Prelude

There was a small window above the sink in the kitchen. Sheer curtains draped the glass but allowed plenty of sunlight to drift through during the day. Here was a perfect perch for a boy his size to hide and peer out onto the patio. At thirteen he had yet to grow to his tallest potential. The spurts were starting to make his bones ache, but it would be some time before he could stop looking up to see anyone in the eye.

Spring was fresh and crawling through the city. A cool breeze trickled in through the screen and teased the curtains. The smooth fabric tickled his cheek, but he paid it no mind. He had tucked himself in between the cabinets, his shoulders pressed into the edge and his feet on the divide in the sink. This was a good vantage point.

Two men were dancing on the patio. Sun-baked bricks lay in a strategic pattern, flush with the neatly clipped lawn. Everything in and around the house was always kept neat and tidy. Fortunate for him; he didn't have to wrestle with any dirty dishes to better claim his seat.

These two men were proportionate opposites of each other. One was an average height and lean, his hair dark with loose curls, and his eyes bright. This one had the grace of movement he had only seen in women before. The other man was monstrously taller; he had a full head of height over the other. He was built like a house with a broad chest and fearsomely large muscles. His hair was not quite as dark as the other man's, nor were his eyes quite as bright, but his skin tone was a shade darker. The leaner man was much too pale.

These two men were dancing with swords. The one the shorter man held had a basket hilt and a long thin blade. The larger man held a sword so thick and long that any other person of normal size would have had to hold it in two hands; he only needed one. The clamor of steel striking against steel rang through the afternoon light, adding music to their dance. Between strikes and parries, these two men were talking. He couldn't understand a single word they were saying, for it wasn't a language that he knew.

By the tone he could make plenty of guesses, however. The larger man was his father, or so he had been told only a short few weeks ago. They both spoke the language that he knew, but they also spoke another. When he wasn't around, when they thought he wasn't listening, or they didn't want him to understand what they were saying, they always spoke in this language.

It was the way the shorter man looked at him that told him everything, though. A couple of weeks ago he hadn't known his father. He had lived in a monastery. By a miracle of his one and only birthday wish coming true, fate had brought them together. He finally met him. The man took him home.

This house was much nicer than the monastery had been. There were no priests milling about and shoving him out of the way. So far the man he now knew as Father, and his partner, the other one, treated him well. But it was an awkward situation. They all seemed to tiptoe around each other, were never all completely comfortable in each others' presence. All this time they had lived without him. He got the feeling that his very presence here upset the natural order of things. He didn't belong.

He spent much of his time like this, hiding on the kitchen counter and watching them spar in the afternoons. When the music of clashing steel came to an end, he watched them take their weapons into the shed off the corner of the patio and put them away. That was his cue to slip down off the sink and tiptoe back up into his room. He closed the door and slid down to the floor. Through the crack in the bottom he listened to their murmurs and wondered where it was, in all of this, even in this one room he was told was his own, that he actually fit in.

Choices

His father's arsenal included everything from daggers and knives, swords and spears, to even polearms and axes and maces. Any melee weapon that anyone could ever dream of wielding was housed within that shed. The number of them hung on racks and glinted quietly in the thin stream of light that filtered in through the open door. They were well cared for, polished and clean. Carmine had acquired quite the collection over the years, and over time he had learned to use them all, save one.

Salvador listened attentively while his father named each one, but the likelihood that he would remember them all by name at a later time was unlikely. There were just far too many. It was the one his father didn't name for him that caught his interest most. "What is this one, Father?"

Hanging from the wall to the left of the shed door, alone and apart from all the rest, was a thin blade that was nearly as long as he was tall. The width of the blade was just barely within an inch, however. This one sword had a complex, sweeping hilt with a crossguard that curved and twisted around the grip. Carmine turned to look at it and smiled fondly. "Ah, that," he said, somewhat wistful. "That, my son, is a swept hilt rapier. It is Dani's."

The boy recalled the days before in which he had watched the two men spar. Yes, he should have known. It did look familiar. He nodded his understanding. There was some minuscule hint in those few words that of all the many weapons in this inventory, this one was off limits. So he turned away from it to look over the rest of the assortment. "Do you use them all, Father?"

