Yelm’s father had often said, “The bitter lesson is best-learned,” usually just before delivering a corrective beating. But Yelm had swiftly outgrown his father, and discovered that teachers, too, can be taught. He’d been conscripted not long after.
Three years later, Yelm found himself in the presence of a teacher greater than his father.
*
The Lion of Aksfelgard stood six and a half feet tall on his bare feet and nearly eighteen stone without his polished and filigreed armor. Pale skin and pale blue eyes under thick golden hair gave him an air of perpetual youth; he was further blessed with a rich baritone voice. In other times, his natural endowments would have guaranteed for him a Burgher’s position, or even a Guild-mastership had he so chosen to apply himself. But in this troubled age, he found his natural level as the leader of a warband, sworn to Baron Ichfeldt.
It was widely spoken that the Lion had singlehandedly taken the city of Broomstek in the Outer Russe. And although he denied it, common consensus held that the Lion was responsible for the fall of Il Paccio in the early days of the Wars. In encampments and inns, the Lion was frequently called upon to relate tales of his prowess and cunning, stories of Achillean combat against the most masterful foes and Ulyssian strategies overwhelming superior forces; he was reckoned as gifted a storyteller as he was a puissant warrior.
As befit a man of his stature and legend, the Lion’s armament always gleamed, the finest steel filigreed with pale gold to match his hair. He kept a brace of intaglioed flintlock pistols in his belt and a massive two-handed sword strapped across his back. His black and scarlet cloak he raised as his own standard on the battlefield next to the Baron’s, so that the enemy might know the futility of their fight. In all respects, he cut a most formidable figure.
If there was a single man in Ichfeldt’s company to rival the Lion’s physical presence, it was Yelm, called the Giant by the cohort. And although he was still very young – little more than a boy, he admitted – Yelm truly deserved that name, standing more than eight feet tall and massing over twenty-eight stone in his undergarments. Where the Lion bore the shiniest, most expensive armor and arms the Baron could provide, Yelm took whatever could be beaten to fit his massive frame, and wielded an equally massive bearded war ax. Yelm was also much quieter than the Lion; he knew his thoughtful air made some of the warband uncomfortable. He held his tongue only because he felt his inexperience keenly and feared making a mockery out of himself through a misplaced word – another lesson learned from his father. He did not crave fame, did not want glory. What he wanted was peace, a quiet life. But at that time no country knew peace, no man could expect quiet – especially not a giant. Yelm knew he would simply have to survive, to ride out the war and find his quiet life on the other side. And so he observed the Lion, as would any who wished to learn the secrets of seemingly perpetual success and survival in endless battle.
*
In the twenty-third year of the Troubles which would come to be called the Second Thirty Years War, the Baron Ichfeldt ordered his Lion and the warband to Stara Moravica, where his spies reported that the self-styled King Stupice had developed a new chemical battery which increased the storage and reproduction of electrical energies a thousandfold. The Baron’s Scientists had attempted numerous experiments, even down to stripping the kingdom of its cats and securing the largest supply of amber outside of the Russe, but they had yet to create any useful way to store and harness the resulting charge. The new technology was thus much coveted, and so the warband was ordered to undertake its longest campaign ever. And while the spies of nearby petty kingdoms were certain to note the departure of the Lion and his cohort, the Baron retained formidable automatic defenses at his castle in the form of steam-powered ballista and grand phlogiston projectors – he was quite sanguine about his chances without the Lion at his side.
The campaign began aboard a steam-barge, intended to travel four hundred miles downriver in two weeks. The barge rode low, strongly armored and provided with a goodly complement of siege equipment to counter the expected resistance from the petty kings along the way, for rival Barons, Dukes, and Kings had their own naval forces on the heavy River Sav, phosphorescent with waste Science in the night. Arrows, javelins, ballistae, and greek fire arced across the decks daily. Bullets and phlogiston found their marks as the warband returned fire. And the Lion led heroically from the barge’s low fo’c’sle, Yelm the Giant at his right hand with the standard held high. Those two at least were unscathed as the barge hove to and assaulted the defenders of a fortified ford less than a hundred miles from their target, and the Lion’s legend grew in the warband. For the standard-bearer of any armed force was a natural target, and to have one survive any great time was considered very good luck.
