Keep your shield up!
I AM!
Parry, parry, block, parry, LIFT up your SHIELD, Sol!
Dammit! Relent, cousin!
Nah!
Open your eyes, girl! What are you doing!?
Agh! Andri you stepped on my foot!
You should have moved your foot then!
Right… Take a break. Andri, you spar with me next. I’ll show you how to properly disarm a foe.
Training started early and started aggressively. Aske was a kindly man and never raised his voice at us, but he was beyond even the most disciplined of Beorning warriors and was never one to give us an out.
We trained two hours in the morning, two more at night, and ran more times than I got hot meals!
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not someone who has never wielded a sword in hand, I know my way around a fight, and the friendly rivalries between young warriors in The Vales got our blood pumping to strive to be the best we could be. But my new trainer, this blonde haired Warden… He’s good.
I have never seen a quicker riposte, a more sure strike. A truer form, for when he belted Andri across the chest with the training sword, there was more power in that strike than his size could have possibly betrayed. It near knocked the man over.
“You will learn how to fight properly!” he said to me once. “You may be strong, you may be a Skinchanger, but you must learn how to use your head too. You will fight like Men or you will die like dogs. I’m not joking around, I’ve seen what lurks out there, in distant, desolate lands, lands the scribes leave out of their books.”
We trained in the front garden of the cottage. We sparred under the blossoming apple trees and trained our archery overlooking the distant fields.
It was a quiet, distant place and so far from home I could barely believe we travelled the distance ourselves. But we did. Now we are for better or worse, stuck here in lands unfamiliar and strange to us. Arin says I will get used to it but maybe I don’t want to get used to it? I am a stranger to these lands and these lands are a stranger to me.
…Maybe I will have to meet these lands more? If that makes sense…
Training was ever so familiar however. Every morning, right after breakfast, my new trainer would cause me to sweat buckets sparring, practising and working out under the blistering sun. And every evening right before we settled for bed, he’d bruise my arm, shoulder or leg with another ‘lesson learned’.
Over the weeks, I grew to hate it. I fought as best as I could with each spar, and with each spar he would best me with a well timed counter, an aggressive offence, disarm me with a flick of the wrist, or straight up topple me with a shield bash. Whatever it was I never saw it coming every bloody time!
The one time, he hurt my nose. Didn’t break it of course but it bled.
…I cried.
I hate losing, I hate having to be taught ‘patience’. I know I will be a great warrior! I have been told this my entire life. I haven’t got much of a choice in the matter it seems, though I desperately want to do my folk proud. Because if they are proud, I am proud too!
But now? Now I am being humbled daily by a man whom I barely know.
…But I’m learning.
One of these days, one of these fights, one wrong move and he’ll be the one on the ground, and he’ll look up to me, probably smirking smugly as he often does…
…And I just hope he’ll be proud. That’s all I ever really want, to make those in my life proud.
I can feel my physique improving. I am growing stronger, running faster. My appetite is near insatiable but Arin does a good job at keeping my stomach satisfied.
I suppose I am enjoying it in the end. I’m looking healthier than ever before, at least that’s what Arin says. And I feel it too.
I must buy new trousers, these old ones don’t fit me as good anymore.
Or I get a belt… No no no, that will not do.
Maybe I just eat more? I need to find good fish.
I wonder where the good rivers are, are there salmon?
I must check the forest North of here, maybe there will be mushrooms soon? Autumn draws near and the all things will rest into the cold of Winter before we know it.
