The heavy crunch of boots on gravel made Henry freeze.
He lowered his wooden blade from the Ox guard and turned to see Captain Bernard striding into the practice ring, his arms crossed over his chest.
Henry quickly sheathed his wooden sword at his side and gave a respectful nod.
“Captain Bernard.
Good morning.”
Bernard stopped a few paces away, his small, gray eyes narrowing as he scanned Henry’s posture.
“Lad…
where in God’s name did you learn how to use those stances?”
“A fencer by the name of Vanyek came to Skalitz,” Henry replied, shifting his weight slightly.
“He taught me some moves in exchange for beer.”
“And what exactly did this wandering vagabond teach you?” Bernard grunted, taking a step closer.
“How to attack, how to defend, how to keep moving…” Henry said, his voice dropping into quiet earnestness, “…and to fight as if my life depends on it.”
Bernard raised an eyebrow.
“And the stances?”
“Vanyek showed me Ox, Day, and Plow before the town fell.”
“Hmph.
Well, at least you know something,” Bernard said, a dry rasp in his voice.
“That may be the only reason you managed to crawl out of Skalitz with your head still attached to your shoulders.
But before I waste my morning trying to teach you, let’s see what you actually know.”
Bernard marched over to the wooden rack, grabbed a heavy practice longsword, and turned back around, his eyes locking onto Henry.
“Let’s go, lad.
Show me what you’ve got.”
They engaged without another word.
For more than ten fierce rounds, the clatter of wood echoing across the empty training field was relentless.
Though Henry’s instincts had sharpened remarkably fast through sheer necessity, Bernard’s decades of brutal battlefield experience gave him absolute control over the fight.
Every time Henry tried to press forward, Bernard parried with effortless ease, driving Henry back into the dirt.
Then, during a violent exchange of blows, Henry spotted a tiny opening in Bernard’s guard—a fraction of a second where the captain’s elbow drifted wide.
Gathering every ounce of power in his legs, Henry lunged forward, executing a swift, powerful straight thrust aimed squarely at the center of Bernard’s chest plate!
A cold grin flickered across Bernard’s face.
Instead of blocking the attack head-on, Bernard subtly shifted his torso to the left.
Henry’s wooden sword grazed the steel edge of the captain’s breastplate, sliding uselessly past his ribs into empty air.
Just as Henry’s momentum carried him too far forward and his center of gravity broke—
“Hmph!” Bernard let out a low growl.
His right leg shot out like a battering ram, kicking Henry squarely in the abdomen!
BANG!
“Ughh—!”
The impact hit Henry like a charging bull.
Pain shot straight through his gut, doubling him over as his breath choked out in a ragged gasp.
He flew backward through the air, crashing heavily onto the packed dirt, raising a cloud of dust.
His wooden sword flew from his grip, landing several yards away.
“Cough!
Cough, cough…”
Henry curled into a ball on the hard ground, dry-heaving in agony, unable to draw air into his crushed lungs.
The world spun in dizzying circles above him.
Bernard walked over slowly, standing over the groaning squire.
The harsh mockery he had shown earlier was entirely gone, replaced by a cold, solemn intensity.
“Kid,” Bernard’s voice was low and hoarse, “that kick was to tell you that the battlefield isn’t a noble’s dueling ground!
Besides the sword in your hand—your feet, your elbows, your knees, your head, even the dirt beneath your boots can kill you!
To survive a real war, all rules are bullshit!”
Bernard squatted down and extended a rough, calloused hand.
“Get up!”
Henry gritted his teeth against the sharp, throbbing agony in his gut.
He reached up, grabbed Bernard’s hand, and hauled himself back to his feet, his stomach still churning violently.
“Swordsmanship…” Bernard said, studying Henry’s pained but stubborn eyes, his tone taking on an uncharacteristic touch of genuine instruction, “…you do have talent.
Those last few moves were on par with a veteran’s .
That saves me a lot of breath.”
Bernard walked over, retrieved Henry’s fallen sword, and slapped the hilt back into his gloved hand before unsheathing his own.
“Since you have the basics down, I’m going to teach you something truly life-saving—how to take a beating without dying!”
“Watch closely!” Bernard growled.
