I am no fool. I was not as incompetent as he and the rest of the school imagined.
I read about war mages that had fought tens of knights with a simple sweep of their staff, mages who had learned archery only to invoke a rain of razor sharp blades upon their rivals, mages who had studied the foundations of architecture and then sent their enemies’ castles crumbling to the ground.
It was time to train. Hard.
I had a robe to wear after all.
“Come on, Ryiah, pay attention!”
“I am!” I groaned and deflected another blow, scrambling to get my defense up in time.
I barely managed.
“Again,” Ella shouted.
I made another mad attempt to defend myself.
And then another.
And then I cried out as my friend’s staff came into contact with my ribs, and I dropped my pole. I’d guessed wrong again.
“Once more, where am I coming from?” She held her stance, willing me to try and see what it was I had missed the first time.
I watched my friend closely, trying to figure out where her next strike would be. All signs pointed to a low upswing from the left, but I had made that mistake before, and my ribs were paying dearly for it now.
I frowned. Her shoulders were deceptively loose with her eyes drifting ever so slightly to my right, and her hands gripped the staff at a crooked angle. I had seen it all before. What was I missing? Pay attention… but to what?
Ella had spent enough time reminding me not to be too sure of myself. Any good opponent will try to trick you, she’d said. Anyone that practiced close range fighting would know the importance of deceit. Let your enemy think they’ve got you figured out, make it look like they can see where you’re coming—not too obvious, just enough so that they get cocky. If someone thinks they know your next move, they are more likely to let their guard down.
“Look at me, Ryiah,” Ella said again. “Where is my staff going to land?”
I tried to see the impossible. Sweat stung my eyes as my gaze traveled up and down my friend’s build, searching desperately for a sign.
Then I saw it.
Her knees were lightly bent, feet apart, with the right heel slightly off the ground. It was easy to miss—her dark boots were bulky and obscured sight easily—but there was a slight indent in the leathers on the right front of the foot that betrayed where she had shifted her weight.
“You’re going to come from the right with a top-swing,” I announced confidently.
Ella relaxed her form. “You are learning,” she said happily. A little too enthusiastically for someone that had constantly assured me I was doing well. I briefly wondered if she really had believed that, and then buried the thought at once.
“It’s funny,” I noted, as we retired our weapons for the evening. “Each day Piers and Cedric ask me to practice in a blindfold, and then you make me watch whenever we train out here.”
“Well four days with me is not an eternity,” Ella replied. “And for you, I really think you need a better grasp of the basics. It’s a little ambitious what they are putting us through. I think the masters are so used to highborns coming from private tutelage that they forget what it’s like for the rest. My background at least came in handy, but for you it’s a matter of tireless diligence.”
I groaned.
For the rest of that week and the next, Ella and I continued our daily practices. It was an endless cycle of madness, but fortunately I did not fall any further behind.
In the meantime, two straight weeks with Ella correcting my form and watching my every move had paid off. I was still as sore as that first day I had arrived, but I could tell my breathing was much less labored in the drills Piers put us though. Even my arms felt stronger. The wooden staff no longer felt like a foreign extension of my arm.
Piers had since stopped criticizing my technique and moved on to some of the other, less fortunate first-years that were still grappling with the concept of a proper guard.
I had to hold back a small smile when I heard Piers inform Priscilla she could learn from my approach after she complained about the “unnecessary repetition.”
The commander pointed his chin in my direction. “That one may not have your skill, my dear, but at least she’s willing to learn.”
“The ones that need to learn this are the ones that shouldn’t be here,” the girl retorted hotly, refusing to cower under the knight’s scowl.
“Highborn children learn to fight with staffs in their sleep.”
Several students gave loud hoots of agreement. It didn’t take a mastermind to figure out which lineage they came from.
“You would think that,” Sir Piers replied idly, “and, most of the time, you’d be right. But each year I’ve been here, there’s been one or two lowborns who shame all that extra coin your families put to use. It’s the ones that need to learn you should be worried about.”