Дэвид Нордли - How Beer Saved the World

It didn’t help their progress any that with every passing hour each man there was becoming soberer than he had likely been in years. As things got hotter under everyone’s collars, Brock began to fear they’d simply kill each other right there in the secret cellar without anyone the wiser. His only reassurance lay in the fact that there wasn’t room to draw so much as a butter knife—which Durn’s peasants were allowed to own and carry.

It was then that Gundar finally bellows, “Silence!” And, to Brock’s amazement, silence falls. “ Men of Durn,” Gundar growls, “is it not time we all stopped living like Mad Gus’s children here?” The silence stretches. “You know as well as I that there’s no silly circus act by which to overthrow Mad Gus. If we truly care about our beer, then we must make whatever weapons we are able from our farming implements and from the branches of our trees and the sharp stones of our fields. Then we must march as one to Gus’s gates, and fight like men until not one of his hired scoundrels is left standing to defend him. Are there not many more of us than there are of them?”

None of them were skilled enough at math to provide him with an answer. But, remembering, perhaps, how handily Gundar had managed to drag a fully loaded barley wagon clear across the valley and up to Gus’s castle—or moved by how he’d walked away alive after whatever insult he had offered Gus to cause them all of these problems—they enthusiastically declared Gundar leader of their imminent rebellion.

Thus inspired, everyone rushed home and quickly fashioned bludgeons out of tree limbs, slingshots out of harnesses, scythes and pitchforks out of, well… scythes and pitchforks, and reassembled early the next morning at the village inn, where Gundar got them all formed up in rows, as befits a fighting force that fancies itself fearless in the face of any foe. When this was done, he shouted, as any good commander must, “Forwaaaaard MARCH!” Whereupon, they all turned sharply, if in numerous directions, and, after just a few collisions and a minor shouting match or two, managed to get headed all in more or less the same direction.

Probably because they hadn’t taken care to march up to the castle quietly enough, they arrived to find Mad Gus’s gates shut tight against them. Atop the walls stood Gus himself, flanked by several dozen henchmen armed with swords and cudgels. Frowning down at them, Mad Gus yelled, “Whatever are you nitwits doing now?”

Gundar stepped forward and called up with great ferocity, “We’ve come for our beer, Your Highness.”

“No, seriously,” Gus called back down. “What are you up to?”

Gundar exchanged uncertain glances with his men, unable to think of any answer clearer than the one he had just given. Looking back up at Mad Gus, he called, “With due respect, Your Highness, you tend to make even the simplest conversations very complicated.” (50)

“Well, let me try to be a little clearer then,” Gus said. “ What… ” he started making bizarre hand gestures, which may have been some proto-attempt at sign language—or at Italian— “ are… you… NITWITS ,” he cupped both hands around his mouth for added volume, “ UP TO ?”

Gundar rolled his eyes, having had it up to here by then with Gus’s poor communication skills. Instead of answering again, he grabbed a four-foot length of tree branch from a stout lad nearby, walked to Gus’s lavish gates, and started pounding on them with it.

“Stop that!” Mad Gus shouted. “Stop that immediately! You’re damaging the finish!”

Gundar kept on banging, having already knocked some impressive chips out of the fancy carving there.

“ I said —” Gus started to repeat.

“I heard you,” Gundar cut him off. “Did you hear me? We’ve come to get our beer back! Now open up this gate, Your Highness, or we will knock it down—one small chip at a time, if that’s what it takes. Could make it very hard to sleep in there tonight!”

“ Open my gates?! ” Mad Gus shrilled. “ Is that your wish, you lout? My gates open ?” He directed an outraged wave at his henchmen, who turned as one and disappeared. “ Fine then, I’ll be glad to open up my gates, moron! Hope you’re ready! Here it comes!”

Of course, Mad Gus could just have had his henchmen fire arrows down at Gundar’s band, and slaughtered everyone in minutes, had he not years earlier declared bows illegal in his kingdom, even in the hands of his own men, fearing any weapon with the speed to reach him faster than he felt able to react. Given his own laws, however, it was now necessary for Gus’s men to come down in person to dispatch the rabble. (51) Gundar and his men braced themselves as Gus’s gates swung open and dozens of men in mismatching armor (52) swarmed out with a mighty hue and cry, bristling with weapons in various states of repair, but still more than equal to the job.

After decades of encountering nothing but the flaccid (53) resignation of hopeless, half-drunken serfs, however, Mad Gus’s men were not at all prepared for the inconceivable sobriety and determination which Mad Gus’s misstep had suddenly engendered. Nor, it turns out, is a standard, pre-owned sword or cudgel as effective as you’d think against heavy branches two or three feet longer, wielded by men who’ve been required, lo those many years, to use their arms for work more strenuous than drinking wine and whoring. (54) Gundar and his men were increasingly mystified by the strange clumsiness of all these so-called ‘seasoned fighting men,’ until they started noticing the stench of stale beer on their breath.

“ Why, they’ve been making themselves free with all our stolen beer! ” somebody shouted, which made the village men even more irate and formidable. Before the castle’s tipsy henchmen quite had time to realize how badly they were losing and retreat, Gundar and his peers had forced their way inside the gates, and moved the brawl into Mad Gus’s courtyard.

Once inside, strangely little effort seemed required to fend off half-assed feints and forays aimed tentatively at them from time to time by Gus’s discombobulated force, now trying—rather badly, it seemed—to improvise guerilla tactics inside their own stronghold. More urgent for Gundar and his band was the blessedly bitter, yeasty smell of beer that hung upon the air around them. Their heads swam with it, their mouths salivated, as they gazed about, trying to triangulate the lovely odor’s source. It took their veteran noses hardly any time at all to home in on the second of Mad Gus’s three huge granaries, built against the courtyard’s farthest wall.

“Our BEER!” shouted several men at once, as Gundar’s motley army charged together toward the open granary entrance. The sad fact that none of them had thought to bring their steins along would not likely have impeded them from simply kneeling down and lapping it out of the vat. These were men more practical than proud. But here is what they found as they raced through the granary door:

Directly before them, filling more than half the room up to the ceiling nearly thirty feet above, stood an unimaginably large beer vat, its hastily constructed walls groaning audibly in the sudden silence. In front of this stood nearly every henchman Mad Gus employed, which helped explain the odd lack of resistance they’d encountered in the courtyard. And finally, dead center, out in front, stood Mad Gus beside his cannon, staring right at Gundar’s rebel band, and smiling blandly.

In one hand Gus held a white lace handkerchief, with which, it seemed, he had been giving his beloved cannon a last-minute polishing. Without shifting eyes or smile from Gundar’s men, Gus gave the cannon one last swish, and said, extremely quietly, to a henchman standing just behind the cannon, “Fire at will.”