‘You are Conor?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘This is your sword?’
‘Yes.’
‘Put it on.’
I fastened it around my waist.
‘So, Conor of Duir – son of the one-handed Prince Oisin – BE AT GUARD!’ He drew his sword and assumed an attacking stance.
I raised my hands. ‘Hey, I’m not going to fight you.’
‘Pity,’ he said, ‘I so dislike stabbing an unarmed man. Oh well – so be it.’
He drove the point of his sword directly at my heart.
THE DAHY
I jumped to the left, just in time to stop myself from being pierced. ‘Hey! Let’s talk about this.’
‘I’m not here to talk,’ the old guy said. ‘If I were you, I would draw my sword, or duck.’
He came at me with a high backhanded cut to the head. Not only did I duck, I hit the floor and rolled to my left. I quickly got back on my feet in a crouch.
‘The roll was good,’ my attacker informed me, ‘but the position is not.’
I took a quick glance around me and saw what he meant. I had boxed myself into a corner.
‘Since you like to talk so much,’ the old man said, ‘I will tell you one more thing. I am going to come at you with a forehand mid-cut. It will be too low to duck and too high to jump. The only defence is to draw and parry, or run and bleed.’
I only took a microsecond to realise he was right. He cocked his sword way back and then came at me with both blade and body. I drew my sword, deflected the attack with a low parry and retreated to the middle of the room.
Our chatting phase was obviously over. He instantly attacked me with a series of sweeping and powerful cuts, alternating high and low. I blocked and back-pedalled. To be honest, I was terrified. For as long as I could remember my father trained me in sword fighting, and I had also won a few local fencing tournaments, but this was the real thing. The swords were steel and the points were sharp. One sloppy parry and I was dead! Then my father’s words came back to me – ‘In a real sword fight, son, all thoughts of winning and losing must be suppressed. Keep one eye on his eyes and the other on his blade. Be aware of your surroundings, block and counter until your opponent tires.’
I used to laugh at him when he said stuff like that. ‘When will I ever be in a real sword fight,’ I’d say, ‘and for that matter, when were you ever in a real fight?’ I take it all back now, Pop – if I live through this.
I forced my father’s advice into my head and the fight attained a rhythm. In fact it became familiar. This old guy’s forearm attack was very similar to my father’s favourite assault. My father would start a major attack with a flurry of forearm cuts, then change into a reverse grip, like he was holding an ice pick, then follow through with an elbow to the chin. He called the move a Dahy Special. Sure enough, that’s exactly what this guy did! I knew from experience that the sword in this manoeuvre was less dangerous than the elbow. I parried the sword hard, forcing his arm to straighten, and then ducked the elbow. I sent the old guy off balance and then started a counter-attack of my own. I came at him with a series of low cuts. I like swinging up – it’s unsettling for an opponent. It leaves my face exposed, but I’m pretty good at bobbing and weaving. The sword felt good in my hand, like an extension of my arm. The old guy parried the cuts with grace, but I could see that I had him working. He parried my last cut and countered with a high downward thrust that caught me by surprise. By the time I blocked it, I was down on one knee. We locked swords – pommel to pommel. I racked my brain for a means of escaping – I knew that as soon as our swords disengaged I was very vulnerable. The sweat was streaming into my eyes and my arm was starting to shake. I couldn’t keep this up for much longer.
‘That’s enough!’ came a shout from the door.
The old man pulled back and Gerard entered the room. I dropped my guard, sat on my feet, and breathed a huge sigh of relief.
‘How is he?’ Gerard said.
‘Not too bad,’ the old guy said, ‘his left side is weak but his footwork is good. Nothing that cannot be fixed.’
‘Wait a minute,’ I said, ‘this was a test?’
‘It was indeed,’ Gerard said. ‘I wanted to make sure if I was going to risk my best guide, that you could at least take care of yourself. Dahy here is my master-at-arms.’
‘Dahy! You taught my father.’
‘Yes, I did. And may I say, my student taught you well, but not well enough.’ He addressed Gerard. ‘In two days I can get him to a minimum preparedness.’
‘Conor, you are under Dahy’s tutelage now, so work hard. You shall leave for the Fililands in three days’ time,’ Gerard said, and left us alone.
‘Now, Conor,’ Dahy said, with a gleam in his eye that I wasn’t sure I liked, ‘we begin.’
The next two days were the hardest of my life. Dahy drilled me like an SAS sergeant gone berserk. We worked on swordplay, archery and banta stick fighting. My biggest difficulty was my left hand. I had always fought with my non-sword hand empty but Dahy taught me a method of using the sword in my right hand and a banta stick in my left. It made my head spin and my muscles scream. Luckily I found a supply of willow tea that helped me make it through the days, and some poteen to help me through the nights.
At mealtimes, I met a handful of people who had still not gone home from the party. Discussions of politics were outlawed in the castle, but when Gerard was out of earshot I learned that my Uncle Cialtie was universally hated. It seemed that Castle Duir sat on The Land’s only gold mine. My grandfather Finn used to allocate a stipend of gold to each of the lords. The gold was used to fuel necessary magic. As of late, Cialtie had refused gold to most of the families and cut back considerably to the rest. The question was – what was he was doing with all of that gold? No one seemed to know.
I only saw Essa twice. Once I caught her watching Dahy and me from the viewing box above the armoury. I looked up and smiled. Dahy hit me painfully in the shoulder with a stick, and by the time I looked back, she was gone. The second time was at lunch on my second day of training. I spotted her sitting at a table and sat down next to her. She immediately stood up to leave. I grabbed her wrist so I could talk to her – big mistake. The next thing I knew, I was face down in my lunch with my arm twisted painfully up my back and her forearm pushing my head into a bowl of salad.
‘Don’t ever grab me again,’ she hissed in my ear.
‘What is your major malfunction?’ I spluttered.
She pulled my head back by the hair. ‘What did you say?’
I wasn’t sure if she hadn’t understood the phrase, or if the face full of greens had screwed up my diction, so I rephrased. ‘What have I done to make you act like this?’
She put her mouth close to my ear and whispered, ‘I know who you are.’
‘Who told?’
‘My father.’
‘Man, he’s telling everybody.’
‘Just me and Dahy.’
‘So let me guess,’ I said,