"Ah, well, most of them," the giant of a man said with a laugh. He turned to survey his collection, rubbing his stubbled jaw. "Not as well as I use this one," he decided.

This one sword he plucked from the rack also had its own personal place. No other weapons around it shared the stand it rested on. Carmine took it up by the grip in one hand, but even a hand as large as his left plenty of room for another. The whole length of this one item was at least two meters, assuredly longer than Salvador was tall. His father was nearly equal height to the sword's length. The boy's jaw fell open at the sight of the thing.

Carmine laughed heartily at his son's expression. "This is a mandoble. Espad?n. Some may call it a greatsword or claymore." That last was a strange word of a foreign language. It may have been one of the first few English words the boy had ever learned. "It's heavy," he warned, lowering the point to the cement floor and offering the hilt to the boy.

He grabbed the hilt at two places above and below his father's hand. When the giant of a man let go, Salvador gasped at the amount of strength he had to use just to keep the weapon upright. A sword of this size generally weighed four kilos (approximately eight to nine pounds). "It is," the boy agreed, about the weapon being heavy.

His father laughed again. "Ah, yes. I expect it will be years before you'll ever be able to wield one of those." Carmine stood their grinning while he watched his son struggle with the weight, admire the sharp edges and design.

"Me? Use one of these?" The boy looked up at him, astonished.

"If you like," Carmine said. His grin hinted at something the boy had never expected to be told.

Salvador absorbed his father's expression with the same bewildered astonishment. He looked around at the other assorted weapons with a certain sort of anxious delight. Before he knew what had come over him, a wide and hopeful smile spread across his mouth. "You will teach me?"

The big old bear's grin widened into a proud and appreciative smile. "If you like," he said again. Then he gently took the immense sword from the young boy's grasp.

Balance

Holding the little wooden sword in his right hand, Carmine turned his profile to the boy and kept the point angled forty-five degrees to the ground. He slid his left foot back and angled his heels near together at ninety degrees, knees and elbows bent with his left arm behind him. Then he lifted the wooden blade with a left turn of the wrist so that it swooped up and to the side. He held it vertically, point to the sky and the flat of the blade facing his son, in front of his face.

Salvador tilted his head, brows knitting in wonder. For a long moment he stood staring at his father and wondering at this display. The giant of a man held that pose. Tilting his head the other way, birdlike, the boy slowly got the idea. When he mirrored him, his father smiled and dropped the sword away from his face. Another twist of the wrist brought it around at a forty-five degree angle that pointed at the roof of the house.

Carmine never explained the meaning of that gesture, but at the beginning of every session he posed that salute. His methods of teaching required very little words between them. The boy was a quick learner and got the gist of things without needing any explanations at all.

"Now," his father said, "try to hit me."

Lowering his waster to match his father's posture, Salvador blinked and tilted his head. It seemed like such an easy request, but the man made it sound like it wasn't. Shrugging, he lifted back his arm and stepped forward, bringing the wooden blade around in a wide arc from his right.

The bear of a man simply turned his sword on a rotation of the wrist, brought it in under Salvador's, and flicked the clumsy blow aside. He maintained his stance while the boy went stumbling sideways. Carmine had swatted his attempt out of the way as if he had been nothing but an annoying mosquito trying to alight on his arm. "Again," said his father. When he regained his balance and turned back, he saw that the man was facing him again in that same stance, with the waster tipped into that same forty-five degree angle. He hadn't thought he had moved, but he had.

This seemed much more difficult than he had initially imagined. Salvador scowled, but turned to mirror his father's stance again. He did not immediately attack a second time.

Carmine grinned at him around the edges of his waster. "Do you know why you failed?" he asked.

The boy shook his head.

"You rely on strength."

Salvador's brows raised. At first, he thought that was the idea. He never imagined he could beat his father right away. The man was huge!

His father chuckled, as if he could read his thoughts. "Fighting with a sword does not require strength, Salvador. It only takes a pound of pressure to kill a man. Less than that if your steel is sharp."

"You're more than a pound, Father," the boy remarked.

This made the big old bear laugh heartily. "So I am! More than two hundred, but that doesn't matter. Dani can best me on some days. He is smaller and faster than I am. My size puts me at a disadvantage. But even speed can't always beat strength. Balance the two, and you will be a master."