The Lion used the Baron’s newly developed phlogiston cannon to reduce the fortifications to rubble and left a third of the cohort to defend the barge. The rest he led toward the last two obstacles between the warband and the pretender King of Stara Moravica: the Vilnik Fen and the Pass at Torvul. The Fen offered resistance in the shape of pestilential insects and a sunken and frequently misplaced road; the warband lost a dozen horses in the crossing. The villains on the other side scattered as the warband passed through their fields, and so the Lion expected to find the Pass heavily defended.
“Let them try!” the Lion roared. “We shall cut through them as I cut through the defenders of Castle Bilt to win the Lady Voregain for our Baron!”
His men cheered for him. He’d killed or grievously wounded twenty men that day, or so it was accounted.
“And remember, my men. Every soldier we kill here will be one less to defend the castle! No mercy!” The men cheered this pronouncement even more loudly.
The Lion’s newly appointed standard-bearer, however, had found himself unable to join in. ‘Surely,’ Yelm thought, ‘if one offers mercy, one has at least the chance to receive mercy in return. Mercy in battle is one thing; mercy after ought to be another.’ He was reminded again that he was but a young man. This must obviously be one more of those things he had yet to learn about the ways of the world.
Yelm wondered, though, why the warband bothered with the Pass at all. The Sterka Mountains were not high, and the Pass at Torvul was hardly the only one. It was the most direct route, he conceded, but it was thus the most heavily defended. Perhaps it was in order to demonstrate, once again, the futility of defying the Lion’s rage? Inexperienced as he was next to the Lion, he still doubted the warleader’s strategy. But he said nothing.
One more lesson he’d learned from his father was that it was better to remain silent. And if the Lion seemed to practice a different teaching, well, Yelm knew he had much to learn.
*
The Pass at Torvul was broad, its bordering peaks not particularly high. It had once been held on the strength of the local cavalry; now, a small, stout castle bristled with ballistae and greek fire projectors. The defenses were basic: a central keep of stone surrounded by a wall and a ditch, crossed and pierced by a single gate. The walls were thickened with an additional layer of rammed earth, offering extra protection from projectiles, but easing assault by ladders. The Lion instructed his best snipers to range across the sides of the Pass and take their most effective shots, to pin down the artillery crews within the walls and allow the rest of the cohort time to get close and scale the fortifications. Then it would be all over but for the slaughter. He laughed as he outlined his plan, and his warriors laughed with him.
Yelm did not laugh. He still couldn’t understand what was so funny about death.
The warleader arrayed his remaining one hundred fifty men in a wedge. Those on the outside wielded ahlspiess, short iron lances that could easily pierce most armor. The rest of the formation carried a motley collection of hand weapons, swords and axes and spears; and all carried a brace of grenades and flintlocks, although none were so fine as the Lion’s.
The cohort advanced through the slag heaps, arrows and ballistae marking their range. Then the Lion’s snipers started their work, firing long-barreled rifles into the castle yard. The Lion roared with laughter and slapped his standard-bearer’s massive armored shoulder.
Yelm hefted his ax. In the middle of the formation there was little enough chance he’d be needed, and he felt glad of that. Indeed, his only real duty was to see to it that the Lion’s standard was not dishonored by the enemy, and he’d never really liked killing; he felt that death came too easily. Of course, the formation would break up once they had scaled the wall, and he knew he’d do what he had to. It seemed likely only last a little while, with the legend of the Lion in the lead.
With the defenders pinned down, their attention split between the snipers and the cohort, the Lion and his warriors advanced with very few casualties, striding with almost insulting ease toward the gate.
“Maybe they heard I was coming,” the Lion had roared. “And they’re just stalling while they convince their commander of the proper surrender terms!”
Even as they laughed, the cohort watched the gate open and they wondered for a moment if perhaps their warleader might not be absolutely right. But only for a moment.
A thing like a siege turtle, but belching black coal-smoke, trundled on iron wheels over the lowered gate and into the field in front of the castle. Rifles poked through loops, and a phlogiston projector squatted on the top.
“Hells,” the Lion said, but so quietly that only Yelm heard him. “A war machine. Maybe they did hear that it was me coming for them.”
