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Just One Of Those Days

Written by Leonard Hollar

The day had begun badly for Matti. First, as his cavalry troop broke camp, one of the ties that was supposed to hold his bedroll on his saddle broke; and then the spare broke, too! So, by the time he finally got his gear stowed he had to join the rear of the column instead of being at the front in his usual place as a scout. And now, as they were charging up the hill to attack the Croats by that odd-looking building, after working hard to get back to his rightful place near the head of the column, his horse had stepped in a hole, broken its leg, and thrown Matti head over heels to the ground. But that didn't seem to be the worst; Matti had just finished putting his horse out of its misery when a bush had risen out of the ground and aimed an arrow at him. An arrow nocked to one of the strangest bows Matti had ever seen. An arrow three of whose companions were protruding from the backs of three dead Croats not far away.

For the first time in his adult life, Matti Antinpoika, of Captain Gars' troop of cavalry, felt like crying.

"A bush," Matti said to himself, "can't aim an arrow at anyone, so this must really be a person . . . I hope." By this time the bush was making an unmistakable motion for Matti to raise his hands. Not being a fool, hands and arms went as high into the air as he could reach.

Behind him Matti heard his brothers in arms make first contact with the Croats with their cries of, "Gott mit uns! Haakaa päälle!" In front of him he saw that the arrow was no longer aimed at him.

It was the noise that roused Curtis Maggard from a sound sleep. The whuffing, grunting sound of a hog at the slops trough. Except Curtis and his mother had neither trough nor hog. Curtis lay there for a moment, then, as realization of what he was hearing penetrated, he flew out of his bed with a shout. "Mutti, in unserem Garten war ein Wildschwein!" Curtis got the front door of the house open just in time to see a curly tail disappearing into the woods on the other side of their garden as dawn was breaking over the hilltop.

"Damn and blast! Three months getting that garden up to Mom's standards, and now it's all gone in one night." As he surveyed the damage, Curtis marveled at the amount of damage one boar could do. He also decided there would be a substitute to the menu in the Maggard home for a while. Pork for veggies!

As Curtis put on what he thought of as his tree suit, he considered the irony of life that had returned his mother and himself to the land of their birth. Even if it was almost four hundred years early. He also thought about how much better his mother's state of mind had become now that there were so many people to whom she could talk since, for whatever reason, she had never been able to comprehend the English language and very few people in Grantville could converse with her in German. The Ring of Fire had wrought a great change in Hilda Maggard's life.

Finished with both his rumination and his dressing, Curtis picked up his bow as he headed out the door a few minutes later. The bow, in the Mongol style, was one that he had handcrafted as his masterpiece only two years ago. Quiet, with a draw of well over one hundred pounds, this bow, or its earlier, less well-made kin, had kept the Maggard family in food for the nearly five years since the disappearance of Henry Maggard, Curtis' father.

As Curtis entered the woods in pursuit of the hog, his other talent soon became apparent. He made no sound that would be out of place in the forest. In the woods, Curtis Maggard was a wraith. His stealth in the woods gave Curtis a certain reputation in Grantville and its environs. He always got his deer, or pig, or anything else he hunted. He also had never been caught getting his deer, pig, or whatever, despite having never gone through the formality of licensure or worrying about a potential meal being in season or not.

Ninety minutes after he began tracking the big boar, Curtis came upon the bodies of three men and a woman. The woman had been decapitated. After a quick look around, and determining that a large number of horses had gone by at about the same time as people had been killed, Curtis took off in a long-legged lope toward the nearest phone. At the high school.

It was only a few minutes before the realization came that the mysterious riders and Curtis had the same destination. With knowledge came action, and action was a change of path. After following game trails that paralleled the track of the horsemen, Curtis slipped over the top of the ridge above the high school just as the shooting began. He watched with grim satisfaction as he heard five rapid shots and saw five saddles suddenly empty. Hah, he thought to himself, Julie must be down there. Let's see if I can't help out just a bit.

In his camouflage clothing it took little time for Curtis to approach to within a hundred yards of the milling riders in the school parking lot. Three times he nocked an arrow and drew his bow, and three times a horsemen fell. He had just nocked his fourth arrow when he heard more horses coming from behind him. It took only the blink of an eye for Curtis to blend in with the bushes around a deadfall and disappear from sight.

Just as he froze in place, the second group of horsemen galloped past his hiding place. Taking his chance, he let go the arrow he had ready and grabbed another from his quiver. This he hurriedly prepared to fire.

It ...