265 AС
Morning is not good only for those who get up at this time.
Roughly by this principle, I have been living for the last few years, getting up an hour before sunrise. I was relatively lucky - as in the previous world, my body had such a trait as hyperactivity.
It could not sleep more than five or six hours a day, it constantly required action, no matter what - mental or physical. If an ordinary child could not control it, constantly moving, talking and annoying others, then for me, as a person who has lived with such a problem for almost 80 years, it was easy to control it.
"Well, how to control" - I grinned, with the usual movement, getting out of the resulting tangle of bodies, woven on the bed, and going out into the street.
"You can't win, lead."
I came to the same conclusion in a past life. Since I cannot control myself, I need to direct my restless energy in the right direction. So now, feeling a sea of strength and energy seething inside me, I ran. Just ran, not counting the distance and time.
I just ran, controlling my breathing so as not to quickly run out of steam. It is necessary to spend as much energy as possible before the morning workout and breakfast. When I got tired of running, I started jumping, when I got tired of jumping, I started climbing, and when I got tired of it, I went to swim in the river, the cold water of which instantly knocked out all the hints of fatigue.
Still, people in this world are much stronger than on Earth, because where has it been seen that a six-year-old is engaged in physical activity for an hour and after that does not get tired at all. Beauty, and only. Well, genetics, of course.
The sun had not yet risen, but a beautiful burgundy veil of dawn was already spreading on the horizon.
Every day, winding circles around the farm, I admired this beautiful and ancient spectacle, like the world itself. After an hour, when smoke began to come out of the chimneys, and the excess energy was spent, exercises began with the father and brother who had already risen and washed.
Father, when he first learned about my morning races at the beginning, together with Cersei, decided to ban them (don't let the Seven child fall off the tree or drown in the river), but soon the entire Cold family howled when an excess of energy began to pour out on them.
Jogging resumed, but under the supervision of his father. Who, after six months of active observation, gave in to the desire to sleep an extra hour and said that everything would be fine with me.
True, this did not save him from several cracks with a frying pan. Even in the ancient patriarchal society, a woman, if necessary, can say a couple of affectionate things to her husband.
The warm-up usually lasted from an hour to an hour and a half and consisted mainly of exercises that, with a minimum load, strongly strained all muscle groups, and stretches, in order to maintain the elasticity of the joints and tendons until they stiffened.
According to my father, if we regularly carry out such a warm-up, then even in old age we can safely sit on the twine. Which he immediately demonstrated. Strong for his age.
Then followed breakfast, as usual consisting of bread, milk and porridge, after which the parents, taking their brother with them, went to work on the farm.
According to tradition, I, the second in seniority, had to look after the twins, as well as look after the house - chop wood, heat the stove, cook food, feed the cattle and much more.
But for a number of reasons this did not happen - an apprenticeship with an herbalist at 3 years old and with a hunter at 4, and the fact that I earn a tenth of our family's income, reconciled my parents with the fact that I am left to myself most of the time and they have to hire a nurse.
Today, after breakfast, instead of going to the fields, my father went to the barn, from where he soon returned with two wooden swords, and the same daggers, axes and armor. Although it was difficult to call them that, because in size they corresponded more to dwarfs. Or children.
- I ordered them from Bern two months ago. - He said, putting in the armor in front of us, starting to show how to dress them. "All the warriors in my clan used this armor when they trained. Over time, they were made heavier with various weights, allowing them to be worn until the age of 13, until active adulthood began. Weapons will have to be changed often, but for your sake it's not a pity.
Having somehow pulled on the armor, in the process getting confused a bunch of times in the fastenings and remembering the entire pedigree of the one who designed this "charm", my brother and I took up arms.
If Aerys immediately grabbed the sword and started swinging it like crazy, then after some thought I decided to take a wooden two-handed axe. It turned out to be very heavy for my body - almost 4 kilograms - and it was possible to hold it with only two hands. Judging by the smiling face of my father, he liked my choice.
"You're lucky you weren't born into the mountain clans. There, only an heir could claim such individual training, and such a "weapon" was often passed down from generation to generation.
- Although my father was smiling, his eyes were nostalgic, looking somewhere towards the North, where he was born, grew up and which he mentioned very unflatteringly.
