Free The Reluctant Warrior by Pete B Jenkins Page B

to live up to that?”
    Rex was enjoying this. “You’ll have to, or die trying. Anyway, she thinks you’re a mighty warrior so you’ll just have to go along with it.”
    Jed scowled. “Looks like I’ve got no choice.
    “That’s the spirit. And hey, you know that pretty little lady that goes down to the river every morning to draw water for the village? If she ever asks you about me put in a good word will you?”
    Jed grinned. “I’ll put in a few words for you, but I doubt any of them will be good.”
    “Now don’t you blow it for me I’m serious about that little lady, she’s the one I plan to have kids with.”
    Jed stopped walking and looked at him. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking of putting down roots here?”
    Rex stared down at his boots. “Do you know the real reason I’ve always gone on these adventures?”
    “I always figured it was to see things very few others ever had.”
    Rex slowly shook his head. “That’s what I’ve always let everyone think. But it’s really so that I can be a man.”
    “I don’t think I follow you.”
    “In New York I always felt like I was looked down on because I wasn’t a metro-sexual. You know the sort, a smoothie who charms the ladies by being a bit of a cream puff.” He shifted his weight uneasily. “When we were away on our expeditions it was the only time I felt I could be a man without feeling ashamed of it. And here,” he waved his arm in the direction of the village, “its paradise. The women love you for being a man. I finally feel like I belong somewhere.”
    “Wow… I wasn’t expecting this,” Jed confessed. “Going on what you’ve just told me I guess even if we did find a way home you wouldn’t come with me.”
    “I wouldn’t let you down if that’s what you’re worried about,” Rex assured him. “We’ve been friends since we were youngsters, so if you needed me to help you get home I’d go with you.”
    “Doesn’t look like it’s going to come to that,” Jed said despondently. “I can’t see any way we can get back across that ice alive. So it looks like you’ll get your wish with the pretty water carrier.”
     
    Later that day Jed discovered what Erik and Amora’s business with the Skraelings had been. They had gone to enlist their allies support for an assault on Montrose’s fortress. The dead men they had found on the river bank had gone with them but in another canoe. Erik had been sad to learn of their deaths but not surprised. “The Sky-Gods are everywhere,” he had said.
    He was glad he had turned up when he did, to attack the fortress would have been suicidal. Now, however, with them in charge they could steer this war in a different direction, a direction Montrose wasn’t used to, a game of cat and mouse that would ultimately leave him frustrated. He just hoped he would live long enough to see the outcome.
     
    Over the next few days Jed and Rex taught six handpicked warriors how to use the rifles they had taken from Montrose’s dead men. The rifles were of course empty, they couldn’t afford to use up any of their precious shells on practice.
    “I don’t know what we’ll do when we run out,” Rex said. “I guess we’ll have to pray we take some more in battle.”
    The same concern was gnawing at Jed. Montrose would have his ammunition well guarded, so the best they could hope for was to take a few rifles and ammunition belts off his men, hardly enough to turn the tide of the war. He knew they could hold Montrose off for a while, even cause enough casualties to concern him, but they didn’t have a dog’s show of defeating him. Not without a miracle happening. All they could reasonably hope for was to delay the inevitable, and it made him sad to think that his friend mightn’t have much time left to enjoy the company of the pretty water carrier.
     
    It was six days after their arrival in the village that Jed ran into Amora on the trail to the river. He was heading down; she was heading up,