The grey dawn broke like a bruise over the limestone ridge. Ronan ran his usual punishing circuit through the frost-laden briars, his lungs burning with the razor-thin mountain air, driving the Faelun flow through his lower limbs until his thighs throbbed with a dull, rhythmic fire. When he returned to the clearing, sweat freezing on his skin, he spent an hour drawing the yew bow until his calloused fingers cracked and bled against the hemp string.
Only when the sun had dragged itself half-heartedly over the jagged tree line did Fergus step out of the cabin, a steaming mug of pine-needle tea in one hand.
"Get your sword," old Fergus rasped, his pale eyes flat as slate.
Ronan dropped the bow and hurried into the cramped, reeking interior of the cabin, emerging a moment later with the weapon his father had hammered out at the anvil before the ash-tides took everything.
Fergus took the weapon from the boy's hands and turned it over in the pale light. It was an unusual, ruthless piece of smithing: a blade possessing the length and commanding presence of a bastard sword, yet specifically optimized and balanced strictly for one-handed use. Stripped of all ornamental vanity, it was a weapon of pure utility, resembling the stark, piercing geometry of a war side-sword, forged for brutal efficiency rather than courtly display. Its crossguard was a simple bar of blackened iron, and its grip was wrapped in sweat-darkened leather, designed to keep a man's other hand free in a tight melee or to deliver lightning-fast thrusts through the gaps in rusted plate and leather. Cormac had built it not to be admired, but to keep someone alive in the mud.
Fergus ran a calloused thumb over the fuller, testing the edge before tossing the hilt back to Ronan, who snatched it out of the air with a sharp intake of breath.
"I'll be riding out next month," Fergus said, turning his back and walking toward a thick, resin-oozing pine stump chopped flat to serve as a chopping block.
Ronan clutched the heavy crossguard, his brow furrowing as the words settled in. "Wait... next month? But I haven't even done my first hunt yet. I haven't killed a beast, let alone."
Fergus stopped dead. He turned his weathered head back over his shoulder, his glare dark enough to curdle milk.
"Do you want to learn how to keep your head attached to your spine, boy, or do you want to stand here whining about a deer?" Fergus barked, his voice sharp as a skinning knife.
Ronan swallowed the bitter lump in his throat, tightening his grip on the leather-wrapped hilt. The memory of the charred timbers of his home flashed behind his eyes.
"Please teach me," Ronan said, his voice hard.
Fergus let out a long, wheezing sigh, rubbing a gnarled hand over his lower back. "My bones feel like rusted iron in this damp filth," the old man muttered, spitting a glob of dark phlegm into the snow. "I'll show you once. Pay attention, because I am not wasting my breath a second time."
Fergus stepped up to the scarred pine log, drawing his own notched, grey-steel blade with a sound like tearing parchment. The casual slouch vanished from his frame, replaced instantly by the terrifying, economical posture of a veteran who had survived decades of frontier meat-grinders.
"Four core movements," Fergus rasped, his voice dropping into a harsh, instructional rhythm. "Everything else is just decorative dancing for court fools."
He moved with sudden, startling violence.
"Attack." Fergus stepped forward, driving the point of his blade in a short, brutal arc that buried an inch deep into the wood of the log, with no wasted swing, no theatrical wind-up, just pure, downward momentum designed to crack bone through leather.
"Parry." With a flick of his wrist, he deflected a hypothetical blow outward, using the flat of his crossguard to redirect force away from his ribs rather than meeting it dead-on.
"Block." He dropped his weight low into his hips, holding the blade horizontal at chest height, bracing the spine against his forearm to absorb a crushing overhead strike without buckling.
"Counter." Before the imaginary momentum of the block could settle, Fergus whipped the pommel forward and slashed upward in a tight, vicious reverse arc, ending with his blade poised inches from the pine bark.
It took less than three seconds. The sequence was brutal, seamless, and entirely unsparing.
Fergus yanked his sword free from the wood, slid it back into its cracked leather scabbard with a dull clack, and turned away, rubbing his aching shoulder.
"That's it," Fergus grumbled, already walking back toward the porch. "The rest is up to your own sweat. Get to work."