Done
To Shoot at Sparrows with Cannons
The man looked around furtively, subconsciously trying to hide the colourful uniform that hung loosely from his too lean body. The marketplace was filled with people taking care of their daily routine. The market criers loudly advertised their wares to the women carefully making their way through the crowded streets, in one hand a basket and in the other the hemlines of their skirts. Their wooden shoes sank deep into the still muddy ground from the rain the day before. At the outskirts of the market, where artisans had permanent stalls or even actual shops, they sometimes stopped to marvel at their craftsmanship, often not only displayed through finished works but through working on them. Here and there a carpenter polished a piece of wood or a baker kneaded the dough for the customers later in the day. It was likely that among all the hustle and bustle of a typical market-day, thieves also made their way through the crowed, but the flashily dressed man noticed none. Neither did he see his friend, Peter, who walked somewhere among the buyers and sellers, waiting for Harold to step forward.
He felt as if he were being noticed by everyone. A shudder ran down his spine when he reminded himself that that was exactly the purpose of the uniform's showy colours. Bright red and dark black stripes alternated on his doublet, which he wore over tight yellow leggings. At the end of the long liripipe of his yellow gugel a silver bell seemed to jingle with every move of his head and even the tiniest gust of wind.
Still, for now, he was mistaken. At the moment he still waited in the shadows of two houses that stood close to each other and whose jetties nearly touched about half a meter over his head. He leaned against the cold wall of one of them, taking deep breathes and surveying the scene in front of him one last time.
…and another time...
…and the last time now...
...really...
He felt the looks of everyone on his shoulders. They prickled like fleas and no rubbing of his back against the stones could get rid of them. A few times he pressed his cold hands against the wall to push himself off, but the rest of his body didn't want to follow his orders. The piece of paper in his cramped hand had been crumpled so much by now that it would be impossible to read any words from it or salvage the wax seal at its bottom and his sweat had smeared the ink beyond recognition. Luckily, there were no useful words written down and the seal was nothing but a glob of cheap tallow. To some degree, he hoped that people really stared at him, that one of the king's guards was among the people on the town square and was already on his way towards him, that last day's rain would return with thunder and hail, that the nearby river would burst it banks, that an avalanche would come down from the mountains or that the earth would open up and swallow him – and when the earth was that hungry it could have the whole town and the whole country right with him! In short, every excuse not to step out of the shadows and find his way to the wooden platform in the middle of the market square was more than welcome.
A last time he pressed his hands against the dirty wall, using more force than before. He made himself stumble away from the house and out of the alleyway. With shaking hands that still crumpled an old and tattered piece of paper and shuffling steps he found his way through the crowd, who backed off and made room for him as soon as they noticed his uniform. It was too late to stop now and the eyes of the people really followed him now, followed him past stalls of apples and meat and left a trail of attention and silence behind.
It was not an absolute silence. Whispers and the rustle of clothes and the flopping of shoes in the mud still came with it and only gradually it extended to the outer corners of the market place. When he stood in front of the steps to the platform, he took a deep breath. And another one, and another. Like before, he had to steel himself for the task at hand.
It was not his idea. It was not his plan as well. Peter had scribbled random signs on the only piece of paper he could find, he had added the bit of tallow to the bottom, he had slipped into the herald's garden and grabbed the uniform from the washing line in a fit of unwelcome genius. Peter had done all this, not Harold, but Harold was the one to wear the uniform now and who stood in front of the crowd. And all because he had lost a bet. All because they were drunk. All because they were stupid. Harold certainly felt stupid. He wasn't so sure about Peter.
He really wished he could go back but now people had seen him and now they really stared at him and the longer he stood there, the more they stared.
His foot had sunk deep into the mud and his leg, already slightly stiff from an old injury, did not want to bend the knee enough to set the foot on the first of the three steps. Shaking, it hit their edge a couple of times before he looked down and forced it up. Rain and mud had made the steps slippery and so he reached the top of the platform even more shaking than before.
