Abased - The Exiled Warrior

Chapter 4.2 - History

When Alam woke the next morning Tajar and Gretch were already awake and busy ignoring each other. Tajar's face looked flat as it had the previous day.

"Good morning," Alam sat up.

Tajar instantly put on his happy face. "Good morning."

After eating and packing the horses Alam and Tajar again went through their morning drills. It felt wonderful to have full movement back. Smiles split both of their faces as their training sticks clicked faster and faster. After watching them for a few minutes Clarisai stood up.

"Gretch, we have been sitting long enough. Come on," she extended her hand to him, offering to help him stand up. "We must practice too. Healing them yesterday has shown me only too clearly how much my power has faded while in captivity."

"Go away, witch," he said without looking at her, "there is nothing I wish to learn from you."

"Courtesy perhaps?" she frowned.

Clarisai bent down, picked up two different sized stones and moved away.

When Alam and Tajar were half-way through drills with their axe and bow Gretch stood up and approached them.

"You are using it like a woodcutter's axe, not a battle axe," he said.

"Is that right?" said Alam annoyed.

"Yes. And if you don't use it right you'll die."

Alam clinched his jaw in anger and looked at Gretch. Their eyes met. There was no smirk or superior look on Gretch's face.

There doesn't seem to be any malice there. And he is a much more experienced warrior than I am.

Maybe I should hear what he has to say.

Alam exhaled. "Fine. Show me then." He handed his axe to Gretch.

"This is longer and heavier that the wood axes you are used to. It makes a big difference to the techniques. The advantages are that it's reach is longer than many swords and at full swing nothing will survive it. The disadvantages are that it is slow and if you miss you are wide open to counter-attack. So the first rule to survival is not letting anyone hit you."

"Obviously," said Tajar, who had stopped archery practice to observe Gretch's lesson. Gretch ignored the interruption and continued.

"The first technique for you to master is constantly swinging the blade without stopping. That way it does not lose momentum." He demonstrated by swinging it two-handed, in an uninterrupted cycle - in front of himself in a figure eight pattern, and then alternating in front and behind his head. Each time it circled he altered its path in such a way that its angle and height changed. The speed that the axe spun around him was frightening.

Only a fool or someone very fast would even think about trying to sneak within his reach with it spinning like that.

"There are disadvantages to this technique, but we can address them later."

Gretch stopped the swinging blade and handed it back. Alam started the circular motion slowly. Gretch provided corrections to Alam's techniques and soon he found that he could have the blade traveling at speed in both clockwise and counterclockwise directions.

When they broke camp later that morning Alam's shoulders were sore from the exertion, but he was pleased with his progress.

As Clarisai lifted herself into Mist's saddle she turned to Tajar.

"Now that we have passed the lake what is the fastest way to my homeland?"

"We continue south and east until we reach The Trail. After that we follow it eastward through and over the mountains. Beyond that I don't know because I've never been that far."