked essentially like small stilts. When I got into the building I realised that the walls were very unsubstantial screens that would let the breeze blow right through them. They looked like the pictures I had seen of houses in tropical areas that were built to be cool in the intense heat. The barracks was divided into two with a simple partition. On the right side there were six frame beds, three on each side of the room. One already had kit on it, so I guessed it was taken. I dumped my kit in a pile on the bed opposite and Desrae did the same on the bed next to me. The others all chose beds and within a few minutes we were outside again standing in a line in front of Finger Roberts.
"Right," said Finger Roberts, "That wasn’t too bad. As you can see the facilities are fairly primitive here. I have no idea what you were used to where you come from, but this world is very primitive and you will have to adapt to it very quickly. The climate is essentially sub-tropical to tropical everywhere you will go. Buildings, sanitation and everything else is primitive as you can see from our accommodations here. Your food will be delivered here every morning, but you will have to set up a rotation to do the cooking. The six of us will be living and working together here for this stage of your training. Any questions?"
I looked around at the others in our Finger and when no-one asked any questions, I decided to risk it.
"Finger-Leader, when can we get further information about what we will actually be doing?"
"You will learn most of this stuff as we proceed, but for now here is the situation. This world has a fairly stable social structure and it’s own population. It is fairly close to what you would consider to be feudal or medieval. Does that give you any clues?"
"Yes Finger-Leader. Will we interact with the population or is it just battles all the time?"
"You will go through your first phase of training with me, then to graduate you will go out and perform on a mission. You can think of it as doing quests. You will have an objective given to you and you have to figure out the situation on your own. Part of what you will learn here will be the details of the situation on the world, so that you are not too lost when you get there, but that will be integrated with the military aspects of what you will learn. There are civilians out there and you will interact with them to the extent that it is required for your mission. Any other questions?"
This last was accompanied with a scowl that deterred even me from asking any more questions.
"Ok. Let’s get started." Finger Roberts walked over to the house and went into the left-hand partition. We all trooped in after him. I could see that it was decked out as a mini-classroom, with what looked like a blackboard and six chairs.
"Grab a seat and listen up."
Once we were seated, Finger Roberts began our first lecture.
"The first lessons you have already learnt. These were best shown by example and will be the basis for much of the rest of what you learn about and on War World. A lot of it you will not even have realised yet, but the basics are this:
- Your bodies and minds are vastly improved in potential, but you need to develop them by use.
- There is technology on War World, but it is not available for your use, and your experience on the planet is constrained by this fact.
"If you have been paying attention, you would have noticed that we have emphasised that it is not only your bodies that are important, but your minds too. The structure of the units that we use is different to what you are used to and there is a reason for this; it is not simply change for change’s sake. The most important aspect of this for you at the moment is why we have a ‘Finger’ with five members and what it means to be a Finger-Leader. As it happens, Finger-Leader is the lowest level of leadership position because the ability to control and communicate with others at this level is restricted to five people.
"We are going to start with physical preparation, but simultaneously we will work on mental preparation. One of the very first things that you need to learn is mental communication. All combat communication has to be facilitated by someone who has reached a certain level of competency, and this is one of the pre-requisites for achieving rank."
"Finger-Leader, can anyone learn how to do this?" asked one of the others.
"Anyone can receive," Finger Roberts replied, "most of you will learn how to reply, and some will learn how to initiate communications. A leader’s develops the ability to send to more than one at a time, and to maintain more than one communications link. This is important as we have to maintain a network of communications. Each Finger-Leader must be able to speak to his Finger members on one ‘net’ as well as to his Hand-Leader on another. Within the Hand, the same restrictions and rules apply as within the Finger. The same is true at each level up the chain of command. The higher levels can reach down through the various nets to any level, although that is only done in unusual cases, we like to maintain the chain of command."
"How will we learn this?" I asked. I was a little concerned about this as I had no experience of it. I was pretty sure that I could learn to handle anything physical that was thrown at me, but I was used to technological solutions to problems and this was far outside of my previous experience. The actual structure of the ‘network’ made complete sense to me though, as it seemed to duplicate to a large extent the radio networks that I was accustomed to. "Oh, and how do you know who you are talking to? Do you use call-signs?" I added as I thought of the radio network.
"I will give you some exercises to do which you need to start practicing. This is not something that you do only in a classroom environment, but that you need to mull over and practice constantly all day long." Finger Roberts replied.
"In fact, that leads me to the general approach that we take here," he continued, "this is not a basic training course in the same sense as you might have experienced before. What we are going to do is to start with a number of basic building blocks and drill you on them. Once you have achieved a certain level of competency, then we will move on to training with other Fingers and even competing with them in mock battles and exercises, although you will find that we believe in the philosophy of ‘The more sweat in training, the less blood on the battlefield’ although I suspect you will be surprised at how much blood you will actually shed during training."
