On a windy day not more than a couple weeks into the months of autumn, an adolescent boy felt the familiar grip of a dulled short sword roll over in his hand.
As he watched the figure of an old man who was kneeling in front of him, he thumbed the bindings of the sword’s grip through the sweat-slicked sensation of his glove’s interior.
The old man, his teacher, bore a head of chin-length dark gray hair. Hair that, as the boy watched with hesitation, fell over the man’s face and obscured his eyes from view.
The man’s wrinkled forehead was pressing down into where the pommel of his blade met its handle.
His knees were quickly being absorbed into the soggy mire of the rained-out field as he continued the prayer-like action.
“Kalen.”
After a moment, an authoritative voice condemned the teenage boy for staying idle.
“One knee down, Kalen.”
Kalen’s brow furrowed as he gave a quick look to the swampy mixture of mud and grass around them. His hesitation to follow such a command was evident in his speech.
“Old Marshall, it’s been raining for a few days now. Are you sure we need to do the rite before training? We do it every time.”
‘Old man’ Marshall’s focused expression twitched as he looked past his blade to Kalen with annoyance.
“Am I sure? Boy, you can decide how you are to train yourself the day that you can land a hit on me. Until then, you do it my way, or you can go back to the millhouse. I’m sure Harmet would be glad to have you back in her service. It’s been a few years, after all. I’ll bet she’d be excited to see how much you’ve grown!”
Kalen raised his hands and sighed soundlessly.
“Alright, alright. Sorry.”
Though in the majority of his spare time, Kalen practiced what he learned in their lessons, objectively, he was nowhere near the level of the seemingly ‘old’ man in front of him. It would take ages before he could spar with the retired guard-now-blacksmith on equal footing.
And besides, his point was valid. Kalen was the one who sought training after all. It would be arrogant of the student to believe their own ways were superior to their teacher’s.
Following that uplifting thought, Kalen resigned himself to taking a knee in the muck, splattering grime all over his coat and gloves with the force of impact.
Kalen brought his forehead to the cool metal of the practice sword’s pommel, exhaling a visible breath in the cool autumn air as he closed his eyes for a moment.
This fluid action had preceded every instance of Kalen’s training for the past three years. Ever since he had first graduated to the age of eleven and was fit to hold a sword, for a boy in the village was deemed as such at that age, the old blacksmith had forced him to do the ritual before every lesson.
And because the only willing teacher for Kalen in the village was the old man, he had no other choice but to participate in the pre-battle rite, even on days like this.
So for a moment, Kalen merely focused on his breathing. His eyes were closed.
A seconds passed as both individuals performed the rite, and before long Kalen and his teacher were standing back up in tandem.
Both of their expressions had become far more serious, and Kalen’s breathing slowed as he examined the weapon in his teacher’s hands.
Though these were mere practice swords, they were still made of real metal in order to stimulate Kalen’s battle instincts. They wouldn’t cut through flesh, but getting struck would still injure him enough to incur a minimum of a few days of recovery.
And an impediment to one of the few things he actually enjoyed doing in the village was far worse than suffering the injury itself.
So as Kalen examined Marshall, so too did the old man reciprocate.
However, whereas the fourteen year old was attempting to distract himself from nervousness, the old blacksmith was focusing on visible weaknesses in his disciple in front of him. The point of his training was not just to beat Kalen into a bloody mess, although that counted as a bonus to anyone who had to put up with his whining, but to point out flaws in the boy’s swordsmanship.
The typical ideology of a swordsman was that tempering was necessary to bring oneself as close as possible to perfection, and indeed Marshall thought the same. Any weakness that he could eliminate now would be one less for those who were more experienced than his student to take advantage of in the future.
For an unending few seconds, both teacher and student stared at each other, their knees staying locked in the mire of mud. This continued until both of their ears twitched as they picked up a sound.
The midday bells of the village’s temple rang out once…
Twice…
Three times…
BOOM
Both figures lept from their positions toward one another.
Kalen held his sword upward and the flat against the right side of his chest, diving immediately toward the ground as his teacher readied a wide swing.
WHOOSH
The sword arced just over Kalen’s head, scraped along his blade that dipped with him and sent sparks into the old man’s eyes.
This allowed Kalen’s dive to go unseen by Marshall, and for him to get an advantageous position behind the man as he rose.
With his sword in a two-handed grip, Kalen immediately got a foothold in the mire and felt his blade come downward over his head toward his teacher.
CLANG
“What?!”
Kalen’s eyes widened as his strike was deflected by the old man, who spun around in a fluid movement faster than Kalen could react.
Before Kalen could follow up with another strike from where his sword had landed however, he felt a pressure on his chest shoot him backward.
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“Agck!”
Kalen lost his balance as the kick sent him down into the marsh. His neck strained to put in enough effort to avoid his head slamming into the ground.
“Ha!”
Kalen’s eyes shook as his head twisted to the side and out of the way of a sword strike. He was unable to avoid being coated by mud however, and he cursed as he shot up from his position.
‘Damn! I could have died if he had landed that! What the hell is he trying to do?’
Kalen jumped back a few paces from Marshall as he held his sword in front of him defensively.
“Oh, you’ve had enough now? I thought you were going to do the rest of the fight from down there!”
Marshall’s raspy laughter broke Kalen’s focus on the life-or-death feeling of the fight.
‘He already ridicules me almost daily, but to do it during a fight? Training or not, he’s not taking this seriously!’
Kalen’s eyes darkened as he thought as such. His grip around the practice sword felt white-hot all of a sudden.
“Old bastard!”
The phrase was all that came to Kalen’s mind, as well as was the most vicious insult he had ever heard spoken by the village adults, but it just made the old man’s smile widen.
