Wielder's Awakening

by T. B. Christensen

  Traven knew he should be listening, but he didn’t care. All that he wanted to do was sleep, and as soon as his eyes were shut, he was gone. Sleep came fast and deep. He felt it pulsating, calling to him. Then he heard a noise and . . . Traven shot awake as Blaize tapped him on the neck.

  “Calm down there Traven,” Blaize chuckled. “I’m just getting you up for your training. Now hurry up if you really want to learn.”

  Blaize walked away as Traven blinked the sleep from his eyes. Was it morning already? He felt like he had just closed his eyes, but he could see that the sun was already beginning to rise on the horizon. He stood up and stretched. Blaize had left the copse, so Traven followed to see what he wanted. Traven was still tired and incredibly sore, but he didn’t feel weak anymore. Maybe he was finally getting back to full strength. As he emerged from the trees, he found Blaize waiting impatiently with his arms crossed.

  “It took you long enough. If you call that hurrying, I don’t know if I’m going to have the patience to help you out.”

  “Come on Blaize. I just got up, and I’m still tired,” Traven said as he covered a yawn and rubbed his eyes.

  “I got up an hour ago and have already gone through my routine. I only let you sleep in this morning because of your weakened state, but from now on you’ll be getting up when I do, before the sun rises.” Traven groaned. “You said you wanted to be good enough to beat master warriors didn’t you?” Blaize paused and looked straight into Traven’s eyes. “Or maybe I was just hearing things as we rode along yesterday. I thought you said you would do what I told you to without complaining, but maybe I was mistaken.”

  “All right, I’m sorry,” Traven mumbled. “I’m just tired. What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to draw that sword of yours and kill me with it,” Blaize said as he took the two swords from his back and threw them off to the side.

  “What?” Traven asked confused.

  “You heard what I said,” Blaize answered back. “It’s not like you could do anything to me anyway. I just want to see how bad you really are.”

  Traven stood for a second looking at Blaize, but seeing that it was not a joke, he unsheathed his sword. He could see that Blaize was now defenseless without his swords and did not know what to do.

  “What are you doing sissy boy? I told you to attack me.”

  That was it. Traven was tired of being called a sissy boy. He would be careful not to do any real damage to Blaize, but the large warrior was going to be sorry. Traven lifted his sword and lunged at him with it outstretched. Blaize nonchalantly jumped to the side and yawned. Traven turned and took a swing at him, but Blaize just ducked under the arc of the sword and stood up with a smile on his face. Did he think this was funny? Traven decided the time for being nice was past and charged at Blaize, swinging with his sword wildly. All of a sudden, Blaize’s arms blurred as Traven’s hand went numb and his sword went flying out of it. Before Traven knew what was going on, Blaize was behind him with one massive arm around his chest and a dagger pressed against his throat.

  “What happened Traven? Why is your sword lying on the ground over there?” Blaize asked tauntingly.

  “I don’t know,” Traven answered, careful not to move for fear the dagger at his throat would cut him. Blaize released Traven and slipped the dagger back underneath his shirt. Traven took several deep breaths before he said anything. “You almost slit my throat! What was the point of that? I thought you were going to teach me, not kill me.”

  “I didn’t almost slit your throat Traven. Calm down. I said I was going to teach you, and that was your first lesson. I want you to think about what happened, and we’ll discuss it later while we’re riding. There are several things you should have learned from what just occurred. Now I’ll start putting you through some basic exercises. I can see that you have no idea how to use a sword. I thought you were hired as a merchant guard. Don’t merchant guards usually know how to use the weapons they carry at least a little?”

  “Well, I haven’t really had a chance to practice with this new sword.” Blaize just kept staring at him, and Traven decided he might as well tell the truth. “Okay. I’d never even held a sword before I bought one a few days ago in Kavar.”

  “That explains a lot,” Blaize said shaking his head. “Now Traven, if you want me to teach you, you have to be honest with me. Don’t feel bad that you don’t know anything about using a sword. Everyone has to start somewhere. I will tell you this though. If you do exactly what I say and work hard at it, you’ll be able to hold your own in a sword fight in no time.”

  “Thanks,” Traven said, feeling relieved. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but I didn’t want you to think I was worthless.”

  “You are worthless,” Blaize said while laughing. “But after a week or two you won’t be anymore. Right now I want you to watch what I do and copy it.” Traven watched eagerly as Blaize bent down and retrieved his swords. He sheathed one but kept the other out. “First of all, when you grip the hilt, don’t hold it so tightly. You want to have a firm grip on it, but if you hold it too tight you won’t be able to maneuver it as well and when you clash with other swords it will transfer the impact right up your arm. Do you understand what I’m saying?” Traven nodded his head and slightly loosened his grip on the hilt of his sword. “I’m going to teach you some patterns to practice, so watch closely.”

