Chapter 606: Greatest Swordsman Of An Age (Part Two)
"A silver penny for striking him, and another one if the group can bring him down. That does sound like powerful motivation," Isabell agreed as she watched the skirmish begin to unfold. Owain wasted no time trying to defend himself against the greater number of men, going instantly on the offensive instead by charging one of the men with the polearms.
Compared to the soldier facing him, Owain wasn’t only stronger, he was much faster and the wooden sword in his hand swung in a series of lightning fast strikes that battered the soldier’s armored hands, forcing him backwards and weakening his grip on the weapon enough for Owain to use one hand to capture the weapon while the other hand drove the point of his blade against the other man’s throat.
"I yield! I yield!" the soldier cried, going limp in Owain’s grip, but the young lord was far from done with his defeated victim. Spinning around the helpless soldier, Owain used the captured man like a shield, fending off attacks from the other man with the polearm and one of the other swordsmen. Slender lines of paint soon covered the soldier’s padded armor before Owain shoved him at the swordsman while charging the other man wielding a polearm.
"See the way he moves?" Jocelynn said with a wistful sigh as she watched Owain working methodically to defeat the men attacking him. "He never lets more than two people approach him, he always moves so they get in each other’s way," she pointed out, repeating the words Owain had used when he explained his method of fighting to her after the first time she watched him practice.
In the courtyard, Owain was moving smoothly between his opponents, lashing out with vicious strikes to arms and legs, inflicting enough pain to stagger his opponent before he danced to the next, defending himself and striking again without becoming mired in a one on one duel at the expense of his ability to disengage and face a new opponent.
"Lord Owain says that demons try to surround knights so they can pull them down in massed attacks," Jocelynn continued as she gazed at Owain’s heroic figure with starstruck eyes. "So he trains himself against groups that work to pull him down. The men are also instructed to keep fighting no matter how many times they are struck unless they deliver something that is clearly a killing blow, because demons won’t stop no matter how many wounds they suffer."
"It sounds like Lord Owain takes fighting against demons very seriously," Isabell said in a carefully neutral tone. Seeing him in action, she had no doubt that he took his practice seriously, perhaps more seriously than anything else he did. Though, given the rumors she’d heard from the brothels in Blackwell City during his visit, she suspected that he had at least one thing he pursued just as passionately as he seemed to pursue swordsmanship.