“Raaahh!”
Kalen pounced from his position, flinging mud behind himself as he practically flew over the marsh’s surface. Raising his sword above his head again, he put everything into a downward slash at his teacher’s face.
Yet in midair, and a moment before he got close enough to strike, the ridiculing smile on Marshall’s weathered face turned into a frown.
“It’s not a feint?”
“Huh?!”
“...I’m disappointed, Kalen.”
Kalen’s expression morphed from confusion into shock as his instructor’s leg moved so fast it blurred. A slick of mud flew into his eyes, and he felt the sword fly from his hands with a violent impact.
CLANG
CRACK!
“AHHHHH!”
Kalen was thrown backward into the waterlogged prairie.
His chest and arms rolled over one another, crackling and sending nauseating pulses up his spine and hideous sounds through the air.
After a few seconds of rolling his body finally lost its momentum and stopped in the mud.
Kalen brought his hand up to the side of his chest, feeling a sudden piercing sensation.
“Ah! Damnit!”
Kalen’s teeth chattered from the pain as he fumbled beneath his jacket, quickly taking off the gloves and rolling up his undershirt to feel for any warmth that would indicate bleeding.
“Oh relax, you baby. I only hit you lightly. I doubt with these dull things that you received any cuts.”
The voice of Marshall called out as he lightly twirled the dull blade in his hands.
Kalen’s grimace turned into a scowl as a pair of blacksmith’s boots made their way into his vision.
“I think you broke one of my ribs!”
Marshall’s face frowned, but that quickly turned to a muted smirk.
“Hmm. Well you better hope that it grows back stronger so that this doesn’t happen again next time.”
From the old man’s tone of voice, Kalen could tell he didn’t heed the manner with the same weight as he did.
Kalen’s scowl turned bitter. He shouted with indignation.
“That’s all? I could have died just then! What were some of those strikes? Were you trying to kill me!?”
His teacher’s figure, which was just about turned and ready to head back to the hut, suddenly stopped. The old man turned toward Kalen.
“You could have died just then? Is that what you just said?”
Kalen’s rage hadn’t left him, but the cold tone that the old blacksmith suddenly adopted gave him a foreboding feeling. He nodded.
“Kalen.”
Marshall started.
“What we’re doing here, what we’ve been doing since you were eleven…it’s not a game.”
Marshall shook his head.
“I am not teaching you swordsmanship so that you can go off and impress the other villagers, or make a career as a village guard. I am teaching you to wield a weapon. A killing device. Not a toy or a prop.”
Kalen’s anger began to dissipate as he witnessed the expression of Marshall.
“Swinging a sword is not an artform or a theatrical performance, it’s combat. An admittance for survival. And every time you practice doing so…”
Marshall motioned to the field where they had just fought, still left with imprints of their spar.
“...I want you to remember this fact. Your life is threatened, and should be, every time you handle that weapon. Whether it's sharpened or dull, when you hold a sword you must understand what it means.”
“The moment you lose respect for your weapon, your life is forfeit.”
Kalen looked to where his sword had flown to. Its muddy form was still barely visible as it had partially sunken into the field.
Kalen clutched the side of his chest, calmer now that he had confirmed nothing had broken the skin, but his expression was unconvinced.
“The other guards in the village…my father, were they trained the same way as today? Why start this now? Is this even necessary?”
Marshall shook his head at the questions.
“Kalen, your father was a great swordsman. When he came to this village, even I, who was already accomplished in the village at the time, learned much more from him than I could ever have hoped to while living and dying in Willowhearth. These lessons were imparted onto me by him, and now I impart them onto you.”
Kalen’s face turned downward to the mud.
“And so because of my father, it’s necessary for my life to be threatened, just so that I might have a chance at being decent with the sword?”
He heard Marshall sigh.
“Kalen, there’s a reason that I waited until you turned fourteen to begin these kinds of spars.”
Kalen looked up at his face.
“What would you do, if tomorrow, the village was attacked, and all the other guards were killed?”
“...I–uh, I’d try to fight back. To stall, long enough for my mother and sister to escape, then leave with them.”
Kalen’s eyes widened. He stammered.
Marshall nodded neutrally.
“And those that came to invade the village, to pillage and murder, do you think they’d fight fairly and with honor, or unfairly like how I did today?”
It was a hard thought for a fourteen year old to come to face with, but it was necessary. The village of Willowhearth was secluded, but there was no such thing as a guarantee in this world. Those that aspired to protect others had to learn this most of all, and early.
“...I see..”
“Yes, you do. And so when I confuse you, insult you, and push you down, humiliating you, what is your first instinct? What did you do?”
“I charged in, blindly swinging.”
Kalen’s brow furrowed as he honestly recounted his movements.
“Not only that, but you repeated a strike that you had already unsuccessfully performed! If I had truly been your enemy, you would have been killed, along with those that you care about.”
Kalen shook his head. Not in disagreement with what Marshall was saying, but at himself.
“Now do you understand why today I did it this way? Do you understand the reasoning of your father?”
“I do.”
Kalen accepted the outstretched hand of Marshall and got back on his feet. The sudden movement caused him to groan as he felt a pressure from the side of his chest.
“It’s a cruel and dangerous world, Kalen. Even if you stay in Willowhearth all your life, you will not be secluded to a life of peace. Your father knew this better than anyone here.”
“...I understand.”
“Good, I hope you do. Now returned to Risi and your sister. I won’t expect you here for a few days while you nurse that rib.”
Marshall jabbed at Kalen’s side lightly. Which the boy, despite his broken rib, adeptly dodged.
“I’ll see you in a few days then, Old Marshall.”