He looked down on his paper and when he noticed its devastating state, he straightened it against the legs of his pants. He looked down once again, searching for words he knew weren't there.
Finally, maybe after a couple of seconds, maybe after several minutes, the eyes that prickled on his back forced him to speak.
“Ye hear, ye hear...” His voice was too silent and rasping, hardly more than a frog's croaking, and people strained their ears to hear him.
He had to start again. “Ye hear, ye hear!” he called, looking up at the sky in an attempt to pretend he was alone. “In the name of his eternal majesty, Ethelred the third, lord of the South, the East and the West, master of...”
He faltered. There was at least one mistake in there already and how did the rest go again? A coughing fit, not entirely due to the machinations of higher powers, saved him from coming up with about a hundred titles that made no sense to him anyway.
“Anyway... Hereby..., his majesty..., the king, announces... the... the inan... No... augna... the inaga...” His face had turned an interesting shade of crimson that he could only hope people attributed to his coughing. “Well, I mean, the..., he announces the find... fund... fountain – shen...” The word was wrong. Both of them. He knew it and only a new coughing fit allowed him to order all the words in his head that made no sense at all. If only Peter had written down what he was supposed to say. But Peter could not write. Then again, Harold couldn't read either. “...the creation. He, that is, the king announces the creation of...”
The market place wasn't silent any longer. Whispers and confused looks wafted through the crowd like ripples in an ocean before a storm. Soon, the wind would start to blow harder, the clouds would darken the sky and send down rain and hail and the ripples of confusion would turn into waves of anger.
“...of the first kingly, ahm, hm, no, ahm, royal, that's it, royal shooting range for cannons... If you are interested to join...” He took a deep breath and called the next words out as if they were all one: “Bring your own cannons to the charcoal burner's hut tomorrow at noon!”
Then he fled. There was no other word for it. He stumbled down the wooden steps of the platform, moving his legs faster than his feet could react. He came down on his knees and plunged head first onto the ground, smudging the colourful uniform with a mixture of manure, mud and rainwater. Even while he was still getting back up, he pushed people out of his way. They asked questions, they discussed among themselves, they maybe even tried to stop him but somehow he managed to get past them all and back into the alleyway at one end of the market place where he was greeted by the pockmarked laughing face of Peter, who dragged him further away from the crowd.
He laughed about Harold, the fake herald's look of utter humiliation and fear the whole way to the hut in the nearby forest.
Harold was not as amused. “And what if someone does show up?” he asked and rubbed his cheek where it had landed painfully on a stone in the mud.
“Oh, come on. As if someone has a cannon just lying around. Or would think this was real. Honestly, you should have seen your face...”
*
On the market place, most people were just confused. They knew the town's herald, and this was not him. And usually the herald was accompanied by a couple of guards. On the other hand, he did wear the uniform and the paper looked official enough. After all, who but the herald or some of the other royal officers and clerks had paper?
Looks became whispers and whispers discussions. The main question wasn't if the herald was real or not, though. How could you dare to question a royal clerk? But what exactly was a
shooting range? And should it matter to them?
Where most people were confused, Gerald was interested. He had always advocated that everyone should own all the weapons he felt like. Besides, if ever someone attacked the town, he wanted to be ready to defend it. And so he had dragged one of the cannons home after the last war. So if the king suddenly started to agree with him, why should he doubt it? For him, a world that had been in pieces that made no sense, finally puzzled itself together.
The whetstone stayed untouched for the rest of the afternoon. Gerald closed the latch of his door and went into the back room where he stored what little material he always kept at hand. Behind an old table, under an even older blanket, Gerald stored a cannon that was once the hight of technology and that probably still was.
New cannons were always minted but their design never really changed. They were made to shoot things, not to look nice. Gerald's cannon was not new, but it certainly looked it. The bronze of the bore was polished to near perfection and glinted in the little sunlight that shone through the open shutters in the other corner of the room. The wheels were strong and always freshly oiled and the three cannonballs Gerald had brought along were much rounder and smoother than when they were made because he constantly polished them and cared for them. A small keg of gunpowder sat not too far away.