Salvador absorbed this information as best he could, processed what he was learning. Yes, he had tried to put a great deal of strength behind that first blow. In fact, he had put all of his strength into it. Tossed his entire body into his father's range and swung blindly. He nodded his understanding and tried again, but he couldn't get his body to comprehend what his mind was trying to tell it and his father swatted him aside lazily once more.

"Again," Carmine instructed him. The lesson went on like this for some time. He failed, his father told him to try again, and again, and again. "You keep coming at me the same way, son. That will never do."

So the boy tried a different tactic, after some consideration. He once again examined his father's stance. If he couldn't hit him from the side, swinging the sword in from the right, then maybe he could hit him from the left. He swung his waster back toward that shoulder and then out and away from it, but Carmine only deflected the blow with the same casual flick of the wrist.

"You advertise your moves too openly," his father chided him.

Was he really that easy to read? Salvador frowned and rubbed his arm. His muscles were starting to ache from all of this not-hitting. He thought he'd be hurting more from suffering bruises, from all the strikes his father might land on him, but so far the man had not hit him at all.

Carmine chuckled and brought his left hand around to tap his own chest, just under the sternum. "Look here, son." The boy instantly fixed his gaze on that spot. "Keep your eyes there. That is my center of gravity. Now watch."

As instructed, he kept his eyes glued to that spot. His father's waster started to move. He could see the man's hand turn at the wrist through the corner of his eye. Along the lower edges of both, through his lashes, he could see his knees bending. Then there was a blur of something flying at his face. Salvador gasped and twisted to his right just in time to see the wooden sword slice the air out from under his nose. Dropping his waster, his arms pinwheeled and he stumbled, losing his balance to fall tailbone first on the hard baked bricks of the patio.

Carmine had stilled in that pose. Salvador stared up at him with his mouth hanging open. The waster and his arm were extended, edge parallel to the ground and sky. The big bear's body was leaning forward, right knee bent and left leg stretched to allow him to balance on his toes. His father was grinning when he said, "Good boy." Then he rocked back into his primary stance, something the boy would come to learn was called a ready stance.

Salvador's heart was pounding and his breath came in short spurts. His eyes were wide. He was certain he had been seconds away from certain death. Well, if that sword had been steel instead of wood, he would have been, but it still probably would have hurt a lot. He scrambled to his feet, making his own waster skitter before he got a hold of it, then turned to face his father once more.

"Now," said his father. "Try to hit me again."

Grace

"So your dad's making you use these clumsy wooden sticks is he?" Dris asked with no small amount of disapproval. The wiry man picked up one of the wooden wasters between his forefinger and thumb as if he were instead plucking up a filthy diaper from the floor. He held the waster by the hilt with a wrinkle in his nose and a disgusted curl of his lips.

These were perhaps the most words the other man of the house had ever spoken to him in any single sitting. Granted, they weren't sitting. They were standing on the back patio distastefully admiring the rack of practice swords that lined the exterior wall. "Yes," said Salvador dolefully.

Dris tsked and tossed the waster unceremoniously back onto the rack. "He always was such a worry wart," the man commented, mostly to himself. He turned about, brushing his hands together as if to scrub loose an excess of nonexistent dirt, then put one hand on his hip and tilted his head to regard the boy.

Salvador stood there under the scrutiny and tried not to look as uncomfortable as he felt. Hanging his head, he looked at his shoes. They seemed to be the safest thing to look at while the other man in turn examined him visually from head to toe.

That one meager unsettling moment was broken to pieces with a flourishing wave of the older man's hand. "Sometimes I just don't know what he's thinking," Dris said, stepping around the boy. A bit of nostalgic admiration trickled out of his tone as he walked to the shed. "I guess that's what makes him so charming. The greater mystery of Carmine Enrique Molinero-Gonzalez." The boy swore he heard the other man swoon somewhat as he sighed.

The boy turned his head slowly, cautiously, and mostly watched the man's profile through the corner of his eye. Dris unlocked the shed and tossed open the doors. He did this in a way that was somehow enchanting. As if instead of stepping into a crowded, weapon-lined shed, he was instead walking into a grand ballroom full to brimming with people in pretty dresses and sharp suits. Dris always did have a phenomenal amount of flair, even if he dressed simply.

