With a Vengeance

by Marcus Wynne

  “How long did it take you to learn to love the mistress of steel, Joe-Seppi?” the man said, as he walked down the hill and towards the instructor. “A longish bit, if I recall correctly…these young guys, it’s going to take them awhile…cut them some slack, eh?”

  Joe Hartlaub’s face lit up in a huge, albeit almost Satanish smile. “Well, as I live and breath, if it’s not the Alleycat his own self.”

  “Meow, meow, that be me,” the man said. “Just a big pussy.”

  Hartlaub’s knife disappeared into a hidden sheath beneath his shirt, one of the amazing concealment sheaths crafted by Mike Sastre of River City Sheaths, modeled on the sheaths of the old riverboat gamblers who prided themselves on their full sized bowies. Then he stuck his hand out at the other man and then pulled him close into an unabashed hug.

  “Great to see you, brother,” Hartlaub said. “Rumor had it you were dead.”

  “Can’t believe everything you hear, brother mine,” the man called Alleycat said. “Or see, for that matter, but then, you already know that, right? I’m just preaching to the choir…”

  “…and you ain’t never been no place but the library, and ain’t never done nothing but sing too loud in the choir, right?”

  Laughter, the deep hearty, unabashed laughter of fighters.

  The man broke the embrace and turned to look at the students, caught Hunter’s eyes, nodded and smiled. “So, Joe-Seppi, you going to introduce me to your crew, or what?”

  “Gather round, men,” Hartlaub said. “Let me introduce you to a legendary figure in our world…” He glanced at the man. “And what name are we using this week?”

  The man laughed. “The real one. Raven. Paul Raven.”

  “AKA the Alleycat,” Hartlaub said.

  “Well, all God’s critters got claws,” Raven said, grinning. He looked around. “Sal Glesser isn’t here, is he?”

  “Not this year.”

  “Tell him to stay home and send that gorgeous Joyce Laituri instead.”

  Hartlaub laughed. “Word, brother. Word. She looks like Sharon Stone, only better.”

  The men all laughed together. Hunter would always remember that day. Raven had charisma, that was for sure, it was something you only really saw in the most alpha of males, and with him it wasn’t a blustery or big and loud thing, it was a quiet, confident, humorous sense of…power. Real power. Not just the power to take a life, though it was apparent very quickly that he had that…just…power.

  Like the Shadow in that old comic book series from the even older radio series. He had the power to cloud men’s minds, and who knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men?

  The Shadow knew.

  And so did Paul Raven.

  “So what are you teaching this year?” Joe Hartlaub said, grinning.

  “No, no, no, Joseph man,” Raven said. “I’m here to play, not to work…”

  “We’ll see,” Joe said. “Got a knife, or do you need to borrow one?”

  “As if,” the other man said, laughing. “As if.”

  Raven reached behind his back and drew out a full size Randall #1 fighter, an old one, the carbon steel almost blue-grey, the leather wrapped handle black with sweat and wear. “Brought my lucky lady with me.”

  “Mana, brother,” Joe said. Hunter noted with interest how the famous knife fighter eyed Raven’s blade. Envy? Maybe. Respect? Maybe so.

  “Let’s play,” Raven said. “Who needs a partner?”

  “I do,” Hunter said, before any one else would answer. “I need one.”

  “Then you’ve got one, young man,” the gray haired man said. “Let’s play.”

  1

  Hunter never forgot that day, the first time he’d faced the Raven across the bridge of steel. There is an assurance, an ease, that only the longest of long time practitioners get with the knife, where it seems as though it’s in fact not an outgrowth of the hand, a deadly razor edged finger, but instead an extension of thought, where pure intention fueled the fluid movement of the blade, seeking out the opening before the other even knew at any level that it was there, poking and slicing and opening the way as though it were a magic wand poking holes in an invisible, magical field of energy.

  Energy.

  That’s what you feel when you’re across from a true master of the blade, the effortless flow of someone fully attuned with an elemental force in the universe, the power to open, to penetrate, in it’s purest sense…the razor’s edge. It’s something that’s hidden from the common eye, the eye without discernment, the discernment that comes from hours turning into months turning into years, forged in sweat and blood, and especially, in the handful of true master, quenched in the blood of an opponent. Man killers have a different feel to them, and especially those that have killed at contact distance with this, the most intimate of weapons, the knife, the oldest warrior’s tool.

  Raven had it in spades.

  He smiled constantly, as though at a private joke, and he always moved with respect. What does that mean? It’s so easy for a master to humiliate a student, to dazzle with moves and techniques and expertise; it’s so much harder, and so much more the test of true mastery, to challenge the student, to bring him to a higher level than he imagined by working him right to the edge of his performance, the performance he isn’t even aware exists in him, but the eye of the master can see, in the same way that a sculptor looks at an ugly block of stone and sees the beauty of the sculpture within.

  Within seconds of crossing blades with Raven, Hunter was drenched in sweat. It wasn’t just that he was working harder than he ever had, it was as though he was training beside a fire, a fire he couldn’t see, but he most certainly could feel.

