Exile's Valor

“Kiorten and Ledale, center! The rest, circle!” That order called the first of his pairs into the middle of the floor, with the rest around them to observe. It was not as unfair as it might have seemed, to order a pair straight into the next part of the lesson when the rest were getting a breather. Kiorten and Ledale were the strongest and had the most endurance; a Blue and a Heraldic Trainee, and as alike as brothers. They were still relatively fresh after the call. That endurance needed to be tested; they needed to learn what it was like to fight real combat while they were tired.

Now Alberich took up a wooden long sword, to separate them when he saw something that needed either correction or scoring. The two combatants squared off, standing warily, balancing on the balls of their feet. They’d fought often, of course. Though Alberich made a point of rotating partners in practice, he tended to put these two against each other more often than not, just to keep things even. They enjoyed the practices, too, and he had more than a suspicion that they practiced against each other recreationally.

He held his sword out between the two; they tensed, waiting. “One—” he counted, “Two—three— heyla!”

He pulled back the sword and jumped back in the same instant, and they both went on the offensive, which was what he expected from them. They were aggressive fighters, and neither one had learned yet that immediate offense wasn’t necessarily the wisest course to take.

He didn’t separate them, even though they immediately tangled up in the middle of the wooden floor, with Kiorten seizing his opponent’s sword in his free hand and Ledale grabbing the front of Kiorten’s padded jerkin with his. Neither could do anything against the other when they were bound up like that, and a moment later, they broke apart by themselves, circled for a moment, then began an exchange of blows.

Kiorten got a hit, and Alberich stopped the combat for a moment. “Na. Let me look—” He made a quick judgment of position and strength. “Ledale, you are losing the free hand; struck it truly, Kiorten has. Tuck it behind you. Heyla.” Let Ledale judge for himself that he had left that hand out there as an easy target. With the wooden blade, the blow probably only stung a bit, but had it been a real short sword, even with an armored gauntlet, the hand would have been seriously injured.

But Ledale wasn’t taking this lying down; he launched himself at his opponent with a flurry of blows that drove Kiorten back, and scored a hit himself, that made Alberich stop the combat again. “Na—a flesh wound, but you bleed. If this goes on, you weaken. Heyla.”

It didn’t go on for very much longer. Ledale was at a disadvantage with that hand tucked behind him; it made him turn a little too far to the right, leaving his body more open to attack. Kiorten saw that, and saw also that Ledale was going to go aggressive again. So this time, he wisely let it happen, and by the way he avoided the blows, led Ledale in the direction he wanted, until he got a good opening for a body shot. He had to commit everything to that, but he made the full commitment, and the sword thwacked home against Ledale’s torso with an impact that made him grunt in pain.

“Enough!” Alberich called, although he hadn’t really needed to. Ledale backed up immediately, saluted his opponent, and pulled off his helm in surrender.

“Curse you!” he said amiably, though his face was a little white. “I’m going to have a bruise the size of my head for a week, even assuming you haven’t cracked my ribs!”

“See the Healers,” Alberich directed brusquely, as Kiorten pulled off his helm and extended his hand for his defeated opponent to shake. “After lessons.” He knew full well that no ribs were cracked; if they had been, the lad would not have been able to breathe, and what was more, the Trainee’s Companion would immediately have told Kantor, who would have told Alberich. “Ledale, observe. Kiorten, you drop your point too often; go to practice lunges at the mirror. Aldo and Triana, center.”

Two more students came out of the circle to face off against each other in the center, while Ledale took a vacant spot in the circle and his erstwhile partner obediently moved to the side of the room to face one of the full- length mirrors set into the back wall of the salle, and began lunging with his sword fully extended, watching his reflection the way he would watch an opponent.

Those mirrors had utterly shocked Alberich the first time he had seen them. Mirrors were expensive, appallingly expensive, and that much mirrored glass at that size represented a sum of money that had made his head swim. But when he’d gotten over the shock, he had to admit that putting those mirrors there was a brilliant idea, for nothing enabled a student learning anything involving body movement to correct himself like being able to see for himself as well as feel exactly what he was doing right or wrong.

Right now, however, he kept his attention on the two students before him; a pair of the children of the nobly born. Trainees, that is, not Blues, though a pair of Blues would have worked just as hard as these two. Things had certainly changed there—perhaps not in the attitude of those highborn toward him, but at least in the fact that they no longer expressed their contempt for him aloud. And no longer permitted their children to act on that contempt. The Blues for the most part now worked just as hard in his classes as any Heraldic Trainee, and there were no more sneers or other expressions of disrespect in his presence.

As for what happened outside his presence, he cared not at all. If they respected him, well and good. If they feared him, perhaps that was just as good. If neither, as long as they behaved themselves in his class, it mattered not what they thought, nor their parents. Let them revile him behind his back if it pleased them, so long as they maintained respect to his face. Discipline in the salle was what he demanded; so long as he got that, they might actually learn a thing or two from him.

These two, Grays both, were going at it with the same concentration and will—if not skill—as the previous pair. And with a touch less aggression; not so bad a thing, since he preferred to see caution over bravado. When one finally defeated the other, he sent them to observe, rather than to the mirrors.