Analog Science Fiction And Fact - June 2014 Read Online Free PDF Page A

whispered Kal to Teo. It was whispered under his breath and barely audible, but the yar heard him and sent Kal on a run around the training field. The men standing guard on the walls laughed, but none of the veterans in the compound cracked a smile.
    "We gotta break you down into little pieces," the yar explained, "so we can put you back together the way we want. This is the meanest, toughest company in the kospathin's service and..."
    Teodorq raised his hand, and the yar stopped his harangue and stared at him. "You gotta question, savage?"
    "When do me and Kal get to fight?"
    The yar looked as if he had sipped vinegar. "You in some kind of hurry? Soon as you learn how. If you're gonna entertain the high and mighty you gotta know how to put on a decent show."
    "What I mean," Teo said, "is that Kal's gonna be a little winded when he gets back, and I don't want it sung that I had unfair advantage."
    The yar showed his teeth. "That can be fixed." And he sent Teo on a run around the grounds in Kal's wake.
    They trained at swordplay—at first with stout wooden rods against posts, then against Yoodavig himself, and many were the welts that Teodorq wore back to the barracks. The purpose of the long drills was what the yar called "muscle memory."
    "The last thing you got time for in a battle," he told the trainees, "is for thinking about
how
to fight. Your body got to know how to do that without any help. Your mind..." And he thumped Emersavig's skull with a thick forefinger for emphasis. "... assuming you got one, is for strategy and tactics, listening for orders, watching for banners, and all the rest of our craft."
    They learned the parts of the long sword— the supple fore-blade, sharp but easily cleared, and the stout aft-blade, on which an opponent's stroke might be caught; the lower edge for cutting or hacking on the forehand service and the upper edge for doing so on the backhand. The blades were amazingly light for their length, which was about an arm's reach, and Teodorq spent much time with the smith watching how they were made in a special furnace blasted with air from a bellows. The ironmen called this kind of iron
stall,
a word that meant "stubborn" in the
sprock.
    They learned the various guards and attacks, and how to dance seamlessly from one to another. They learned when to "go hard on the sword" and when to go soft; how to stab and hack and cut, and how to get out of a bind. And how to use the off-hand on the pommel for extra leverage.
    It was every bit as nuanced as knife fighting and wrassling, which every plainsman sucked up with his mother's milk.
    "Too complicated," Sammi complained one day, carefully outside the yar's hearing. He counted on his fingers. "Spring from ambush, slit throat, run away. Much simpler. Not so much to learn."
    But nowhere in the practice yard was outside the yar's hearing. "There's no hiding on a killing field, stupid hillman!" he gently informed Sammi. "How you plan to spring from ambush on an open meadow?"
    "Easy," Sammi replied. "Not fight in open meadow. Ambush best in dark, crowded place."
    He won four laps around the practice field for that one—in helmet and breast-and-back.
    World was a bigger place than Teodorq had ever imagined. World had always been the Great Grass, rolling off as far as the eye could see. The hill country to the west and the distant plateau to the north had only served to mark the boundaries; the center had remained the limitless prairies. There, great events had taken place. The rivalry of the Scorpion and Serpentine clans. The Great Trek West of the Gudawan Adyawan at the dawn of time. The war with the Pheasants and their allies when the hero Bardremow sunna Iyash had declared himself First-of-all-Firsts and tried to bring all the Great Grass under him, and bows had sung from the foothills to the Breaks.
    But he had learned since leaving home that that had been only one small corner of world, and people elsewhere had never heard of any of these