Wielder's Awakening (23 page)

Trying to catch his breath and remain standing, Blaize turned towards the door and braced himself for the next attack.  He was met, however, solely by the silent night.  The only sounds Blaize could make out in the stillness were his own labored breathing and rapidly beating heart.  He could hardly believe that the attack was finally over.  The tranquil silence and cool air blowing through the room seemed surreal after the heat of the battle.  It almost seemed too quiet.  The silence was broken by a dull thud behind him.  Spinning around, he found Sherrial’s lifeless body lying on the floor of the back room with a dagger in her heart.  Behind her stood a window, yawning open to the darkness of night.  Stumbling to the opening, Blaize stared out into the empty night and screamed.

“NO! NOOOOO!”

Blaize searched the darkness, but all was still.  As he turned haggardly from the window, he saw nothing in the room but the lifeless body of his love lying in a pool of fresh blood.  She had been his reason for living.  She had been the passion that kept him going.  She had been his happiness and his life.  Blaize slumped to the ground, not having the strength to stay on his feet any longer.  He dragged himself along the floor of the room using his left arm as his right dangled uselessly at his side.  When he reached Sherrial’s body, he gently pulled the crooked dagger from her chest and stared numbly at it and the letter scratched into its hilt before letting it fall.  He then gently cradled Sherrial’s angelic head in the crook of his arm.  Lying down next to her, the blood from his wounds mixing with her blood, Blaize did something he had not done since he was a small child; he cried.

* * * * *

As Blaize finished his story, Traven could see tears in the magnificent warrior’s eyes.  He didn’t know what to say, so he kept silent.  Blaize stood up and walked away from the fire and out into the night.  Traven watched in silence until Blaize was out of sight.  He then woefully added some more wood to the fire before lying down for the night.  With the solid ground beneath him, he stared up at the stars.  They didn’t seem as bright as they had before.

14

Blaize was back to normal with the coming of morning.  He had gotten up early, kicked Traven awake, and sent him to go through his old exercises one more time.  By the time the sun was up, they were on the road headed for Calyn.  The weather was beginning to turn colder, and Traven wrapped himself up tightly in his cloak.  The cold did not seem to affect Blaize at all, however.  Most of the few trees that Traven could see from the road were already beginning to lose their leaves.  Blaize said it looked like winter was going to come early this year but that they would easily be in Calyn before the first grassland blizzards came.  Traven sure hoped that Blaize was right.  It would be awful to be stuck out in a blizzard.  As the sun climbed toward the horizon, the day warmed up, allowing Traven to put his cloak away.  By the time they stopped at midday, he was full of excitement.  Blaize had promised to teach him new exercises.  This would be the final set of exercises that Blaize would be able to teach him before they parted in Calyn.

“Are you ready to learn some new exercises?” Blaize asked.

“You know I am,” Traven replied.  “Let’s get on with it already.”

“Okay, since this is going to be the last set that I teach you, I’m going to teach you some things that are going to take you a lot longer to master than your previous exercises.  I’m also going to have you divide your routine into three different sets instead of just two.  You’ll start off with your agility exercises as usual, but then you will spend time on free combat before practicing with your sword.  Free combat is fighting with your bare hands.”

“Why don’t you just call it weaponless combat?” Traven interrupted.

“Because that’s not what it is.  I call it free combat instead of weaponless combat because it is not weaponless.  Your hands, your feet, your whole body becomes the weapon.  The body is the greatest weapon of all.  When you use a sword or any other crafted weapon, you are using it in conjunction with your body.  A blade is not a weapon until your body turns it into one.  A blade is merely a tool that your body uses to increase its own capabilities as a weapon.  A blade without a body to wield it is not a weapon, but a body without a blade to wield is still a weapon.  Do you understand?”  Traven nodded in affirmation.  He had never thought about it like that before, but it was definitely true.  “Now that we have that out of the way, I’ll show you your new exercises.”

To start off with, Blaize told him that he would basically be doing the same agility exercises but would need to increase their difficulty a little by sprinting instead of jogging and by jumping as high as he possibly could when diving and kicking into the air.  Traven would also need to double the amount of push-ups and sit-ups that he was already doing.  He would only be doing all of these exercises through once to leave enough time for him to add his free combat exercises.  This didn’t sound all that bad until he learned that many of the free combat exercises were merely extensions of the agility and endurance exercises that he would also be doing.  He had thought he would get a break from all of the boring exercises but unfortunately learned that now he would just be doing them twice.

His free combat exercises were, however, a little more interesting than the basic exercises, because now he was punching and kicking and could imagine that he was fighting someone.  The first exercise was merely to practice punching and blocking with his hands, doing it both with his fists and with his hands opened.  He then would practice kicking and blocking with both legs.  After that he would do his diving rolls but would come out of them in a fighting stance that Blaize showed him and immediately throw two punches before kicking strongly straight up in front of him.  He then would practice doing various types of kicks while jumping up in the air.  He would finally work on a combination of attacks and blocks that included dropping to the ground and spinning his leg around to trip an opponent.  By the time he had gone through each of the exercises, he was breathing hard, and he hadn’t even done any of his regular exercises like he would be doing in his new routine.  Blaize told him to run through the free combat exercises again, and then they ate lunch and got back on the road.  Blaize said he would teach him the new sword exercises when they stopped for the night.