"Did he ever tell you about the time he and I single-handedly fought off a band of roving orcs that had thought they'd commandeer themselves a brigantine?" Dris asked, pulling a pair of flimsy looking metal sticks off a rack from inside the shed. He turned in a grand and sweeping fashion, holding one sword in either hand. His hands were hidden by the domed cross guards. He turned the tip of one bent end in a circle in the air, carving a flourishing O into the very atmosphere that the boy could very nearly see, for a second.

When Salvador didn't answer him, he sighed, lowering both points to the ground and said, "No. I don't suppose he did." Then the man tossed one of the swords to the boy. Salvador's eyes widened, and he very nearly missed catching it completely. The boy caught the weapon by the blade, which he was relieved to discover wasn't the least bit sharp. After fumbling with it for a moment, he got his hand around the cylindrical little hilt and blinked owlishly at Dris.

The man stepped out of the shed, waving one hand in the air while he spoke and criss-cross-cutting the air with the tip of his metal stick sword while he walked. "Carmine never really was any good at story-telling. Left that to me," he remarked wistfully. When he made it back to the center of the patio, he stopped to reflect on that matter and smiled brightly.

Salvador only blinked at him again, wide and slow. The other man blinked back at him, quickly, momentarily startled, and so the boy looked down at the object he had been given. He turned it in both hands curiously, completely uncertain as to what he was supposed to do with it.

"Oh gods," Dris drawled. "The man hasn't taught you anything useful at all has he." That wasn't so much a question as it was very obviously dismay. The boy heard the slice of metal cutting air and looked up to see Dris pointing at his sword with the bent tip of his own. "That," he said, "is a fencing foil. No sharp blade. The point's dull, see. You could poke and prod me with that until the cows come home and the most I'd have for my trouble are a spot of bruises decorating me for a week at most. I'm wagering he told you to use those--" He swished his own foil to point out the rack of wasters. "--so you'd avoid cutting each other, am I right?"

The boy followed along by the bent tip of the foil, blinking reflexively to the whispering slice of sound he heard it cut into the air. He looked at the rack of wasters and said, "Yes." Even as a child Salvador had been very short on words.

"Sometimes I figure between the two of us he's the bigger baby," Dris remarked with another exaggerated sigh. "You know. After that time we took on thirty armed guards for the sake of a lady's virtue, he came away with about two dozen cuts and scrapes. Whined and whimpered through every single stitch I sewed into him. Man that big crying over a stitch. Can you believe it?"

Looking back at the man, Salvador tried to restrain his smirk, but he couldn't hide it entirely. Seeing it made the musician smile facetiously at him, and for the first time the boy wasn't uncomfortable with such an expression.

"Now normally," Dris went on, "people wear padding and masks for this sort of thing. Helps to cut back on the bruising, and avoid getting poked in the eye." Grimacing at that thought, he cut the flimsy steel blade downward in pause. "Course, I don't have any of that equipment on hand at the moment. If I'd known we'd be sparring off, I would've gone and purchase some. Next time. Until then just avoid the face, eh?"

Salvador chuckled quietly and nodded his understanding. "Avoid the face," he said. "Okay."

"Good boy! All right then." Dris swished the blade up with a flourish and touched his finger to the base. "This part here's called the forte, or strong end of the blade." He moved his finger up to the middle and said, "This here's the medium." Then he slid his finger up toward the tip. "And this here we call the foible, or the weakest part." Tossing the foil up into the air, he caught it by the flimsy blade and pointed out the parts of the hilt. "Here's the grip. Inside that's the tang, which is connected to the blade, for balance and strength. "Pommel and bellguard," he added, pointing out the parts appropriately.

Dris flipped the sword again, catching it by the grip, and touched his finger to the very tip. "They call this end the button. It's dull, can't cut you, but they make some that can. Either way if you poke me in the eye I'm going to lose it and I'd much prefer to keep them both." Grinning, he swished the blade away from his face and took up a stance.

