Combat Axe
COMBAT AXE. (See also, BLUNT FORCE, TOOLS, WOOD AXE) The axe is one of the earliest tools used by man, and the combat axe was not far to follow its more practical, wood-splitting brethren into the lives of humankind. Gripped with two hands, the combat axe is an object of blunt force that can fracture and splinter bone, causing serious damage, particularly when applied to the head.
The combat axe, or battle axe, has been used throughout history, with early examples of the metal variety dating back to the early 1300s. Stone-headed axes were used in battle as early as the 7th century, historians say. Though because axes have been an important tool to humankind throughout history, it is not always possible to prove conclusively which were used for wood, for battle, or for other necessities.
Examples of combat axes found in Louisiana that have been dated to the late 1800s show signs of heavy modification, with additions of metal plating and barbed wire to increase the instrument's brutality, stability, and effectiveness.
Unpublished manuscript, "Bad As They Seem
Author: Hayden Collins
Undated
Bleached paper, typewritten, 8.5x11 in
-1-
The mother left them before they were born. Internal bleeding. External bleeding. The father left them shortly afterwards. It wasn't the labor that killed her.
She hadn't known there would be two, so there had only been one name. Josefina. They pulled the infants apart, severed the cords, and severed the name: one Josie, one Fina. They went into the care of an uncle, a blacksmith. He had no children, and a wife buried with the yellow fever, so he apprenticed the girls, now women, in the smithy.
They learned to hammer, to forge, and to fight. The first knife Fina made broke against Josie's first axe. Everything they built they tested against the other in the yard of the smith. Their first attempts splintered and broke, but they grew stronger, in the fire and in the fight. Their uncle watched them with pride and trepidation. Fire and fury. Fina and Josie. Fin and Jos.
Two days past their sixteenth birthday a man named William Durant killed the blacksmith, and they reached for their tools.
Unpublished manuscript, "Bad As They Seem
Author: Hayden Collins
Undated
Bleached paper, typewritten, 8.5x11 in
-2-
He was no longer their uncle, but had taken on the role of father, and as the killing blow landed against his skull
(soft against the weight of the combat axe sent into it), his two girls, yes, his daughters, were entering the room, blackened by soot from the forge and thinking only of dinner and rest.
You might think that this was the moment of transformation, the fabled turning point. And it was the first step taken on the path that would lead them to the hunters. But their fate was already laid out before them. They had been born into violence, baptized by it, and come of age as midwives to its tools.
The twin girls backed silently out of the door at the gruesome sight, and returned to the forge, each choosing a weapon from those they had made and hung on the walls to display to customers. For Jos, a sledgehammer. For Fin, a crossbow and a single arrow whose fletching, shaft, and point she had fashioned with her own calloused hands.
Back in their kitchen, where the corpse of their uncle-father lay in a pool of warm blood on the floor, the stranger still stood, panting as he leaned against the handle of the axe he had taken from their own shed on his way inside. They were silent as cats, circling. They had but one question:
"What is your name?"
The man blinked and answered in a rough, wooden voice. "William Durant."
Jos swung the sledge hammer as Fin fired her bow into the skull of William Durant, whose blood joined that of his victim's, warming the cold stone floor.
