I think people who have to deal with people like that should wear crosses, and hold them up when they need to.
I use my fingers; I put them up with that econo-cross thing. Handy-cross.
"Shields up!"
The ancient Myceneans were cheaters. Well; mean. Serious. About three or four thousand years ago.
You know what they did? They figured out, well they weren't really cheaters, because it was for defense of their citadel, which, is really, sort of necessary ~ but anyway, they built their place on a mountain such that the only good access was up this way in the front. They could pick you off everywhere else, from above within the walls, easily. (This is story is actually, really, going to be, about "shields up." I promise. Honest.)
So the curving wide driveway that came up to The Gate, which happens to be the Lion Gate Of Mycenae, that a lot of people have seen and are familiar with ~ with the two giant stone lions perching (I don't know the word, so perching will have to do, general perching) up to a massive Mycenaean column, over the entrance gate ~ it's a giant triangular stone lozenge weighing something like twenty-five TONS, about ten feet off the ground ~ uh I forgot where I was, trying to give people little reminders who might be right on the edge of remembering the Gate, so....
The Lion Gate. It goes across this driveway, up the side of the hill, curling up around the side of the hill, clockwise, toward the fortress at the top. It's walls and structure are VERY heavy stonework, not the type of thing you can pry apart with a dull dinner spoon in a hail of bullets, even if you have extra idiots. So the only way to really take the place, "take" and "take," (take and bake, actually), was to come up the driveway, fighting MEAN Myceneans, all the way up. These guys were your Sardaukar, your Ghurkas, your Sikh Lions, anyway, and you were fighting up the hill in a narrow roadway, with the uphill wall on your right....
Well, see? That's the nasty part. The shitty part, that makes you think twice about taking over comparatively cultured cultures. (Heinrich Schliemann discovered the treasure of King Mynos and friends right outside the Gate.)
(And gave it to his wife!)
(That was an aside. They were cultured even though they had jewelry, not because of it.)
(But, it was probably a woman that got those guys dumbed down enough to attack.)
Ellen, Great-granmother x12 of Helen. ("Frank, I want one of those bracelets.")
So you've got your sword in your right hand, because between a hundred per cent and 80 per cent of you soldiers do; and your shield, which is heavy as fuk, in your left; and you are blocking ENORMOUSLY heavy uphill blows with it, all the while trying to render one, blow, uphill, or crap, two, and even this honking shield won't stop a hot arrow on a bad day. It's got like seven stuck in it already. There's not a lot of room, so this fight is taking a HELL of a lot longer than they thought it would, because the driveway is only wide enough for a few combatants to crush against each other in the front at a time, and those goddam Myceneans are pushing flaming carts and all kinds of crap for street sweeper plungers, front end off-loaders, and, AND, they are on TOP of the WALL of heavy masonry to your RIGHT, firing those goddam arows into your completely open sword-arm unshielded side, ALL THE TIME.
(They have extra coffee.)
(They've even got time for donuts.)
A-chew! "I think they dropped some scratching powder on us."
"It's.....it's.....powdered sugar."
"Look. I've got my shield in front, I NEED my sword, none of our guys can shoot these guys up in the driveway behind the outer wall, from down in the camp there, I'm falling all over dead and slippery people, and these assholes on the wall are shooting straight down at me from fifteen feet away. I need someone to hold another shield, on this side, on the top"
"Well, what will he have. Won't he need to hold two shields?"
TSSSSSZOINKKK.
"Chuck 'im over the edge!!"
"Nimrod Squad! You're up!!"
Five hundred years later, or so, you know, the place was burned down, the city on top, but I can't remember if anyone ever TOOK it.
(Might have been. general cultural malaise ~ you know, hemp.)
(Smoking hemp started the fire.)
I guess we put this in the "Warfare Is A Hassle" pile. |