  “Try this,” Raven said genially. “Easy entry with deception…just like Joe showed you…open with the one line feint…” the old Randall blurred up. “…and then go for the three line…” Hunter hollowed back and then sprang back as the tip of the Randall appeared right before his nose.

  “See how it works?” Raven said. “The body wants to follow the brain, and the brain wants to follow a pattern, so when you give it a pattern, you know where it’s going to go, and then…you interrupt it.”

  “Show me again,” Hunter said.

  Raven grinned. “Once for flow…”

  He feinted at the one line, then the three line, and as Hunter hollowed back showed how he broke his wrist up to put the tip right where Hunter’s face would have been.

  “How do you feel about working live blade with this old guy?” Joe Hartlaub said, from behind, where he’d been watching Hunter.

  “Does give an edge to things,” Hunter said.

  Raven laughed. “As long as you get the point.”

  All three of them laughed.

  “I’d never let anybody else but me train you that way,” Joe said. “Take advantage while you can, young gun.”

  “I’ll keep him as long as he can keep up, Joe,” Raven said. He winked at Hunter.

  “I’ll keep up,” Hunter said.

  “Well, you got the talking part done,” Raven said. “Let’s play.”

  2

  Hours passed like minutes. It was well late into the day, and at the unanimous agreement of the knifers, they had delayed dinner to work into the dusk. Hunter slouched on the grass, back against the coolness of a granite boulder. Raven sat cross legged, surprisingly limber for a man who had to be in his late forties or early 50s, though he moved like a twenty year old.

  “There’s a lot you can do to enhance your use of deception,” Joe was saying. “Study magic, sleight of hand…conjuring tricks all use distraction and deception to lead you to see…or not to see…what the conjurer wants. To a blade master, deception is part and parcel of all that he does…”

  “What’s the point?” the class smart ass, a chubby security guard from Boston who called himself Night Stalker, said. “I mean, in a real knife fight, it’s all going to be over in a second anyway, right? Why waste time with all this deception stuff when all you go
tta do is get your knife out and get it in the bad guy?”

  Raven grinned and shook his head. Joe saw that, and said, “Would you like to answer that question, Paul?”

  “I’ll answer the question with a question…what makes you think that you’ll always be able to get your knife out and get it in the bad guy before he does it to you? I mean, respectfully, you don’t, do you?” Raven said.

  Night Stalker was nonplussed, then said somewhere between his feet. “Uh, no, I guess not.”

  “So here’s my thought, for what it’s worth,” Raven said. “I’m just an old guy, but I’ve seen a thing or two in my time. The one thing certain about combat is that nothing is certain. The human being is a complex organism, and the brain of man, well, it’s an infinite mystery, at the risk of sounding ridiculous. There is nothing for certain when two determined men meet in the ring of steel, and for sure nothing is certain in any kind of face to face fight. So you want to stack every advantage you can…because you never know who you’re going to run into out there on the street, now do you? Look around you, at all of you…you’re here training. How many other people are off training the same way? How many of those people have bad intent? Do you know?”

  He took his time and looked each of us in the eye, a master orator at work.

  “The art of the knife is deception. Deception. “All warfare is deception.” Anybody know who said that?”

  “Sun Tzu. The Art of War,” Hunter said.

  Raven treated Hunter to a huge and approving smile. “Full points to the very aggressive Mr. Hunter James.” Raven turned his attention to the class again. “If you don’t know that book, you should. It’s one of the master works of strategy…and in the unforgiving world of the knife, you must be a strategist as well as a tactician. Solving one problem isn’t good enough if your opponent is thinking ahead, and making you solve the problem the way he wants you to.” He studied Hunter thoughtfully, then went on.

  “It’s not enough to mask your move,” he said. “You must disguise your intent. Intention is what begins all combat…and it’s your first opportunity to sense what’s coming and move to counter it. The most important parts of the OODA loop are Observation and Orientation; the sooner you see it coming, the more time you have to prepare, to orient yourself in the changing landscape of the battle field, whether it’s the desert of Iraq or a dark alley behind a bar, to decide and act…that’s the Golden Skill of the warrior -- the ability to see the fight coming. Most people, most non-warriors, I won’t call them sheep, that’s degrading, but non-warriors -- they don’t even know they’re in the fight until they’ve been hit or till they wake up in the hospital -- if they wake up at all. And there’s a fair number who think they’re warriors…and if they survive that first encounter, then they’ll know whether that’s true or not.”

  Raven grinned, and took his time looking around at the ring of young men hanging on his every word. “And some of you will find that out, some day…”

  He looked at Hunter. A faint grin, the grin he always wore, seemed to deepen as he noticed that Hunter didn’t look away, but met his challenging gaze steadily. He nodded, then looked at the other men. Most of them couldn’t meet his eye.

  “But hopefully not!” Raven went on, a sudden cheery and positive tone in his voice that hadn’t been there before, a tonal shift that immediately and measurably shifted the energy of the group. “Hell, killing people might be messy, and bad karma besides! Let’s just train, and eat!”

