WW Chapter 65: Sword Practice (Patreon)

The arse who introduced himself rather smugly as “Lord Tobias Grenfeld, scion of Viscount Grenfeld,” was, in keeping with what he’d said, a trained fighter. Ezra’d managed to get a solid punch in on him in the mess hall, but though the other boy wasn’t a brawler, he was a fighter. Despite his heavy frame and heavier steps, Tobias moved with certainty and was able to use his shield and sword both with notable skill. Everything Ezra tried was shut down and then returned with a combination of insultingly patronizing words and the stinging of the flat of the wooden blade against his ribs, knee, elbow, or head.

It didn’t matter that he was wearing thick, padded clothing and a helmet. The heavy wood of the sword smashed just as painfully against his body, regardless of the slight protection his armor gave. Ezra could feel his ribs aching with every breath as Tobias cracked his sword into Ezra’s wrist for the third time. He wanted to use his aura to teach the fucker a lesson, but Mikhail’s gaze kept him from doing so. The training sword fell from Ezra’s numb fingers, and he snarled at his tormentor.

“You can’t lose hold of your weapon,” Tobias sneered. “You’ll never be able to win a fight without one.”

He stepped forward to keep one of his heavy feet on Ezra’s sword as his right hand held his own at the ready. Tobias’s left arm, the one holding the shield, was sagging, though, and Ezra realized that, despite the beating he had taken so far, he was holding up better than the portly noble was. The months of hard conditioning had fortunately done enough to keep him going.

With that in mind, Ezra leaned down to grab his sword, acting defeated. He knew what would come the second he exposed any part of his body to the malicious bastard. With the back of his head presenting a juicy target, Ezra could feel the wind whisper that Tobias was coming in for what could potentially be a killing blow, even through the helmet. Ezra’s attention wasn’t on what was above him, though. He saw as Tobias shifted his hold on his shield to be able to strike down with all of his strength, and Ezra seized on that opening.

Instead of protecting himself from the blistering strike that was coming down on him, Ezra hunched his shoulders and shot forward, slamming his shield’s edge into Tobias’s right thigh. The rest of Ezra’s body weight followed through as he buried his shoulder in his foe’s gut and continued driving. With his movement, Tobia’s sword smacked into Ezra’s flank, mostly hitting his upper thigh, but Ezra’s movement had changed the blow from hitting him solidly to glancing off his armor. It would leave a welt and probably a bruise, but Tobias fell backward with a wheeze as his knee struggled to support him.

Ezra didn’t hesitate to press in, raising his left arm against another quick strike of Tobias’s weapon. The smacking of wooden sword against wooden shield rang out, far from the only sound in the training pits. Tobias started to shout something, but the wind had been knocked out of him, so his words only came out in a weak gasp. Ezra raised the shield and slammed it down into Tobias’s right shoulder as he bore the heavier man to the ground.

The noble’s face twisted up in pain as, despite Ezra’s expectations, he held onto his sword as he fell. Ezra kept his shield high on his left side, between the sword and his body, as his right hand wrenched Tobias’s shield out of the way. Then he adjusted his mount, and with his right knee on Tobias’s left shoulder and Ezra’s left arm and shield protecting him from the noble’s sword, Ezra’s right hand was free.

With quick punches, Ezra struck Tobias’s face where the helmet wasn’t. The first strike, even with his heavy leather gloves, made Ezra’s knuckles creak with pain. His second strike got Tobias in the throat, and then Ezra started to pummel his face. He only got two more strikes in before he was pulled off.

“That’s a solid victory in that bout,” Mikhail’s voice said from directly behind Ezra.

As soon as Ezra calmed down and started shaking the pain from his right hand, he saw that Mikhail had been the person to pull him off, and as Ezra didn’t throw himself back at Tobias, the Pseudo-Knight released him.

“We’re practicing with swords and shields,” Tobias shouted, his voice nasal through his broken nose. “This urchin thinks this is a drunken brawl!”

“You said for him to never be unarmed,” Mikhail said with a shrug. “He reminded you that he’s not. A shield is a good weapon if push comes to shove, and Captain Chloe reminds all of you every day that she doesn’t need a weapon to kill any one of you in just one or two hits. Yes, what Ezra here did was unorthodox, but all is fair in the pits, especially when you were in a winning position and neither of you surrendered. He didn’t use magic, he didn’t bring a new weapon or use his aura or poison you or anything. You got cocky and sloppy, and he busted your nose for it.

“Consider this a reminder,” Mikhail said, raising his voice for everybody else, “the person who pushes themselves tends to be the one who wins, not the one who’s more trained but lazy.”

With that withering critique of Tobias’s performance, Mikhail turned and walked away. Ezra was left wondering what Mikhail’s deal was if he was seemingly unbiased in training, but he couldn’t think about that any longer. Tobias brought himself to his feet, snarling as blood ran from his nose and into his mouth. He stepped to the side, grabbed his waterskin, and splashed it into his face as Ezra could feel his opponent using a trace amount of aura to recover.

“Remember,” Mikhail said, looking at Tobias, “you can use whatever you’ve got in your inner world to recover, but I will not be see you using aura in your fights.”

The noble boy bared his teeth at Ezra, the promise of violence much greater than it had been before. He seemed ready to come forward, but Ezra shouted for him to back away as he started to draw on his own inner world.

Tobias’s eyes widened as he realized what Ezra was doing, though Ezra could feel that the noble boy was only an Initiate at best, going off how slow his aura circulation had been. In less than a minute, Ezra’s wrist was recovered enough to hold his sword again, and he rolled his shoulders.

