Taking a knife to a gunfight

The weeks went by and before Gawain knew it the deadline was just around the corner. His uncle listened to him and after many discussions Ralof managed to convince the other peasants of "his" idea. Bofur, the village carpenter, spent two days improving the primitive plow. The end result disappointed Gawain quite a bit, he expected his neighbors to create something resembling the Norman plow but instead they created what the redhead could only describe as the bastard child of the Norman plow and the Roman plow.

Despite Gawain's disappointment with the design of the new plow, which remained the same only with the addition of wheels, he was quite satisfied with its performance. The new plow can't compare to the Norman plow in terms of performance, let alone its later versions, but it's still two to three times faster than the one they used before. And that might just be their saving grace, Gawain is sure they will manage to meet Lord Roxton's unreasonable deadline.

Gawain is currently sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace carving a piece of wood trying to turn it into a new toy for his little brother. In recent months carving wood became his hobby and he managed to build a wide variety of toys for his little brother.

The redhead is thinking of carving the necessary pieces for chess but he quickly dismisses the idea. Carving the pieces is easy, he calculates that it would take him a week or two, the complicated thing would be the rules of chess. Chess is quite a complicated game to play, and the rules of it reflect that.

`There is no way I can build that, explain the rules to a bunch of people to play with me and not stand out. For a five year old kid to create such a complicated game... Yeah, no. But checkers, that is a much simpler game.`

The redhead's reflections are interrupted by the barking of his dogs.

"They sound different." Thor and Loki's barking sounds more ferocious and frantic than usual.

Gawain gets up from the floor and approaches the window, just when he was going to open it to see what's happening outside, he hears some voices.

"Fucking mutts!"

"Careful, Jon! Don't let them bite you!"

The redhead feels his heartbeat quicken and moves away from the window.

`Thieves!`

He places a hand on his chest and takes a deep breath, quickly thinking what to do. His eyes go to the cabin door. The only ways someone can enter the cabin is through the front door or roof hatch, the windows are too small for an adult to fit through.

Gawain blocks the door of the cabin with a wooden plank: the door has two L-shaped pieces of wood nailed to the sides and resting a wooden plank on them is how the door is locked.

`I have to hide Galahad in a safe place!`

The redhead walks to his bedroom and sees his little brother still sleeping, he thanks the heavens for Galahad's ability to sleep through the end of the world, and picks him up.

`The attic! I have to get Galahad there!' With his heart rate increasing, he walks to the stairs that go up to the attic of the cabin. Climbing the narrow ladder with his little brother in his arms was quite a challenge.

`I should have created a baby carrier- no, there is no time.`

The attic of the cabin is the storage area, where his parents keep a wide variety of things from the furs they use to wrap themselves in winter to sacks of grain. Gawain places Galahad on a pile of furs and returns to the attic entrance hatch. He takes the ladder up to the attic before closing the hatch and blocking it with some sacks of grain.

Gawain wipes the sweat from his brow and begins to look around, looking for anything he can use as a weapon. Every second that passes he feels how he is getting more and more restless, his senses are sharpening and he swallows saliva.

`Galahad, I must protect him. I -... I can't fail, not again.' In his mind he sees the image of an eight-year-old girl, he sees her bloody body and the air no longer reaches his lungs.

His breathing is fast and agitated, he presses his lips together and his mouth feels dry. His entire body is tense like a bowstring and his imagination runs wild creating increasingly darker scenes in his mind, in his mind he sees another corpse next to the girl's; a much smaller one.

`Calm down Damian!' He clenches his fists and concentrates on the feel of his nails digging into his skin. By concentrating on that pain he manages to calm his breathing and clear his mind.

He takes a deep breath and strains his ears, vaguely hearing barking and yelling but the sounds are too muffled for him to get a clear idea of what's going on outside.

`I heard two voices, two adults. Loki and Thor are well trained but if those two men are armed... Or if there are more of them. I can't sit idly by, if they get past the dogs they will enter the cabin. And if they find the hatch to the attic, if they find us- No, I can't let them get close to the cabin, to my brother!`

Gawain sees a chest hidden in a corner and opens it, inside he sees a recurve bow, a quiver with some arrows and a longsword.

`Useless, all of them.`

The sword is too big and heavy for him to use with his five-year-old body.

`A world champion swordsman can't even lift a sword, what a joke.` He snorts and turns his gaze to the bow.

The bow is lighter but just because he can lift it doesn't mean he can use it: his body lacks the necessary strength to draw the bowstring.

He hears, or rather he no longer hears one of the barks.

`I have to do something!`

Gawain sees a pitchfork with a broken side tine leaning against an attic wall and the wheels in his brain begin to turn.

`It's a stupid idea, even dumber than the time I took a knife to a gunfight.`

Despite his thoughts, he feels his heart rate calm down and a small smile dawns on his face, the smile is neither cheerful nor happy; is more of a grin, an insanely terrifying one- One that does not belong in the face of a small child.

The redhead opens the roof hatch and steps out onto the roof with the pitchfork in his hands. He crouched down and inches to the edge of the roof and finally saw what was happening outside.

He was wrong, there are not two men but three.

One of them is lying on the ground without moving, Gawain sees the blood coming from his neck from that distance. The corpse, or almost corpse, has bite marks on the legs and throat.

`Loki, that was his doing. Good boy.`

Not far from the first man is a second down on one knee gasping for breath and one hand grasping a bite wound on the shoulder near the neck. On the other hand he has a sword. He is pointing his sword at Thor, who is about two meters away snarling pitifully, barely keeping himself on his feet.

Gawain sees the red in Thor's black and gold fur, he tightens his grip on the pitchfork as he realizes that the bastard cut his dog.