"[What I want for now though is for you to take some time to settle in and get to know each other. I will give you some exercises to practice and I want to see progress in the morning.]"
I was shocked. I could see Finger Roberts was enjoying himself: he had a huge smile on his face. The last sentence had appeared in my mind without him speaking out loud at all.
"[Yes. That’s correct. You guessed it. This is what I have been talking about.]" he said in our minds again. "[Does that answer your question about call signs]" he asked me.
"Absolutely." I replied. There was no doubt who had spoken in my mind. I didn’t know how, but it seemed as if there was a ‘taste’ that identified Finger Roberts uniquely.
He then proceeded to tell us what the mental exercises were that would help to prepare us for mental communication and dismissed us to settle in. I certainly had a lot to think about.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Chapter 8: Kit Issue
Embarrassment aside, Desrae’s change made me acutely aware of the reality of physical changes in general and fired off a series of speculative thoughts about healing and regeneration. I started to take note of the changes in my own body. If felt as if I was experiencing the benefits of six month’s road-work from one two hour run. I could feel that my legs were stronger and that the slight belly I had developed had almost disappeared. I had thought I was just getting my second wind, but this was definitely more than that!
I realised that we had run further than I had thought, and that our pace had been increasing constantly. We were now running almost twice as fast as we had been when we set out. In spite of the pace, I was surprised that I wasn’t hacking and coughing from my years of smoking. I couldn’t remember when, if ever, I had run as fast as this with as little effort. It seemed that the effects of processing were starting to pay off with an improvement in my lungs as well as everything else.
As we ran on, I saw that we had almost completed the circle and were returning to the parade ground.
"Looks as if we are almost finished the run." I said to Desrae, glad of the opportunity to talk about something that deflected the embarrassment I felt.
"About time. I have always hated running." came back from Desrae, with a touch of bitterness that I hadn’t expected to hear from her.
"Oh?" I queried, intrigued.
"Mostly because I blame running for the extreme pain and discomfort I experienced with early onset of arthritis" she explained.
"OK. That explains it."
"All better now though" she said with a self-satisfied smile.
When we arrived back on the parade ground, Fist-Leader Ryon was waiting, balled fists on hips and feet spread. Basically, the typical NCO stance. He had a scowl on his face as we ran in in drips and drabs, but stood patiently, obviously waiting for everyone to get back. We all fell in again into formation and stood waiting to see what would happen next.
"Right," started Fist Ryon, "I see all of you managed to drag your lazy carcases back here. Now let’s get started properly. Take a careful look around you. See if you can spot the people that you arrived with or that you got to know. You might find that you don’t recognise them anymore. That’s the effects of the processing starting to kick in. We have no idea what it is that Marek and his crew actually do to us when we get here, but we all enjoy the benefits of it. The purpose of our activities so far has been to kick start the process. You will learn more about this as we progress, but essentially, your body and mind will respond to what you do to make your more efficient at it. This means for example that if you exercise, then your body adjusts to match that exercise. It is just like normal training, except that the effects are incredibly fast. The first stage of the process is pretty much the same for everyone, but the amount of focus you apply to it will determine how far you can move into the second phase. What this means to you is that there is no magic wand effect, you still have to work, and work hard, to achieve the best results. It just means that the results are achieved a lot faster than they would be normally, and that it is possible to train to do things that you might not have been capable of doing before.
"Some of you will also have noticed that illnesses or injuries that you had before have either been repaired, or have progressed a long way on the path to being repaired, just in the last few hours. The same thing applies to that as to normal training; if you are injured, you just have to send a signal to your body that you want it to be active, and it will start repairing itself to enable you to do so. This does not mean that you are bullet-proof, just that you can recover from most things, even some of the most severe injuries. Kinda handy seeing as there is no real concept here of a hospital. Just the rough-and-ready first aid of your comrades, and their assistance to start moving again so that your body can heal itself.
"Let’s move on to the reason that you are here. This is War World, and you are here to fight. I know that most of you come from situations where there were projectile weapons and lost of mechanisation, so that you were transported in some or other way to and from the battlefield, in a vehicle or an aircraft. That is not the situation on War World. Here we rely on our bodies to transport us and on our physical and mental strength to fight. Our weapons are primarily swords.
"You will have realised that our structure here is somewhat different to what you might have been accustomed. Here is what you need to remember:
Five Warriors make a Finger,
Five Fingers make a Hand
Five Hands make a Fist and
Five Fists make a Fight.
You will now be divided into Fingers for the balance of your training."