  Traven paid close attention as Blaize slowly swept the blade back and forth in front of him eight times and then lunged forward with the blade outstretched straight before him. Blaize then turned around and repeated the same motions again lunging back to where he had started. He looked at Traven to make sure he was paying close attention and then started another pattern. This time he wove his sword in a sideways figure eight pattern in the air before him. After he had done it several times, he stopped and switched to something else. This time he did not swing the sword but pretended to block invisible swords thrust from both sides and then from in front of his face and legs. He showed Traven several other things he wanted him to do and then told him to do each of the exercises for him. Traven had been paying close attention and sliced back and forth through the air before lunging forward. He then turned and repeated the action lunging back to where he had been standing. He was about to start the next exercise, but Blaize stopped him.

  “That was pretty good, but you’re still holding your sword too tight. You also need to make sure that you stay on the balls of your feet the whole time you practice these exercises. When you lunge forward, make sure you don’t put all of your weight forward or you’ll end up falling on top of your opponent. Make sure you keep your weight directly in your center, not forward or backward. I’ll teach you some exercises to work on your balance later. Now show me the rest of the exercises.” Traven began to weave his sword in the figure eight pattern but was stopped immediately by Blaize. “Traven, I told you not to hold the hilt so tight.”

  “I’m not holding it tight,” Traven answered back immediately. “If I hold it any looser, it’s going to fly out of my hands.”

  “I know that might be what you think now, but I guarantee you’ll be able to control it. I want you to start doing this right now so that you’ll become comfortable with a loose grip while you’re practicing. You’ll find that it’s not as bad as you think.”

  Traven loosened his grip on the hilt and began to weave the pattern once again, afraid he would lose hold of the sword. Surprisingly, the sword seemed to flow easier through the pattern and never came loose.

  “You see what I mean?”

  Traven nodded and continued through the rest of the exercises. After being stopped several more times and shown what he was doing wrong, Traven finally made it through all of the patterns without Blaize interrupting him.

  “Good job,” Blaize said when Traven finished the set of exercises. “You’re a quick learner. Now we need to get moving. We’ve already lost about an hour.”

  Traven followed Blaize as he made
his way back into the copse of trees feeling pretty good about himself. He helped Blaize break camp, and they were soon heading west along the road. Traven reached down and patted his new horse. He had decided yesterday that he was going to call the big stallion Pennon. It was definitely a mighty horse. Blaize said the horse might even be faster than his own. Blaize had also said it was a trained warhorse and that Traven needed to make sure he was careful when he was around other people. Traven was sad that he had lost Dapple but glad to have Pennon. All he needed now was to learn to fight like Blaize.

  “So Traven, what did you learn from our little encounter this morning?”

  The question took him by surprise. He hadn’t thought at all about what he was supposed to learn from the encounter and said the first thing that came to his mind.

  “I learned that I stink.”

  “That’s not a very good answer, even though it is true. What else did you learn?”

  “That, uh, I need to tell you the truth.”

  “No Traven, I told you that after.” Blaize sighed when Traven gave him a blank look. “Okay, I’ll tell you what you were supposed to learn from that. First of all I wanted to show you that things aren’t always what they seem. You might think that an enemy is unarmed or harmless, but you never know. You thought I didn’t have any weapons because I threw my swords down, even though I had shown you my dagger yesterday. You have to pay close attention and be very careful when facing an opponent. The other thing I wanted to show you was that your body can also be used as a weapon. I didn’t need the dagger to kill you. I jabbed my hand into your wrist to make you drop your sword and could have just as easily snapped your neck. Even if you don’t have a weapon, you can still be lethal. Always remember that.”

  As Blaize retreated back into the silence that he usually held while they were riding, Traven thought about what he had said. He had never thought of all of that when he had faced Blaize but saw that it was very true. He watched the countryside for a while before retreating into his own thoughts of adventure. They rode on in silence until midday when they pulled over to the river to water the horses and eat. After eating, Traven unsheathed his sword to begin practicing, but Blaize told him to leave his sword by the horses because he was going to teach him some exercises to do without weapons. These would help him work on his balance and agility. Traven put his sword back in its sheath and left it by the horses as he made his way over to Blaize.

  Blaize soon had him doing running dives and rolls. After that he had him practice ducking and jumping. Blaize then had him practice running and kicking into the air as he jumped. He had Traven do several other things before finally deciding that it was time to leave. Traven was sweating and breathing hard as he pulled himself into Pennon’s saddle. Maybe all of this training was not going to be as fun as he had at first thought. They rode until the sun had set. When they stopped for the night, he was happy to finally get out of the saddle and rest, but just as he was making himself comfortable, Blaize stopped him.

  “Come on Traven. It’s time for you to do your exercises. I want you to spend half an hour working on your agility and then spend half an hour working on your sword work.”

  “You’ve got to be joking,” Traven said incredulously, thinking of all of his sore muscles. “Don’t I get a break at the end of the day?”

  “It’s not the end of the day until you’ve done your exercises. And don’t cheat at any of them,” Blaize added. “I don’t care if you don’t do them properly, because all you are doing is hurting yourself. If you really want to become a good fighter, make sure you do all of them correctly. When you’re done, I’ll have dinner ready and the camp set up. Now hurry up and get started. The sooner you start, the sooner you get to stop and rest.”