He swung his wooden blade downward in a sharp, menacing arc.
It wasn’t fast, but the angle was treacherous, aimed straight at Henry’s sword arm.
“When you block, don’t foolishly meet force with force!
Like this!”
Bernard demonstrated, his wrist rotating in a fluid arc.
The wooden sword, like a nimble snake, slid along Henry’s guard, deflecting the power away while his body subtly shifted off the line of attack.
“This is called deflecting!
Use the least amount of force to neutralize your enemy’s strength!” Bernard retrieved his sword and stepped forward again.
“Again!
This time it’s a thrust!”
Henry pushed down the throbbing ache in his stomach, concentrating every ounce of focus into his stance, trying to mirror Bernard’s wrist motion.
Once…
twice…
his movements were clumsy.
He failed repeatedly, taking hard, stinging blows across his forearms and shoulders, but he set his jaw, gritted his teeth, and persevered.
“Keep your wrist flexible!
Follow with your feet!
Your whole body is one unit!” Bernard barked, throwing another strike.
Gradually, as Bernard intentionally paced his attacks, something clicked.
When Bernard’s next heavy chop came sweeping down, Henry didn’t brace for impact.
Instinctively, his wrist executed a subtle rotation and pull.
CLACK!
The crack of wood against wood was no longer a bone-jarring thud.
Henry felt the force of Bernard’s strike, but instead of crushing his guard, the blow was skillfully guided away, grazing past his hip and slipping into the dirt.
Though Henry stumbled slightly, the block was clean—and his arms didn’t throb with pain. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
A flicker of genuine approval crossed Bernard’s face, gone as quickly as it came.
Captain Bernard stepped back, planted the tip of his training waster into the churned dirt, and rested both leather-wrapped palms against the pommel.
He let out a long breath that puffed white against the crisp air.
The mocking smirk had vanished from his bearded mouth, replaced by the grim, evaluating squint of a master mason inspecting a freshly quarried slab of granite.
“Right,” Bernard rumbled, his voice scraping low like grinding millstones.
“You’ve got the wrists for it.
Your father put iron in your marrow .
But right now, lad, you fight like an honest man.
And an honest man is the first one who gets a hole punched through his gut.”
Henry lowered his waster, chest heaving in steady, measured swells.
“What’s missing, Captain?”
“Everything that keeps you breathing when forty men are screaming for your blood,” Bernard spat.
He tapped the flat of his blade against his shin guard.
“First lesson.
The Mensur—the distance.
Look at where you stand.”
Bernard took a deliberate, sliding step forward.
The tip of his ash waster hung two inches shy of Henry’s throat.
“Most green boys think distance is just stepping in to swing and stepping out to run,” Bernard said, shifting his weight subtly between his front and back foot.
“Wrong.
There are three distances: where you can hit without moving your feet; where you must take a passing step to strike; and the dead zone where neither man’s steel can bite.
You were rushing into the dead zone with your nose sticking out.
Watch my heels.”
Bernard drifted backward—a smooth, gliding motion that didn’t bounce his head an inch.
“If your back foot lands before your edge cuts, your balance is dead.
Step with your blade, not after it.
Now, close the gap and measure me.”
Henry stepped forward, sliding his left foot along the dirt, matching the rhythm Bernard had shown.
He kept his hips low, his ash point threatening Bernard’s sternum.
He stopped at the exact threshold—one passing step from blood, half a step from safety.
Bernard’s eyes flickered with quiet approval.
“Good.
You’re not falling into the well.
Now, keep that line while I show you how to lie with cold wood.
The Feint.”
Bernard raised his weapon into a high Vom Tag above his right shoulder.
“When an idiot wants to hit my ribs, he looks at my ribs and swings at my ribs.
What does any man with eyes do?
He blocks.
But if you sell him a lie with your eyes, your shoulders, and your breath…”
Without warning, Bernard stepped forward with a thunderous Oberhau, his blade slicing down toward the left side of Henry’s neck with terrifying speed.
Henry instinctively threw his arms upward to meet the crash in the crown guard—
Mid-flight, Bernard’s wrists snapped.
The heavy downward cut died in an instant.
