I walked up to the dummy closest to me, which happened to be the one in the rough center of the “yard”. In essence, it was more of an alley, just one with gated entrances and exits. Thaajh appeared two meters to my right and turned to look at me. I haven't really had a chance to performance test this weapon yet, I realized, I suppose I could just try all the things I should have back before I bought it. I removed my spear from my back and set it down so that it wouldn't obstruct my movement at all, then drew my sword.
I hacked away at the dummy violently using a simple progression of strikes. The primary moves were diagonal chops from high to low, which themselves could be chained into other diagonal chops on the opposite side, diagonal uppercuts, or hilt bashes. Really the entire group of moves was quite basic, designed simply to waste as little time on setup as possible and throw as many strikes at the target as possible. Wood chips flew past my face and in many other directions, quickly forming a thin layer over the grass beneath my feet.
As the weapon moved I paid close attention to its heft, and sometimes glanced at the blade to make sure it wasn't taking any damage. It's really more like an axe than a sword if I use it this way, I thought, not that it isn't effective, but maybe I should ask Koyl about sword fighting. He seems to have been formally trained. I found that, by adjusting the angle and rigidity of my wrist, I could easily change whether or not a blow would sink deeply into the target or slide along it for more superficial damage. In any other body allowing my wrist to contort in such a way would be a worry, but the speed with which I healed from the minor overextensions of my range of motion meant that it wasn't an issue in my current one.
“Okay, okay,” Thaajh called out, “you can stop now.” I abruptly caught my weapon mid-swing, then lowered it to my side. Thaajh walked up to me and looked at the dummy, then at the weapon in my hand. “So you aren't a sword fighter then,” he observed.
“I recently learned,” I replied. Thaajh frowned, then tapped the dummy.
“Your style, if I could call it that, is pretty simple,” he explained. “It also more resembles a knife fighting style than a sword fighting style, at least what you just did there. A lot of those hits would have been superficial at best. Not that hurting someone isn't useful in a fight, but any fighter with enough experience isn't going to flinch at a bit of pain. You need to land something more solid than that. A few of the hits looked more axe-like, those would be better to focus on.” I specifically changed how I fight to include the application of pain, I thought, but now this man is telling me that it might be useless?
“Experienced fighters don't feel pain?” I asked.
“Nah, we feel it, sure,” Thaajh replied. “It's just that somebody like myself can easily tell if it's a scratch or something serious. You'd have to at least break a bone or cut off a big chunk of me to make me flinch in a fight. Why don't you just go ahead and hit this dummy as hard as you can with that sword? Try to chop it in half.” His tone in his last sentence indicated that it was a joke, but Thaajh backed up anyway.
I looked at the dummy, which was basically just two big chunks of wood on a smaller wooden post, covered in rough cloth, and quickly found the best place to strike it. Raising the sword above my head and grasping it with both hands, I took a brief moment to concentrate and come up with a series of movements that would use as much of my body weight as possible. Think of it like an axe, I told myself, it's basically just a really, really short but heavy axe. The sword came down at the dummy, impacting in the exact middle of the blade, and a loud crack was heard.
“Damn,” Koyl swore from behind me.
“Shit, I was joking,” Thaajh laughed. My sword had gone through the entire “head” of the dummy, splitting it in two and sinking around ten centimeters into the wood of the “body”. With a few tugs I managed to pull it out without issue. The blade was still in good shape, thankfully, though I was sure it would need to be sharpened after such extended use.
“Satisfied?” I asked Thaajh. It was a totally genuine question, but Thaajh took it as though I was being cheeky.
“Your arms aren't for show at least,” he said, rubbing his chin. “Do you have any combat training at all, or are you just big and strong?” Wasn't this why I- I began to think, then stopped myself, Right, I didn't tell the Steelheart Company that I had combat experience. If I did, they probably would have given me something to show this guy, and this test wouldn't be necessary.
“I have training in the use of knives, batons, spears for hunting, and-” I paused, stopping myself before I said “firearms”.
“And?” Thaajh prompted instantly, looking curious.
“Crossbows,” I lied. I suppose they're close enough to firearms in the way they're shot that I could pass for having training, I thought.
“So if you know how to fight with knives and 'batons', why aren't you using one of those instead of a sword?” Thaajh asked, expertly cutting to the question I knew he was going to ask when I provided the information.
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“A sword is just a sharp baton,” I said flatly, “besides, everyone here uses swords as their primary weapons. Batons aren't effective in th-” I paused again, mocking a clear of my throat and planning out what I was going to say instead of “in this place”. I need to get better at thinking before I speak in Uwrish, I told myself. “Batons aren't effective in real combat,” I continued, “people heal too quickly from them. Knives are effective, but killing with a knife is very difficult unless you are willing to leave the knife in an incapacitated person, which is not good for fighting more than one person at a time.” Thaajh narrowed his eyes at the last point I made.
“Your job as a guard would be to repel or apprehend attackers, not necessarily kill them,” he stated, “and if you're fighting more than two people at once you're probably screwed anyway.” How do you repel an attacker who can regenerate near-instantly from a slashed throat or a punctured lung? I wondered. Opting not to talk about the group fights I had been in for obvious reasons, I decided to get back on topic.