  The group dissolved and headed to the lodge for the deferred evening meal. Hunter lingered a little till he saw Raven huddle with Joe Hartlaub. Hunter hesitated a moment, then followed the rest of the men into the dining hall, where a lavish feast, fit for a barbarian horde or a Viking raiding party, was laid out on the tables. Racks of barbequed ribs, a steamship round of beef, platters of steaming potatoes and roasted corn, and plenty to drink -- even beer for those inclined, though most stuck to icy pitchers of water and lemonade.

  Hunter loaded up a plate, heaping on the protein, and turned to look for a place to sit.

  “Come sit with me, Hunter,” Raven said from right behind Hunter’s shoulder.

  Hunter almost started, but caught himself. “Sure, man…”

  The older man led them to a corner table, sat himself with his back to the wall where he had a full view of the room, put his plate with a few slices of beef and a ladle full of steamed vegetables down, then set a napkin and a fork beside it. Hunter sat across from him.

  “You’ll watch my back, right?” Hunter said.

  Raven grinned. “Trusting, are you? This is the wrong crowd for that.”

  Hunter laughed. “I’ll take my chances. At least they’re not managers and bureaucrats.”

  “A-fucking-men,” the older man said.

  They ate.

  Raven was a meticulous eater; he’d cut his meat into small bits, take a deliberate bite, then eat some vegetables, then take a sip of water. Everything he did was precise and neat, almost choreographed.

  “You ever think about time?” Raven asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “About how time passes.”

  “No, I don’t,” Hunter said. He studied the other man curiously. “Why do you ask?”

  “You should,” Raven said. “Time, and how you use it, that’s the integral component of the Golden Skill.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Raven nodded and cut his meat into small, neat squares. “You ever feel impatient with ordinary folks? Civilians, I mean. Non-warriors. Sheeple. Ever feel as though they don’t see what you see, as though they think too slow, like they’re caught in some kind of web or bowl of jelly?”

  “Yeah. Sometimes.”

  “Ever think that maybe they are too slow, and they are caught up in a web? A web of their own thinking, a web they blunder through…ever think that they why that is, is because they can’t see, and what they do see, they see too slowly?”

  “You’ve lost me, man.”

  “No I haven’t,” Raven said, looking Hunter in the eye. “Don’t underestimate yourself.” He tapped his knife on the plate. “You visualize well, right?”

  “Yeah. I work at it.”

  “It shows. I saw that when we were working together. You take the time to visualize what you’re doing before you do it, and that is one of the reasons you pick things up faster. And you pick up on things faster. So visualize this…I want you to close your eyes, and I want you to visualize a clock face. With a second hand. And I want you to see the second hand moving smoothly, sweeping along…it’s important that you just see it moving smoothly along, not ticking from point to point, all right? Let me know when you see that.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yes,” Raven said, a hint of impatience in his voice. “I’m teaching you something. Now.”

  Hunter closed his eye and conjured up an image of a clock face, almost like one of Salvador Dali’s clock faces, and saw the second hand moving smoothly, like the second hand of a Rolex.

  “Okay, I see it,” he said.

  “Now what I want you to do is this…when I tell you go, you count off ten seconds -- but don’t do it verbally, just watch the second hand sweep and when it hits ten say stop. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Okay, ready, go…”

  Hunter watched his hallucination of a second hand go to ten seconds, then said, “Stop.”

  “All right then,” Raven said, satisfaction in his voice. “Want to know your time?”

  Raven had his finger resting on the case of a battered Casio G-Shock held in one hand.

  “Yeah,” Hunter said.

  “Your ten seconds of internal time equals 2.5 seconds of external time, according to my fairly infallible and somewhat battered G-Shock,” Raven said.

  “So what does that mean?” a voice from behind Hunter said.

  Hunter looked at saw about half the class standing in a semi-circle behind him, listening and watching.


  Raven nodded. “Do the math…for every 2.5 seconds of “real” time, whatever “real” means, Hunter has ten seconds internal time. Time in his head. Four times as much time as somebody on “outside” time does. You see what I mean? Some of that is genetic…some of it is a byproduct of experiences and training. It is trainable. You can make it work, if you work it. By having more time to see trouble coming, you have more time for options, decisions…see how it plays into the OODA loop? Observation, Orientation…that’s the entry point into the loop, and the more time you have for observation and subsequent orientation to the situation, the better you are in the situation…the farther ahead of your opponent. See how that applies? If you see the fight coming before your opponent understands that you’ve seen the fight, it puts you ahead of him…and you can cloak your intention, lure him in with the appearance of unpreparedness…”

  “Dude, that’s way too deep for me,” the chubby kid who called himself Night Stalker said.

  Raven gave him a look that was momentarily cold, then softened. Or so it seemed. “Well, dude, give thought to it, or else someday you might find a knife deep in to you!”

  The group laughed, and then began to disperse when Raven stood up.

  “Thank you,” Hunter said. “I appreciate you teaching me that.”

  Raven faced him, and again Hunter was struck by the sense of power that rang off the man; it was something hidden away, and Hunter felt as though Raven were granting him just a glimpse of what lay beneath the surface of the affable teacher he put on for the benefit of the others.