Bernard dropped his center of gravity two inches, inverted his short edge, and whipped the wooden point under Henry’s raised hands, stopping the blunted ash tip squarely against the hollow of Henry’s throat.
“Dead,” Bernard murmured.
“You bought the lie, opened your belly, and died with your hands in the sky.”
He stepped back, circling.
“The feint isn’t a twitch of the fingers.
You must throw your weight into the first cut so hard that his gut screams at him to defend it.
Only when his steel begins to rise do you break the line.
Now, do it to me.
Try to take my left ear.”
Henry adjusted his grip, settling into the high roof guard.
He took a measured breath, locked his eyes on Bernard’s left temple, and launched forward with a vicious downward slash, putting the full torque of his blacksmith shoulders into the arc.
Bernard’s guard rose to intercept with a heavy iron crash—
Now.
Henry’s reaction kicked in before he even thought about it.
Before the blades crossed, Henry arrested the downward drive, rolled his wrists over the thumb, and whipped the wooden tip underneath Bernard’s rising crossguard, driving the flat toward Bernard’s unprotected lower ribs.
THWACK.
The ash wood slapped against the boiled leather of Bernard’s side.
Bernard didn’t flinch, but his jaw clenched hard.
He looked down at the wood pressed to his ribs, then up at Henry’s determined eyes.
“Hah!” Bernard barked, half-impressed, half-annoyed.
“A bit wide on the turn, and you exposed your knuckles for a fraction of a heartbeat.
Against a court master, you’d lose two fingers.
But against a Cuman or a highway cutthroat?
You just spilled his supper into the mud.
Now—The Riposte.”
Bernard backed up, knocking Henry’s waster aside with a flick of his crossguard.
“A block is not a defense, Henry.
A block is just waiting for the next blow to crack your skull.
Defending without striking back is like kneeling before the executioner and asking for a blunt axe.
When our wood crosses, the rebound belongs to you.
Vor und Nach—the before and the after.
The instant you catch my strike, you don’t reset.
You feed the blow back down his throat.”
Bernard stepped in, throwing a sharp, rising cut from the low left.
Henry brought his blade down hard into Pflug, catching Bernard’s waster near his forte.
“Now!” Bernard bellowed.
“Don’t admire the block!
Counter!”
Henry didn’t pull back to swing.
Using the kinetic jarring shock of Bernard’s strike against his guard, Henry rode the momentum, rolling the long edge over his forearms and driving a straight thrust forward like an iron piston. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
The blunt point slammed into the steel plate over Bernard’s sternum with a dull, ringing clack.
Bernard took the impact without yielding ground, nodding sharply.
“Better!
That is the tempo.
One breath: parry-thrust.
He attacks, but you finish.”
Bernard paused, leaning slightly on his training waster, his sharp gray eyes studying Henry with new intensity.
“Listen to me carefully, lad,” Bernard said, his voice dropping into a low, solemn rumble.
“Mastering the deflection and the counter-strike in a single, fluid tempo isn’t just basic swordplay.
Once you can execute both in the exact same heartbeat—without thinking, without hesitation—you unlock the foundation of the Master Strikes.”
Bernard tapped the pommel of his sword against his chest plate.
“A common man-at-arms blocks and then attacks.
A peasant simply swings and prays.
But the Master Strike?
That is the line that separates a common foot soldier from a true knight on the battlefield.
Master these fundamentals, Henry, and when the real steel comes out, no cutthroat or Cuman will ever touch you.”
The captain tossed his waster aside into the grass.
Henry blinked, lowering his weapon.
“Captain?”
“You think men die with three paces between them?” Bernard growled, unbuckling his heavy iron gauntlets and dropping them onto the rack with a metallic clatter.
“A tavern brawl or a breach in a castle palisade turns into mud, spit, and teeth in five seconds.
When the blades bind and you can smell the onion on his breath, you throw away the fencing manual.
Ringen am Schwert—Wrestling at the sword.”
Bernard picked his waster back up, marched straight into Henry’s space, and crashed their blades together at the hilts, locking crossguard against crossguard.
Before Henry could leverage his wrists, Bernard’s left hand shot out from beneath his guard like a striking viper.