"Bâtard" The redhead growls and looks towards the third man.

He is still standing and has a dagger or knife in his hand, the redhead cannot see it clearly, the thief has a bite mark on his left forearm but otherwise appears unharmed. Loki is slowly circling him, Gawain can see that the black dog is limping slightly.

`Don't worry boy, papa is coming to the rescue! Just hang in there for a little longer!`

Gawain climbs down from the roof using the cabin's logs for support, something he has done several times in the past so he is not afraid of falling and cracking his skull.

Once he is on the ground he tiptoes to the side of the cabin and takes a closer look at the thieves' positions.

The one standing is five meters away with his back to him, but the one kneeling is four meters away and he could see him out of the corner of his eye.

`Thor, I'm counting on you to distract that bastard.`

The redhead tightens his grip on the pitchfork and places it in front of him.

`Lady Fortune please be kind!`

The boy starts running at full speed with the pitchfork pointed forward. Time seems to slow down with each step he takes, his feet hitting the muddy ground and Gawain praying that he doesn't slip in the mud.

He is barely breathing as he runs and his lungs start to burn, he ignores the sensation and runs at full speed suppressing the urge to scream a battle cry; that would ruin the element of surprise.

"Jon!" Someone yells, and his target turns. He sees the boy running towards him with a pitchfork in his hands and his eyes widen.

Gawain sees his target move to the side and jumps in his direction, crossing the last yard before his target's partner can yell his name again.

The tines of the pitchfork stick into the soft meat of the thief's stomach and both the thief and the boy look at each other in disbelief, barely believing what just happened.

"Urghh!" The man feels the pain hit him like an elephant and screams in agony.

Gawain loosens his grip on the pitchfork and takes a few steps back, breathing hard. He slips in the mud and falls on his ass, eyes wide and breathing heavily as Loki lunges at Jon from behind and bites into his neck.

"No! Jon!" The kneeling man lets out a cry of anger and pain, drawing Loki's attention to him. The dog looks at the man he just bit, sees him fall to the ground clutching his neck, and decides it's time to move on to the next kill.

Still limping on one paw, he walks towards the kneeling man growling threateningly, his bloody muzzle terrifying the thief and he tries to back away. Thor took advantage of the distraction of his prey and used the last of his strength to bite into his hand, causing him to drop his sword.

Loki jumped the last meters that separated them and bit the thief in the throat.

As his dogs finished off the last thief Gawain sat in the mud, cloudy-eyed as he stared at the fallen man before him. Blood gushes from his neck and it stains the mud red, his eyes are wide and unfocused but there is still life in them. The redhead sees how he opens and closes his mouth several times but no sound comes out, in a few minutes that movement stops and his body goes limp.

A strange calm surrounds the patio, as if someone had muted the world, no sound can be heard, neither the growling of the dogs nor the cackling of the chickens.

Gawain looks at the thieves and for the first time notices their clothing: filthy, torn rags that could hardly keep anyone warm on cold spring nights. The redhead feels his stomach sink and looks at their faces, already knowing what he is going to find: sunken cheeks.

`They were starving peasants, not heartless bandits...`

The redhead doesn't recognize their faces so he can at least take comfort in knowing he didn't kill any of his neighbors but still, any sense of accomplishment or satisfaction he felt as he plunged the pitchfork into the thief's stomach vanished into thin air.

The cry of a baby breaks the silence and Gawain turns his head towards the attic of the cabin, he gets up from the ground and runs towards the house. He scales the cabin wall the same way he climbed down and enters the hatch.

"Sshhh, big brother is here." Gawain picks up the baby and holds him against his chest, rocking him gently. The crying subsides and Gawain sits on the ground with the baby in his arms.

He looks at the reddened face of his little brother and wipes the tears from his face, while doing so he looks at his own hands. His hands are clean, but when he blinks he sees red staining them and quickly pulls his hands away from the baby's face as if he had been burned. Gawain blinks again and the red disappears, he squints at his hands.

`I killed hundreds of people but all of them deserved it, they were monsters. They took my little sun. But these men... Would they have left if I had given them some food?`

"Gwan" A small voice is heard in the attic and the redhead looks at his little brother with wide-opened eyes. Galahad repeats that word again.

"Gwan? That's my name!" Gawain smiles brightly and hugs his little brother tightly. Hearing his little brother babble his name, the clouds dissolve and the redhead thinks clearly again.

"Desperate men can do horrible things. They were armed so they were prepared to harm someone. If you hold a weapon it is to harm someone, and if you are ready to hurt someone you must be ready to be hurt." He hardens his heart and sympathy for the thieves vanishes as smoke into the air. "They were a threat to my brother, they injured my pups."

Gawain gets up from the floor and after removing the sacks blocking the hatch he puts the ladder back in place and goes down to the cabin. After giving his little brother a kiss on the forehead, he leaves him on the bed and goes to the main room of the cabin and opens the door.

He looks at the thieves for a second and then focuses his gaze on the dogs, Thor and Loki are lying on the ground huddled against each other. Thor is licking his wound and Loki is watching the path leading to the cabin with intent eyes.

"You did a very good job." Gawain crouches down beside them and kisses each dog on the head. "Everything will be fine pups, I'll treat your wounds and in no time you'll be as good as new. I promise, everything will be fine." The latter is not only said to the dogs, but also to himself.

After cleaning Thor's wound he bandages Loki's paw. Fortunately none of the dogs were seriously injured and they will recover in a few days.

With a lighter heart he looks back at the corpses, his eyes focusing on Jon; in the pitchfork stuck in his stomach.

`The ultimate weapon, not even battle hardened legendary Witchers can withstand its might. This poor bastard never stood a chance.`

***

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