“And after that?”
“A few other things. The ability to move quietly, for one. How to manipulate your opponents, how to predict their next moves. Some battle strategy, maybe. Depends how long we spend on the other stuff to some extent. We’ll see how you’re doing at the end of the year.”
“One year? To learn all of this?”
“Did you hope to learn it sooner?”
“No,” Relam said, aghast. “I expected it to take far longer. I know Master D’Arnlo’s students for instance study for a minimum of three years, usually four.”
“But he is not devoting all his time to a single student,” Oreius pointed out. “And he is not spending every waking hour on that single student, trying to make sure that individual succeeds and is prepared for what lies ahead. He would rather spread his influence over a wider range and take longer to train the students as a group, and train them worse I might add. They’ll be doing quite a bit of group drill, which is mindless and pointless, and won’t even touch on most of the things I teach you, which will keep you alive and give you advantages in every aspect of your life, not just the battlefield.”
“Such as?” Relam asked around a mouthful of meat and cheese.
“The awareness drills will help you perform better against all adversaries, be it in negotiations, in battles, or in court,” Oreius explained. “That’s just one example, of course. There are many others I could use.”
“But you wanted to emphasize the importance of awareness?” Relam guessed.
“Precisely. You may do very well when we come to the part about understanding your enemy,” the old man added thoughtfully, nibbling at his half of the cheese.
“You’re not my enemy,” Relam pointed out.
“No, but you are beginning to understand me. And while I am not your adversary, I will often be your opponent, especially when we are sparring. Understand Relam, that you will lose the vast majority of our bouts. Nearly all of them, in fact. Even in those moments when I am driving you beyond your limits, I am not your enemy. I am your best friend because each one of our training sessions could very well save your life one day.” The old warrior leaned forward and stared at Relam, his blue eyes boring into the prince.
“Is that abundantly clear, Relam?”
Relam nodded slowly, realizing that Oreius had used his name for the first time. Maybe he was getting used to having a student finally? Or was he starting to connect with Relam, to regard him as someone worth his time.
“Yes, Oreius. I understand perfectly.”
“Good,” the old warrior said, nodding. “Make sure you remember this conversation when you are frustrated or upset during your training. Every word of it was the truth. Now,” the old warrior continued briskly. “Let’s get back to work, boy! There’s daylight wasting and you have a lot to learn.”
Oreius whisked away the plates and returned them to the kitchen, then strode outside before Relam had even risen from his chair. Relam rose resolutely and followed, suspecting that the afternoon was going to be just as challenging as the morning had been.
Chapter 27
“Right,” Oreius said, moving to the center of the glade and clapping his hands together. “Practice patterns. Before we get started on anything new, I want to see how well you know the old stuff. That way I know where to focus my teachings as we go forward. Make sense?”
“Yes,” Relam said, drawing his sword.
“Good. Get started.”
Relam took up a ready stance and took a deep, calming breath, closing his eyes as he inhaled, opening them as he exhaled. He focused on the glittering blade held vertically in front of him, and began the first sequence. Side cut, overhand, backhand, thrust, slash.
“Faster,” Oreius barked.
Relam increased his pace, flowing from one blow to the next, meticulously striking exactly where he was supposed to.
“Faster!” Oreius said again. “Good grief, boy, did Tar let you practice that slowly?”
“Master Agath always said that precision was more important than speed,” Relam grunted.
“So it is,” Oreius agreed. “But having both is even more important.”
Relam nodded. “Probably, yes.”
“No, no probably about it,” Oreius countered. “You can have all the precision you want and move at the speed of a snail. There’s only one result in that contest.”
“I lose?”
“You’ll be dead!” Oreius snapped. “Now, come on! Faster! Like your life depends on it. There’s a wild northern raider facing you, intent on separating you from your head and plundering a village.”
Relam made no comment, merely increased his pace so that his sword was a glittering arc of steel, never stopping in one place, always on the move, striking and withdrawing before an opponent had any hope of retaliating. Even in his fiercest bouts with Cevet he had not fought so hard or so quickly.
“Hmm,” Oreius muttered, walking around Relam, analyzing his work from all angles. “Pattern two!”
Relam switched instantly. Thrust, thrust, overhand, backhand, side cut-
“Pick it up, boy!”
There was no time for thought anymore. Relam flowed from stance to stance, struck and withdrew, performing the patterns Tar had drilled into him with an instinct and speed born of hours of repetition and painstaking care. His sword was positively humming in his hands as he slashed and cut and thrust.
“Third!”
The young prince hesitated for the barest moment between patterns, then made the adjustment. Oreius continued to circle around him, staying just out of reach of Relam’s blade, brow furrowed, eyes flicking from Relam’s sword, to his arms, to his chest, and to his footwork.
“Fourth!”
Relam was panting from exertion now, sweat streaming from his limbs and forehead, dripping into his eyes and forcing him to blink constantly. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep up the grueling pace.
“Fifth!”
The call, coming from somewhere behind Relam, startled him and he faltered. Then, it was back into action, performing the fifth sequence at the same instinctive speed Oreius had demanded of the previous four patterns. After several minutes of the fifth pattern, Oreius stopped pacing in front of Relam, looking at him dispassionately.
