I strapped the cuirass over a linen shirt and then put on two bracers, and a padded metal helm.

I kept them in the armoury, which was essentially just a musty shed near the stables. It's where we kept all the gear.

As we lived outside the city wall, in Seventhill, there were plenty of grounds that led into what could be mistaken for forest, if you didn't know that there would be another manor not far off.

When we had just come to Seventhill, the manor had seemed a bit run down. Father had already hired Crasilla and Ovelrun, the maid and footman who I rarely heard and never saw who took care of cleaning and stocking the firewood. They had apparently cleaned much of the manor and fixed some of the cracks and mould but it took a year of living here before it felt like home.

There was also a gardener, Mr. Drotwool who I sometimes did see, still pulling out weeds and tearing down rather pretty vines that used to grow along the manor walls. The front was quite well tended now, with a row of silver dust planted along the edge to contrast with the colours of the nasturtiums and geraniums behind.

"Tilvrade, you are late." father called out as he saw me enter the yard. "Look at your brother, here before you and already training."

The back of the manor, in contrast, had no gardens. It was mud and grass and cobblestones. This was the training yard. Half of it was for the horses, and the other half for sword practice.

"I'm here earlier than usual," I made a weak excuse. It's not so much that I was here early as that father moved training earlier to accommodate the afternoon plans.

I was ready to train though.

Judging by the fact father was waiting here for me, he intended to have a spar.

Usually I just trained on my own, though Saul often led or corrected my drills. It was only on some days that there were mock fights to see what progress was being made.

"Give me a moment, I just want to stretch," I told father.

I took a deep breath and tried to clear my mind. It was important to Sam, a fairly basic routine I had developed based on duel team memories.

Father thought it was ridiculous when I started doing this a year ago, but since I insisted, he no longer asked too closely. He did try to give me some freedom, never demanding more of me than I did of myself and never raising his voice either.

Perhaps it was due to his childhood under his own father, a father whose heavy hand and proscriptions had pushed him away in a tragedy.

Even so, father was demanding as well, a perfectionist because of those same expectations grandfather had of him. It was why he focused on the sword and trained me and Brendal with care and encouragement.

"You're ready now? You really should stop that nonsense."

Stretching done, I jogged quickly over to the fence of the riding field and then back to father who was looking over Brendal with Saul, who was now a knight in his own right, father's only retainer knight since Jom Barker died last year.

"Father."

"Go easy on him, my lord, the running at least will be good." Saul spoke up in my defence. "He's better at the sword than either of us were at his age."

"Mmh, I guess. Come on then. Saul, please take care of Brendal while we spar."

"As you say, my lord." Saul said.

Father led me away a bit and then put on his own helm.

"Here should be fine. Let's see what you can do today."

Judging by the sweat I saw cooling on father and Saul's foreheads a moment ago, they had been out here since the early morning already, probably training with some of the guards.

I wonder if he even had something to eat.

I focused on my mana, making sure I was concentrating it in my arms and knees.

"Aaah!" I shouted out and ran up before bringing my sword down overhead.

I put power into my knees and gauged a good opening, father would have to parry and then-

"Oof"

Father feinted the parry I was expecting, but instead of knocking my sword to the side, he just stepped to the side and let my sword slide down his before my shoulder thumped into his fist and pommel from my own momentum.

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In a battle, he could have bashed my head in or simply slashed at me with his sword.

"Three more bouts and then you should practise while I go clean up. Come on, on your feet."

It happens. Father was far better even than Saul, who could beat me nine times out of ten.

I settled back onto my heels and clenched my teeth.

I was used to this, but the pain was still pain.

Father trained me just as Sir Barker always said you should train squires, with a firm hand and no nonsense.

I felt my wooden sword handle under my grip and placed it in front of me. Father would initiate this time.

His sword came down straight over his head, just like I had tried before.

I brought my sword up feinting a parry like he just did, but then stepped backwards so the blow would pass in front of me.

Father's wooden blade elongated, and I just had time to bring my sword up in front of my head. I used mana to jump backwards, not having time to make more than a small push off the ground and then thrust my sword towards father who was closing the distance.

But my sword didn't meet any resistance as the man almost twice my height disappeared.

I felt the ground meet my shoulder and then father's hand was on my head.

