The Silver Isles Kingdom

Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

Gold Tooth approached Jacque and Alexis after the ship set to sail again, another pirate stood by his side.

"This here is Jules, he's one of our best fighters, and maybe the only one who had spine at all. Even before your speech, Jacque."

"I see," Jacque replied with a bit of surprise in his tone, "Jules, you never spoke up in defense of yourself, why didn't you?"

"I wasn't sure if I could, great mage," Jules said solemnly, "I didn't want to downgrade my shipmates by showing them up and say how much better I was than they. Though they all know it, I didn't see it to be my place to say so."

"There's no harm in acknowledging your own strength. Even if others feel you're showing off, point out their own strengths to uplift them. If you are also good at what they do, say that they are better than you, most of the time they feel better when you point out something that they're good at. Took me months of training with my father and John to realize that I had the potential to be great," Jacque said reassuringly.

"So, you don't think it's wrong to say one is better than another?" Jules asked confused.

"Only if it helps them be better than they are. Lesson in a single phrase that both my father and John taught me, 'The better you are, the worse your friends seem to be. The more you help them, the better they are than you,' or something like that. The point is you help anyone who is lacking a skill and soon they either become as good, or better than you."

"That's a lot of big words mate, but I think I understand what you mean," Jules said, scratching his head. Though the words were simple, the phrasing was a bit much for the pirate.

Jacque then turned to Alexis. "Your first assignment, Jules, is to teach the princess to fight. In the process of showing her how to fight, your mates will follow suit and learn how to fight at the same time."

Alexis shivered at the thought that she would have to fight again. The last time was hard on her, especially with the golem under her doing most of the work and crushing the enemy with its boulder like rock throws and destruction by its massive arms. But she knew Jacque would need her, even though he had said from the beginning that it would be best she had stayed behind. "Well," she began with a sigh, "sword play is it then?"

"Sword play?" Jacque and Jules said together.

"Princess, sword play is little boys with sticks or limbs play fighting," explained Jules, "Dueling and sparring are completely different from what I'm going to teach you."

"My father called it sword play when he taught me basics," Alexis pointed out.

"Ah, but that is only the basics. In a way, 'sword play' is the basics of actual sword fighting. We're going a little bit of a higher skill than just basics. If you're going to fight to kill, you need more than the basics. You need what we can give you for defense, blocking, dodging, etcetera. And same with offense, how to hold the sword, swinging, slicing, jump attacks, stabs, and so forth," Jules said, giving more detail to what rules of sword fighting were.

"Very well, teach me what I don't already know," Alexis said energetically.

"First, Alexis, you need to show him what you know and he'll work with you from there. You have less than two hours to learn what takes us months to learn," Jacque said, hoping the added pressure would somewhat help.

"Less than what?" Alexis asked in surprise, but Jacque and Jules were busy gathering the other pirates to watch the lesson in progress and didn't repeat themselves. Soon all the pirates were gathered in a circle on the deck, leaving only a slight opening for the princess to walk in. She hoped she would be left out of this fight, but it was clear that the pirates would only be able to help just this once then it will just be her and Jacque again to save the other islands. Slowly she entered the center of the circle, holding her breath from the stench of the pirates. They clearly had been off the island for some time, or they just never bathe.