Damian FINUCANE's Arc

Chapter 33 of 57

Damian had taught for a week, and the students still would not listen. He drilled them in the stone hall each morning. He barked the footwork he had once learned. They dropped their stances the moment he turned his back. He was a stranger to them, a killer with a runed sword, not a teacher. He needed to know how to reach them. So he decided to stop teaching and start listening. He found them in the yard after drills. Instead of correcting their form, he sat on the low wall and asked what they feared. A tall boy admitted he froze when the master shouted. A small girl said she had joined only because her family sent her. Damian did not scold them. He told them how he had hated the footwork drills too, how his own rage once ruined every strike. The tall boy leaned closer. For the first time, someone looked at him without fear. Rolo watched from a rafter, legs swinging. She had never stopped moving since the road east, and she did not stop now. She flipped down into the yard and landed among the students. "He's not lying," she said, jerking her thumb at Damian. "I saw him miss a fence rail three times before he learned to breathe." The students laughed. Damian let them. The wall between him and them cracked open. Over the next days he learned each one by name. He learned the small girl was quick but scared of the blade's weight. He learned the tall boy copied whatever he saw last. So Damian changed how he taught. He gave the girl a lighter grip and slow steps. He made the tall boy watch only clean strikes. He unwrapped the runed sword and laid it across his knees, its gems catching the light. "This blade drew killers to me," he told them. "Control kept me alive, not the steel." They listened. They held their stances after he turned away. At week's end the master watched from the doorway. Damian ran the class through ten exchanges. The small girl held her ground. The tall boy struck true. No one dropped a stance. The master said nothing, but she nodded once, the same nod she gave when he earned the sword. Rolo hopped onto the wall beside him. "You cracked them," she said. "They'd follow you into the ravine now." Damian looked at his students filing into the hall under the arches. He had wanted to teach them. Now he knew how. But knowing them had shown him something worse. They were soft. They were slow. And the marked men who wanted his face would not wait for them to grow ready. He had built a class he could reach. Now he had to make it a class that could fight, before the enemy arrived at the doors.