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\chapter{Sword}\label{chapter-7-sword}}



\epigraph{``A single strike parts a champion from a corpse.''}{Praesi proverb}



Dawn had come much, much too early.

I put on my aketon and fastened my bootstraps regardless. I'd been told
the ache in my everywhere would die down when I settled into my ``riding
legs'', whatever the Hells that was supposed to be, and apparently
Zombie was making it much easier on me than an actual horse would. Not
that it felt like it. I dragged my ass down to the common room of the
inn we'd ended up in and picked at my porridge half-heartedly, forcing
myself to swallow mouthfuls of the increasingly lukewarm slop. I wasn't
that hungry at the moment, but a I knew that if I didn't fill my stomach
now I'd feel ravenous in a matter of hours. Captain was the only other
person sitting at the table, methodically tearing through her second
bowl without a word. Even while eating her eyes were never restful,
always moving and scanning the corners of the inn's dining room -- the
habits of a lifetime spent serving as my teacher's bodyguard. With a
grimace I put down my spoon and admitted that this was about as much
food as I could force myself to swallow at the moment. Besides, I had
questions to ask and this was as good a time as any: Black was nowhere
in sight but I was due to begin my first sword lesson soon.

``So,'' I spoke up, ``the Sixth Legion.''

Captain eyed me curiously but didn't reply. I hadn't expected her to,
really: even after only two days of travelling with the gargantuan
warrior I'd gotten a decent read on her personality. She wasn't the type
to talk unless asked a direct question, not unless she was with an old
friend.

``I know their cognomen is \emph{Ironsides},'' I continued, ``but
besides a mention of how they held the left flank at Streges, the books
don't say more about how they got it.''

A cognomen was what we mere Callowans would call a nickname, thought the
books had given me the impression that there was a little more to it
than that. I'd taken the time to look up the legions that served as
Summerholm's garrison, after being told it was where we headed. The
Sixth and the Ninth -- \emph{Ironsides} and \emph{Regicides}. The second
was fairly straightforward, but the first not so much. Captain put down
her wooden spoon, resting it against the rim of the bowl.

``They broke a charge of the knights of Callow,'' she gravelled out, her
tone making it clear she expected this to be a tell-all explanation.

``That's, uh,'' I said, ``good on them I guess? You're saying like
that's a really impressive thing.''

The tall woman mulled over this a moment before speaking.

``You were born after the Conquest,'' she finally said, ``so you don't
understand the way wars used to go. You only heard of the Legions after
we started winning.''

``I know the Empire tried to invade a few times before,'' I defended
myself. ``I was taught about how Emperor Nefarious got his ass handed to
him by King Robert before Black and the Empress got put in charge.''

``Don't take it as a criticism,'' Captain grunted. ``The Legions went
through reforms decades before you were born. Things were different back
then. It used to be that the Empire didn't fight Callowan armies on an
open field unless we had them four to one.''

I couldn't help but let out a whistle at that.

``That seems a little excessive,'' I told her.

``We still lost about half of the time,'' she gravelled. ``Before the
Fields, the only way a legion ever held against a charge by Callowan
knights was by packing the ranks so tight they got bogged down.''

I winced. You didn't need to be a master tactician to understand that
that particular tactic was going to involve a lot of dead legionaries.

``So the Sixth are badasses who spit in the face of enemy charges,'' I
said. ``The name's already starting to make more sense.''

``There's more to it than that,'' Captain gravelled. ``Istrid -- the
Sixth's general -- is an orc. So is most of her legion.''

``And that changes things because?'' I asked.

``Greenskins weren't allowed to be legionaries until the reforms,'' the
large warrior grunted. ``Just auxiliaries that the Black Knights used as
meatshields to take the heat off Praesi soldiers. And when the knights
charged \emph{them}\ldots{}''

``They broke, and they broke hard,'' I finished quietly.

It was easy enough to imagine the greenskin legionaries I remembered
patrolling the streets in Laure, only without the armour and the large
shields. I'd seen enough frescoes of Callow knights in the House of
Light to know they were large men and women in full plate riding war
horses decked in the same: it would have been like running a sharp knife
through butter.

``And so there was Istrid and her legion of orcs, after a thousand years
of her people being run down like animals,'' Captain spoke quietly.
``Standing down those knights from behind a line of shields, and this
time \emph{they were not the ones to break}.''