Gerald had not much practice since the war ended. As a matter of fact, he had none at all. Until now, he always believed that the king would not take kindly to people owning artillery, but apparently that was not the case.
Now, he just wanted to make sure his cannon was in perfect condition. Lovingly, he stroked the long pipe and nuzzled the slightly wider muzzle at the end of the bore. He caressed the hard shaft with a soft cloth, polished it with steady movements of his rough hands. Up and down and around he went with the tender rag and here and there a drip of oil. When he was finished with the outside, he carefully poured some into the bore to polish it deep inside. Afterwards, when the the shaft glistened with oil, he turned his attention to his balls. He took them into his hands and weighted them. His fingers slid over their surface, testing their smoothness and oiling them too.
That night, he Gerald hardly slept. Excitement kept him awake a long time. The thought of the imminent pleasure would not leave his mind, and so he got up more than once and followed the moonlight to his cannon. If only he could fill it right now with its powder, if only he could give it its release, so long awaited...
The next morning, he dragged the cannon out of the back room of his house and let it sit in the morning sun to warm up a little bit while he tried to convince his donkey that it was time to start the day.
The ass did not agree with him.
He also did not agree with the harness Gerald put on him or the weight of his burden, but nobody ever asked him and so all he could do was put up as much of a fight as possible.
The sun warmed the market place that morning and dried the muddy street into a dirty track. Few people were up at this hour of the day, or at least there were few on the market place. While it tended to be busy and chaotic the one day of the week where the small town held its market day, all other days were rather quiet. Here and there, a few artisans already set up their shops and one or two costumers already ambled over the square, but the only busy corner was where the old well stood and where housewives and servants met and gossiped about cabbage and kings. It wasn't a crowd, but it was a sizeable group of people, that could not ignore Gerald having a heated argument with his donkey, nor the apparent reason for the argument.
Some called out to him and asked him what he was doing.
“I'm going to the shooting range,” he answered impatiently, as if it were obvious.
But it wasn't. While news often travels fast, and news that makes no sense often even faster, it seldom keeps its information straight. And few of the early morning patrons of the well where there the afternoon before.
“What's a shooting range?” someone asked.
“And what's this on your ass?” another added with a certain amount of mirth about his witty question.
Gerald forced patience into his voice. “The king has finally decided to support the idea of the armed citizen and as a loyal subject it is my duty – and everyone else's – to arm myself and prepare myself to conquer all threats against the enemies of the kingdom, the town and everyone personally.” He puffed out his chest as far as possible.
Not surprisingly, the explanation went right over the heads of the people gathered around the well. They had never thought about weapons or the protection of the kingdom, really. When the king called to arms, they had to follow, if they wanted to or not. There wasn't more to it.
Gerald's self-importance at least allowed him to see their lack of understanding and so he got ready to offer another explanation, but luckily to about everyone involved, the donkey finally decided to move. He pranced a bit, then he jerked forward, dragging the heavy cannon along the dirty road and leaving deep tracks behind.
Gerald, who still held the reins in his hands, was dragged along and stumbled into the dirt. Laughter and jeers followed him as he picked himself up again and jogged after the surprisingly fast donkey with curses and a rather red face.
*
Otto shook his head. The last two days were weird. First, the town's herald shows up and complains about missing clothes. What self-respecting – or trying to be inconspicuous – thief would want to run around in bright colours? And then the thief went up onto the speaker's platform on the market place to make some kind of announcement that made little sense. At least, what people told Otto made little sense.
