A Teaching Match (Not)
The monastery’s back garden opened into a clearing just before the woods began.
A sparring match had sprung up out of nowhere, and the children were whispering among themselves, eyes flicking back and forth between Blow and Tommy.
Tommy stood with both fists clenched, glaring up at him as if he meant to kill him. Blow, for his part, was working the tension out of his muscles, hands clasped as he stretched his arms from side to side.
Jane’s lips had gone flat. She wanted no part of this, and when she spoke, disbelief sat thick in her voice.
“Young Master.”
“What?”
“What in the world is this…!”
“You’ll see soon enough. Don’t worry so much.”
It did nothing for the sulk on her face. There was something oddly endearing about it, though, and a short laugh escaped him before he could stop it.
“You said you’d never duel again…”
“You’re putting this on the same level as Greig?”
“A duel is a duel.”
“You’ve got a stubborn streak, you know that? Relax.”
“Young Maaaster…”
Beside them, Melo had been fidgeting with guilt written all over her. She pressed her hands together and spoke in a small, worried voice.
“Liz says Tommy even took sword lessons from a knight…”
“Hm?”
“They say he’s the strongest of the boys at the monastery.”
“Are you worried about me? Melo?”
She gave a weak little nod. Liz, standing next to her, was watching him with just as much worry in her eyes.
…All this fuss over a match with a kid.
Those looks left him oddly embarrassed. He reached out with both hands and smoothed the girls’ hair, his voice easy.
“You don’t have to worry. Jane, tie Melo’s hair back up for her. She must’ve really gone at it. It’s a complete mess.”
“Young Master, I’m sorry. You told me to behave, but…”
Melo wrapped her arms around his waist as she said it. He met her eyes and asked, gently,
“That boy did say something, didn’t he?”
“Yes…”
“Something about me?”
“He did.”
“Don’t do that next time. The one who throws the first punch is the one who loses. Understand?”
“Yes, Young Master. I won’t.”
Jane, who remembered the man he used to be better than anyone, tipped her head to one side as if she couldn’t believe her ears. Blow no longer bothered himself over reactions like that. He picked up a wooden sword and walked toward Tommy.
“That’s quite the sour look.”
“……”
“Right. You want to start this instant, don’t you? I know that feeling very well.”
“…Hmph.”
Blow tossed him a wooden sword. Tommy snatched it clean out of the air, and Blow let out a short laugh before raising his voice so everyone in the clearing could hear.
“Simple. The moment I swing this sword at you, it’s over.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that until you drop from exhaustion, all I’m going to do is block and dodge.”
Wrinkles gathered on Tommy’s brow, and his eyes narrowed.
From what he’d overheard Melo saying, the redhead was a noble, sure—but only some soft scholar who’d gone to a magic school. These days he was running a shop, she’d said. And now he wasn’t even going to swing? Was he looking down on him over a few handspans of height?
Rosinante, his sword instructor, had acknowledged Tommy as well above his age. Hollow little laughs kept slipping out of him.
“Want me to use magic, then?”
“You’ve got a sword in your hand. Magic wouldn’t be fair, would it?”
Tommy had snapped it in a heated, disrespectful tone. Blow Deblique answered as if it were nothing at all.
Tommy snorted and shrugged at the nun in charge beside him.
“I can really hit him, right?”
“Tommy!”
“He’s a noble. If he decides to get back at me later…”
“Hahaha!”
He shot a glare toward the laughter. There was his opponent, that insufferable redhead, a hand over his eyes as he laughed.
“……”
What was this bookworm so sure of? A fire was just beginning to catch in Tommy’s chest when Blow’s laughter died. He leveled his sword, holding it crosswise.
“Whenever you’re ready. Swing.”
Tommy had been waiting for exactly that. He charged.
Rough, but quick—he closed the distance at once and laid into him, the wooden sword whipping up, down, left, and right without mercy. Liz and Melo, faces tight with nerves, squeezed their eyes shut.
Thwack. Tak. Thwack.
A moment later the bright crack of wood on wood reached them. They opened their eyes, just in case, and what they saw was this: most of Tommy’s attacks dying before they were even properly swung, and Blow, even when a strike split the air with real force, sliding out of its path as if the blade had never been aimed at him at all.
Something was wrong. Tommy fell back a step and caught his breath.
“Good spirit! Mind your breathing, set your stance properly, then swing again.”
He sounded like he was giving a lesson. Tommy’s hands began to shake.