``Ironsides,'' I murmured, trying out the word with a new kind of
wonder.

I'd probably met cripples in the streets of Laure who'd been part of
that ill-fated charge, I told myself. It was a sobering thought, but it
didn't quite manage to take away the mystique of the tale Captain had
just spun with her curt sentences. That was the thing I hated -- loved
-- the most of these villains I was travelling with: when you listened
to them talk, they didn't seem so much like the villains anymore. There
was a twisted sort of justice to the Sixth Legion managing to be on the
other side of slaughter, for once. \emph{We're raised on stories of
Praesi monsters, but I wonder what kind of stories they heard while
growing up?}

``Don't focus too much on Istrid,'' Captain spoke quietly. ``Sacker's
the more dangerous one between the two.''

``Ninth Legion -- cognomen \emph{Regicides},'' I recited from memory.
``One of their companies killed the Shining Prince, right?''

``They all wear red war paint on their throat to show how the idiot got
his throat slit,'' she chuckled. ``It's what she's remembered for, but
it's not why she's dangerous. She's slated to take Ranker's place when
she retires, and you need more brains than brawn to make it to
Marshall.''

``So she's smart?'' I guessed.

``Cleverer than a snake and twice as mean,'' Captain grunted. ``She's a
patient one, too -- balances the way Istrid can get a little too eager
for blood. It's why they've been paired together.''

I grimaced. Coming from a woman who was on first name basis with the
Dread Empress and the Black Knight, `twice as mean' was a statement to
take seriously. \emph{So let's add General Sacker to the list of people
I'll need be very, very careful around}.

``Speaking of Summerholm,'' I segued in the most casual tone I could
muster. ``D'you have any idea why we're headed there?''

Captain shot me an unimpressed look, so apparently not as casual as I'd
hoped.

``Some kind of Name thing for you,'' she gravelled. ``Squires are so
bleeding dramatic. Getting Amadeus settled into his Role was a pain too,
though, no reason you'd be different.''

I raised an eyebrow. ``Your Name was easier?''

``I was born into mine, back when I was the Cursed,'' she grunted. ``By
the time I became the Captain, no one was dumb enough to challenge me
for it.''

I eyed the gargantuan warrior frankly -- she was already wearing her
armour, and even without her hammer peeking over her shoulder she looked
like a one-woman battering ram. ``I find that pretty easy to believe,''
I admitted.

She snorted and returned to her gruel, making it pretty clear she
considered the conversation over. I tried to do the same, but nearly
spat out the stuff when I realized how cold it had gotten during our
little chat. Shoving the spoon back in, I pushed myself up and nodded my
goodbye to Captain before heading for the door. The inn we were at --
the Soldier's Rest -- wasn't big or rich enough to have a real stable,
so the horses had been tied to a row of posts right outside. Zombie
stood perfectly still next to Black's mount, his chestnut coat lacking
the subtle rise and fall that the horses of the Blackguard showed every
time they breathed. Just by coming close to it the eerie awareness I'd
come to have of the necromantic construct unfolded in the back of my
mind again: it felt like he was a puppet whose every individual string I
could pull on at any time. That wasn't the eerie part, though: I
\emph{knew}, somehow, how all those strings interacted. How pulling on
the part that animated the left forward leg would affect the rest of the
body, what parts I needed to tug on to set him to a trot or a full run.

It wasn't like I'd ever studied horse anatomy, either. I had no real
explanation for how I knew any of that except that my Name itself knew
-- and wasn't that just enough to send a shiver up my spine?

``You'll get used to it,'' the voice came from behind me.

I tamped down the urge to jump out of my skin. Black's idea of a sense
of humour apparently involved sneaking behind me at every occasion. How
the man managed that in a full suit of armour was beyond me.
\emph{Probably involves some kind of Name bullshit.}

``To raising things from the dead?'' I replied, turning to look at him.
``Gods, I hope not. That strikes me as a bad habit to form.''

The dark-haired man stood alone. No sign of any of his bodyguards, or
even Scribe. \emph{Not that she'd say much of anything even if she was
around.} The plain-faced scrivener made Captain look positively chatty
in comparison.

