Page 53 of Beds and Blades

I ran the arc. He watched.

“Better. Weight forward on your left foot.”

I adjusted. The motion settled. I ran it again. And again. By the fourth repetition, it had stopped feeling like a performance and started feeling like something that my body understood.

“Again,” he said. “Faster.”

I ran it faster.

When I looked up, he was closer than I had registered. He was within the training distance. He reached forward and adjusted my forearm angle with two fingers.

One hand settled at my hip, warm and present, while the other corrected my grip.

“Run it again,” he said.

I ran it.

The arc was correct.

“You learn fast,” he said. “You are still a beginner, and I hope you never need to use it in earnest.” His voice was even. He was delivering an honest assessment with neither flattery nor cruelty. “But you know the basics now. In a small room, with one target at close range, you can act. That is not nothing.”

I set the hook on the desk.

“Now, the sword,” he said. He crossed to the weapons arrangement and took down something short-bladed and light.

It was a small sword, built for someone who needed to carry it without it impeding movement. He held it out.

“For your belt.” He turned the sword once in his hand before holding it out. “It can take a head, if the angle is right. But that is not what you should use it for. Against one of them, use it to slow them, cut them, and create space. Throw it to interrupt the momentum. Buy seconds.”

He glanced toward the weapons rack.

“A hunter’s hook is better for the killing stroke. Shorter. Heavier at the blade. Made to catch at the neck and finish the work.”

He met my eyes.

“Seconds are what you use to reach the hook. Carry it until it stops feeling like something you are carrying and starts feeling like a part of you. If one comes for you directly and you cannot reach the hook in time—throw the sword.”

“Throw it,” he said again. “Not to kill. You cannot kill it that way. Pain slows them. Throw it to interrupt the momentum. A blade in the shoulder, the chest, anywhere it lands. They heal. You know this. You have seen it. But healing is not the same as not feeling. They feel pain the way anything feels pain. The difference is that they survive it. The blade goes in, and they stop. They do not stop because they are hurt in any permanent sense, but because pain is information their body responds to before their mind can override it.”

He took a deep breath. He was hoping I would never have to apply this knowledge, but wanted me to have it.

The fire had burned lower since we woke. The room was warm and close. The heavy oak desk was still scattered with maps and reports.

“Yes,” I said.

“Say it back.”

“Throw the sword to slow it,” I said. “Use the seconds to reach the hook.”

We trained for another forty minutes or so.

By the end, I could execute both weapons with what he described as adequacy.

He moved to the window, and I followed. We stood together in the morning light, looking out at the view.

The Zhaduun Mountains came first. They seemed to insist on it. Always there, always dark, their stone drinking in the morning sun instead of reflecting it. At the peak of the tallest mountain, Druvenfall sat with patient permanence.

Then the sun. Warm and present.