The guard set on one of the rickety desks in the barracks and mulled it all over. But most of all, he tried to make sense of what he had seen himself. Just a few hours ago, he had seen someone whipping a donkey through the town's streets. So far, that was normal. Otto had to think this through in small steps. People often said he was slow, but he just wanted to make sure he got all the details – and that he could trust his own eyes. If he was not mistaken, and he was fairly sure he wasn't, then the man dragged a large artillery cannon behind the donkey. He was pretty sure civilians were not supposed to own cannons.
After a while, when the tight belt around his impressive belly pressed to much into his stomach, he decided to get up. He shuffled over to the captain's room and entered without knocking. It would have been a waste of time anyway, the captain was asleep in his far more comfortable chair and didn't take kindly to being woken in the middle of the day. Otto, who very much preferred shuffling steps to actually doing the work of lifting his legs up all the way, was extra careful to do just that now. His leather boots were far quieter on the clay floor than the wooden shoes of peasants and artisans, and considering his rotund statue, Otto moved impressively silent. On the other hand, the captain had a fairly deep sleep.
The book Otto was after was the only one in the room. It was an old tome of rules and laws that often got pages ripped out and other just put into it in no particular order. As with all things Otto did, he had taken his time with learning to read but in the end, he had managed it by looking at all things that had words on them, the old tome of laws among them.
His lips formed the words as he read them slowly, searching for a paragraph he had read a long time ago. In the end, he found it, grunted contentedly and ripped the page out of the book. Then he slammed it shut.
The captain woke with a start. “What the...?” He looked around, blinking sleep out of the corners of his eyes but all he saw was the door close behind a shadow. The captain closed his eyes again with a grunt.
If he wanted to, Otto could move fast.
Usually, he didn't want to. He eyed the uncomfortable chair longingly and the sword standing against the wall wearily and scratched his head a couple of times. With a sigh, he finally decided to grab the sword and shuffle out of the barracks and towards the town gate.
The dirt road led past fields that stood golden in the autumn sun. People mainly took the street with purpose, seldom strolling or even hesitating to take in a deep breath and even less often to look at the landscape. In general, few people were on this particular road that day, or any day for that matter. The sun had dried all remnants of the rain of the last couple of days and warmed the worker's back as well as the corn on the fields.
Otto wished for the rain back, though. For him, even a little sun always felt too hot, even in the middle of winter when snow crunched under his feet, but on a beautiful autumn day it was just exhausting for him. He looked the fairly straight street along, hoping to still see the man and his cannon there somewhere, but he must have disappeared behind the shallow top of the surrounding hills. Otto pulled up his pants and tightened his belt, then he started his track towards the nearby forest.
He reached the forest panting, even through he had not walked particularly fast. His bald head already felt like it burned and he was glad to enter the shadows of the trees. He blinked a few times to accustom his eyes to the comparable darkness and then again to accustom his mind to the different silence of a forest from the one in the fields.
Birds chirped in the treetops and small animals rustled in the brushwood. Under his feet, still wet leaves crunched and creaked and made his steps a bit faster than before.
Further into the forest, the loud silence of nature was interrupted by loud voices arguing. Otto could not tell about what. The sound of the voices carried, but not their meaning.
But when he reached the charcoal burner's hut, he was greeted by silence. The argument had turned into a more friendly discussion and a few laughs a couple of minutes ago. Three man stood around a cannon, their looks jumping from the weapon to the approaching man.
When Otto had reached a conclusion, he did not like to drag things out unnecessarily and so he straightened himself to his full form. He cleared his throat as audibly as possible.
“For the purpose,” Otto's finger followed the words as he slowly read them from the old piece of paper, over-pronouncing every one of them, “of their work, the hunting of small animals for personal consumption and the protection of house and farm, every citizen may own the necessary weapons.” He cleared his throat again and folded the law into a neat little package that he then stuffed between the seam of his pants and his belly.
Gerald, Peter and Harold looked at each other, waiting for the guard to say more, but Otto kept quiet. He stared at them with an expression of stupid ignorance, as if he wanted them to explain what he had just said.