  Traven trudged away from camp and started practicing the diving rolls and continued with the rest of the exercises. When he was done with the agility exercises, he started over again and did them several more times. When he figured he had been doing them for about half an hour, he got his sword and practiced the other exercises. By the time he had gone through all of the sword exercises once, his arm and legs were shaking with the effort. He wanted to quit, but remembering what Blaize had said, he continued on. He continued going through the motions until Blaize finally called him back to the camp to eat. He walked slowly over on unstable legs and slumped down next to the fire with a thump. Blaize handed him his food which he ate immediately. He then wrapped himself up in his cloak and drifted off to the world of dreams.

  The next morning, Traven found that Blaize hadn’t been joking. He was rudely awakened about an hour before sunrise by Blaize’s boot being jammed in his ribs. By the time Traven began to go through his exercises, Blaize was already twirling from one intricate pattern to the next in the distance. Traven wished he could work on a pattern like that instead of doing his dumb exercises, but he knew that Blaize would not teach him more intricate patterns until he had worked on the basics. An hour later he trudged back to the camp, and they were soon on their way down the road with the sun peeking over the horizon at their backs. When they stopped for lunch Blaize sent Traven to work on his exercises again. He did them again but was noticing that already he couldn’t keep his mind on what he was doing. The exercises were becoming easy enough that he let his mind wander while he worked on them. When they stopped for the night, he immediately trudged off to work on his exercises before Blaize had a chance to tell him to. Traven was extremely tired by the time he finished but was actually able to stay up after supper for a while and talk with Blaize before going to sleep.

  Traven woke up by himself the following morning and had already started his exercises by the time Blaize got up and started his. Traven followed the same routine as he had the previous day and was glad to find that his muscles now only ached slightly at the end of the day. On the fourth day, the landscape began to change from the flat grasslands into rolling hills. Blaize informed him that the beginning of the hills marked the halfway point between Kavar and Four Bridges. The previously straight road began to wind around some of the larger hills. Traven sometimes lost sight of the river for an hour or more. They stopped a little before midday to water the horses. Blaize said the road would not come back next to the river for another couple of hours. Traven walked up a small hill to do his exercises and to his surprise was followed by Blaize.

  “How are your exercises coming along?” Blaize asked. “Are they getting any easier for you?”

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t have to pay much attention to what I’m doing anymore. It’s kind of boring how easy it is to do the exercises.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Blaize said with a smile. “One of the main points of working these patterns every day is so that you can do any of them immediately without even thinking about it. I watched you this morning, and I think you’re ready to learn some more intricate patterns.” Traven smiled eagerly. “Don’t get too excited. It’s not going to be anything like what I practice. It’s just one step above the basics. You’ll still be doing the same agility exercises for now, but I’ll show you some new sword patterns.”

  Blaize unsheathed one of his blades and began to demonstrate the new patterns. The first was merely a combination of what Traven had already been working on. The pattern consisted of several blocks, then horizontal slashing, and then more blocks. From there Blaize lunged forward immediately going into the figure eight stroke before returning to some more slashing and blocking. It looked pretty easy to Traven, but the second pattern was a whole different matter. It started with the blade poised above the head. From there Blaize fell down onto his back keeping his sword in front of him. He then proceeded to work different strokes back and forth in front of his body with his back to the ground before going to his knees and working the same strokes over again without breaking the rhythm of the strokes. He finally was back on his feet working the same strokes. The strokes really didn’t look that hard to do. The problem was that he wasn’t sure that he could go from his
feet, to his back, to his knees, and back to his feet with both hands on the sword and not break the rhythm of the strokes. The next patterns were basically the same things he had been doing, but he was supposed to jump and do them while in the air. The last pattern was another pattern that combined a bunch of the strokes together in a weaving pattern that he was supposed to do while only standing on one leg. He was then to switch legs and do it standing on the other one.

  When Blaize was convinced that Traven knew what he was supposed to do, they returned to their rested mounts and followed the road as it wound its way away from the river and through the hills. When they stopped for the night, Traven did his exercises and struggled through his new patterns. They were longer than the ones he had been working on, and he didn’t have the chance to practice each pattern as much as he had been able to practice the previous ones. He returned to the fire to eat, frustrated with the problems the new patterns were posing. After finishing his rabbit, he realized that he was not ready to go to sleep and decided to go back and work on some of the harder patterns. An hour later he had overcome most of his problems except for the back, knees, feet pattern. No matter how hard he tried, he could never switch bodily positions without breaking the rhythm of his strokes. He yelled in frustration, and Blaize came over to him from the fire.

  “What’s the matter Traven?”

  “I can’t get this last pattern right,” he responded. “It doesn’t matter what I do. I just can’t do it.”

  “You’re trying too hard. You’re not supposed to be able to do all of the patterns perfectly right away. That’s why you practice them every day. Each day you’ll get a little better until you get to the point where you perfect the pattern. You have to remember that I mastered that pattern a long time ago, but I did have to work hard to master it. Just do your best and keep working on it. You’ll get it sooner or later. Now come on back to camp. You need to get some sleep.”