Chapter nine
“We’ll make a Bladesman of you yet!”“No, no, no, Hamun! Your body behind the line! The arm straight before you lunge!” Rees flicked his rebated point away from my chest where his stop thrust would, had the point been sharp, have skewered me. He laughed even as he looked crestfallen. “I swear by Havil the Green — and no man should have to do that, by Krun! — you grow worse every day instead of better!”
He stripped the mask from his massive lion-face and hurled it at one of his slaves. The light from the southerly-aspect windows lay cool and shadowless within the salles d’armes. I stripped my mask off in turn. Had I pretended too far? Had I been too clumsy for belief? It is a sobering task to have to fight, even in practice, with a man and allow his point to reach in past your