"I will teach you how to use the axe, sword, dagger and fist. I say right away - I will teach according to the method by which they taught me. Therefore, do not complain when you do not succeed the first time and it will be very painful.
If you are not lucky enough to be on the battlefield, you will only thank me for everything.
I didn't like his smile. The last time I saw such a mixture of nostalgia and sadism was on Earth, in the army with my sergeant.
- But dad! Knights don't fight with axes! Only bastards from the Iron Islands and barbarians from the wildlings do this!
Aerys' unexpected outcry did not come as a surprise to me. He spent too much time in the tavern, which was not far away. And there most often stop freeriders and minstrels from Casterly Rock and Lannisport. The people living there dislike the ironborn very much, and as a result, they cannot stand battle axes, including axes.
"I won't take advantage of this ugliness!" A real knight fights only with a sword, and axes are the lot of salty lu...
- Son. - In a harsh tone, the father interrupted the brother's speech, which had begun to gain momentum, forcing him to find out how the mouse feels in front of the boa constrictor. Still, it's a shame when the weapon with which you earned your fame and fortune is so insulted.
Unlike Aerys, I don't trust the stories of those who drink half their weight in wine. Therefore, if possible, I listened to the stories of the head of the family, who, knowing about my corrosiveness and that I was developed beyond my years, described his life before he settled down without too much boasting. And according to him, the main reason that he was able to show himself well at tournaments and various companies and survive was precisely the ax.
- I do not argue that the sword is an excellent weapon. But have you ever wondered why he is called "the king of all guns"? No? The answer is simple - versatility. The sword, and especially the one-and-a-half, is a universal weapon suitable for fighting with any opponent.
But son, you knew that knights, when they go on the attack, do not use a sword, but a spear. Same thing with the infantry. Most people first use the pike, bow, ax, halberd and many other piercing and cutting, and only then they take up the sword.
I wandered around Westeros for almost 11 years and I am alive only because many knights, - Father said the last word with such sarcasm that even Aerys understood how he relates to representatives of this caste, - They are good only with a sword and a mediocre spear.
The double-edged ax is ideal for combat with swordsmen, as it can knock out or break any sword in a few blows, if it is not made of Valyrian steel or is not two-handed.
This was followed by a long rebuke to the "stupid" son from a wise father about the fact that one cannot blindly believe everything that is said in inns by completely sober individuals. Judging by the eyes of his brother, he got through, but he did not stop considering the ax an unworthy weapon. Batya will have to try to beat this opinion out of him.
- I will teach you to fight with swords, axes, knives and fists. And also keep on horseback. - All this the head of the family said, waving a giant (for me and one and a half for him) sword, writing out various pirouettes and figure eights in the air. To our perplexed faces, why the last two points are needed, he only answered.
– The battle is like a living being, it is unpredictable and has its own character. You cannot be prepared for everything that will happen to you on it. You need to be ready when you lose your axe, fight with a sword, when your sword breaks, fight with a blade, and when it leaves you and there are no more weapons left, you need to be ready to fight with your fist.
It reminds me of an old joke that my grandson told me. "To engage in hand-to-hand combat, a special forces soldier must lose a machine gun, a pistol, a knife, a waist belt, a shovel, body armor, a helmet on the battlefield. Find a flat area on which not a single stone or stick is lying. Find on it the same near. And only after that, engage in hand-to-hand combat with him.
But this is the Middle Ages, and apparently, at the end of the battle, many knights amuse themselves by hitting their neighbor's face with a plate glove. Although we will need hand-to-hand combat more in taverns and inns, where it is not customary to brandish weapons, but you need to be able to defend yourself.
If the brother thought that we would immediately be taught to fight with swords, then he was deeply mistaken. First, we were dressed in armor, forcing us to do the whole range of exercises that we did during the exercises. After giving us wooden inventory, they sent us to run "to get used to the weight of the weapon." Half an hour later, the father witnessed the picture "two corpses of fresh-ordinary."
This was followed by a long lecture that for a warrior the most important quality is endurance and the ability to maintain it. That is, until we learn to save on every movement and develop our vitality, we will not be allowed to train with weapons.
The next hour and a half were spent in similar races, with short breaks for rest. After that, my parents and my brother went to the farm, leaving the girls to a young nurse and leaving me to my own devices.
- We have to go to Chloe.