Following that interesting speech, one of the people that had been pointed out as a Finger-Leader started calling out names. Once the five people that he had called out had joined him, the next started. The third called out my name, immediately followed by Desrae’s, and we moved quickly to join him. Once all five of us in this new Finger were there, our Finger-Leader ordered us curtly to follow him and moved off. We followed like ducklings after their mother as he walked rapidly towards one of the buildings.
When we arrived at the door, we had to wait for the Finger ahead of us to enter and our Finger-Leader stopped us.
He turned to us and said "My name is Jude Roberts. I will be your Finger-Leader during training. You may call me Finger Roberts, or just Finger-Leader when there are no others around. You will soon discover that this is my rank and position. You will do what I tell you, when I tell you to, and will not argue about it. If you have questions, they will be delayed until after I request them. Do you understand me?"
There was a murmur of "Yes Finger-Leader" and one misguided "Yes Sir". I wasn’t sure who said that.
"I am NOT Sir. I thought I just explained that. Get down and give me a hundred push-ups" Finger Roberts ordered with quiet menace. While I was busy doing the push-ups I thought quietly to myself that this was a much more effective technique than the usual blustering and shouting that I associated with drill-instructors and training cadre during basic training.
When we had all finished our push-ups, and no-one was more surprised than me by how they got easier to do the more we did them, rather than more difficult, we all stood up again.
"OK. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s see if we can get you your first kit-issue without too many SNAFUs. Single line. Go in the door."
With a chorus of "Yes Finger-Leader" we lined up at the door. I was second in line and looking forward to seeing what kit we would be getting.
As we entered the building, the place struck me as being completely different from any other Quartermaster’s Store that I had ever been in. Rather than a long counter with shelves up to the roof, there was a series of desks with what looked like a cupboard next to each one. Finger Roberts went ahead of us to the first desk and called Desrae, by name to my surprise, and she moved up to the table. She spoke briefly to Finger Roberts, then stepped inside the ‘cupboard" while he closed the door behind her. As he did so, he motioned me to come close. As I stepped up to him, he told me what I was sure would be repeated for everyone following:
"Step into the cupboard. Stand completely still. Once you have been scanned and measured, the door in front of you will open. Step through and wait at the table until you have received your kit, then move to the next station and repeat."
Just as he finished his spiel, the ‘cupboard’ opened on the far side of where it had opened before and Desrae stepped out. Once the door had closed behind her, the door in front of me opened and I stepped inside. The door closed behind me and it was dark for a few seconds, then a light started to moved from the ceiling down over my body. I felt as if I was inside a fax machine. There was absolutely no sensation or noise, just the light. When the light reached the floor, the door in front of me opened, startling me a bit. I stepped out and the door closed behind me.
I found myself standing at the table. I looked down and saw that there was now a pile of clothing on the table which I assumed was mine. I reached out and picked it up and looked for Desrae, only to see her disappearing into the next ‘cupboard’.
As I walked across to the next cupboard, I did a quick inventory of what I had received. I was expecting some more clothing, and at first glance it looked as if that is what I had received. A closer inspection revealed that this was actually a form of chain-mail. Exceptionally light, but definitely chain-mail made up of hundreds of little links of what looked like metal. I decided it couldn’t be metal though because it was too light. I didn’t have time to wonder though as I was at the next station and the door opened just as I got there.
I stepped into the second ‘cupboard’ and went through the same procedure. When I stepped out of this one however, what was waiting for me was a pair of shoes. Finger Roberts was there, and told me to put them on before moving on to the next station.
I sat down and pulled on the shoes. When I held them, they felt as if they were very light-weight moccasins, with the design of a pair of boots. When I pulled them on, they came up to just above my calves and they did that magic ‘adjusting’ thing again. As I started walking in them, I could feel that they hardened under my feet so that they felt as if I was wearing slippers with a tough sole. I decided that the boots I had packed weren’t going to be needed after all.
The rest of the kit stations went along similar lines. At the end of the process I had gotten new chain-mail, boots, a hat, cutlery and crockery and a training sword.
We all exited the building and stood waiting for Finger Roberts. While I stood there, I took a closer look at the sword. It came in a scabbard with a belt and I pulled it half-way out to see it. The sword blade was exactly as long as the distance between the tip of my fingers, and the crook of my arm. It was heavy, but I couldn’t determine what it was made of. It felt almost as if it was a mixture between wood and plastic. I had to stop my examination hurriedly when I heard a noise and looked up to find Finger Roberts giving me a baleful glare.
Chapter 7: You're in the Army Now
Chapter 7: You're in the Army now
Almost everyone in the room seemed to be programmed to stand up when hearing the "Command Authority" voice, and those who weren’t followed the general example.
