"Better, better....." I said as my blade parried her swing in a skirl of metal on metal. Feet scuffed on the shallow sand of the practice court, as metal shrilled again as Florimel threw a parry in the way of my high-line attack and countered with a high-line lunge. I blocked that, pushing her blade up and away, and took a step to my right, continuing my pattern of movement.
Looking at her as we fenced, I could see the changes in the pudgy girl who lacked confidence that I'd first seen in the Pattern Room of Boreas. The exercises over the past few months had melted the puffiness from her face and taughtened her natural curves, and the outdoor work had lightened her mousey brown hair to a dark blond. Her eyes showed the most changes, though, being up and focused, watching, rather than hidden and downcast. I smiled at her, and her eyes smiled back through her helmet's mask, though her mouth stayed clamped in concentration. She'd never make a true knight, she lacked the interest, but I could help her gain confidence, body control, and coordination this way as well as any other, and the skills she learned could prove handy sometime in the future as well.
Of all my students, I'd spent the most time with Florimel. Her older sister Sand, her younger brother Random, and her older brother Delwin, I'd dealt with all of them. Her older sister was, in many ways, the model that Flora aspired to: beautiful, sexy, smart. Delwin had tried to give me trouble, but a session or three had convinced him that it wasn't worthwhile. Random was kind of a fun kid, though I certainly wouldn't want to be made responsible for him, that would be a 26-hour-a-day job. Interestingly, he and Mor got along very well. Sand, once she and I got ourselves settled, proved not to be nearly as bad as her reputation suggested: she could be vain, spoiled, and bitchy, but she could also be much better than those adjectives suggest.
I threw a cut at Flora's shoulder that she parried, pulling her blade out of line just a hair. She was starting to respond to the pattern of my attacks, coming in from her left and high. I was parrying her attacks out and to her right, setting up a feint to her shoulder followed by the real touch lower on her left side.
I parried the riposte, blocking it down and away, then extended myself at a shoulder target.... that wasn't there. She spun away to her right, taking herself out of my reach and leaving me over-extended for a second while I regained my correct footing. "_HOLD_!" I shouted, as I grounded my point, and she slowed, panting, as well.
"All right, why'd you spin out there?"
"Because you'd been setting me up, all those attacks at my shoulder, you were lulling me into seeing one that wasn't coming there. You'd show me that attack, I'd bite, and you'd drop your point and touch me here." She tapped her curved left hip.
I smiled, pleased. "Good eyes. Yes, that was an option. The pattern was there, get you used to what I was trying, and show it to you again then take advantage of your conditioned reaction. When you saw it, why didn't you try to use it against me?"
She blushed, happy that she'd spotted the incipient pattern. "Because I'm not fast enough to my left to get a touch in, and I might miss the parry if I tried. Better to break the pattern, force you to reset from the start. And maybe from a new start I might be able to get the initiative for long enough to be attacking instead of responding."
I nodded slowly. "All right, fair enough. And you're right to get clear if you can't see a way to take advantage of the pattern, get clear and try again. That spin right then caught me off-guard, if you'd been in a position to do so, you could have gotten a touch on my arm or leg, no problem. Watch for that, I'm not perfect."
She nodded, getting her feet under her to return to a guard position. I shook my head, "No, that's enough for one day. Knives, now, let's see if yesterday was a fluke."
She lit up like a torch, her eyes gleaming. Yesterday her score had topped mine with the throwing knives. She might never be a great swordswoman, but as a knife-thrower, she was already very good. Not my best skill, I'll admit, but still....
We hung up our practice swords and our protective gear, then took up the belts of knives and walked to the target. At 20 yards, I skuffed a line in the sand with my boot and nodded to her. "You won, you go first." She smiled at that, bobbed her head, then drew the first knife, adjusting her grip on it to get the right hold. Then her arm snapped forward, the knife flashing away in a low arc and taking root in the target just left of the X ring.
"Not bad, not bad...." I drew my first knife and threw it in one motion, planting it in the X ring. Her mouth twisted a little bit, but she drew her second, weighed it deliberately, and threw an X herself. My second knife was another X, and now the X ring was getting crowded, her earlier 10 didn't help. She drew her last knife, balanced it, and slammed it home into the lower corner of the X. I drew my last knife, released it, and knew as soon as I did that I'd lost. `CLACK', my knife hit the hilt of another poking out of the X-ring and bounced away.
"YES!", she shouted, threw her arms up in the air, then threw them around me in a hug. "Thank you, Andelia", she whispered.
As I put my arms around her and hugged her back, I asked, "For what? You did that, not me. You won that match, by keeping your cool when I got the jump on you, and by being good with the knives."
"No, for showing me.... what you've shown me."