“Regardless, I use a sword when fighting humans,” I said. There was a moment of tense silence and I saw Thaajh thinking of what to say next.
“A sword is not just a sharp 'baton',” Thaajh corrected, “nor is it just a long knife or just a spear that's sharp along the whole length, or just a flat axe. It's an entirely different weapon altogether and you do not know how to use it past the most basic level. I'm going to demonstrate that to you right now, take off your armor if you don't want it to be ruined.” I hesitated, but then did what Thaajh said. He also removed his shirt, then drew both of the daggers at his waist. He looked at the scars on my torso, then smirked.
“What are you doing?” I asked calmly. Thaajh held both daggers in a reverse grip style, then raised his hands into a fighting stance. I saw movement in my peripheral vision as Koyl stepped far away from both of us.
“We're going to spar,” Thaajh declared. “You can say no, but if you do you can get out of my office and not come back. Don't worry, I won't kill you, just extend me the same courtesy and we're fine. Not that I expect you'll be able to really hurt me, just avoid trying to cut my head off with that slab of metal you have there.” I raised my own sword into a ready position above my shoulder, putting my left side forward and arm out as a gauge of distance.
“To be clear, the rules are that we don't kill each other,” I said, recalling my spar in Suwlahtk.
“From your perspective? Pretty much,” Thaajh agreed, “you ready?” I looked at him and nodded, and without another word he inhaled and ran at me.
The instant that I knew the blow might connect, I swung a wide horizontal sweep at him just below neck level, a move I had not used on the dummy. Thaajh didn't bother to try to block it and instead ducked under my sword, then slashed at my belly. One knife bit in making a shallow wound, then Thaajh juked to the right to avoid my follow-up downward swing and jabbed me in the collarbone for my trouble. I would have gone for the lung, I thought with a hint of amusement, and I rammed him with my right shoulder then threw out a low horizontal sweep to try to catch him in the abdomen. Thaajh bobbed backwards, just enough that my sword spilled blood but did not cut deeply, then jabbed his two blades into each of my pectorals. I had seen the attack coming, but decided to let it happen since it was ostensibly “non-lethal” and would provide an opportunity for a counter.
I'm too slow with this sword, I thought with a grimace, I need to swing it faster. He's not like those idiots I fought on the road, and he's not like Koyl who was barely aiming anywhere vital. Thaajh's knives withdrew from my chest and I jabbed him in the jaw with my left hand, knocking him back a bit as he struggled with staying upright. I stabbed at his chest while he blinked rapidly, only to have my attack deflected at the last moment by his left knife. His right knife tried to cut into my forearm, probably to sever my tendons, but I drew it back too fast and only received a scratch instead.
Thaajh flipped his right knife into a forward-facing grip, then started to stab rapidly at me with it might like Koyl had done using his dueling blade. It was a series of ranging blows in this case though, not intended to strike me so much as to move me away from him so that he could figure out his next moves. I don't think so, I thought, and instead I pushed forwards, blocking what I could, and enduring the knife when I couldn't. Cold steel sunk into my chest multiple times, scraping against my ribs and spilling yet more blood across my front. As I expected, instead of pressing his advantage Thaajh stepped backward, trying to gain the distance he had intended to create by ranging me out.
And now for the decisive counter strike, I thought, and I tracked Thaajh's next stab closely with my eyes. As it came towards me, my left hand came up flat to meet it. The blade struck, piercing through the soft flesh between my third and fourth metacarpal bones. With a toothy grin for effect, I closed my fingers around Thaajh's hand once the hilt of the knife hit my palm, then pulled him towards me. My sword came down like a guillotine with my weight behind it, only slowing at the last moment when I recalled that I probably shouldn't dismember someone in a duel. It'll be fine, I thought, though not so much in words as feelings, I just need to pull back enough that it doesn't come off, and he'll heal from it in a minute or two.
Thaajh's eyes went wide as my sword cleaved into his wrist, shattering bones and severing tissue then stopping just a centimeter before it would have cut the hand off completely. I let go with my left hand, letting him withdraw his limp appendage, and pulled the knife out of my own hand using my teeth. To my surprise, Thaajh didn't try to force me back, nor did he take up a reasonable defensive stance while he regenerated. Instead, he began savagely screaming a series of curses and clutching the stump on his left arm while his hand dangled freely by just a strip of skin.
“You yeyhhayseytay!” he cursed, spittle flying from his lips. “You gods-damned tawtzeytay! You cut my seytoydh hand off zeyleyreyngoyth! How seytoydh poymawpjhoyjh are you!? This was a spar!” The open wounds on his stump and on his nearly-detached hand were starting to close up.
“What are you doing?” I scoffed after spitting out the knife onto the ground, “Just hold the-”
“GET OUT!” Thaajh roared, “GET OUT OF MY BUILDING YOU TAWT ZEYTOYDH ZIHJHEYZM!” I looked to Koyl, who was staring at me in shock, and hoped he would tell me what was going on.