“Round two, then?” he called over to Tobias with a grin.

***

Tobias’s sword tip smashed into Ezra’s sternum, and he fell back, wheezing. Ever since Ezra had taken the upper hand with his tackle, Tobias had, despite his increasingly puffing breaths and sweat pouring down his face, not allowed the Adept a single opening.

Instead, he’d spent the last half hour getting struck by heavy blows, heavy enough that the brief moments between fights that he’d taken to recover were far from enough to get him back into top shape. This latest strike had been just another demonstration of Ezra’s lack of experience. Tobias caught his toe in the sand and flicked that up into Ezra’s face. He covered himself with his shield, but Tobias had smacked that aside and stabbed into Ezra, and the rest was history.

“That’s it!”

Mikhail’s voice was a savior to Ezra, and though Tobias obviously wanted to press the attack and hit Ezra again, he didn’t. Evidently, just like in the mess hall, the rules of the garrison were strict, and breaking them came with consequences, strict enough to keep even wannabe lords like Tobias in check.

Ezra fought to breathe through the pain of all the bruises and having the wind knocked out of him, standing straight despite the pain as Mikhail made sure everybody’s attention was on him.

“You all have ten minutes of rest before we get into our individual weapon training,” the Pseudo-Knight announced to everybody. “You all know this. I’m saying this for our new arrival’s benefit. Stick around here, go to the baths, I don’t give a damn. Ezra, follow Telemachus. He’ll get you to your destination.”

At that, one of the prospective Knights saluted as Mikhail turned on his heel and strode out of the pits. In that moment, Ezra, keeping his eyes on Tobias, strode to where Telemachus was watching for his approach.

“That wasn’t too bad,” the darker-skinned boy said as he pulled off his helmet. Sweat had slicked his hair to his scalp and forehead, and he led Ezra towards a bucket on the other side of the clearing.

As Ezra followed, he immediately began to see the divide between the rich and the poor. At least, that’s what he assumed when he saw that, of the group of thirty two prospective Knights, five, including himself, came to the two lone buckets on this side of the sand-filled practice area.

On the opposite side of the space, twenty six people congregated, with varying levels of closeness. It was obvious that those like Tobias, who had sided against the Duke, were their own faction. There were eight of them, Ezra assumed nine once the absent and still recovering Anders rejoined everybody. For now, those eight stuck together, and the other privileged people stayed around them, though they had their own small cliques.

“This is Ezra,” Telemachus said, pulling Ezra’s attention back to the people he was meeting.

The other three people were one broad-shouldered boy who was, at most, 150 centimeters tall, with a chiseled jawline and the hint of stubble across his jaw. His hair was a light brown, and his pale brown eyes didn’t stand out on his light complexion. Other than his height and the obvious power granted by his stature, he was unremarkable.

Beside the apparent strongman stood two girls, both about the same age as the rest of the prospective Knights. One was tall, even taller than Ezra, and ripcord-thin. Under her armor, she had the barest suggestion of curves to go along with her feminine face. She evaluated Ezra, same as he was to her, and nodded a welcome to him. Beside her, the girl who stood was beautiful, almost stunningly so. She’d removed her helmet, and the sweat of effort had matted her hair, but the bright red hair in her braid complemented her full, rosy lips. Her skin was fair and unblemished, and Ezra found himself subconsciously smiling at her.

Only now realizing the commonality of age between all of the prospective Knights, Ezra figured that, if he went to the other side of the training area and looked, he would find that most people were anywhere from sixteen to their mid-twenties.

“This is Dirk, Miriam, and Gertrude,” Telemachus introduced them, pointing first with the man, then the tall woman, and finally the pretty girl.

Gertrude scowled at Telemachus giving her full name, and as she started to step forward threateningly, he laughed and said, “Gertrude prefers to go by Rose.”

Ezra’s estimation of the girl changed at that, considering her dislike for her own name. Even so, she was nice to look at, and she offered her hand to Ezra to shake.

“Nice to meet you,” Rose said, her voice bubbly. Then, leaning in and dropping her voice to something much less cutesy, she whispered, “Good job breaking the asswipe’s nose. He won’t stop trying to get me to fuck him, and I’m not good enough yet to get him like you did.”

Ezra’s wildly fluctuating opinion about the girl came to a screeching halt at that, and he finally swore to himself that he’d stop trying to nail down his thoughts about each person right when he met them.

From Rose, he went to Miriam, and shaking her hand, he immediately noticed the firm, thick calluses across her fingertips.

“Welcome,” she said, nodding once. Then she stepped back without saying anything more.

“He’s one of us, then?” Dirk asked, looking at Telemachus.

“Chloe brought him to me before lunch to make sure that he was in good hands,” Telemachus laughed. “He’s the reason why Anders isn’t here right now, though.”

“The Count’s spawn bit off more than he could chew?” Dirk asked, a wide grin crossing his face. He stuck his hand out to Ezra at that, and though he was short, his hands were broad and wide, and gripped Ezra’s firmly. “If you’re already making trouble for them like this, count myself among your friends.”

Ezra smiled and nodded, feeling like he might just belong among these people. Then he asked, “What’s Mikhail’s deal? He seems like he wanted Tobias to kick my teeth in.”

Telemachus nodded slowly at that, and looking around to make sure nobody was nearby, said, “I’ll explain it on our way to the next place, once we’re all done getting our drinks and taking a breather.”