“Yes?” Harold finally said, minutes later, when the silence made him too uncomfortable. And probably the position he stood in too. Like the other two, his back was crooked as he was interrupted in the middle of looking at an old cannon and hadn't really moved since he noticed the old portly guard.
Otto's stare was unnerving and the three man began to squirm, even though they didn't feel like they had done anything wrong. Harold put his hand on the cannon's bore to keep himself from falling over, Gerald, who half knelt behind the weapon because he had just added the gunpowder, tried to change the knee he sat on while a frown formed on his forehead and Peter looked everywhere but the guard, but mainly into the trees surrounding his hut.
Otto didn't even seem to blink and with every minute that passed, Gerald felt the need more and more to defend himself: “”It's for my protection!”
“Ahmhm.” Otto grunted. Painfully slowly, he reached into his pants, deeper than he put the paper originally and searched deep down for it, never breaking eye contact with Gerald. Even slower, he unfolded the paper again. His lips silently formed the words of the sentence as he read them again, and then he said: “...necessary weapons. All who keep weapons not necessary shall be suspected as being traitors.” Again, he folded the paper to put it in his pants. “A cannon is not necessary to protect yourself. The kingdom needs them, an artisan does not.” Otto almost smiled.
Gerald jumped to his feet, already disappointed from learning that the whole announcement was just a stupid prank but temporarily soothed by the idea to at least test the cannon in front of an appreciating audience. Now he got angry. “But they could have one and I -”
“It's for hunting!” Peter interrupted.
“Hunting?” Three pairs of eyes turned to the charcoal burner, though who had spoken was difficult to tell. “What?”
Peter still looked mainly into the trees and at the on the branches. He focused on a small brown and grey one that observed the scene below with the greatest form of disinterest, chirping contentedly. “Sparrows,” Peter said, first absent-mindedly, then, as if he had come to a conclusion, more forcefully, “Sparrows!”
“You hunt sparrows? With cannons?” Now Otto's stupefied, incredulous look was not his way to get people to react.
“Of course! Why else would we have a cannon? Sparrows are so small and fast, what else would you use? You never get them otherwise!”
That was something Otto wanted to see. As a matter of fact, all of them wanted to see this, and even Gerald agreed in the end, so Peter had to shush him before he said something else they all would regret.
With a ringing thud the cannonball slid into the bore and as if in answer to the sound, the little bird in the tree began to chirp louder. It leaned its head from one side to the other as Gerald turned the cannon a bit towards the tree and then louder as he put a little piece of burning wood against the fuse. The flame danced a bit at the end of the fuse, then it slowly climbed up towards the metal. It seemed to hesitate at its end for a moment before it decided to enter and then...
A loud, resounding bang filled the silence of the forest. The branches of the tree shook and rustled from the sound, but the cannonball did not fly there. Fairly limply, it rolled onto the grass and dark thick smoke filled the air.
Up in the tree, a little sparrow chirped angrily. For a second, it moved its head from side to side as if it were shaking it, then the bird spread its wings and flew away.
----------------------------------------------
Notes:
To shoot at sparrows with cannons is a German idiom (
mit Kanonen auf Spatzen schieàŸen If you want to pronounce it: àŸ is an s
). Unfortunately, idioms can't be translated literally. The English equivalent would be
to crack a nut with a sledgehammer, which is the same kind of idea, but would have no connection to the story. So, in the hopes that the title makes, well, “enough” sense, I did use a literal translation.
Inspiration for this came from a newspaper article about the recent vote about a weapons' ban in Switzerland. This article mentioned that the first shooting club in Switzerland was already established in the 14th century. I assume they meant for bows and crossbows (handguns existed but the
arquebus, the first kind to be really kind of useful, appeared in Europe in the beginning of the 15th century) though they did not elaborate, but I just ended up with this image in my mind of a couple people meeting in the forest with their own personal artillery cannons...
A
gugel is a specific kind of hood from the middle ages and a
liripipe is the tail end of such a hood, just in case you're not familiar with them