``I'm referring to the things you don't know how you know,'' he replied.
``Names provide what you could call a\ldots{} second set of instincts.
Part of growing into yours is learning which parts to use and which
parts to ignore.''

My eyes fell to the scabbarded sword he held in his hands. A short
sword, much like the one strapped at his hip. Not quite Legion-issue --
the pommel was inlaid with silver, though from this far I couldn't see
what it depicted -- but close enough for training purposes. Without any
warning, he tossed it at me. My hand came up before I'd even processed
the sight, snatching it out of the air like we'd choreographed the whole
thing.

``The reflexes are useful, so I think I'll be keeping those,'' I
acknowledged. ``I take it that's going to be mine?''

He nodded. ``Goblin steel, straight from the Imperial forges of Foramen.
You won't find anything of better make on the continent.''

I raised an eyebrow. ``Not even dwarven stuff?''

The Knight snorted. ``As if they'd ever sell anything but the
mass-produced stuff to surfacers. Dwarven weapons are common because
they're cheap, Catherine, not because they're quality material.''

I raised a hand in a gesture of appeasement. ``Alright, alright. No need
to go all Praesi pride on me.''

The silver inlays made up a grinning goblin's head, as it happened. The
smaller greenskins might not have the kind of fangs you could see in an
orc's mouth, but the leering goblin was showing an impressive set of
canines. I shoved the scabbard into the leather straps made for it on my
belt, wriggling it a little to make sure it fit properly.

``No shield?'' I asked.

There was one hanging off his back, fastened by a clever metal
contraption I'd taken a look at the other day. A large rectangular piece
of plain steel, unadorned by any heraldry: it was similar to what
legionaries used, the kind Sergeant Ebele had called a \emph{scutum}.

``It's waiting for you where we'll practice,'' he replied. ``You'll go
without armour for today, but as soon as the armour Scribe requisitioned
arrives you'll be doing this in full plate.''

Joy. The aketon already made me feel like I'd gained twenty pounds,
actual armour was going to turn me into Creation's clumsiest upright
turtle. I followed Black when he led the way around the inn -- didn't
see what was so different between the ground in front and in the back,
but it was too early to ask questions. Besides, the whole place was
identical in every direction as far as I could tell. The two hundred
miles between Laure and Summerholm were flat farmland with no city to
speak of in between. The main road was good paved stone, at least: it'd
been built by the Praesi after the Conquest, in case they ever needed to
move troops quickly between the cities. People called it the Imperial
highway, since from Summerholm it connected through Streges and its
infamous fields to the Blessed Isle -- and from there, across the
Wasaliti River to the Wasteland itself. There was a field of beaten
earth behind the inn's wooden walls, and there was my shield: an actual
legionary's scutum, painted dark red, though I noticed it lacked a
legion number. I picked it up and tested the weight: twenty pounds,
maybe a little more? It'd get tiring to hold up until I built up my arm
strength. The horizontal grip was good cedar wood and I tied up the
leather straps hanging off of it to my wrist -- put there to make sure
it wasn't easy to knock out of my fingers, I figured. Black was standing
at ease on the field when I finally turned to face him, shield held up
to cover his side and sword already in hand.

``So,'' I said. ``Teach me swordsmanship.''

He smiled. ``I'm not going to teach you anything of the sort.''

``That seems a little counterproductive,'' I commented.

``Swordsmanship,'' he continued, ``is the tame sport they teach noble
children. It's a matter of forms and rules, as useful on the battlefield
as a blunted blade.''

The tip of his sword rose to face me.

``I'm going to teach you to \emph{kill}, Catherine,'' he said. ``Kill
well and quickly, while giving as few openings as possible.''

``Hurray,'' I replied flatly. ``Long live the Dread Empire, other
assorted patriotic slogans. Can we start now?''

Still, even as I gave him the flippancy that little bout of melodrama
had deserved, I straightened my spine and brought up my shield in a
rough approximation of the way he held it. This was the sort of lessons
I'd actually been looking forward to -- even more now that I'd started
learning the blinding headache that was spoken Kharsum. Only one night
in and I was already much more amenable to the Miezan point of view of
stomping that whole ``other cultures'' business into the ground. He
actually looked a little offended I'd been largely unaffected by his
impromptu spot of theatre, though he got over it quickly enough.