The way the man stood was remarkably different than how his father had stood all those times before. He took up a stance that put his torso facing forward completely, his right leg extended in front of him. Both legs were bent at the knee and he leaned most of his weight back onto the heel of his right foot but the toes of his left. He held his right elbow close to his stomach with the foil extended away from his body. He tucked his right arm up behind his back.

Salvador tilted his head and looked the man over thoroughly. Tilting his head the other way, he shifted his feet and mirrored the stance. The older man laughed lightly. "Carmine's right. You are a fast learner." Grinning wildly, he cut the button of his sword, swish-swish, left to right in the air in front of him. "So, boy. You ready to learn to dance?"

Six Sharp Colts

Irina Braeden had been one of those few good people loaded with money and a generous streak that caused her to spend it extravagantly on her friends. As such, three days after his alleged fourteenth birthday, she had taken Salvador Delahada out shopping through the Rhydin Markets. Regardless of the strange insurgence of soldiers marching through the streets, they had meant to make a day of browsing, bargaining and buying. It started off that way well enough.

"See anything good yet, Sal?" She was sticking close to him. After the other night , especially with the soldier types around, she was understandably on edge. Sal was surprisingly reassuring in his own way.

"No," he grumbled at first. And then: "S?!" Sudden excitement. He grabbed Irina and dragged her over to what was unmistakably a dealer of knifes and other assorted bladed weapons.

"Huh? What?" She looked around to try to see what had caught Sal's attention. Then found herself dragged over to the blade dealer's booth. "Okay."

Okay? Just okay? The light in his eyes should have been evidence enough! Sal had hit the jackpot. His own personal version of paradise. Straight blades, curved blades, jagged blades, dual blades. The works. He was practically drooling. The merchant didn't seem to know what to make of the situation immediately. Customer?

"Hi. I think Sal here wants to buy something from you," Irina said nervously, but with a friendly enough smile.

Salvador looked up for only a second to regard the vendor, but immediately his attention was drawn back to all the sharp and pointy pretties. There were so many to choose from, and he knew he couldn't afford any one of them. Though he sidled down to look longingly upon the collection of throwing knives, particularly a set of three.

When Irina saw his obvious interest, she addressed the vendor again. "How much are those knives?"

The vendor listed a price that was obviously way too high. Salvador looked up with a frown, and Irina proceeded to haggle with little success. Just as they had begun to turn away, the vendor called back to them and began the game anew, listing a lower price, and so on, until Irina was satisfied with his honesty. She had Salvador to thank for that, because he had watched the man's aura until he saw no lies in his colors.

That day Irina bought not only a set of three for herself, but two sets of three for Salvador. They were magnificent blades, well balanced with their black rubber grips. The image of a horse was printed into the handle. Colt throwers. He fingered them lovingly as they walked away from the stall. "I will pay you back, Irina. Gracias."

"De nada, Sal. You can pay me back by teaching me how to use them, yeah?"

"Ok. Is a deal."

And taught her he had. Though after that day, and the many weeks to follow, first he had trained himself how to use them. He had used the training dummy set up in the back yard of his house. On top of sliding through the ghosts of memory to hone his skills with a blade, he had spent hours standing there and testing the balanced weight of the knives, throwing them again and again until he got it just right.

Two sets of three, six knives in total. No matter when he lost one, he always replaced it by picking up another from vendors in the Rhydin Markets. He special ordered them when he got older, and over time had learned to use them as adeptly as any sword in his father's collection.

One day he had found a fancy for garrote wire, and incorporated that into the use of his Colts by tying a bit of the thin, nearly invisible, wire through the hole at the end of the handle. A lot more practice had taught him how to wield them as a pair, turning and swinging the knives like other experts might employ yo-yos. Though it had cost him many cuts before mastering such a feat as an art. Not only could he make the blades seem to fly on their own, but he could retract them from wherever they stuck without having to walk the distance to retrieve them.

Being born half Spaniard, his favor for this technique should come as no small surprise. After all, the garrote was originally a Spanish torture device before the word became common in association with any weapon intended to strangle a person to death. And Salvador ... well ... he was rather adept at torture.

The more you know....


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(See: Garrote: Facts, Discussion Forum, and Encyclopedia Article.)