Tommy drew his arm far back for a long horizontal cut. Blow stepped in to meet him, already laying his sword along the line the blow would travel. The power never had a chance to settle into the swing. Tommy was driven backward instead, and panic flooded his eyes.
“I told you to take it slow.”
“Shut up!!!”
Advice, in the middle of a match. Furious, Tommy came at him like a charging boar, the wooden sword flailing in every direction. Those blows, too, were far too crude to ever reach Blow. He turned them aside one by one, a faintly sinister smile on his face.
Jane watched him with a deadpan look. Blow’s face had gone even brighter than the day he’d taken eighty gold off Rachel.
…He wouldn’t get a taste for this and go off dueling in Caipol again. He wouldn’t.
The worry wouldn’t leave her. The moment Hervena and Skadi arrived, she was telling on him.
She was still turning that over when someone tugged lightly at her clothes. She looked down. Melo was staring up at her, eyes several times their usual size.
“Jane, did the Young Master learn the sword?”
“Mm. He’s quite good.”
Melo’s mouth fell open. Tommy, meanwhile, was boiling over at strikes that refused to land.
“Aaaah!”
He put real strength into that one. Blow didn’t take a single step. He simply let the blow slide off.
…What is this?
Tommy stared at him, breath coming hard. He had no way of knowing. Blow had simply never attended a knight school. From the day he came up to Caipol until the day he collapsed, he had fought well over a hundred duels.
“What, already finished? I thought you’d at least have some grit.”
That voice had been needling him in small, precise ways from the start. Tommy decided that even if his hands split open today, he was not backing off. He reset his grip on the sword.
What followed was some twenty minutes of attack and defense.
Most of the children had bolted their lunch and come running back, and the crowd of spectators had swelled. Mouths hanging open, they chased Blow’s every movement. In front of them stood Jane and Melo, and Aubio as well, who had come sprinting over in alarm—all three of them gaping at the match.
“Haa… haa…”
Tommy was gasping as if he might die, barely upright against the wooden sword he’d planted in the dirt, staring at Blow. Blow Deblique looked back at him and yawned.
At that utterly unbothered figure, the hand on Tommy’s sword began to tremble. Blow watched him, let out a thin sigh, and shook his head.
“You said you learned from Rosinante, but this is pathetic. Has that Azure Blade Rosinante gotten old and washed up too?”
“…Don’t you dare talk about my master!!!”
He shouted it and charged again.
Thwack.
Blow caught the drained wooden sword in his right hand and stopped it cold.
Everyone stared at him in shock. Pride in tatters, anger climbing all the way to the top of his head, Tommy yelled.
“Let go!”
“Don’t want to.”
“I said let go!!”
Blow Deblique looked at the boy as he boiled over. His eyes narrowed, and when he spoke again the mockery was gone. What remained was a rebuke.
“The one taking Rosinante lightly is you, kid.”
“What…?”
“Look at your stance.”
Tommy looked down at himself before he meant to. A bent back. An arm that wouldn’t even straighten. Legs shaking, and after how long a match, exactly?
The criticism was too precise. His face went red.
“Your footwork is a mess, your arm won’t extend, and there isn’t a single part of your form that could be called bold.”
“……”
“Rosinante would never have taught you like this.”
“Aaaah!”
The next strike came in. Blow twisted and let it slide past, then hooked the boy’s leg. Tommy went sprawling into the dirt without mercy.
“Ugh…!”
Sand had scraped him raw, and his strength was gone. The unfairness of it pushed tears up behind his eyes. Even so, he was beginning to feel it in his body—that he could never beat the red-haired man in front of him, and worse, that he couldn’t even force him to swing.
The children watching had gone solemn. Even Melo, who had been the one to clash with him earlier, was looking at him now with pity.
Tommy hated that. Still on the ground, he clenched a handful of sand and shoved himself back up.
“Haa, haa…”
Blow had been watching the heaving boy in silence. One corner of his mouth lifted, and he spoke without mercy.
“No technique, and now no stamina either?”
For reasons Tommy couldn’t name, the words drove straight into his chest. His head dropped, and what fell onto the dirt beneath it was not sweat.
“Hic…”
Aubio, who had been watching without a word, decided it was time to stop this and started forward. Blow shook his head at him. Then he walked over to Tommy, braced on the ground and fighting for breath.
The words raised the boy’s face as if they were a spell.
The sun sat high overhead then, drawing the shadows out long, and Tommy fell into the illusion that the sun itself was wrapped around Blow.