``The two most important parts of any kind of fighting,'' he said, ``are
distance and footwork. Your fighting in the Pit should already have
taught you the basics of distance, though you'll need to adjust to the
range of your sword.''

I frowned but nodded. Girls my height who got into fights either learned
to deal with the fact that most opponents would have more reach and
upper body strength than them, or they learned to enjoy the taste of
blood in the mouth. The short sword wasn't much of an upgrade, in that
regard. Most people I'd end up fighting would have a sword too -- and
outside Praes, longswords and two-handers were the most popular weapons.
\emph{Except for the Free Cities, I guess.} That whole lot had a
fixation with pikes and spears, though to give praise where it was due
their phalanxes were supposed to be fearsome on the field.

``Shield up,'' Black barked, and my arm rose immediately -- mostly out
of surprise.

I'd never heard him raise his voice before. The suddenness of it had my
blood rushing through my veins while he advanced towards me, eyeing my
stance critically.

``You're right-handed,'' he said, ``so your left hip and leg should be
braced against the back of the shield. Otherwise, \emph{you're open}.''

His sword whipped out faster than my eye could follow, swatting aside my
hastily-placed scutum. The tip of his blade came to rest on my throat
for the blink of an eye before he took a step back. I swallowed. That
wasn't a practice blade he was using: if he'd pushed it an inch further
in, I'd be dying on the ground. Squaring my shoulders, I put the
godsdamned shield up the way it was supposed to go. The upper edge came
all the way up to my chin and the sides covered my entire body -- it was
reassuring, to have that length of steel between me and his blade. The
position felt awkward, to be honest. The foot in front pointed towards
Black but the one in the back had to be horizontal if I wanted to have
any stability: swinging my sword would be tricky.

``Better,'' the green-eyed man conceded grudgingly. ``Now for the sword.
Grasp the grip and press forward as you lift it out.''

It ran against my instincts to do it that way, but I could see the sense
in it: it kept everything but my upper arm under the cover of the
shield. I rotated my elbow down and brought the sword up, letting it
rest to the side of the scutum. \emph{Ah}, I understood suddenly. Of
course swinging would be difficult: the sword wasn't supposed to be
swung. It was meant to stab forward in short thrusts.

``Legionaries fight on three lines,'' Black said. ``Low line goes like
this.''

He crouched behind his shield, letting it cover him all the way up to
right under his eyes. The tip of his sword was knee-height.

``Mid line goes like this,'' he continued, rising up and bringing the
sword up to his hip.

He took a short step forward and I eyed him warily. My newly-acquired
Name reflexes had been of no help whatsoever last time he'd attacked.

``And high line like this,'' he finished calmly.

His arm went back and the tip of the sword came to breast-height like a
serpent poised to strike. I nodded sharply.

``Good,'' he smiled. ``First we'll spend some time having you go through
those motions.''

He stepped back.

``\emph{Low line},'' he barked out.

I flinched at the sudden sound but crouched. I \emph{would} learn this,
and learn it well.

Several eternities later -- or, more realistically, about two hours -- I
found myself pulling the cork out of a waterksin and gulping down the
contents greedily. We'd acquired an audience somewhere between the
stabbing drills and the footwork ones. If I had to hear \emph{steady
timing, maintain the distance} one more time, someone was going to get
stabbed. And I had a sword now, so I meant business. Captain, who'd been
the one to hand me the skin in the first place, patted me comfortingly
on the shoulder. \emph{Gods, even her hands are huge. She must have ogre
blood or something, humans don't usually get that big.}

``The first few weeks are always the hardest,'' she told me. ``You're
not doing bad at all.''

I took her word for it, though I couldn't find it in me to agree out
loud. I'd been in enough fights to know that I was good in a scrap --
\emph{very} good, even, for my age -- and it had been a while since I'd
felt as clumsy and slow as I had today. I was aware that comparing my
own movements to the effortless way Black moved even in plate wasn't a
reasonable comparison, but it wasn't stopping that nagging voice in the
back of my head from making it anyway. \emph{And I'll be worse when I
get my own armour.} I felt my fist clench and took another swallow to
hide my grimace. I was definitely doing another set of drills tonight,
preferably somewhere no one would be able to see me making a bumbling
fool of myself. When I passed the skin back to Captain I found her
scrutinizing me with those too-perceptive eyes of hers, and without
saying a word she patted me on the back a last time before heading
towards Black. The Knight was talking in low voices with Scribe, reading
a folded parchment she'd handed him after he'd announced we were taking
a break.

