Volume One: The Forest Knight Chapter Twelve: The Heated Kang Bed and the Longbow

After loading the grain and bolts of cloth onto the cart, Tur took charge of driving, while Berion and Eomer led the mule and horse back to Norland Castle. Although they hadn't managed to secure weapons or armor, they did not return empty-handed. From now on, there would be a monthly subsidy of twenty denars for soldiers' wages, three hundred pounds of wheat, five bolts of linen, and one of cotton. While these were all allocations from higher authorities, it counted as the first official income of the fief. Every beginning is difficult, Berion mused; things would surely improve in time.

The day after their return, a sharp cold snap swept through the northern lands. Already deep into winter, the temperature dropped even further. In Berion’s small manor, both the lord’s hall and his bedroom were equipped with fireplaces, thick fur blankets, and carpets. The common folk, however, crowded into three rooms, fared much worse. The drafty wooden houses barely kept out the wind, and the people lay on wooden planks strewn with straw—how could they not be cold? Many of them came from the south and could hardly adapt to such frigid weather.

When Mark reported this matter to Berion, Berion carefully inspected the rooms and pondered a solution: earthen stoves. In his early days as a soldier, he had once been stationed at a border outpost in the northeast, where winters were unbearably cold. Yet, as long as there was a stove in the room, it remained warm no matter how bitter the cold outside. He had helped his squad leader build stoves a few times and learned the technique himself. So, he decided to guide everyone in building them.

Acting at once, Berion had Eomer lead a group to fetch stones and slabs from a nearby ravine. With no bricks available, they would have to use stone and mud. Mark took the women to gather dry grass, while Bess led some strong men to dig earth.

First, Berion went to the room where women and children slept, asking the brothers Barin and Barrett to help him remove the wooden planks used as beds. Once the stones, slabs, earth, and dry grass arrived, he demonstrated how to construct the stove-bed.

Building such a stove required skill; it was not as simple as stacking bricks and stones into a raised platform. A well-built stove would burn efficiently and heat quickly, while a poorly made one would waste wood, smolder, and sometimes even fill the room with smoke.

Berion started by carving two holes in the wall opposite the door—one for the fire, one for the chimney. He built the base of the stove with stones and mud, instructing Eomer to cut the dry grass into short pieces and mix them into the mud, which would strengthen and toughen it. This was why earthen stoves became more solid the more they were fired, unlike cement stoves, which weakened.

The firebox was also plastered with mud mixed with grass, growing harder with each firing. Berion crafted a sloped surface to make the fire draw upward—improving combustion and making it easier to remove ash later. Once the flue was finished, he used slabs for the surface, plastered over with mud, and built the chimney base from stones.

There was a trick Berion had learned from his old squad leader: the body of the stove had two hollow layers, with the lower one known as the “dog hole”—a cold wall cavity. When cold wind backflowed through the chimney, it would first swirl around the base, enter the dog hole, gradually warm and expand inside, and then be pushed out. This ensured that no matter how fierce the wind, it would not blow burning embers out of the fire mouth, allowing heat and smoke to move in only one direction.

Once the mud dried, Berion ordered the fire to be lit. Soon, the stove was radiating heat, and the room grew warm. He had a woman holding a child try it out. She touched the stove, then sat upon it, astonished to find that a bed made of mud and stone could be so warm. The others crowded forward, equally amazed.

Mark, moved, asked, “Master Berion, what do you call this bed of stone and mud? Who taught you? It’s a marvelous invention!”

Berion hesitated, then replied, “This is called a firebed. My teacher, Sir Logan, learned to build it in his youth and taught me alone. Now I teach it to you—but you must keep it a secret.”

He dared not tell the truth, for fear the people would think him possessed and the Inquisition might come for him. So he attributed it to his late teacher—dead men tell no tales.

To prevent further questions, Berion sent them off to build stoves in the other two houses—after all, there were still at least two months of winter left.

They worked late into the night, finishing stove-beds in all three houses. That night, while the wind howled outside, the rooms were toasty warm. Berion’s people could not have been happier: they ate their fill, had clothes to wear, and now a warm place to sleep. What more could they wish for? Life was already much better than before.

Winter would last at least another month and a half. With no fields to plow, Berion had the people fell trees for firewood and to clear land for spring. Additionally, all adult males of the fief underwent daily military training. Given their current condition, Berion and Bess designed a regimen focused on drill and physical conditioning, supplemented by practice with spears and axes.

Through discussions with Bess, Berion realized that while mercenary companies of the day still valued individual skill, they had begun to recognize the importance of discipline and combined-arms tactics in actual combat. Bess, after nearly twenty years with the Free Company and countless battles, saw eye to eye with Berion—who brought experience from a more advanced era. Other lords had sought to win Bess over, offering him squireships or even knighthood, but differences in principle always made Bess decline. Now, with Berion, who was more than two decades his junior, Bess felt a sense of meeting a kindred spirit too late.

