[Bronze Wood] Only my Wit is Sharper than my Dagger (Eris)

[Tyuru]

51st Day of Spring, 510 AV

How cold it seemed to her.
The last ten minutes or so spent walking from the Main Gates to a considerable distance inside the Bronze Wood had reddened Tyuru's nose and cheeks. The spring mornings were still chilly, despite the warmer afternoons, and the cool shade of the forest did nothing to help her bodily temperature. She pulled her cloak tighter around her and turned to Eris.

'Alright,' she said, rubbing warmth into her arms, 'let's get started. Unless, of course, you've changed your mind about teaching me?'

[Eris]

Eris wrapped the jacket tighter around herself, shivering slightly in the crisp morning air. She began to regret asking Tyuru to arrive so early. At the moment, even the small, hard bed in Traveler’s Row seemed inviting.

“Haven’t changed my mind, yet.” Which is probably a stupid decision on my part.

Eris glanced over her shoulder to see Rhine following her patiently, albeit a little slowly. Apparently, the horse didn’t appreciate being woken up this early either. The horse snorted in Eris’s general direction, tossing her head from side to side. She was not happy. Eris ended up brining her along in case she decided to head off somewhere other than Syliras after the training session. She’d been itching for the road lately and returning to the city after a trek through the woods seemed terribly disappointing.

They continued walking for a while, Eris lost in her own thoughts to the point that she did not notice the time. Finally, they arrived at a clearing, surrounded by a cluster of trees that would successfully obscure them from view.

Eris pivoted on her heels to face her new pupil, wondering how exactly she was going to go about this.

“Let’s start off with something easy. Tell me what you know about holding a dagger,” she said, producing her own weapon and holding it loosely at her side.

[Tyuru]

Tyuru heard a quiet sound and jumped, startled. The woods were creeping her out. She was used to wide open spaces and the limitless freedom of the Sea of Grass. The ceiling the trees made above her was making her feel slightly claustrophobic.

Finally, a clearing. At least she could see a substantial part of the sky.

‘Holding it. Okay,’ she said, reaching into her belt to retrieve the dagger. The ruby glinted like an ember in the hilt, reflecting the weak morning sun. Tyuru concealed a shiver – the blade, which had brushed her hand, was as cold as ice, despite having been pressed to her stomach beneath the belt.

Tyuru lay the dagger in her hand and considered it. After a while she took it by the leather bound grip and held it in her left hand. When she raised her forearm to about chest height, the dagger pointed away from her. This way of holding it seemed like the most practical manner to her. In this position, her arm could easily bend and her wrist could turn, and she could provide her torso with minimal protection from her forearm.

Tyuru looked toward Eris and noted a horse standing nearby. Momentarily distracted from the beautiful weapon in her hand, she smiled and said, ‘Is that your horse? She’s very intelligent, following you freely like that. My own horse would have stopped to nibble plants long ago.’

[Eris]

Eris tilted her head to one side, examining the girl’s grip on the weapon. “Not too bad for a defensive strike,” she murmured, “But if your opponent uses full forth in his blow, you won’t be able to deflect it very well. And you won’t have much room for a swing, to lend the dagger extra momentum.” Eris stepped closer, taking Tyuru’s dagger by the hilt and shifting it to the left, in the process, moving the girl’s elbow slightly outward.

“Keep your arm loose, but make sure you don’t lose your grip on the dagger as you swing. If at the moment, fighting at close range isn’t the right option, extend your arm and bring the dagger below chest level,” Eris added, pulling Tyuru’s arm away from her, so that it was stretched out at a downward angle.

Eris stepped back, tightening her grip on her own dagger. “Now, try to attack. Use any strike you feel most comfortable with.”

She wondered briefly if this was the best way to start a lesson, but that was how she remembered Joel teaching her. After all, she needed to gage the potential and current skill level of the girl before she could actually get anywhere with her.

[Tyuru]

Tyuru let her grip relax, taking note of the position Eris placed her hand in. It did feel more comfortable, and it seemed like it would be easier to move and bend her arm.

‘So I… just attack…?’ she asked, watching her hand as she bent and extended her arm, contemplating the increased freedom of movement. ‘I don’t know…’ her eyes met Eris’ and she smiled, ‘I wouldn’t want to hurt you…’

The teasing bravado faded, however, and she bit her lip, unsure of what to do. Undoubtedly, Eris was the more skilled of the two, and would be able to easily defend herself – Tyuru had no serious belief that she could harm the woman. What Tyuru was nervous about was her decision to learn this. She knew she wasn’t properly cut out for this kind of thing, but she hated feeling so weak…

Resolve hardened her eyes and she smiled again, dropping to a kind of half-crouch that made her look more confident than she felt. Her skirt brushed the ground and made a rustling sound on the fallen leaves that were slowly decomposing.

