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He faced off against Odard, raised his padded wooden blade in salute, and began. They both had round shields about two feet across-rather similar to what Bearkillers used, and calling for a quite different style from the four-foot-long kite shields Odard had trained on, and he wouldn't be used to facing a southpaw. Liu's sword was held above his head with the hilt forward, Protectorate fashion.
Rudi's blade looped out to strike at the knee, a hocking strike. Odard leapt straight up so that it hissed beneath his feet and smashed forward as he landed…
" Feel where your opponent's blade is to go!" Master Hao said ten minutes later when they backed away, panting.
His callused hand slapped the back of Odard's leather helmet.
"You think too much! You are clever, and you rely upon it. Then when your opponent does not do what your so-clever mind thinks, you are helpless-paralyzed!"
Now that was clever. That is Odard's great fault as a fighter, Rudi thought.
"And you!" Hao went on, turning on Rudi. "You are very fast again, you are very strong again, you have the instinct for the blade. On all this you rely-too much. You have pattern in your attack-too much. Even good instincts will betray you if you use them the same way all the time."
Odard's eyes went wide in apprehension as Hao picked up a quarterstaff and motioned him out into the open, flicking it back and forth.
"Come, clever man," the monk said, his face as impassive as carved beechwood. "Enlighten my stupidity."
Rudi gri
"Are you two men, or rutting buffalo?" Hao called, apparently not needing to look away from where he stalked in a circle around Odard. "Your aim is to hit your opponent, not to push him over like a dead tree!"
Edain let one leg relax and stabbed low. Fred almost caught it-he'd realized what the Mackenzie was about to do-but momentum drove him forward. The tip of the padded wooden sword struck him in the pit of the stomach; even with the tough rawhide of the practice armor the thud made Rudi wince slightly in sympathy, and the young man's brown face went gray behind the bars of the drill helm. He staggered backwards, whooping and desperately trying to cover himself; Edain slid forward, his face blankly intent…
"Enough!" Hao said.
The young Mackenzie stopped as if he'd run into an oak tree, shaking his head and blinking.
The staff spun in Hao's hands, and Odard was hopping and cursing and shaking his right hand as his practice sword flew free.
"The sword is not the weapon," Hao said to him. "The hand is the weapon; the sword merely extends it. Now you, Raven-man."
Rudi and the teacher bowed courteously to each other and faced off. Hao began turning the staff, hand over hand, the ends of the tough mountain ash blurring faster and faster as they made a figure eight in the air. After a moment he could hear the whsssst of cloven air as they moved. The Mackenzie tanist let his consciousness sink into the ground, grow into the air, knew the salt water in his blood and the fire in his nerves. Then he attacked, smooth and swift, aiming for the hands in the center of that blurring circle.
Crack.
The staff struck wood as it battered his sword away, flinging it high and wide; Rudi's eyes went wide even as he whipped his shield around to catch the other end of the six-foot length of wood with a hollow boom that jarred all the way into the muscles of his back. Only frantic effort brought his sword up in time to ward off a full attack.
"Think a little, Raven-man! Raw speed is less useful than anticipation. I am older and slower than you, but I block your attacks-by anticipation."
They circled again, blue-green eyes locked on brown. It's true, Rudi thought. He started his block before I moved, just a little.
Then, grimly: Raven-man he called me, eh? Well, so I am.
"Morrigu," he whispered. "Black-wing, Red Hag of Battles, be with me now!"
The world fell away from his vision; there was no pouring of something other into his self, but instead a focusing until there were only vectors, threats, targets-the ends of the staff, Master Hao's hands and face and feet. And the shadow of wings, bearing him up, and a huge joy in the play of weapon and muscle and nerve. He lunged again, long leg and long arm and long sword outstretched.
Crack.
This time the deflection was minimal, just enough, but the lunge left him overextended. He was moving with delicate precision, but so was Master Hao; the staff struck the wooden sword just forward of his fingers, nearly slamming it out of his hand.
Rudi drew on the certainty that flooded him, and turned the motion of the sword into a backhand slash. The same impulse drove his will forward like a spear's point. A shriek burst past his snarling lips, the Morrigu's own, the screaming that guided the birds of the Crow Goddess to their feasting upon the acorns of the unplowed fields of battle-whose yield was the heads of men. The blow might well have dished in a man's skull, even with the soft padding around the wooden practice weapon.
"Good!" Hao cried, and he was gri
Only a blurring duck and whirl saved him, but more than the battering counterstrike of the staff made Rudi stagger. Then Hao struck again… and something struck with him, and the universe seemed to vanish in a blaze of white light. He backed, reeling, sword and shield moving in a desperate dance of defense.
"Good, good! But the hand is not the weapon-the mind is the weapon, and the hand only its extension!" Hao called, his words and breath in perfect unison with his motion. "Discipline your mind!"
Rudi did, baring his teeth and thrusting with his will. The sense that wood was flailing at him from every direction in a ceaseless cascade of motion died away, and he saw the staff floating towards the touch of his shield and sword, as if he and Hao danced in a dream. Now they were not fighting; they were priests of a ritual, all alone on a mountaintop, beneath a sky where ravens circled a single Eye…
A twinge brought him back to common day. He stepped back and looked around; the others were watching him, and blank-faced or wondering. Suddenly he felt a little tired, the good tiredness you felt after a day's work in the harvest fields. Hao looked at Rudi closely, then stepped closer and prodded at his right shoulder with a finger like a section of wrought-iron rod.
"Pain?" he said.
"A bit," Rudi replied-honestly.
"Then stop! Too much is worse than too little! The rest of you, continue."
Rudi sank back on knees and heels, hands resting on his thighs. Ingolf was sparring with the twins; Ritva was using her usual longsword-and-shield, but Mary had one of the local weapons, a length of chain with a ball on one end and a sickle-shape on the other-both wooden for this practice. In real combat, they'd be steel. The two young women spread farther apart than they usually had, too. The man from Wisconsin attacked first, using the twin dao-shetes in the whirling style the monks taught…
They're better balanced than shetes usually are, Rudi thought delightedly. And that will give him an advantage once we've left here; the appearance is so similar…
Ingolf attacked, pushing hard and circling around Mary's blind left side to maximize the disadvantage. Mary was turning her head regularly, and the chain slid out through her fingers to whip around one of the swords…
When they'd exhausted the possibilities of the match, Ingolf had been killed eleven times, Mary three, and Ritva only twice.
"You will run back to the monastery," Hao a