Read Wizard's Heir (A Bard Without a Star, Book 1) for Free Online Page B

“When I come at you, with my sword like this, raise your sword
across it, and let my blade slide down yours.”
    “But I could force it up and
away, leaving you open.”
    Bran shrugged. “Sure, you could.
But don’t think of it in terms of winning the melee. Think of it in terms of
mastering the blade.”
    “What? That doesn’t make any
sense.”
    “Alright,” Bran said, “let me
turn it into a question: who is more skilled, the warrior who wins, or the
warrior who controls the outcome of the battle?”
    “But shouldn’t they be the
same?” Gwydion asked.
    “It depends on what your goal
is.”
    Gwydion sighed. “I thought my
goal was to be able to beat Gilventhy.”
    “And what is the best way to
accomplish that?”
    “I assumed it was to be the
best warrior possible, and to learn as much about the claymore as possible.”
He looked thoughtful for a moment. “But I read somewhere that you should never
assume anything in a battle.”
    Bran grinned. “Now you’re
beginning to see. Take it one step further: everything you do in life is a
battle. Sometimes it’s obvious, but sometimes it’s not. Yet everything worth
doing has a goal, and that goal is not always to beat your opponent.”
    “You certainly make it simpler
than Math does.”
    “Perhaps that’s because I’m
just a simple kern,” Bran said with a laugh.
    “Simple like a fox. Is this
how you train Gilventhy?”
    “How to be subtle?” Bran
snorted.
    “No,” Gwydion said. “By being
subtle.”
    The smile faded. “You think
that Gil understands?”
    “No,” Gwydion replied. “It
doesn’t surprise me that he chose the most inelegant weapon.”
    The smile returned, slyly. “It’s
inelegant, is it?” Bran raised his sword with one hand and twirled it like a
staff, stopping with the point aimed directly at Gwydion’s heart. “Only in
inexperienced hands.”

    Gwydion had been taking extra
lessons with Bran for a month before Math mentioned it at all. As usual, he
approached the matter bluntly one afternoon as they were training in the tower.
    “Bran is tutoring you well, I
hear.” Math said as he stroked his beard. “Why don’t you ask me what you want
to know about the claymore master?”
    “What do you mean, uncle?”
    “Don’t play the innocent with
me, boy,” Math said sternly. “Bran has talked to me enough to know that you
think he is more than he seems. Yet you ask nothing of me concerning the
matter.”
    Gwydion bowed his head. “You
are right as always, uncle. I believe that there is something unusual about
Bran. I cannot gather my information from the wind yet, so I have been listening
in the ways of normal men: a coin or a cup in a tavern or around a good meal
produces many whispers.”
    “The source of many winds,”
Math said. “An interesting task you set yourself. But the question remains:
why?”
    “Would you have answered me
directly, uncle?”
    “Probably not,” Math said.
    Gwydion smiled. “I didn’t
think so either. So I have been putting my skills to the test on my own terms.”
    Math chuckled into his beard. “An
excellent test of your training so far, even if I didn’t devise it.”
    “Thank you, uncle,” Gwydion
said with a bow.
    “Have you learned much?”
    “Only enough to make me more
confident in my original insight: he is not what he seems. But he is an
excellent teacher.”
    Math said nothing for a moment,
his eyes unfocused. Gwydion started to listen to the winds himself, but his
uncle suddenly said, “Do you think you’ve learned enough to defeat Gilventhy?”
    Gwydion looked down at the
floor, thinking not only of his uncle’s words, but also the meaning behind
them. “I might have,” he said finally. “But I might choose not to.”
    “Explain.”
    “By defeating Gilventhy, I
would set myself up as a target. Everyone would want to challenge me, and I
would lose both strength and focus for my other studies.”
    Math’s beard twitched in a
smile. “Very good. What will