∴ A Second Strike∴

You stride down the familiar corridor, your kidskin soles silent against the swirls of fine marble, but the carved quillons of your sword jangling against your belt buckles to announce your presence.

The door at the end of the hallway is open, and you know that your Master is within, eagerly awaiting your advice on his latest deal with the Lowlands. From the hints he’s been dropping lately, you suspect that there’s more to this meeting: after five years as an apprentice, you are considered ready to graduate as a guild member.

Keen as you are to fulfil this fate, there is something you must do first. You pause just before the door, and turn your full attention toward a small framed print on the wall. Smiling, you take in the wood-cut knight on horseback, riding through monsters and demons with a look of steadfast splendour.

This unassuming image was a source of solace when you first moved into the grand townhouse, a mere child of fifteen. You recall yourself tracing the delicate lines of the hero and his steed when you thought nobody was looking, longing for the simple morality of his fairy tale world as you naviagted a world of commerce and politics.

As you did then, you drop your hand almost instinctively to the wire and leather grip of your longsword, still striking in its similarity to the knight’s own brand with its curving quillons and a gleaming wheel pommel. Like the needle of a compass, you like to think the slender blade has kept you on course, reminding you of that straight-backed knight and the vows he might have made.

Your name rings out across the marble expanse. With a wistful sigh you nod your final salute to the woodcut knight, and turn to face your future.

∴ A Problem Halved∴

The salle is silent but for the sound of clashing blades. Students line the long, high-ceilinged room like empty suits of armour, rigid and wordless, their eyes fixed on the fight.

The duel was not your decision. You can say that at least, though you might admit to goading your master into it. The fellow was never fond of you, from the first time you corrected his footwork. All it took was a little critique, an impertinent question or two, and a certain wrinkling of your nose when he held forth on measure. Eventually he was bound to crack.

And today he did, the words like music to your ears: “well if you’re such an expert, Mister Furlano, why don’t you prove yourself in a fight?”

You let the pause sound long, until all the students around you had pricked up their ears and strayed from their pairs to see the drama unfold. Then you gazed up with innocent eyes.

“Was that a challenge, Maestro?” you asked quietly.

And so the duel began: longswords, gloves and gambesons. A fight to first blood.

Your master fences much as you expected: at first flashy and uneconomical, keen to embarrass you in some splendid fashion. Then, as his tricks sputter out, he becomes coiled and defensive, stepping back from the engagement when he might press his suit. Finally, as he starts to tire and sees that you do not, he resorts to desperate swinging cuts that create great gaping voids.

You select one of these and step daintily into it, one hand sliding from the oxblood grip of your longsword to the thick forte of the blade, while the other remains cupped about the steely wheel pommel. You glance up just in time to see the panic in your master’s eyes before you jab both arms outward, the fangs of your crossguard flashing as the sword sinks between his ribs.

He stumbles back, clutching at his wound. You watch idly as students clamour around him, some casting wary glances in your direction, others staring openly with something like awe. The master’s wound will heal well. You chose your target carefully. His reputation will take a little longer to repair.

A flower of battle you may be, but that doesn’t make you any less of a thorn in the side.