Creusus's Arc

Chapter 3 of 21

The next morning Creusus went looking for a man who fought with a sword. He had learned in the alley that his fists worked when he could see the blow coming. In the ring, a blade would come faster. He walked to the training grounds behind the arena and stopped at a lane where an older fighter drilled alone against a straw target. The man had gray at his temples and a nick in one ear. Creusus said he needed to learn how a sword moves before the next bout. The man looked at his bare chest and his wrapped hands and asked what he would pay. Creusus said he would take the bruises for both of them. The man laughed once and picked up a wooden blade. They worked from the first horn to the second. The man showed him the line a cut travels from the shoulder, and the shorter line from the wrist. He showed him where a thrust starts and where it has to pass. He swung slow, then faster, then at full speed. Creusus caught the wooden blade against his forearm on the third try, on the flat, the way he had been shown. By midday he was catching it clean. By afternoon he was stepping inside the arc before it finished and pinning the man's wrist against his own chest. The man stopped and rubbed his shoulder and said he had taught this drill for twenty years and never seen a student find the inside of it before dusk on the first day. Creusus did not answer. He set his feet and asked for another pass. He could not read the notices pinned on the gate and he could not count past the fingers on both hands, but he had watched the wooden blade a hundred times now and his body already knew where it would be. When the man finally called the day and lowered the practice sword, Creusus had a bruise the length of his forearm and a map in his head for how a blade reaches a man. He wrapped his knuckles again at the bench by the gate. The next fighter in the bracket carried steel. Now Creusus knew where the steel had to travel to reach him, and how little of that path he needed to close.