Traven spent the rest of the day resting upon his steed as he plodded down the road.  He was looking forward to learning the new sword patterns but knew that he was going to be sore for the next few days until he got used to all of the new exercises.  As the sun headed toward the horizon, a stiff breeze picked up.  It was cool enough that Traven had to pull his cloak back out and put it on.  They stopped with the setting of the sun and set up camp a little ways from the road.  Traven soon had a warm fire blazing and was able to shed his cloak.  After eating some dried meat, biscuits, and cheese, Blaize let out a belch and got up from the fire.

“Time to learn the new sword exercises.”  Traven got up to follow and grabbed his cloak.  “Leave your cloak here.  As soon as you start your exercises you’ll just take it off.  Besides, you need to build up your cold weather endurance.”

Traven tossed the cloak back down with a sigh and followed Blaize out into the twilight.  As soon as he was away from the warmth of the fire, goose bumps broke out all over his skin as the chilling breeze made its way across the grasslands.  Under the light of the moon, Blaize drew one of his swords and began to show Traven his new routines.  Traven had expected them to be a bunch of small patterns to work on as they had been before but was surprised to find that this routine was definitely different than the others.  While the others had been many different exercises, the new routine was a single exercise that flowed smoothly from one type of pattern to another.  As Blaize demonstrated the new routine, Traven realized how similar this was to what Blaize himself did every day.  It was simpler of course and used only one blade but had the basic look of what Blaize practiced.  When Blaize finished going all the way through the pattern once, he broke it down into smaller parts so that Traven would be able to remember it.

The pattern began in a motionless stance with the sword held pointing up, slightly forward and off to the side.  From there, Blaize suddenly swiped his blade forward in a short arc.  After doing several more slashes, he took a defensive stance and parried imaginary slashes.  He then counter attacked.  He stopped to make sure that Traven understood all of it and then began the second part of the routine.  While the first part had been slashes, the second was all spinning and whirling as the blade cleared a wide path through imaginary enemies.  Traven concentrated on the turns and the whirling of the blade but still had to ask Blaize to show it to him a little slower so that he could get all of it.  The third part was diving and rolling, jumping back up to slash and block, and then repeating it several times using different sword patterns.  Traven only needed to see that part once because it so closely resembled earlier exercises.  The fourth part looked much harder.  It consisted of much of the whirling from earlier but added slashing leaps, rolls that ended in piercing thrusts, and weaving intricate patterns in front while leaping back and forth from one foot to the other.

The fifth and final part of the routine looked even more difficult than any of the rest.  It seemed to combine everything else into one furious attack.  It started out with a roll that turned into a whirling pattern upon regaining your feet.  The whirling pattern became even more intricate as Blaize leaped into the air in a hard kick without the blade ever slowing.  Upon landing he ducked, swiped for imaginary legs, and jumped back up to make multiple quick slashes.  It was then another diving roll in another direction and stabbing thrusts followed by more slashing.  The fifth part continued for several more minutes as Traven tried desperately to take it all in.  When Blaize finally finished, Traven had him go through it more slowly.  After that he still needed Blaize to show him a few parts before he figured out what he was supposed to do.  After assuring Blaize that he remembered everything, they headed back to the camp.  Traven welcomed the warmth of the fire while Blaize stayed back for a while letting the swift wind help to cool his body after the strenuous routines.

“If you get all of these routines down perfect before we reach Calyn, we’ll have a practice fight so you’ll see what it’s like actually facing somebody else that’s good with a sword,” Blaize said, walking over next to the fire.

“You mean I’m going to practice against you?  I think that would be pretty one sided,” Traven asserted as he thought about it.  “Maybe we could find someone else for me to practice against besides you.”

“Oh brother,” Blaize said as he rolled his eyes.  “It’s not like I’m going to try to kill you, Traven.  I just want to give you some practice.”

“More likely you want to give me another lesson in humility,” Traven stated, eyeing Blaize and thinking about the last time he had tried to fight him.

“Well, that too probably,” Blaize said chuckling.  “But don’t worry about it yet.  First you have to get all of your new exercises down.  Then you can start worrying about fighting me.”

Traven just shook his head as he stretched out for the night, pulling his cloak over himself.  It would be interesting to face Blaize again.  This time maybe he could hold out for a minute or two. Blaize was right, though.  He needed to concentrate on his new difficult routines before Blaize would let him fight him.  It was going to take a while to get them all down, but he was determined to have them down as close to perfect as he could before they reached Calyn so he could practice fighting against Blaize.  Then he would be able to see how much all of his hard work had really paid off.

Traven arose early the next morning and started on his new exercises.  By the time he was done with the agility, endurance, and free combat exercises, he did not feel like doing any blade work but knew he had to.  He decided to concentrate on getting the first two parts of the routine down.  By the end of the day, he had the first two parts down well enough that he decided the next morning he could move on to work on the third and fourth parts of his blade routine.  By the third day, he had the third and fourth parts down and was able to combine them with the first two.  On the fourth day he tried doing the fifth part but could not remember it all, and he had to have Blaize show it to him again.  It took him an extra day to get the fifth part down, but by the sixth day he was doing the whole routine from beginning to end.  It still didn’t flow smoothly like it had for Blaize, but everyday Traven got better.  At first, all of the exercises and the blade routines left him exhausted and sore, but by about the seventh day it was no longer such an intense struggle to get through all of them, and he still had energy left to do other things.