The Knight

Chapter 55. Sword And Shield

“See how I’m holding my sword,” Garvaon said, “with my thumb on top? I want you to hold yours the same way.”

What Garvaon was really holding was a green stick that he had cut, and the sword I held was another stick.

“With an ax or a mace, what you want is power. You want to hit as hard as you can with it, because it won’t do much damage unless you do. A good sword will do a lot of damage with just a light stroke, so what you want is finesse. You’re not going to try to split the other man’s shield. That’s not what a sword’s for.”

He paused to study my grip. “A little farther forward. You want your hand up against the guard, not up against the pommel.” I inched my hand forward.

“That’s better. Sometimes you want to drop your shield and hold with both hands for a stronger blow.”

“Like an ax?”

“No. You still don’t chop. You slash.” Garvaon took a step backward, looking thoughtful. “I had a lot of trouble with that as a boy. With slashing instead of chopping, I mean. I used to get beaten for it. So here’s what did it for me. When you chop, you expect your ax to stay there. Think about chopping wood. But when you slash, you expect your blade to go on by. The edge of your blade is going to hit the other man’s neck, maybe a hand back from the point. Then the rest of the edge between that place and point is going to slide along the cut. After that, the point. The whole blade’s going to come free, and you can slash again, backhand or forehand.”

I nodded, although I was not sure I understood.

“You try to put the weight of your arm behind the weight of your blade, but if you lock your wrist you’ll chop. Now that tree right there’s the other man. I want to see you go at him, and I want to see you slash.”

I tried.

“Faster!”

“I wanted you to see what I was doing,” I explained.

“I’ll see it. Listen here.” Garvaon caught me by the shoulders. “Speed isn’t the main thing. It isn’t the most important thing. It’s everything. If you haven’t got it, it doesn’t matter whether you hold your sword right, or how brave you are, or whether you know a couple of dozen tricks.”

I nodded, trying to look surer than I felt.

“Have you ever seen how a bull fights? A couple of really good bulls?” I shook my head.

“They’re fast. It takes your breath, how fast they are. They stand off and paw the ground, testing it so they won’t lose their footing. As soon as one starts, they come together like lightning. I said good bulls, understand? If they’re good they’re fast, because if they’re not fast it doesn’t matter how strong they are. If one’s a little slow, the other will catch him in the side, and then it’s all over. Now do it again. Fast.”

I did, blocking imagined blows with the shield I had borrowed from a man-at-arms and whipping the tree with my stick until I was panting and dripping sweat.

“That was a lot better,” Garvaon told me. “Now let’s see you come at me.”

I rushed him, but found his shield wherever my stick hit, while Garvaon’s stick tapped my knees and calves.

When he had smacked both my ears with it, he stepped back and dropped his point. “You’re fast, but you’re making a couple of bad mistakes. Every cut you make’s a separate operation.”

I nodded.

“That’s not how it’s supposed to be. The next cut has to flow out of the last one.” He showed me, his stick flying and fluid. “This is easy, because the sword’s so light. When I practice back home, I use a practice sword that’s heavier than Battle Witch.”

Reflecting that Sword Breaker was heavier than any actual sword I had handled, I nodded again.

“Now let’s see you do it. Down then back up. Left, then right. Up and across. Keep your arm behind it. You’re not waving a stick, you’re cutting with a sword. He’s wearing mail and there’s a leather jerkin under it ....

“You’re slowing down. Don’t! If you get tired you’ll die. That’s better.”

The cuts became the surges of the clear sea of Aelfrice, the green stick that was the Green Sword, that was Eterne, curling like a wave and breaking like an avalanche, only to return to the sea and rush ashore again.

“That’s it! That’s it!

“All right. Enough.”

Gasping, I stopped.

“That was good. If you can do that every time with a real sword, you’re a swordsman.” Garvaon paused, and for a moment his hard, narrow eyes grew vague. “Master Tung used to say a true swordsman was a lily blooming in the fire.”

He coughed. “Master Tung taught me when I wasn’t any higher than your stick. Do you understand what he meant?”

Recalling the fight on the Osterlings’ ship, I said, “Maybe I do, a little.”

“Every Overcyn in Skai knows I never did.” Garvaon laughed self-consciously. “But he said it over and over, so it must have meant a lot to him, and he was a wonderful swordsman.”

“And a good man. He must have been. If he hadn’t been, you wouldn’t talk about him the way you do.”

“You’re not a wonderful swordsman,” Garvaon told me, “but you’re coming along. Maybe if you can get to the bottom of that business about the lily in the fire you will be.”

With his stick, he tapped my shield. “I said you were doing two things wrong. Remember that? What were they?”

“You said—you said my sword wasn’t like the sea. Not like it enough, anyway.” I groped for another idea. “And you said that ...”

“I didn’t say it. I’m not asking what I said. I’m asking what you were doing wrong. You got the first one. You’ve got to make your sword flow. Now what was the other one?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think about it. Think back on our fight and the way you were fighting me.”

I tried.

Garvaon said, “While you’re thinking, I’ll tell you a little secret. If you want to be good, you’ve got to think about your fights after they’re over. It doesn’t matter if they’re real or practice, or what the weapons were. You’ve got to go back inside your mind and look at it. What did he do, and what did you? How did it work?”

“You kept hitting my legs,” I said, “and then you got my head. I was hitting your shield all the time. I didn’t want to and I tried not to, but that’s how it always was.”

“Good enough. When you came at me, you came sword-side first, like this.” Garvaon demonstrated.

“That was because you were thinking sword, sword, sword when you ought to have been thinking shield, sword, shield, sword, shield. Your shield is every bit as important as your sword. Never forget that.”

He paused to look at his own. “Sometimes I’ve fought men who had never really learned it, and I’ve always known after the second breath. They go down fast.”

I swallowed. “Like I would have, if you’d had a real sword. That first cut to my ankle.”

“Right. Now we’re going to try something different. Switch your shield over to your right hand, and hold the sword in your left. I want you to think shield, sword, shield, sword. Understand?”

So I learned to fight left-handed. It sounds dumb, I know, but it was a good lesson. When the shield is on your right arm and the sword is in your left hand, you use the shield as much as the sword, and that is the way to win. Beginners are always thinking about how they are going to stab or cut. Seasoned fighters think about staying in one piece while they do it. What’s more, they know you can make the shield your weapon and the sword your defense.

But first of all speed. Which is what Garvaon stressed over and over. If you cannot do it fast, you cannot do it. A young knight—as I was—has it in him to be faster than an older one like Garvaon. I knew that, and so did he. But he kept on being faster just the same, because he had fought and practiced so much that it was second nature to him. I did not get a lot of lessons from him. I rode ahead into Jotunland before we had gone much farther. But I learned enough that when I got to Skai some of the knights there, knights who were still famous in Mythgarthr, said I was a better swordsman than most newcomers.

Garvaon was a simple man, and it was that simplicity that made him hard to understand, although I am a simple man myself. He practiced with his men whenever he could, and he taught them to the best of his ability, which was great. He told me once that he was always afraid before the battle, but never afraid once battle was joined. That is the thing that makes men attack too soon, sometimes; but if it ever made Garvaon attack too soon, I never heard the story. When it was time to fight, he told them to follow him and waded into the thick of it. He took pride in his appearance, and in the appearance of his men. He did his duty as he saw it, saw that most men did not, and was a little contemptuous of them because of it. He was the kind of fighting man who sees to it that none of the horses has a loose shoe.