Because of her left handedness, she decided to try for a swing from the right to the left, extending her arm and bringing it in a swipe toward Eris, forearm facing the woman. After playing through the move in her head, she made a sudden motion forward, making an unpracticed movement that looked very clumsy, in the general direction of Eris.

[Eris]

Eris watched the girl with suppressed amusement. A smile flickered across her lips at her words. Confidence was good – certainly a whole lot better than cowardice. Just at Tyuru’s dagger was inches away from her chest, she turned slightly, brining her own dagger up in defense. Steel connected with steel as Eris deflected the weapon, forcing it away from herself. She hadn’t had much practice fighting against a left-handed opponent and she found it to be a tad uncomfortable. She realized that she would have to tailor all her stances and strikes to better defend herself.

“If you’re going for the head-on approach, you should make sure your feet are firmly planted on the ground. If you were fighting against someone considerably stronger than you, your opponent could use the force of your own strike against you,” she said.

“Now, try to defend yourself,” she added, raising her own dagger leisurely, making sure the girl would have plenty of time to chart its path through the air with her eyes. The blade swished through the air, its edge facing Tyuru’s left shoulder.

[Tyuru]

Tyuru stumbled backward, the clang echoing in her ears. Such a cold sound. She supressed another shiver. She registered the practised, professional movement aside that Eris made, and immediately wanted to learn to do that - it looked so graceful...

Nodding at Eris, she moved her feet slightly further apart, and found the position was a comfortable one - or at least, more so than her strange half-crouch.

As she was distracted with her stance, she looked up at the last second to see Eris' dagger cutting a line through the air toward her shoulder. It wasn't moving particularly fast, and as Tyuru looked up it was still quite far away, but she was surprised - she'd never had somebody stab at her before. A small sound of surprise left her and she stepped backward. The blade cut a clean line in her tunic, revealing her undershirt. Reflexively, she brought up her left hand at such an angle that it would knock away Eris' arm, another clumsy movement.

[Eris]

Tyuru’s arm flew up belatedly; bumping into Eris’s arm a few seconds after the dagger had already done its job. Eris sighed, feeling a stab of disappointed. Just when she was beginning to think the girl might have some potential… She made no move to help her, simply standing there – a slight frown creasing her brows.

“Well, I suppose I couldn’t have expected much more,” she said, chewing on the inside of her cheek in thought. “At least there’s no blood.”

She shook out her right arm, working out a tightness below her elbow. “Well. come on then. If you want to get any good at this, you won’t let a little wardrobe malfunction interfere,” she said, spreading out her arms in an invitation to attack.

“Oh and a little tip: Don’t move your body toward me when you strike – that just opens you up for attack. You’ve got an advantage, fighting with your left hand- use it.”

[Tyuru]

Tyuru made a small, rather indignant sound of frustration. Just when she thought she might actually be good at something, things like this happened.

“The shirt’s nothing to worry about, I can always mend it,” she mumbled, biting her lip and staring at the floor. You can’t do it, something in her mind was saying. How could you ever learn to cause harm to someone?

Doubtfully, Tyuru let her arm fall into the position Eris had shown her, but not naturally – she had to look down at her arm to make sure it was right. She paused momentarily to unclasp her heavy cloak and toss it against the base of a tree. Sunlight was starting to warm up the world and she was beginning to perspire in the stuffy material.

Biting her lip again, she stood in the way shown to her by Eris. Somehow, Eris managed to do it almost without thinking about it, but Tyuru had to consciously arrange her limbs to stand correctly. How did Eris make it look so smooth?

What now? she asked herself. Who was she kidding?

A sudden, irrational anger twinged in a corner of her mind. What was she to do all the way out here if she couldn’t learn to defend herself? How would she be able to brave the wilderness to find Issak? Her brow furrowed and she gritted her teeth, dropping down slightly lower by bending her knees and extending her left arm in a swipe aimed at Eris’ midsection.

[Eris]

Eris jumped away, clearly surprised by Tyuru’s swift movement. The girl’s dagger was only half an inch away from her stomach as it swished by.

“Much better,” she commented, a ring of appreciation in her voice.

She remembered Joel telling her: Once a bird has gotten its feathers rumple, it puts in twice as much into its next scuffle. Her teacher had been full of those little saying, always choosing to dispense them at the oddest moments. That particular one was spoken as the two were riding away at full speed from a band of angry gamblers.

Eris brought up her own dagger, this time striking without warning. Her motion was still much slower than it would have been naturally, but quicker than her previous lunge. This time, she aimed for the girl’s other shoulder, with the point of the dagger facing Tyuru, rather than the edge.

((Sorry for taking so long to post recently. Real life’s catching up with me in the form of final exams. Should be back to normal by the end of next week.))