- I decided, going to the next lesson to our herbalist, having taken with me in advance all the prepared herbs collected during the hunt.
The herbalist's house was located on the outskirts of the settlement, half a kilometer from all other buildings, so that the smell of decoctions and ointments constantly being prepared, smelling rather specific, did not interfere with the villagers' life. You could walk to it in just a couple of minutes at a leisurely pace.
The healer's dwelling itself was located on the edge of the forest, preventing outsiders from seeing it, because of the trees and shrubs growing there. The house itself looked like a collapsing shack - the walls had long since squinted and did not fall only because of several beams substituted for the supporting pillars, and the roof looked like a scarf full of patches of different colors.
And the house itself was as if glued together from several pieces that did not fit together. But that this difficult dwelling could be understood by three things - fully glazed windows, which no other commoner could afford, a straight and new chimney, giving a hint that the house was recently renovated, and a large supply of firewood, which the old woman herself could not collect.
The door was not locked and was slightly ajar, letting you feel the whole kaleidoscope of smells hovering inside. Freshly dried herbs, fermenting tinctures, healing ointments, light smoke from burning logs... A lot of things were guessed in this confusion. Chloe herself showed up in her usual place - on an old but strong stool, at the table, kneading another unknown herb in a special saucer with a pestle.
- Appeared not dusty. she croaked in her age-struck voice, not even turning her head in my direction. Only I could enter her house without knocking and not receive a five-story structure made of selected shoe mats and curses.
- I thought I completely forgot about my studies, you little bastard. What did you bring this time?
- Chamomile, blue manticore, mandrake, mountaineer, motherwort, yasnotka, bedstraw, wintergreen and centaury.
I answered instantly. The woman was a fan of her work, and she was primarily worried about what her student brought, who, due to hunting, visited those parts of the forest where she could no longer enter due to her age, and not how he was doing. She even learned the news about the death of the old hunter only a week later, when she asked why he stopped coming to her for a hangover tincture.
Only after listing the entire catch, the herbalist deigned to look at me, already hanging herbs on the ceiling, for specially made crossbars.
- Mandragora and Lamb is good. I've run out of stock completely. - The old woman grunted rather, gesturing for me to sit down in her seat. - So, today your task is to sort all the herbs according to their properties, then finally dry everything that you brought, then help me in preparing an ointment for bruises, and then we will consider the method of preparing a tincture from the centaury root.
And that's how almost every session went. 80% of the time I helped the master with the work, doing the most dirty and physically difficult part of it, and only the rest of the remaining time was devoted to my studies. I'm still very lucky.
Many masters, when teaching students, work on the principle - watch how I do it and repeat without bothering with explanations.
Chloe herself was an old woman whose hair had long gone gray, leaving no hint of its previous color. Twisted like an ancient tree, with her thin and dry hands tightly covered with skin covered with senile spots, she fully justified her professional nickname - the Forest Witch.
Everyone in our small farm knew her as a grumpy and grumpy old hag, but as a person who lived for more than 80 years, it was clear to me that this was only her mask, behind which she hides old wounds. To do this, you do not need to be a genius, but just listen to her story, unique in its own way, albeit quite banal.
When Chloe was still a young girl, she fell in love with a hedge knight passing through these lands. The love turned out to be mutual. They got married and soon the young herbalist became pregnant. But happiness was short-lived.
In 211, Dagon Greyjoy rebelled. Her husband went to defend the coast of the Western Lands from the ironborn and died. Unfortunately, fate loves to mock a person's grief. The news of her husband's death hit Chloe hard. The birth was very difficult, both for the mother and for her child. The child did not survive, and the girl herself lost the opportunity to have children, which is why she could not remarry.
Knowing this story (told by one of the tipsy old-timers), it was easy to ask for her as a student. A woman in her eighties and not realizing her maternal instinct simply could not refuse a three-year-old boy who tearfully asked to become her student (and gave good arguments for his age).
So, in addition to my family, I also had a grandmother, although not related to me by blood. And constantly grunting at me for any reason.
Now, sitting at the table in a cozy and bright house, and slowly sorting through the dried herbs, it came to the understanding that despite all my experience and all the memories (which, thank the local gods, are still fresh), I still became a child who is still easily attached to people, seeks to learn something new and just wants to be happy. There is no this adult rigidity and cynicism.
"And this is good".