"Well," said Clovis thoughtfully, "I'd say that physical prowess is about twenty percent of being a good soldier. A good twenty percent is that notorious oxymoron, military intelligence. The rest is down to your own intelligence - and, most important, an ability to read people.

"That means close up - as in hand to hand combat - when you need to focus as much on their eyes as their hands or feet or tentacles or claws or what have you. But it also means far away - strategy. Knowing where your enemy is going to be placing his troops. Knowing when and where he will move. If you know how his mind works - you'll know ... everything about him.

"And, of course, there's learning weapons. The theory as well as the practicality. I favour the blade, myself.

"I began to learn fighting skills start when Farve started training me. I was about five ... no - five exactly, for he gave me a wooden rapier for my birthday. Well, I say 'rapier' - it was more of an epee - and I nearly took the cook's third son's eye out with it. After that, Farve took my training seriously in hand. I had a fencing master - I believe Farve imported him from Shadow Earth. Emma was awfully jealous - Mother insisted that Farve could only import a dancing master for her. I had to train her in secret - which certainly made practice rather more eventful.

"He started of teaching me epee de combat ... but Farve asked him to give me a grounding in the more traditional schools. I was hardly in a position to raise any objections - I was about seven by now - and it was all fascinating to me - including the fact that I was allowed to train with my own scaled smallsword.

"So - we moved on to the Italian school. As well as the spada solo, I was trained in spada e brochiero. That was all with my first Master - until I was about twelve. He was a member of the Corporation of the Masters of Defence - a Provost at the time he trained me, I believe, although he later rose to Master. When he declared that there was no more he could teach me, I was passed to the Ancient Master who had trained him. Here I learned the Spanish and French schools - and also spada e pugnale and spada e capa. That was the centre of my focus until I was about seventeen, I suppose.

"You must understand that until that time, we had resided primarily in my home Shadow of Blythe, where the rapier was the gentleman's weapon. As a gentleman's son, it behoved me to become fully proficient in its usage - and Farve insisted that I devote a portion of every day to practice. I still practise between three and five hours a day, when exigencies permit.

"There have been times when I've fallen away from that, sadly enough. During my time as a slave in Etruscaria, for example, I was not permitted to bear weapons - indeed would have been executed had I been found in possession of them. I therefore developed what passed for dancing skills - actually, they were rather fine dancing skills, but within the confines of the dance I included all those movements that were contained within my swordplay. Certainly, once I set aside the scented garlands and took up my blades again, I found my powers had not greatly diminished. Indeed, I had become more limber - although I found I did rather need to work on my thrusts."

He frowned for a moment, considering. "It was when I was about seventeen that Farve suggested I should become proficient in other blades - as I might find myself obliged to fight in unexpected circumstances. He trained me in the use of the scimitar himself, and also the cavalry sabre. With both of those I was taught to fight on horseback and afoot. Later, when we began to travel, I also experienced fighting from the back of a dromedary - which I rather liked, a camel - which I found slightly more tricky and an elephant - which I found rather dull. On elephant back, I find arrows answer much better - or rifles. Unless, of course, you have managed to mount your enemy's elephant, in which case I prefer to use daggers which can be thrown or used to stab. The same is true for all pachyderm fighting, actually."

His eyes darkened as though remembering battles.

"I think it was about this time that I mastered the art of the shotel - a blade that looks deadly - and yet is so curved that the manner of fighting is to hook your opponent and draw him close to kill him. Or her, of course. Or - as it has been on a few occasions - it. Although the 'its' I've killed, I would generally prefer not to use a shotel on. Pretty repellent, most of them. In fact, a good hand grenade lobbed from a great distance would have been my preferred method of fighting them. Eugh.

"Although there was one rather lovely willowy hermaphrodite in the Cygnus Shadow who used the 'it' pronoun. It was unbelievably fantastic in bed ... I really hated having to face it in battle. And it had this really stupid code of honour - it believed it could redeem the disgrace of its family by dying bravely. Such a waste ...

"Anyway ... the shotel. I think it was a similar desire for experimentation that lead me to try the claymore - although I really lack the brute strength to handle that to the best of its ability. My forte has always been for the quicker, lighter weapons - like the maub ti ratttana of Glatticus. That's great fun actually - I love the way one can control the length of the blade as it's in the hand - moving from four feet to two with barely a check. Although I've probably been wounded more with the maub ti rattana than any other blade - until I mastered the skill of it.

"The ice blades of Episilius too were intriguing. I was impressed by how much damage one could do to an opponent if the blade had melted slightly, and then refrozen. Of course, duelling with the ice blades was strictly forbidden - we were meant to keep them for the glarn. But ... well, it was tempting."

"Going to the other extreme, I did train for a time with the fire blades of Vesuvia. I never really took to them - one would think fire a swift medium ... but in actual fact, I found the technique utilised by the masters of the craft was still very limited - and somewhat clumsy. One sees their point, of course - they are not able to regenerate a new ear or even recover well from facial burns but ... "
He shrugs.

"Then ... I suppose I must have been in my early twenties - or possibly slightly later - I worked with katanas and the kushan blade. I practised the style of Gandahar - although when we were based there, I preferred fighting with clubs rather than blades - their version of the kushan was too heavy for my taste.

"I'd done some shipboard fighting by then - mostly cutlass work. Farve and I built a machine that allowed us to drill as though on a deck in a storm ... although I must confess I found the real thing infinitely more hair-raising.

"But it was soon after that when I learnt larquim fighting. On has to use something similar to that underwater, of course. I have used the gallquist school, and I have practised oblating a little - but I find larquim most reliable in water worlds. The profligacy of dagger use is, of course, a disadvantage. But then if one is prepared, one can utilise razor sharpened shells.

"Strangely enough, I've used larquim with some success in airborne fighting too. I think perhaps it's because it is designed to be a form of combat that works well when one is not bound by gravity. I'm aware of other techniques, of course - but I wouldn't say I was proficient."

He grinned, clearly at some memories of this lack of proficiency being demonstrated.

 

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