He had dashed underneath my thrust and then kicked my legs out from under me.

"Not bad," father grunted. He sounded annoyed that he was forced to hit the ground himself instead of finishing me elegantly with the sword. "Your reflexes are getting better. You have to work on your perception and footwork though. You would have tripped over yourself if you hadn't used that reinforced burst, well done on that though."

Even if he praised me for that, I felt frustrated. I had used mana reinforcement and still hadn't managed to do anything.

Father and Saul had nothing but praise when it came to my mana talent. Usually, a page would be made into a squire when they demonstrated the ability to condense mana and do basic reinforcement. It was one of the proofs of becoming a man in Farand.

For me though, it wasn't even my accomplishment. I liked finding out new things from Sam's world. I wasn't ashamed to figure things out from the foreign memories or to show them off as my own. It took a lot of work to fit together concepts, understand calculations or research what things meant in the books and stories in Farand.

That wasn't the same as the habits though, the little quirks or sometimes muscle memories that I realised I had that let me know mana.

I pushed away my disquiet and just brought my sword up again.

It was my turn, so I would try to use my footwork and sword technique to put pressure on him this time.

Father held his sword low, but I didn't just assume that meant there was an opening towards his chest. It was all about the momentum. If I could make him think I was committing, then I could create an opening when he committed in response.

I straightened my arms and whipped the tip of my sword directly forward in another thrust like the one I had used when he charged me a few moments ago.

I saw him step to the side and I used the foot I had stepped forward with to push into a slash at his waist.

He parried but instead of taking another swing, I kept circling around him to aim a thrust in slightly awkwardly from an unexpected angle at his back.

Father jumped to the side and then sprung right at me, my sword guard brought up just in time to strike his helm as he pushed me to the ground.

I tumbled over and just stayed there trying to catch my breath.

I did it!

I hadn't used any mana, and had gotten him to strike defensively, putting himself at risk to push me off balance.

He would have still won if it was a real battle, but I had scored the hit on his head, which was more of a win than I had ever had before.

"Good, very good." He said. I showed him my tooth-gapped grin. "One more time, before you lose that feeling. Remember, balance and prediction."

When father first gave me a sword when I wasn't even 3, I swung it around a bit and thought I was a hero. I didn't really understand why father decided the sword wasn't so important the next few months as he got me to jump around with mana reinforcement.

It was because I was more likely to hurt myself than anything else. Even last year when Brendal was three, father just let the overeager baby hold the sword and wave it around with supervision.

Even when I did manage to do full drills though, I wanted to be more than just a knight. I had all my dreams of becoming a genius mage who could lead this world into a new age. This style of backwater knights seemed childish, inefficient with Sam's perspective.

Then I had that incident with the sharpening spell and realised there was more to it than that. It wasn't that father and the rest of the people here were dumb, it's that they lived in a different world with its own rules.

Father's tricks all worked, unlike Sam's. He was about as great a teacher in the techniques of knights as I could ask for. And, unlike other knights who usually only learned mana enhancement late into their training as a squire, when they were used to condensing mana, I had started early and seemed to have a decent condensation rate.

I got up and fixed my helm back so it wasn't slanted on my head.

I charged at him again, but father just parried and hit me on the head.

I was too distracted after getting my first point against him.

"That's enough. You've lost your focus. Practise your footwork. Just do an overhead slash but try stepping forward with different feet and think of how to reposition yourself when there are attacks setting you off balance."

"Yes father," I panted out.

Father walked back over to Brendal who had finished his 50 swings and then took him inside.

I went through the movements, over and over again.

It was exhausting, but I did the mana reinforcement too. I had been hoping to get over the mana dreams and start storing mana again, at least a little bit. The dreams, however, still continued even now, and I was afraid that I could relapse into something worse than that painful stigma.

"Don't mind your father too much, he's feeling stressed himself. I saw how he laid you out flat."

Saul had walked over, still here in the yard to supervise me.

"I know. Did you see? I got a hit!"

"Oh!" Saul's expression changed, "You got a hit on your father? No wonder he was looking grumpy."

I finished off my own hundred flourishes then went back inside.

I was late enough to the bathing room that father and the others had left already, so I had the water to myself.

It was already a bit ugly from the others' soapy runoff, but it was still warm from when Ovelrun must have poured and heated it.