“Go easy on me,” Chloe whispered to Hannah they circled each other warily, hoping that their teachers could not hear. “I’m still getting used to all this…”

“Don’t be such a wimp, Chlo!” Hannah whispered back.

They had found themselves pitted against each other on the sands of the training grounds of the Larakian school they were attending now. Chloe was holding a wooden training sword and Hannah a rectangular wooden training shield. As you can see, this was much more interesting than regular school. As well as learning from books, they also had combat lessons with their weapons. Hannah excelled at offensive combat, even though her weapon was more traditionally defensive. She was extremely good at using the front stud of her shield as a kind of battering ram, walloping things with it during her training exercises. Chloe, by contrast, had a more offensive weapon but was much better at defending with it, which was most peculiar. She struggled with going on the attack with her sword and found it much easier to block and parry rather than thrust and slash. Sometimes she wondered whether the One True King had mixed up the different weapons that he had supposedly assigned to her and Hannah.

“Come on Chloe, look for an opening!” someone called.

“Keep your guard up, Hannah!” called another.

Chloe was being encouraged by Romaphaia, the Mistress of Sword, and Hotzeh, who was also the Master of Seeing; and Hannah by Thureos, the Master of Shield and Pistua, the Mistress of Trusting, as they looked on with the other teenage Larakian students. They each had different teachers for combat training according to the weapons and the primary ‘Gifts’ that they had been assigned.

Combat training usually involved sparring, practicing fighting, like they were doing now. As for the book-learning, many of their lessons involved reading from and studying their own copy of a medium-sized leather-bound tome simply called ‘The Book’, which was in fact a collections of lots of little books. This seemed mostly to be made up of stories, and it told the story of the making of Mashal, of the rebellion of her people against the Light of the One True King, the division of Larakia, Dahma, and a place called Shul, and so on. It told the story of some of the earliest Larakians, how they had been rescued from slavery in Shul to come and live in Larakia, and explained how thereafter they became ‘Wayguides’ who journeyed into Dahma and Shul in order to point those who would listen in the way back to Larakia. It was fascinating. And much easier than combat training, in Chloe’s opinion.

“Look, it’s not so difficult when you let go and get on board with it,” Hannah whispered again. “You’ve just got to……trust!”

As she said this last word, Hannah sprang forward, thrusting the wooden version of the shield at Chloe’s torso.

Chloe had been practicing lots at using her ‘Seeing’ gift to anticipate enemy attacks, just as she was being trained to do. She had now become proficient at it. The moment before Hannah had leapt forwards, she saw in her mind’s eye a picture of what had happened. So she was able to jump out of the way, not a moment too soon.

“Hey!” said Hannah. “That’s not fair! I trusted in my blow but you saw it coming!”

“Keep trusting!” called her teacher Pistua from the sidelines. “You have to trust that you can win the overall battle, even if at one particular moment it is not going how you want or expect!”

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Hotzeh egged on Chloe too. “Keep at it, Chloe! You’ve mastered the art of seeing the opposition’s attacks coming in our lessons. Now you need to see your own opportunities to counterattack!”

“That’s easy enough for you to say…” Chloe muttered under her breath. While she had no problem with the defensive manoeuvres, Chloe just found the prospect of ever having to fight someone in real life too scary, and so she couldn’t get beyond them. For the life of her, she just couldn’t seem to get the hang of using her gift offensively, in order to attack. It just didn’t seem to be in her nature. Quieting and calming her mind with an effort of the will, she found it easy enough to allow pictures to form in her imagination, like she had been taught, showing where her opponent would next strike. But when it came to trying to watch for offensive pictures and acting on them, her gift eluded her.

Chloe saw Hannah jumping forward again to attack, so as it happened she side-stepped out of the way.

Chloe saw Hannah feint to the left and then hit hard on the right, so as it happened she dodged to the left.

Chloe saw Hannah spin and throw her shield at her, so as it happened she ducked and the shield whizzed over her head.

“Argh!” exclaimed Hannah in frustration! “Hold still, will you?”

Hannah was weaponless. Taking advantage of the chance to end the sparring match, Chloe made to bop her on the leg. But this time Hannah was too fast. She jumped over Chloe’s cautious swipe of her weapon and dashed over to retrieve her shield.

Chloe sighed. Fine, she thought, I’ll have another go at this offensive seeing thing.

She let her mind go quiet and tried to shift the way she was looking, to change what she was listening out for. It was a bit like asking the One True King a different question. Show me an opening to attack, she thought.

Two fuzzy shillouetes appeared in her mind’s eye, one of them with a sword and one with a shield, but she couldn’t make out what they were doing.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Chloe said aloud.

This time before she knew it, Hannah was in front of her and jabbing at her with the shield. While she had been trying to see for an opening to attack she hadn’t seen Hannah’s own attack coming for her, on this occasion.

Using her natural reflexes Chloe was just about able to get her wooden sword up in time to block the first two hits. But the third connected too hard, and caught her off balance, and all of a sudden her sword was flying out of her hand and into the corner of the training arena.

Hannah thumped Chloe on the arm, not too hard, but perhaps harder than was completely necessary.

“Ow!”

“Ha! Got you!” said Hannah. “I win!”

“The match goes to Hannah!” Pistua said. The teachers and other students applauded.

Chloe rubbed her arm as she walked out of the training arena.

“I tried my best, Hotzeh.”

“Don’t be disheartened, young one,” Hotzeh said to her. “It’s more important to be able to defend yourself than to fight back.”

“I know. I’m not too bothered. At least Hannah doesn’t seem to have a problem with it.”

“Yes,” said Hotzeh. “And with a primarily defensive weapon. It is most odd. We shall have to keep a watch on her…”