Yelm still felt uncomfortable doubting so famous a leader as the Lion, but it seemed more likely to him that this steam turtle was regularly stationed in the Pass. The cohort was already taking fire from the turtle, their own bullets spanging harmlessly from its heavy armor.
“Grenades!” the Lion roared.
Three men ran from the tightening formation, lighting fuses with ropes stuck smoldering in their belts. The moved too rapidly for the marksmen within the steam turtle to track, but the phlogiston projector followed their general path. And when the men were within its more limited range, it spewed forth the volatile liquid which, when dispersed and exposed to the air, burst into instant, flaming death. The grenadiers died burning, their black powder explosives detonating in the heat.
“Encircle it, you men!” the Lion shouted. “The projector cannot reach all at once. Stuff that thing full of grenades, by Hell!”
The cohort started to move, altering formation from a wedge to a circle, and the steam turtle seemingly obliged them by coming forward. But while the rest of the cohort advanced, Yelm found that he and the Lion had not moved. He saw a tightness in the warleader’s face, but it couldn’t have been fear. The Lion didn’t know fear, as every man in the warband would attest.
The spikes edging the steam turtle’s perimeter, far from being decorative or even simply static defenses, began to move, traveling along an apparently internal track to form a whirring barrier to approach by attackers. The rifles continued to fire, although the interior of the turtle must have been so badly choked with black powder smoke that few of their bullets found their mark among the widespread cohort. The phlogiston projector seemed to spout at random, and Yelm noticed the Lion at last grin mirthlessly. Even so, the cohort’s casualties were mounting. No man could get close enough to the war machine to be effective. It seemed that even the undercarriage must be armored, as grenades rolled beneath exploded to no visible effect.
The Lion turned to the Giant as the phlogiston projector found another victim. “Yelm, my lad. Are you as quick as you are strong?”
Yelm nodded. “Yes sir.”
“Good,” the Lion said. He took the standard from the Giant. “I want you to sprint up there, leap over the blades, and use that massive ax of yours to disable that projector.”
Yelm noted the Lion’s enlarged pupils and rapid breathing, and the warleader’s seeming excitement communicated itself to the young soldier.
“I’ll be right behind you with a grenade in each hand, my lad. Together, we’ll knock that turtle out!”
Yelm grinned in spite of his earlier doubts. Exhilaration thrilled through his frame, followed by a sensation of invincibility. In any combat lay the chance of failure, but somehow, with the legendary Lion at his back, Yelm could find no room for doubt. The warleader was assigned every victory, and victory meant survival.
“Right,” said the Lion. “Go!”
Without a further thought, Yelm hefted his ax, saw that the projector was aimed away from them, and ran. He did not run perfectly straight at the turtle. He wanted to present something other than a fixed target, even if, with the myriad smokes drifting across the battlefield, it was unlikely that anyone would have a clear shot at him. But he also needed to find a suitable gap in the cohort’s circle, which was nearly complete, but which had stalled in the face of the whirling, shrieking spikes.
‘If only I had time to get to the rear, where the steam engine’s stack arrests the phlogiston projector’s field of fire for a small arc,’ he’d thought. But there was no time; his companions were dying and the Lion was waiting to save the day.
The turtle was a rough oval, with sloped sides and a flat roof standing some ten feet off the ground. The spikes projected three feet from the lower edge of the machine, at waist height to a normal man, while the projector was mounted in a rotating housing like a turret. Yelm thought that the whole thing was almost a sort of mobile castle. Had it not been arrayed against him, he would have though it much cleverer.
He saw his moment, turned, put on an extra burst of speed, and launched his nearly forty-three stone of massive frame and gigantic armor into the air. The turtle rocked under him as he hit the side, and he used his ax-head as a hook to haul himself onto the roof. The projector started to turn, and Yelm wondered if the phlogiston was capable of igniting so near to the nozzle. He didn’t care to find out. He raised his ax high over his head, ready to sweep the turret from the top of the war machine. Then his muscles locked up, and agony sheeted through his body.
