A blunt sword isn’t the most useful object to have, but for Sir Capra, it did the job.
Sir Capra used it more as a teaching aid and was going to do so in this instance. Capra had inherited a group of peasants for his flank. Capra could see that they were a sorry lot. They had as many words in their vocabulary as teeth in their head.
Capra had them gather around him as best as he could. There was a hundred of them, maybe a few more and he had to address them all simultaneously.
Sir Capra also understood that he would have to simplify his language as best he could, few of them had even seen a quill let alone held one.
Sir Capra would often be on the receiving end of mockery from his fellow knights for engaging the inferiors in such a way.
Capra didn’t know any other way than to get off his high horse and to meet them at their level. Sir Capra was hoping that it might boost the bonds of brotherhood and they may believe that he was willing to die with them in the hope that they would die for him.
Capra produced the sword.
The sword was rusted as well as dull. Looking round to his captive audience, there eyes vacant and unblinking.
“This sword lacks the sharpness for incision but welded with enough might it can do just as much damage,” as he said this, looking around trying to address them all equally in the hope that the seed of the lesson would sprout towards what little light there was in their skulls.
If ideas required stillness to formulate then, maybe he had penetrated the thick fog that clouded their intelligence.
The knight doubted that he got through to them. There was more terror in the silence that accompanies a speech meant to lift weary spirits than the hush that falls before bloodshed.
“Those who are approaching mean not just to kill us but our women and children. Our very way of life.” Silence again, Capra’s soul despaired.
A voice from within the group, “You should see our way of life kind sir it is wretched.”
“Yes, but we must fight back to preserve the little that we have.”
“Oh I don’t know about that Sir, some of us seem to have more little than others,” said the voice from within the crowd.
Capra scanned the crowd
He scanned the peasants in the hope that he would see the speaker, but the voice came from everywhere and nowhere. Capra spent so little time with the common people that he did not know if it was one speaker or several.
“Yes but it is ours together, and it is together that we must come to vanquish the enemy who marches on us all this very moment,” Capra responded he lowered his head to tighten his vocal cords to stifle the panic that was creeping into his speech.
“Maybe we are the enemy and should be rooted out. The preacher tells us that we are wicked. This enemy you call them, who have done us far less wrong than you and your brothers ever have. Death would be sweet relief for the wretched such as ourselves.” The voice said it’s source invisible.
As he peered among the ranks; there was nothing. The unmoving mouths, the absence of movement. Capra believed that it could be the voice of the Lord himself. The Lord stopping time telling him that the time of reckoning had come. “But do tell us again about the unsharpened sword, we are too dull to comprehend such metaphors most wise sir.”