"Now that I have your attention, let’s establish the ground rules so there can be no room for misunderstandings." Fist-Leader Ryon said. "You have all been processed so you all speak and understand the same language. You will find that unless you had some pretty acute problems with your body before processing, nothing much has changed. Well, there is nothing for free; as you start exercising your body and mind, the changes will start kicking in. For some of you it will be fairly gradual, for others the changes will be radical. Think of it as the normal process of getting your body fit. Once you are at a certain level that I consider to be sufficient, the we will look at extending you to meet your personal potential.
"Most of you have prior military experience in one form or another. Well, keep that in mind but remember that this is basic training all over again and your prior experience might actually hinder your progress if you allow it to interfere with learning to do things my way!" The Fist-Leader paused for breath and looked around to see if everyone was up to speed.
It all sounded pretty familiar to me as I had heard, and even given, similar speeches myself in similar circumstances.
"Right," he continued, "let’s start by getting those ugly bodies of yours adequately covered. Take a look inside the pillow on your bed and haul out the clothing you find there. Get dressed then fall-in outside. You have five minutes."
With that he turned on his heel and disappeared.
I checked my pillow and found a lime green roll of fabric neatly packed inside. I fished it out and unrolled it on the bed. Turned out it was what looked like a standard set of long pants and a shirt. I quickly pulled them on.
When I turned to Desrae, she was already dressed. I raised an interrogatory eyebrow at her and mouthed "Shall we go?" over the general hubbub in the room.
I got an affirmative nod and we joined the steady stream of freshly clothed people head for the door.
As I walked, I felt the slight discomforts of the new uniform disappear and it felt as though it fit me better than I thought it would. I looked down at myself and discovered that the uniform had adjusted to me and now fit me better than any other set of clothing had ‘till that point.
I glanced across at Desrae and found her just as caught up in the novel sensation.
When I went through the door I was surprised to discover that we were actually outside rather than in one of the uniformly bland and ubiquitous white corridors. I looked up into a sky that was subtly wrong somehow, although I couldn’t quite put my finger on just what was made it feel that way.
It struck me for the first time that I was truly off Earth and a long way from home; how far I had no way of knowing.
We arranged ourselves into a formation of six lines deep and had got ourselves mostly sorted out, when the bellowing of Fist-Leader Ryon drew our attention again.
"Right. I see I have my job really cut out for me this time. It seems that someone has lied to me and you lot have never been in the military before. You look like a herd of animals trying to decide if you want to be prey. Pathetic. Lets see if the Finger-Leaders can do anything about that."
At that, a group of men and women dressed in red uniforms, similar to the lime green ones we wore, started moving amoungst us. They had been loitering on the fringes of the area just watching. I noticed a level of competence about them similar to what Roger had displayed.
Once we were arranged to the Fist-Leader’s satisfaction, he started to give us some basic drill instruction.
Within an hour or so, we had started to get the hang of it. With that accomplished, it seemed it was time for a run.
Fist Ryon led us around the parade-ground and the off into some wilder country.
The feeling I got was that this area was sub-tropical with bush and plants that were similar enough to what I knew from home that it wasn’t sufficient to trigger the ‘you’re not in Kansas anymore’ response.
We ran for about two hours through a lot of bush, even crossing three rivers enroute (or maybe it was the same river three times?)
The Fist, or company as my internal monologue still insisted it be called, slowly spread out. I had been next to Desrae all morning, and it seemed as if we were fated to be paired up as buddies. I initially found myself feeling protective of her and resentful that she should be made to suffer without having had much chance for the promised healing to kick in. As the morning had passed however, I had been amazed to see just how tough and determined she was. After a while, I stopped worrying about her so much and just concentrated on the drills an exercise. Now as we ran side by side I realised that she was running smoothly and easily and that the constant grimace of pain was missing from her face, as was the slight limp that she had started out with.
"Desrae," I asked her now, "how are you feeling?"
"Actually I cannot remember when last I felt this good." she answered. "It feels like my body is 20 again."
As I glanced at her again, I did a double-take.
"Umm Desrae, have you noticed any changes to your body?" I asked her.
"Well, my joints are definitely no longer a problem, my hip needed replacement, but no longer and I generally feel much better."
"Yes, I noticed the results of some of that, I was talking about something more immediately visually evident." and I gestured in the direction of her chest.
Desrae glanced down at herself, then she almost stumbled. "Oh my GOD!" she exclaimed as I grabbed onto her arm to prevent her falling. She was obviously as gobsmacked as I was: this was the first direct, visual evidence that either of us had seen, of the regenerative abilities that we had been granted.
Where she had only had scar tissue before, she now had a pair of healthy, full breasts. When I tore my eyes away from them and looked at her face, I saw that she was smiling broadly.
"God that feels good!’ she said
"Having breasts again?" I asked.
"No. Having a man struggle to remove his eyes from them." She giggled. "I can see that the fringe benefits are going to be worthwhile after all."