Yelm had listened when the Madboys explained electricity and something called galvanic response. That interest was why the warband was in the field. But Yelm had not reckoned on experiencing its power firsthand. He couldn’t move, not to scream, not even to breathe. His heart felt strangled in his chest. If he fell, he would slide down the sloped side of the turtle, right into the spinning spikes. His eyes rolled back into his skull.
And as quickly as it had struck, the caged lightning ceased. Yelm ached all over, as if he’d been hit by a titanic mallet in a steam mill. He staggered and almost fell, but he couldn’t. He knew the Lion must be right behind him, and if he didn’t do his part, they couldn’t save the rest of the cohort. He raised his ax again, screaming as his muscles resisted, and swung with all his might at the rotating projector. The stubby barrel had nearly aligned with the Giant, and the ax knocked the tube loose somewhere inside the turret. Even over the sting of burnt black powder, the campfire smells of roasted flesh, and the soot of the coal-fired engine, Yelm smelled the chemical tang of phlogiston spewing into the interior of the turtle. He turned to wave the Lion off, to warn the warleader away, and saw him already at a safe distance, rallying the cohort.
Yelm stood confused for a moment, then the world exploded beneath him.
*
Yelm awoke by degrees. He gradually became aware of sounds, scents: hints at his environment even if he couldn’t yet manage specifics. He understood that the reason he couldn’t see anything was not that he’d been blinded; he was in a darkened room. Facts combined in his mind – the scent of coal soot, the thrum of a large engine, the slap of waves against a flat surface.
He was back on the barge.
He had survived. He sat up; or he tried. Sheets of pain coruscated across his skin, arced through his muscles. Even the act of gasping, an involuntary reaction to the pain, hurt. He lay for a long time, struggling simply to breathe.
A man’s voice boomed out nearby: the Lion. The leader of the warband seemed incapable of communicating below a shout.
“Chirugeon, how are the wounded tonight? How fares my standard-bearer?”
Bitterness and rage warred within Yelm, and for a moment he felt no pain. But only for a moment. The pain returned redoubled, and he almost blacked out. Another man spoke, and Yelm clung to the words as a lifeline to consciousness.
“I think they will all pull through. And that standard-bearer of yours…Yelm. Must have bones of iron. Oh, he’s bruised, and burned. But I don’t think anything is actually broken. His ears have stopped bleeding, even.”
Once more, bitterness and rage overmastered Yelm’s pain. But he realized that he was feeling wasn’t simply rage; it was outrage.
The Lion’s voice, still roaring, seemed more distant – he was walking away. “’The Iron Giant.’ A fitting attendant for the Lion of Aksfelgard! I am glad I saved him!”
Yelm felt betrayed. He had believed the warleader, had believed in the legend. In spite of all his doubts, raised all along the journey, Yelm had chosen not to question, had chosen to believe. And why wouldn’t he, really? Every word spoken of the Lion was a glowing recommendation.
Anger compounded Yelm’s pain as he realized that most of those glowing words had in fact been spoken by the Lion himself. But the Giant reserved most of his anger for himself. If he’d not chosen to ignore his admittedly inexperienced misgivings, instead of automatically following the Lion, he might perhaps now be elsewhere than laid out like a foundling on Death’s doorstep.
Then Yelm’s anger at himself deflated. He realized that he hadn’t really had a choice. His inexperience was a justifiable excuse. And he was still a soldier; his job was to obey. Even if he doubted his leaders, he must still obey. Unless he deserted. Which was an action punishable by death. And Yelm acknowledged that he still had much he might learn from the warleader if he expected to continue surviving. Whatever the Lion’s tendency to embellish his accomplishments, he remained in fact a superb general. To be sure, he treated his men like tools, preparing and wielding them with workmanlike precision. However the warleader took personal credit for others’ actions, he still achieved his Master’s desired results.
Further despair grew in Yelm’s mind as he recognized how he himself had been used. He growled at himself, at his situation, but the resurgent anger only served to increase his pain. He was forced to let it go.
“A bitter lesson is best-learned.” he whispered. He felt anew how true the phrase was. And how much greater as a teacher was the Lion of Aksfelgard than his father had ever been. But as he had outgrown his father, so Yelm knew in his iron bones that he would become greater than the warleader.
The sun rose and the Iron Giant slept.
* * *