``Black,'' she called out as she strode across the field. ``Anything
urgent come up?''

Green eyes flicked towards me before he replied. ``Nothing new.''

Captain grinned, tossing the waterskin towards the wall and rolling her
shoulders.

``Let's have a bout, then. You've been putting the girl through the
mangle, so at least show her what she's headed to.'' The gargantuan
woman pulled the war hammer hanging off of her back, twirling it
one-handed like she was holding a twig instead of a massive wrought
steel bar. ``Been a while since we had one, anyway.''

Well now. That sounded like it had potential. Seeing the Knight getting
smashed by that hammer a few times would do wonders for my mood. The
green-eyed man snorted.

``Fair enough. Terms?''

``Let's keep Names out of it,'' Captain replied. ``Would defeat the
point to go all-out.''

``Would also wreck most of the countryside,'' someone muttered from my
side.

I glanced and saw one of the Blackguards had come up to me. There were a
handful of them milling about the place, though together they didn't
make up more than a dozen people. Where the rest had gone to, I had no
idea. The man who'd spoken pushed up his visor to show his face:
couldn't have been older than thirty, with brown wide-set eyes and the
dark skin tone typical of northern Praesi. \emph{Soninke}, I corrected
myself. \emph{They call themselves the Soninke.}

``They get messy, I take it?'' I prompted him.

It was the first time one of the Blackguards had struck up a
conversation with me, so I fully intended to keep it going. Hells, it
was the first time I'd seen one of their faces: they kept to themselves
to the extent I'd started to wonder if they were avoiding me.

``The last time they had a spar without holding back, Captain knocked
down a tower and Lord Black threw a whole statue at her,'' he informed
me cheerfully. ``Hilarious at the time, of course, but the local baron
was less than pleased.''

I chuckled. ``I don't think we've been introduced,'' I said. ``I'm-''

``Catherine Foundling.''

I scowled. ``I really wish people would stop doing that.''

He grinned, showing off pearly white teeth. ``I'm Lieutenant Abase,'' he
introduced himself, offering his hand. I went to shake it but he made
some sort of strange clicking sound with his tongue and moved my hand up
to his forearm.

``You're not a civilian,'' Abase told me. ``Use the warrior's salute.''

I raised an eyebrow but clasped his arm like he'd showed me.
\emph{Praesi and their rituals. I'm surprised they can use a chamber pot
without doing a special dance first.}

``So,'' I mused. ``Any particular reason this is the first time I
actually speak with one of you?''

``We're quiet types,'' the lieutenant replied drily. ``And wary of
strangers. Lord Black has several men's worth of enemies.''

Wary of me, huh. Not sure whether I was offended or flattered. Still, I
must have done something right, to finally rank words today. I was about
to ask exactly what that was when movement at the edge of my field of
vision interrupted me: Captain and Black were putting distance between
them, striding to the edges of the dirt field. Scribe stood in the
middle, looking superbly bored with the whole affair.

``Try not to blink,'' Lieutenant Abase said. ``You'll miss it.''

\emph{Miss what?} I wanted to ask, but Scribe was already speaking.

``On my mark,'' she announced. A heartbeat passed, then she brought down
her hand.

I blinked -- probably because the lieutenant had brought it up in the
first place -- and in the fragment of a moment where my eyes closed,
Captain crossed half the field. She left behind foot tracks and a spray
of dirt where'd she been standing an instant before, barreling through
the distance almost faster than I could see. Black had not yet moved,
standing still with his shield up and his sword in mid-line, but the
moment Captain got close enough to bring her hammer down he calmly
sidestepped around the strike and pivoted so he'd be facing her back.
The armoured woman's weight and momentum carried her forward even after
she landed on the ground, carrying her a few feet further down the field
as she turned to face the Knight.

``Shit,'' I whispered. ``Did she really just jump thirty feet forward in
heavy plate?''

``Quick on the offensive, today,'' Abase noted, unruffled by what we'd
just witnessed. ``She must have been getting bored.''