“Halt.”
Relam finished the last stroke and returned to the ready stance, chest heaving.
“At ease,” Oreius said after a moment, clasping his hands behind his back.
Relam allowed his sword point to drop, so that it pointed towards the ground, but he continued to stand straight, breathing deeply and trying to recover. Oreius nodded approvingly.
“Good, excellent discipline. No collapsing or folding over during the break, no instant urge to sit down. Tar did well for you there.”
“Thanks,” Relam gasped.
“Take a moment,” Oreius said, waving a hand dismissively. “Then we’ll get back to it, starting with the sixth pattern. If you need a drink, there’s a rain barrel and some beakers by the left wing there, next to the gutter.”
Relam followed the sword master’s pointing finger and saw the rain barrel. He walked over to it quickly, stumbling slightly from fatigue. Then, he plunged one of the wooden mugs into the barrel, filling it to the brim and drank deeply. Once his initial thirst had been slaked, the prince refilled the mug and sipped at it more slowly, knowing that too much water too fast was a bad idea.
“And water discipline,” Oreius observed. “Most impressive. Important, if you ever try to cross Gobel-Tek in the summer or the deserts near Mizzran.”
Relam set the mug down abruptly. “This is a test, isn’t it?” he realized. “All of it?”
“Of course,” Oreius replied.
Relam shook his head wearily. “I should have known,” he muttered. “You’re testing every skill or bit of knowledge I have ever had, every habit, every movement, every thought?”
“Well, I haven’t perfected mind reading, so evaluating your thoughts
is a little harder,” Oreius said. “But yes. Everything is being evaluated. That way, I know you as well as possible and I know how to relay knowledge and skill so that it sticks and doesn’t go straight through to your other earhole and bouncing down to the river once it shoots out the other side.”
“It’s sticking,” Relam assured Oreius, shaking his sore arms. “Speed and precision.”
“Survival,” Oreius added, inclining his head. “The faster, more precise fighter wins. Not the strongest, mind you. Strength is important but endurance, skill, knowledge, those are far more useful in the heat of battle.”
“You keep talking about battle,” Relam noticed. “Do you mean like in a war? With thousands of men all around you and galloping horses and siege engines firing and arrows whistling back and forth?”
“An eloquent description,” Oreius noticed. “And an oversimplification, but yes. That is what I mean by battle. But I usually think of it as chaos. Death. Darkness, sometimes even despair.”
“That’s rather gloomy,” Relam muttered.
“But far more accurate,” Oreius promised. “Your minute is up, back to work. And don’t even think about slowing your pace down, boy.”
Relam took up the ready stance once more, though his muscles were starting to feel wrung out and sore already. No practice session with Tar had ever been so painful. But Relam trusted Oreius, trusted that the old warrior knew what he was doing, and trusted that the work he was putting in would help him become the best warrior he could be.
Relam spent the next hour moving through the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth patterns. Oreius paced around him the entire time, noting his technique, occasionally providing pointers or curt orders to pick up the pace. But for the most part he was silent, watching and evaluating. Never in that span did he call a halt or allow Relam to rest. By the end of the tenth pattern, Relam’s arms felt like metal rods, clumsy, heavy, and slow. But when Oreius called the halt, he defiantly returned to the ready position and held the blade aloft, though he wanted more than anything to collapse on the ground and pass out.
His determination was rewarded with a curt nod from Oreius, just before the warrior told him to relax. Relam let his blade drop once more and made for the water barrel. The day had grown uncomfortably warm during the last hour, despite the pleasant shade provided by the trees and the refreshing cool breeze blowing up from the river.
“How do you feel?” Oreius asked, joining Relam at the water barrel.
“Exhausted,” the prince admitted with a tired grin. “That’s the hardest I’ve ever worked.”
“You’ll work even harder before I’m through with you,” Oreius promised, filling a mug for himself and sipping slowly. “Tar did well with you on the first ten patterns. Very well, actually. You were precise, and you know them so well that upping the speed to somewhere between unreasonable and impossible hardly affected your technique.”
Relam frowned. “You mean I won’t always have to fight at that speed?”
“Exactly,” Oreius agreed. “The speed was more a test of how well you knew what you were doing than a test of your strength or endurance. Both of which are impressive, by the way.”
“Thanks.”
“The one major lacking so far has been your balance and footwork,” Oreius continued heedlessly. “The timing of some of your thrusts was off and your feet tend to stay still for far too long. You need to be moving to get the full power out of your strokes. The next ten patterns will help with these flaws.”
“They will?”
“Yes, they will, I’m making them up in my head as we speak.”
“They’re not standard?”
“Of course not!” Oreius said, frowning. “Well, I suppose D’Arnlo and Yavvis probably use the same set with their students, but I believe that the second set of patterns should be designed to help students with their greatest failing. Take their weakness and eventually make it a strength as it were.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t, not yet. But you will,” the warrior promised, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “The other aspects of your ability to fight will improve too, but footwork is going to be key. Now, you said you’re exhausted, so I think we’ll stick to demonstrations for the next hour or so, let you get your strength back.”
