by Travis Kerr
When they finally stopped for the night Drom was already exhausted. His day, however, was not yet over. While Tara prepared a small fire for their campsite, Malik left them at their makeshift campsite, looking for wood of a different kind than the firewood Tara collected. In a few moments he returned with two stout sticks, perhaps two inches thick and nearly four feet long. He tossed one of them to Drom.
"While Tara gets dinner ready for her and I, I'll begin your instruction. Tomorrow will be a shorter day, so you’ll have time to gather wild greens to cook yourself a hot meal. For tonight, you'll have to deal with a couple of oranges.
“Now, before I can teach you how to attack or defend yourself with a sword, you'll need to learn how to hold one. Hold the stick out in front of you as if it was a sword. Let it rest between your thumb and your index finger. Grip mostly with the index finger and your middle finger, leaving the last two fingers on your hand loose. Like this," Malik showed him using his own stick, his little finger putting almost no pressure at all on the makeshift weapon.
Drom tried to copy the grip on the stick he had been handed, though Malik had to adjust his grip slightly. It felt as if the wood only floated in his hand.
Surely such an insecure grip can't block or attack without me losing my hold, he thought.
"Wouldn't I get a stronger swing if I gripped it tighter?" he asked. "This just feels like a really weak grip."
"If you held it the way you're suggesting it would be easy to knock it out of your hand," Malik answered candidly. "You leave your grip loose until you move, whether you strike or block. The same is true for the muscles in your arms. Your natural response is to tense up. However, a tense muscle takes longer to move than a loose one. When you strike, don't swing with just your arm. Swing your hips and waist with it. At the last second, tighten the grip on your last two fingers. It will add speed and strength to your attack. Watch what I do, and swing like this."
In one swift, easy move he shifted his body to the side, striking a thin sapling next to him with a vicious hit. The wood collided with a loud crack, sending bark flying in all directions. It seemed to Drom as if the assassin had hardly put any strength into the attack at all, yet the results were obvious.
"Now you try it," Malik instructed. "Step into your swing and strike as hard as you can. Don't forget to keep your muscles loose until the moment you strike, then tighten your grip just before you hit. The weapon will flow into the strike naturally. Just move with it."
Drom did as he had been told, and swung with all his strength at a sapling like the one Malik had hit. The tree shook violently from the blow. Unfortunately, so did Drom's hand.
Ouch!
He nearly dropped the stick when it hit. His arm felt numb all the way up to his elbow, tingling as if it had fallen asleep. Malik choked back a laugh.
"Now you see why you don't want such a strong grip," he joked. "Remember to leave your hand loose until just before the moment of contact. When you tighten down on the last two fingers it will pull the weapon into the swing naturally. Also, I noticed that you put nearly all of your power into the blow, but most of that power came from your arm. Fighting like that you'll tire yourself out quickly, and your blows won't cause any more damage than they would if you used your body instead. Move your hips into the strike, and don't use as much of your arm. You'll be faster and will be able to fight longer without tiring that way. Try again."
This time Drom managed with effort to avoid tightening his grip too soon. His mind told him to grip it as hard as he could, but he had been told otherwise.
Just relax and do as you were told.
The stick swung around hard, cracking the tree with a thwack. It wasn't as hard or nearly as fast as it had been when Malik did it, but at least he didn't hurt himself again.
"Better," Malik observed. "Not great, but it's a beginning anyway. There are four types of sword strikes. Only four. Everything else is either a variation of those movements or it's not being done correctly. The first is the on-side strike, which you just used on that sapling. The second is the off-side strike. For that strike you move you arm forward, just as you would with the on-side strike, but at the last moment you turn you wrist and pull your body weight in the opposite direction. This will turn the sword around to strike at the other side of your opponent’s body, Like this."
As before he demonstrated the attack technique, this time striking the tree on the opposite side. Drom had seen Malik fight before, and knew the man was slowing down his movements considerably. Even at the slower speed Drom could still just barely see the change in the man's grip.
He tried his best to copy the move, finally completing it passably after the third attempt. It wasn't great, by any means, but it was at least he was beginning to understand how the weapon would move.
This is nothing like the grips and movements I used when I was using the tools on my father’s farm, he thought.
"For today we're going to work only with those two attacks. Whether you are striking the head, the body, or the legs, it still uses the the same body motions of those two techniques." Malik punctuated each of the strike locations by demonstrating them as he marked them off, leaving three clear, precise marks on each side of the young tree, one for each height of the body parts he spoke of. Drom followed suit, though his movements were slow and sloppy in comparison to the smooth gliding motion of Malik's strikes.
"By using the momentum from one strike as it bounces off the target, you can flip the weapon to strike the other side. Your movements will be much faster that way. Watch closely." Malik struck hard with an on-side shot, then spun the weapon and flipped his wrist, striking the other side in a blur.