``Weren't they supposed to not use their Names?'' I asked him. ``What
she just did is, like, physically impossible for a normal person. Just
seeing it would give my numbers teacher a headache.''

``They're not using them \emph{actively},'' the lieutenant clarified.
``Lord Black's shadow isn't moving and Captain is, well, still using her
hammer.''

He didn't elaborate further on either of those interesting tidbits, and
I decided not to press him any further -- not because I wasn't curious,
but because what the people in question were getting up to had claimed
my full attention. Captain was attacking relentlessly, swinging the
two-handed war hammer like she couldn't feel the weight of it at all.
And yet, she wasn't the one controlling the flow of the fight. Black
moved little and carefully, rarely more than a step at a time: he
stepped barely out of the arc of her strikes and then swung around so he
was facing her back. He'd yet to attack, but just the threat of him
doing so was forcing Captain to keep moving. The sight of them was
almost comical, from where I stood: the two of them were dressed in
similar-looking plate, sure, but the olive-skinned woman stood at least
three feet taller than him and had broader shoulders to boot. Neither of
them wore helmets, so I could see that while a faint smile tugged at
Captain's lips my teacher's face was expressionless. His pale skin made
it creepy: he looked like he was wearing a mask made of marble. After
another miss, Captain took a step back and raised her hammer high.

``That should do for the warm up,'' she grunted before striking the
ground.

There was a dull boom and the ground shook like it had been hit by a
catapult stone: dirt sprayed everywhere, clouding my sight of the
battlefield for a moment. When they came into sight again, Black was
ducking under a vicious-looking swing. He ventured a kick to her knee
but Captain danced back, the hammer coming back to swat him on the
backswing. His shield came up to take the hit but the metal crumpled
under the force and the impact was enough to throw him back a few feet.

``You're getting slow in your old age,'' she told him.

The dark-haired man shrugged and discarded the now-useless scutum.
``You're getting mouthy in yours,'' he noted amusedly.

And then he went on the attack.

I'd seen him move like that once back in Laure, when he'd decided that
stabbing me in the chest was an acceptable way to end a conversation,
but seeing it from a distance was an entirely different matter. When
Captain was at her quickest I could still make out a blur, but with him
it was like he just\ldots{} appeared in another place. Stepping inside
the warrior woman's guard almost absent-mindedly, he swept his blade
across the space where her throat had been a moment earlier: if she
hadn't taken a step back at the last moment, her blood would have been
spilling in the dirt. She brought down her hammer's handle on his
shoulder, but he spun around and smashed the pommel of his sword into
her elbow. She grunted and the impact loosened her grip, but Black was
already moving again. He spun again and stomped down on the back of her
knee, forcing it down as his blade went for the side of her neck.
Captain managed to bring up the hammer's handle at the last moment and
block it, but hers was not a weapon made for defence and it showed. Not
that it mattered, given their difference in strength -- the instant she
got her footing back, Captain pushed him off without any visible effort.

It was what he'd been waiting for, unfortunately for her.

He drew away as she pushed, letting her pass through and steadying his
arm in the high-line guard he'd spent half an hour showing me earlier:
he thrust straight into the back of her neck. It was a killing blow, or
it would have been if he'd pushed it all the way through. Instead he
stopped after pricking the skin, stepping back and sheathing his sword
with a flourish as Captain cursed in Taghrebi. I recognized the plural
of goats somewhere in there, and to be honest I was kind of glad I had
no idea what the rest of it meant.

``And that's a kill,'' Black spoke, the lack of smugness in his tone so
flamboyant it looped around back to smug.

Captain grunted and let her hammer rest against the ground, fingers
coming up to touch the minute wound on her neck. ``That makes what, two
hundred for you?''

``And still one twenty-one for you,'' he agreed. ``The gap is widening,
it seems. Are you sure \emph{I'm} the one getting slower?''

``You'll need to beat Ranger at least once before you get to gloat,''
she growled back.

I let out the breath I hadn't known I'd been holding as the two of them
continued to bicker amiably. So that was what it looked like, when
legends fought. And not even a serious fight, I reminded myself.

``Triple drills,'' I muttered to myself. ``Triple drills, even if my
limbs fall off.''