Page 53 of Bride of Fire
“What are they doing with it?” Jenefer asked.
“Exactly!” Feiyan huffed. Then she cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled down, “Halfwits!”
That finally got the men’s attention.
“Bloody fools!” she added.
They stared in silence.
“Dunderheaded clods!”
At last, the one wielding her sword took offense. “Hey now, lassie! There’s no need to—”
“You’re doing it all wrong!” Feiyan shouted.
“What?” he yelled back.
“I said, you’re doing it. All. Wrong!”
“Am I now?”
Predictably, the knights elbowed each other, snickering at the idea of a wee lass daring to tell a pack of seasoned warriors how to fight.
“Well, lassie,” the man jeered suggestively, “why don’t ye come down and show me what ye know about handlin’ three feet o’ steel?”
The others laughed uproariously at his crude humor.
Feiyan ignored their crassness. “First of all, you don’t swing it like that. You have to use it like a blade, not a bloody sickle.”
The men stared, dumbfounded.
She continued. “And you don’t hack haphazardly at your target. You only waste motion that way. Watch.” She leaned out the window and, as if holding her sword, made a slow, smooth, slicing motion in the air. “’Tisn’t a claymore. ’tis a fine, sharpdaothat cuts with ease. It requires finesse, not brutishness.”
To Jenefer’s surprise, though the men around him were chuckling, the knight holding the sword attempted to imitate Feiyan’s movements.
“Aye, like that,” Feiyan said. “You see? It takes very little force.”
The man repeated the movement.
“Keep your elbows close in,” Feiyan said.
He did.
“Now try it on the target.”
He brought the sword down in a graceful arc, easily slicing through the corner of the straw.
The others oohed and ahhed.
Another man held up one of her steel stars. “What about this?”
“That’s ashuriken. You throw it like a dagger,” she called down. “Pinch it between your thumb and first finger. Aim at the target, and give your wrist a quick flick.”
He flung the star forward, vertically.
Unfortunately, he missed the target.
Fortunately, he missed the other men-at-arms.
