Gordon Dickson - Wolf and Iron

“I’m going to have to practice getting down and doing that leg swing,” Jeebee said ruefully.

“Practice all you want,” said Nick, “but remember that that’s just one thing you can do. When you’re fighting, a knife is just one of the things you fight with. Most people forget that, just like most people think that if you point a gun at them, it’s all over and you might as well give up. Not necessarily. Now, if you’re interested, we will work with the actual sticks themselves while we’re on our feet.”

They practiced for a while with the sticks. Jeebee tried desperately to use his longer arms and stick to keep the stick Nick held from touching him, but he was a constant failure. If they had actually been holding knives, Nick would have killed him a dozen times over.

At the same time, Jeebee’s mind was reacting in its usual manner by trying to remember what he was going through and to see some pattern in it. He was just beginning to see what he thought of as that pattern when Nick called a halt.

“Enough for now.” Nick reached out with his left hand to take the stick from Jeebee’s hand. “You’re beginning to get jumpy and poke out blindly. After you leave us, try it the same way you’d try shadowboxing. Just imagine me or somebody coming at you with a knife and imagine what you’d have to do to block him. Let’s go to breakfast.”

This morning Merry was making the breakfast, and Nick would be washing up afterwards, now that Jeebee was leaving. They ate pancakes and bacon, and after they were done, Merry took off her apron and put her hand on Jeebee’s arm.

“Come along,” she said, “come on back with me to the horses.”

Jeebee swallowed a final syrup-drenched piece of pancake, gulped the last of his coffee from its cup, and got up. The two of them went out of the wagon, climbed down to the ground, and walked together toward the back of it, behind which the horses were picketed.

Merry went briskly, so that he had to stretch his legs to keep up with her. It was almost as if she brought him along with an invisible grip on his ear with her fingers. Behind the wagon, Jeebee saw that tied directly to it was one horse already saddled, and tied to that saddle with a lead rope, another horse, which must be his packhorse, which had only a blanket on its back secured by a strap around its belly.

On the ground next to this horse was a pile of gear ready to travel. Merry took him to it.

“Here you go,” she said over her shoulder, “and here’s something I particularly wanted you to have.”

From a sack, the drawstring of which she had untied, she brought out a ball of dark blue yarn, thick strands, and a couple of long knitting needles stuck through the ball.

“There’s a book here, too,” she said, rummaging in a small box, and produced it. It was not so much a book as a thick pamphlet, with paper covers. The title How to Knit was printed plainly on the cover. She shoved it into his hands.

“You study this now,” she said sternly, “and you work with the needles and the yarn. Learn how to knit things for yourself. You’ll need them more than you think, and they can be more use to you than anything you can imagine. You’ll have all winter long someplace where you’ve nothing to do but knit, so you might as well start learning now. You’ll need socks, sweaters, everything else. Look here!”

From the same box she produced a pair of socks knitted of bright red yarn. They looked enormous, and Jeebee estimated that they would come well up to his knee, if not over it. The feet were very large and the legs were wide. He felt slightly embarrassed, since clearly she had guessed at his feet and leg sizes and had got them wrong.

“I don’t think you understand,” she said, looking at his face. “When winter comes, you’re going to need to wear layers of all kinds of clothes, including three or four pairs of socks. This is the pair that goes outside everything else, that’s why I made them so big. I made it exactly according to the diagram and directions on page forty-nine. The first thing you do is try to make another pair of socks just like it; and you can look at this pair to see how close you’re coming. Do you understand that?”

“Oh, I see!” said Jeebee. “I… thank you. I never thought of anything like this. I’ll do just what you say. I’ll learn how to knit.”

“You’ll make a lot of mistakes while you’re learning, and there’s going to be no one around to help. It’ll be you and the book,” said Merry. “But if you keep on trying, you’ll get to where you can make socks, sweaters—all sorts of things. Mittens too. Don’t forget mittens!”

She passed him the pamphlet and dug back into the box, coming up with another paper-bound volume. She shoved it into his hands.

“This,” she said. “This will give you instructions on how to skin animals, how to tan the hide, and how to use it making clothing and shoes. Study that, too!”

“I will,” he said. The gear that was to go on the back of Sally, the packhorse, was piled on the green plastic groundsheet that could have its edges tied together to protect its contents from rain. He stooped to put what she had just given him into one of the loading bags that had room to take it.

Pushing it into one of the bags, he stopped, staring at what was laid out on the groundsheet before him.

“Now,” said Merry’s voice crisply, “let’s see you load Sally and see if you do it right.”

He straightened up and looked at her.

“I wasn’t supposed to get all this stuff,” he said, waving a hand at the items on the groundsheet. “Paul said—”

“He changed his mind,” Merry said, still crisply. She looked straight at him. He stared back, his mind fumbling for words he wanted to say to her and finding none.

“Paul only promised… ” he began at last, unsurely.

“It’s that gold of yours,” she said, still looking him in the eye as if daring him to argue. “He’d been valuing it at the minimum he could get for it. Instead, he decided to value it for the maximum. There can be a big difference; particularly if he can sell those coins in one of the southern cities that didn’t burn itself to the ground, or have everyone in it shoot each other trying to stay alive after the power, water, and food stopped coming in.”

“He didn’t say anything about changing his mind to me.” Even to Jeebee’s ears, his own words sounded weak and unconvincing. It was hardly Paul’s way to announce his reasons for anything he did, even for a change as enormous as this.

He looked again at what lay on the groundsheet. Besides the flour, ammunition, blankets, clothes, and other things of relatively small value that Paul had promised him, there were both a double-bladed and a single-bladed ax, a small wall-supported tent with a frame of aluminum poles, and a large number of other kinds of gear that were—from the viewpoint of Jeebee’s survival—unexpected luxuries.

He raised his eyes again to Merry.

“You had something to do with this,” he said.

“What makes you think so?”

“I just know you did,” he told her. “Paul wouldn’t do it on his own and Nick couldn’t make Paul change his mind, even if Nick wanted to. It had to be you.”

For the first time, her direct glance yielded a little. There was no real change in her expression, but having said what he had and seeing her standing there, for the moment silent, he was suddenly sure of what he had merely suspected before saying it.

“What did you give—what did you promise to get me all this?” Jeebee demanded. “I’m not going to take—”

“Nothing!” she said, almost violently. “I didn’t give up or promise anything. Dad understands me. I told him you had to have these things if you were going to have any chance of staying alive until we come back next year.”