Berion shared his former-world training methods with Bess, and together they developed a system suited for this age of cold steel. The focus was on forging discipline and obedience, strengthening physical fitness, and drilling the use of basic weapons—spears, axes, and the like. Mastery of these, they reasoned, was enough, for battle was about killing the enemy, and any means that served that end sufficed.

Moreover, Berion thought of the legendary English longbowmen of history. That island nation, with its longbowmen, had won countless victories on the continent with small forces. Their feats led English officers to prize ranged firepower, so that when firearms arrived, the redcoats swept all before them. Inspired by this, Berion decided all adult males in his fief would practice the longbow daily, just as in old England every Sunday saw men summoned to archery practice, creating a culture of marksmanship among the people.

Fortune favored Berion: a previous outpost commander had left plenty of suitable timber in the firewood shed. Yew was best for longbows, but elm and oak were also excellent. After retiring from his past life, Berion had become a cold-arms enthusiast, particularly fond of archery. He had made several longbows himself and knew their construction inside out. With the help of two carpenters, he crafted two longbows on the first day—though he was not as fast as the English bowyers of history, who could turn out a bow in two hours.

The next day, after Eomer set up the targets, Berion brought the two bows and a sheaf of arrows to the range, accompanied by Barin and Barrett. He invited the brothers to test the new longbows.

Barin picked up a bow, pulling the string to test its strength. It was a fine, powerful weapon. Selecting an arrow, he nocked it, drew to full length, and loosed it in a high arc. The arrow soared a great distance before falling to earth. Eomer measured the range—nearly three hundred paces. In this era, even military crossbows only managed 150 to 200 paces at best. For Berion to produce such a bow in a day was astonishing.

Elated, Barin stroked the bow and fired at a target a hundred paces away. Thanks to his skill, he hit the bullseye in a single shot, earning a chorus of cheers. On inspection, they found that the two-inch-thick pine target had been pierced clean through. Eomer exclaimed, “By the Fire God! On the battlefield, this could shoot through mail at a hundred paces!”

Berion nodded in agreement, thinking to himself that mail was nothing—longbows could pierce steel plate, too. Plate armor had yet to appear in this world, but once he had a blacksmith, he would see it done.

Berion then proposed that Barin and Barrett organize the adult males to practice archery for at least two hours every evening before supper, which everyone readily accepted. To speed up production, Berion had the two brothers and their three hunter siblings join the bow-making team. For bowstrings and varnish, he sent Eomer and Tur to Armondine with a carter and two serf-soldiers to purchase gut and tung oil, and as many fletched arrows as possible; if arrows were scarce, then at least arrowheads, since shafts and feathers were easier to come by.

Three days later, Norland Castle boasted forty serviceable longbows. Berion named them Norland Longbows, confident that soon, their reputation would echo across the land.

Expert tasks were left to experts: Barin and Barrett oversaw the archers’ training. Berion gave them a simple standard—an archer would be deemed qualified if he could accurately loose twelve arrows in thirty breaths and hit the target at over one hundred and fifty paces.

With this order, the thirty adult males serving as reserve soldiers began to suffer. After breakfast, Bess and Tur had them stand in formation for an hour in the biting cold, then run laps around the castle for another hour. After lunch and a brief rest, there was another hour of drill, followed by two hours split between spear and ax practice, and, finally, at least two hours of archery. Grueling drills aside, they had to endure the instructors’ scolding and beatings—these new recruits of Norland Castle were nearly at their breaking point. Yet why hadn’t they broken?

That evening, after collecting his weekly wage of twenty copper coins from Mark the steward, Tuk the spearman sat across from his countryman and fellow shield-axeman, Drago, bowl in hand. He grumbled, “I really don’t get it. Didn’t our lord bring us here to clear land? Now he’s training us as soldiers. By the Fire God, I’ve never seen any lord train his farmhands like this—he’s treating us like knights in training!”

“Shut your mouth, big Tuk. Not only do we get paid for the training, we get meat every day, and a warm stove-bed to sleep on at night. What more do you want? The Fire God won’t look kindly on your greed. Sure, life is hard now, but it’s better than huddling with your family in rags and hunger in a leaky hut, isn’t it?” Drago dipped his bread in the meat broth, eating as he scolded Tuk.

Tuk muttered in protest, “I’m not greedy, just complaining a little.” He broke his bread and soaked it in the broth as well.

“I think we’ve found ourselves a good lord. He’s young, but skilled in arms and good at winning people over. Most importantly, he’s kind to his people. Serving him is far better than working for those dog-hearted lords who treat us like cattle.” Drago picked up a grilled fish and took a bite.

Chewing, he continued, “Besides, the training, tough as it is, is good for us. Haven’t you noticed? After a week or so, I feel stronger already. Whether it’s the spear, the ax, or the archery before supper, these are all useful skills. Master them, and maybe Sir Berion will notice us. We’ll be better able to protect ourselves, and who knows—maybe one day we’ll earn a squire’s rank, and our descendants might rise to join the nobility.”

Tuk chuckled at his words, knowing Drago was half-joking. Yet, it was true: Sir Berion was a very different kind of lord. After nearly a month under his rule, Tuk truly believed that with Berion, a better life was within reach.