Relam sighed with relief. “I appreciate that,” he said with a grin, stretching his tired muscles.
“It’s not to avoid causing you pain, it’s to avoid you forming bad habits and shortcuts due to your exhaustion,” Oreius growled, moving back to the center of the glade. “Come on, boy!”
The prince sighed and trotted after Oreius, sheathing his sword as he did, reflecting that he should have known that the unexpected break wasn’t so much a reward as it was a necessity.
“Focus,” Oreius said briskly, drawing his own sword. “This will be pattern eleven for you. Watch closely now. I’ll start out slow so that you can see what I’m doing.” He assumed the ready position, then frowned. “Actually, I think I’ve just thought of a better way of doing this. Get up.”
Relam stood and joined Oreius hesitantly, wondering if the old warrior was about to rescind his break. “Draw your sword,” Oreius grunted.
The prince drew his blade again, wincing, its familiar weight burning at the end of his arm.
“Are you strong enough for this?” Oreius asked, sounding concerned for once. “I don’t want you to pull or tear any muscles, and I did say I would give you a break.”
Relam considered this. A break would be wonderful, but he suspected that he would learn better if he participated. “I’ll be fine, as long as we take it slow,” he decided.
“Then we’ll take it slow,” Oreius replied, chewing his lip. “Now, I am going to attack, slowly, and as I attack I will instruct you how to defend, slowly. Then, I will instruct you on how to attack and we’ll mix it up from there. The combination of attack moves and defensive moves will become pattern eleven. Does that make sense?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Now, I lead with a thrust to your left side,” Oreius said, demonstrating with exaggerated care. “You turn side on to counter and deflect away from your body . . . good form! Now, left foot forward and side cut from your right-”
“My right?” Relam asked, already halfway through a left side cut.
“Yes, your right,” Oreius confirmed. “Bring the blade up and around behind you, builds more power that way. And your opponent would expect a left side cut.”
“Makes sense,” Relam agreed, performing the right side cut. “What next?”
“I parry,” Oreius said, demonstrating. “Now you thrust, left side cut, right side cut, always moving forward,” Oreius said, stepping backwards as Relam advanced. “Good! Now I deflect and cut overhand, you block overhead, left foot back for support. And now I side cut, thrust, thrust and you back, back, back, deflect all of them.” They ran through the series of three moves in slow motion, placing their feet carefully. “And . . . we’re right back where we started, perfect,” Oreius observed, looking around the glade cheerfully. “That went better than I expected.”
“That’s it?” Relam asked.
“Yes. That is pattern eleven. Do it again, slowly, to try and get the feel of it.”
Relam frowned in concentration, then took up the ready stance. Oreius lunged forward and Relam turned side on, dropping his left foot back and deflecting the thrust. Then, he followed with the right side cut, feeling the momentum his sword gained as he spun and slashed. Oreius parried and Relam moved into the next series of three moves: thrust, left side cut, right side cut. Oreius deflected each, then came on the attack and Relam backed away, deflecting each blow until he was back at his starting position.
“That wasn’t so bad,” he said grinning.
“It shouldn’t have been,” Oreius said sternly. “There are grandmothers in this city who could perform those moves at such a speed.”
Relam’s grin faded and he shrugged. “Point ta
ken.”
“Faster now,” Oreius said. And without further warning, he attacked. Relam nearly botched the first move, surprised as he was, but he quickly recovered. Their blades screeched as they connected then separated. Then, Relam was on the attack again, only to have Oreius turn the tables and drive him back.
“That was a little harder,” Relam agreed.
“How are you holding up?”
“All right,” Relam said stiffly. In truth, his shoulders were burning and his arms were wondering what had happened to the break they were supposed to be taking.
“Good, then we can go again, faster this time,” Oreius growled.
The sword master struck like chain lightning, Relam barely keeping up. Each impact shook Relam to the core and jarred his right hand alarmingly. When he parried the final blow in the sequence he nearly dropped his sword, gasping in pain as he tried to loosen his clenched hand around the hilt.
“Something the matter?” Oreius asked mildly. “Not holding up as well as we thought?”
“No,” Relam replied, setting down his sword and shaking his right hand out.
“Don’t be afraid to admit weakness, boy. It’s better than lying to me.”
“I wasn’t-” Relam started to say. Then he noticed the skeptical look Oreius gave him. “Well . . . maybe I wasn’t quite as recovered as I implied,” he admitted.
“I should think not,” Oreius agreed. “Now, since it appears that you are not capable of working through this pattern any further, let’s take a moment and develop pattern twelve. Are you up to that?”
“Yeah,” Relam said, picking up his sword again. “I think I can do that.”
Oreius took a little longer developing the twelfth pattern, adding in side steps and ducks to complicate things. The first time they tried the pattern all the way through, the two combatants ended up some five meters from their starting points. Oreius made a few adjustments and they tried again, this time barely missing the starting point.
The Prince (Heirs of Legacy Book 1) Page 33