To the Ends of the Earth

Chapter 12

*

Gabriel

"Keep your arm up idiot! Swing through from the shoulder. Think of that blade as an extension of your arm, not as something separate."

I raised my arm again and tried to swing from the shoulder as Danny said. We'd been at this for a few hours at this point and my body was screaming with exhaustion. I attacked the makeshift dummy/enemy (a spare tunic stuffed with leaves and attached to a thick branch) once again.

"Better and worse. You're getting too tired. We're going to have to stop soon." Danny commented dispassionately.

When we'd left Danny's hut a few hours prior, he had instructed us to take separate paths towards the river several hundred yards past the wash houses. We had met up again and Danny had led us to a shallow portion of the river where we crossed to the other side onto an open stretch of meadow. We needed to be far enough away from the village so that we wouldn't be seen or heard and the river helped cover our tracks as well as muffling the noise from our practice.

About fifty yards away from me I could see Maggie practicing with her bow and arrows. She too had a makeshift dummy set up at a much farther distance and was shooting him more often than she was missing. She was proving to be annoyingly adept at archery and I couldn't help but resent the ease with which she took to it. Especially since I wasn't as quick to learn with my weapon.

While I took a moment to catch my breath I watched her notch another arrow. She pulled her arm back, a rare look of concentration covering her feminine face, and let loose. The arrow sunk home in the dummy's chest, a particularly impressive feat since we were practicing only by the light of the stars and the moon. I scowled in her direction and wiped sweat from my forehead.

Danny looked up at the sky and scratched at his scraggly beard.

"We should head back. You're no good to anyone right now."

I scowled at him too. "Well what about you?"

"What about me, boy?"

"All you've done is stomp around and give orders. Don't you need to practice? What weapon are you going to use anyway?"

The older man's countenance darkened. "You don't think I'll pull my weight, is that it? Too old and fat to be of use? You think you're going to have to carry me?"

I didn't think that, actually. Though he was old, he was obviously still capable of many things. A lifetime of blacksmithing had honed his arms and chest into formidable slabs of muscle; like a giant grouchy grizzly bear I thought he could probably put a man down with nothing more than one swipe of his massive paws.

But I was feeling irritable and tired and he was being annoying so I just shrugged.

He growled, much like the grizzly I imagined him to be, and snatched the sword from my hands faster than I would have thought possible. He stalked towards the dummy I had been attempting to murder and stopped a few paces from it, taking up a fighting stance.

In the moonlight his ugly, iron-grey brillo pad hair looked closer to silver wire and gave him a more dangerous appearance. His body coiled and his eyes narrowed, a sense of calm and concentration coming over him like a shroud. He lifted the sword to shoulder height and simply stood for a moment and assessed the dummy, blending into the still night in a way that I would have thought impossible.

All of a sudden, he moved. He really moved. Fast as lightening and delicate as a snowflake he moved in the series of forms he had been trying to teach me. He danced, agile and mesmerizing, the sword moving as a true extension of himself and without any hesitation or faltering. He approached the dummy, ducking under imaginary foes and surely decapitating others without ever losing stride. When he finally reached the dummy, he felled it with three quick movements, obliterating it with grace and speed. The scraps of wood, fabric, and leaves fell around him like rain while he once again rested in the ready position.