Wow is he fast!
Drom could barely follow the attack, though with the description he had been given he knew what Malik had done.
"Practice that attack three hundred times, then you can stop for the night to eat," Malik instructed. "Don't forget to move your body into the strike. All of your power comes from your body. I'll watch and let you know if you’re doing anything incorrectly."
"Three hundred times?" Drom was daunted by the prospect of striking the tree like that so many times.
Is he serious That will take over an hour!
"Yes, three hundred times," he repeated. "You've never used a sword in your life. We need to get your body used to the motions. After a few weeks of practicing those strikes you'll find that the movements come far easier to you than they will right now. The easier it becomes, the faster you will become. Remember, strength can allow you to fight longer and hit harder, but speed is how you win. You saw the other day how good that trog's strength served him. I defeated him so easily, in part anyway, because I was much faster than he was. Well, that and just simple skill. This is how you begin. This practice teaches you how to move, and the speed will come naturally."
He could not see how hitting a tree over and over again was going to turn him into a great swordsman, but he did as he was told and began swinging. Several times Malik stopped him, changing minor details like how he placed his feet, how he moved his body, or how he held the stick he was using in place of a sword. After a time he began feeling a certain rhythm to the movement, and he noticed that, without trying, he had started moving much faster.
Malik watched him closely the entire time. Once Tara had finished roasting several strips of boar over the fire she joined him. As the two idly munched on the meat, Drom wondered what they could have been thinking about.
Am I actually doing well, or am I really as bad at this as I feel?
Certainly his two companions seemed to find him amusing, though they didn't say anything aside from the minor changes Malik would make from time to time.
By the time Drom had finally finished with his sword practice he was starving. Strangely enough however, he no longer felt as tired as he had when the group had first stopped for the night. In fact, he felt invigorated. He fell into the tangy oranges with gusto, barely taking the time to peel the first two b
efore gulping them down. In a few minutes he had already eaten four. He stopped himself there, not wanting to eat too much at once and dwindle his supplies too quickly.
"Eat as much as you need," Tara told him. "Tomorrow evening you'll have plenty of time to gather more food. I'm not sure if there are oranges there, mind you. I've occasionally used them to flavor the meat I'm cooking, but I don't really eat them, so I don't really remember if there are any orange trees there or not. I know for sure, however, that you'll be able to find something you can eat. There used to be farms all along here. You'll find that in most of the places we'll be stopping for camp you can gather some sort of food. I know where we are stopping tomorrow is right beside a small lake. I fish there when we are in that area. There are plenty of edible plants Malik has gathered there while I fished, so I know you'll find something."
Even with such assurances, he stopped after only two more oranges, which was a generous enough meal even for him. He was used to eating more greens and grains, and the rich citrus fruit was hard on his stomach. As he lay down to sleep for the night, he heard Trick fly down from the trees somewhere above them.
Trick hasn’t come down to join us all day. Surely the animal must be hungry.
Drom had seen the animal eat regularly throughout the day when Malik was still calling himself Garan, yet somehow the creature had gone all day without eating as far as he had seen.
I wonder just how intelligent Trick really is. I’ve never heard of a pet that could follow instructions well enough to ignore its own needs.
As Drom fell asleep to the sounds of crickets and the rustling of small animals in the wilderness around them, he wondered once again why he trusted his new companions at all. Everything he knew about them suggested that they were not people he should really associate with, and yet for some reason he found he trusted them completely. He just couldn't understand why.
Chapter Five
Drom woke up to find his companions already awake and ready to leave. He sighed. He had hoped that somehow this day might start out differently than every other morning had over the past several weeks.
I should have known better, he thought.
Today, just like every other day, they would walk until nearly sundown. Then, before he would be allowed to eat whatever he could scrounge up for himself for a meal, Malik would instruct him in the use of the sword.
Most of that time he spent monotonously hitting small trees with sticks. Malik insisted that he needed to create muscle memory, so that should he need to use his weapon in a real confrontation he would do so naturally. Or so that was the theory at least. Still, Drom was skeptical. How smacking a tree over and over again was suppose to make him a good swordsman was beyond him.
Thankfully, Malik and Tara had not lied about the amount of food they would find along the path they followed. It seemed that no matter where they were there was always something to eat. Drom was sure he wouldn’t have made it if he had to go on sparse rations. He never knew what he was going to get each night, but there was always something, and it was always plentiful.
Tara ate nothing but meat. Her species, it seemed, was entirely carnivorous. Trick was the same way, eating small scraps of meat that Malik gave them when they stopped for the night.
Drom was amazed by the small animal. Even he had trouble going for such long periods without eating, yet the dragonling stayed away from the group every day, right up until nightfall.
Perhaps Trick hunts for himself during the day, eating small rodents and the like, he thought.