He hooked his forearm over Henry’s right elbow, wrenched Henry’s arm downward, and stepped deep behind Henry’s lead heel.
Henry felt his balance vanish in a dizzying snap.
Bernard’s shoulder slammed into his chest, and Henry hit the dirt hard on his back, the breath knocked out of his lungs in a sharp gasp.
Before Henry could even roll, Bernard’s boot came down firmly on his right wrist, pinning his weapon arm to the ground, while the captain’s wooden pommel hovered an inch between Henry’s eyes.
“Clinch trap,” Bernard panted, a grim grin showing yellow teeth beneath his gray mustache.
“You were looking at my blade.
A blade in a clinch is useless unless it has room to lever.
When you’re chest to chest, your left hand is your dagger, your shield, and your executioner.
You grab the hilt, you trap the elbow, you hook the leg.”
Bernard lifted his boot and offered a massive, calloused hand.
Henry gripped it, and the captain hauled him back onto his feet with a single, effortless heave.
“Again,” Bernard barked.
“Lock with me.
This time, you trap the arm.”
They crashed together again, wood grinding violently against wood.
The heat of the bind burned between them.
Henry didn’t hesitate.
Remembering the geometry of the lever, Henry abandoned trying to push Bernard’s blade.
He released his left hand from the hilt, shot his arm across Bernard’s lead wrist, and locked the joint against his own hip while stepping his right boot behind Bernard’s rear ankle.
He drove his lead shoulder straight into Bernard’s sternum with the full, concussive force of an eighteen-year-old blacksmith.
Bernard let out a startled grunt as his heels clipped.
The veteran’s mass shifted violently, and only a desperate backward hop and twenty years of seasoned instincts kept the captain from crashing into the dirt alongside Henry.
Both men broke apart, breathing heavily, kicking up clouds of dry dust into the morning sunlight.
Bernard stood with his hands on his hips, his chest expanding under his brigandine.
He stared at Henry for a long, silent moment.
The sun was climbing high over the church spires of Rattay, and the distant clamor of market wagons and blacksmith hammers drifted up from the lower town.
“God’s teeth,” Bernard muttered, wiping a trail of sweat from his forehead with the back of his sleeve.
“You’re a stubborn bastard.
Most squires take a fortnight just to stop tripping over their own scabbards in the clinch.”
He walked over to the wooden rack, methodically sliding his training waster into its iron bracket.
“That’s enough steel for this morning,” Bernard said, his tone shifting into the flat, no-nonsense authority of a garrison commander.
“Your arms are full of blood, but your head needs to digest what I just put into it.
Drill those lines in your sleep.
If I catch you crossing your heels tomorrow morning, I’ll take a switch to your backside.”
As Bernard turned toward the rack, a shimmering translucent window flickered before Henry’s eyes:
+——————————————————-+
| [SYSTEM NOTIFICATION] |
| Level Up: Strength (Level 7) | Agility (Level 6) |
| Warfare EXP: +150 | Sword EXP: +110 |
| |
| [NEW TECHNIQUES MASTERED] |
| • Deflection & Perfect Parry |
| • Feint (Line Break) |
| • Riposte (Vor & Nach Tempo) |
| • Clinch Control (Ringen am Schwert) |
| |
| Stat Buff: Stamina Cost in Combat -3.5% |
| Note: Reflexes adapting to high-tempo combat.
|
+——————————————————-+
Henry let out a steady, measured breath as the blue box dissolved.
The dull ache in his forearms was still burning, but seeing his stats climb made every drop of sweat worth it.
Henry wiped the sweat and grit from his jaw with the hem of his green doublet, bowing his head respectfully.
“Thank you, Captain.”
“Don’t thank me yet, boy,” Bernard replied, unbuckling his heavy iron gauntlets and tossing them onto the weapons bench before turning to look Henry up and down.
His sharp gray eyes glinted with a fresh wave of skepticism.
“A sword will save your skin when a man is in your face, but steel is useless if a Cuman archer catches you from thirty paces before you even draw your blade,” Bernard grunted, gesturing toward the open field beyond the palisade wall.
“Come on.
Let’s go to the archery range and see if you actually know how to draw a string, or if you can even hit a target.”