yet; this was the point in the practice where experience was the teacher, and there was nothing quite like the experience of a good bruise to drive the lesson home.
Again, he sped up the call, forcing them to move a little faster than they were used to. But now they were beginning to tire. The response was getting ragged again, and some of the students began dropping some of the sequence as weary muscles failed to keep up with the cadence. Time to stop, and go on to individual lessons.
âRest!â he barked, and at that welcome command, the points of a dozen wooden practice blades dropped to the wooden floor with a loud thwack.
âKiorten and Ledale, center! The rest, circle!â 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. Theyâd 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. âOneââ he counted, âTwoâthreeâ heyla! â
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 wasnât necessarily the wisest course to take.
He didnât separate them, even though they immediately tangled up in the middle of the wooden floor, with Kiorten seizing his opponentâs sword in his free hand and Ledale grabbing the front of Kiortenâs 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. âNa. Let me lookââ He made a quick judgment of position and strength. âLedale, you are losing the free hand; struck it truly, Kiorten has. Tuck it behind you. Heyla.â 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 wasnât 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. âNaâa flesh wound, but you bleed. If this goes on, you weaken. Heyla.â
It didnât 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 Ledaleâs torso with an impact that made him grunt