If that was the case Drom never saw him doing it.
Malik would eat nearly anything put before him. It didn't seem to matter in the slightest if it was cut from an animal or grown in the earth. Drom couldn't even tell if the human preferred one over the other. He seemed to enjoy them both equally.
At least Malik won’t ever go hungry.
Drom had thought that his father grew nearly every fruit and vegetable worth eating on his farm, but Malik knew about all sorts of edible plants he had never even heard of. He had eaten things on this road that were unlike anything he had ever tried before. Not all of them were things he wanted to try again, but there were others that were quite tasty.
With two carnivores in the group they had to both hunt and fish regularly. Every time the group caught an animal they had to kill for meat, Malik made Drom do the killing. The sorvinian man hated every minute of it, but he understood why Malik made him do it. He wanted Drom to get used to death. He wanted him to understand the need to take life, whether to feed his companions or to protect them.
Drom still wasn't sure if he could take the life of a humanoid, regardless of which race that victim belonged to, but for the first time in his life he began to consider it.
Perhaps in an emergency, if someone I care about was being threatened or my own life was in danger.
Even then he wasn't sure he would be able to bring himself to do it. He just hoped it didn't become necessary, at least not for a long while. The very thought of it put his nerves on edge.
The first time the group stopped at a still body of water, Drom stared in amazement at the stranger staring back at him. His face was bright red, as was the false hair on his head. He remembered that Malik had said the skin on his face had been pale white before. Now with the fur shaved off the sun had burned his skin terribly.
It just won’t stop itching!
In time, Malik assured him, that burn would darken into a tan. Until then he should try not to scratch it, the assassin told him, or the skin would start peeling before it was ready.
Every few days Tara shaved his face again. If he wanted to continue to look human he had no other choice. Once the fur grew back it would be obvious to anyone who might see him that he wasn't human. Unfortunately, the constantly regrowing hair irritated his itching skin all the more.
Within the first week or two Drom felt certain that Malik knew exactly where they would be stopping on each leg of the journey. The campsites they stopped at were never right on the road. Sometimes they were as much as a half mile into the woods to one side or the other. No matter how hard Drom looked he could never see any sign that would indicate a trail, but somehow his companion found these hidden clearings night after night without fail.
His training was going remarkably well, if Malik's observations were to be believed. After the first week Malik started training him in hand to hand combat as well as his sword training. There was far more to fighting than Drom could ever have realized.
It was not just throwing a punch or a kick like he would have thought. Each movement, even a small change in the position of his feet, would make a huge difference in how an attack presented itself.
Where he hit was just as important as how he moved, he learned. Malik taught him each point of weakness, which bones could be broken, the position of organs and how to strike them, and every conceivable way to inflict the greatest amount of damage possible.
His own techniques were not the only aspect of combat he was taught. Malik also taught him how to predict his opponent’s movements based on how they positioned themselves. Malik informed him that, once he was better at it, he would know what his enemy would do three steps or more before they did it.
For the most part Malik barely said anything at all outside of his instructions, choosing instead to simply watch as Drom practiced each movement over and over again. Drom wouldn't have believed that his training was really going well at all, however Malik rarely corrected his stances or movements any longer, so he must not have been doing too badly.
The main changes that Malik would make was in his footwork. He would often step just a little bit out of place when he moved forward or back. It didn't seem to make much of a difference in his attack techniques, but Malik insisted on correcting it each time.
Drom decided on a new name for himself during the first week of the journey. He called himself Roland, after a fictional hero in one of the stories his mother told him as a child. Unlike her
histories, which she insisted were true tales from ancient days, the tales of Roland had no basis in truth. They were tales that were once used to teach morals to children, which is the reason his mother had told them to him.
Roland had not been like most heroes, not any Drom had heard of anyway. He was not good looking or overly skilled. Instead he was just a normal, average man, who found himself in a difficult situation, overcoming it through shear force of will and more than his fair share of luck. Drom hoped that, should he find himself in a similar situation, he would fare as well.
As expected, his companions had no difficulty with the new name. For people who shed their names as quickly as snakes would shed their skin it would be quite easy for them to deal with his name change.
The background he chose for his new persona was not that different from his own, as Malik had suggested. Since he now appeared human he fed into that, claiming to have come from a family of human farmers in the north. That way, should he for some reason be questioned, his story was more likely to be believed. After all, he really had grown up on a farm, and knew plenty about that lifestyle.
"We should reach the city in about three more days," Malik announced after days of saying nearly nothing at all. "We'll need to leave the road about a mile up ahead to gather herbs that grow in the woods there. Not many people know about them and they're difficult to get to, so I'm almost certain they'll still be there. We can sell them to merchants in the marketplace once we are in the city."
"I thought you were meeting your contact in the city?" Drom, now Roland, questioned. "Why do you want to gather herbs to sell?"