Chapter 185: Teach a Man to Fish
Over the next few days, Simon turned his dejected farmers into something closer to fighting men. Their abilities were entirely inferior to the fighting force he’d built to fight the centaurs, but so too was his opponent, which was good because Simon needed the practice.
“We don’t want to fight; we just want our land back” was a popular refrain, but Simon ignored it after the first ten times. He’d run out of patience for explaining why no one was going to do the right thing just because it was the right thing to do.
“If you want to leave, that’s your right,” he would answer dismissively if he even answered at all.
No one left, though he attributed that more to fear and cowardice than men who wanted to fight for what was theirs, at least at first. Most of them knew how to use bows, though, and a couple of the farmers were even halfway decent at fletching new arrows, which was the skill that really came in handy because, after a few encounters on open ground, he steadily went the way of Robinhood.
He didn’t fight with a bow, of course. He stuck to his sword practice whenever he could, but once the hornets' nest was riled up, small patrols were darting here and there in an effort to protect the Lord of the land from his own mistakes.
Simon used each of these as an opportunity for his men to practice their ambush techniques. If a dozen men could all loose at once, there was no reason they couldn’t take out half that number, whether they were on horse or foot. Still, try as they might, they disappointed him on that front.
“It’s okay,” Simon assured them after survivors would ride free and escape or once he’d finished cutting down the last of the wounded. “Rebellion 101 is just taking a little longer than we thought it would.”
In the end, though, Simon decided that his chosen side quest was probably hopeless. That didn’t mean he wasn’t enjoying it, of course. Once they’d started fighting back, they were widely regarded as heroes by the other local villagers. Simon’s little band of merry men even started to get a few new recruits in time.
They didn’t know just how poorly their local heroes were doing in most engagements, of course, but they didn’t have to. Simon certainly didn’t tell anyone. He just drank his beer and did his part to spread the legend of Ennis the Bold, which is what they’d taken to calling the imagined leader of the little rebellion. Simon absolutely refused to let the man give credit to anyone else.