BECMI Chapter 261 – The Measure of a Grandmaster
“You still haven’t attained Grandmastery.”
Gate Captain Rossus Tronsweyr froze, as did the other eight individuals in the sparring room. Their heads snapped around, staring at the tall blonde woman leaning against the wall, jaws dropping as they wondered how she had gotten past them. They had all been waiting to form up and salute her when she was spotted coming, after sending a page to Captain Tronsweyr indicating that she would be arriving to evaluate him.
Eyes went to the two men on guard by the door, who were as flummoxed as anyone else on how she had managed to sneak past them. There, there was only one door in…
“Grandmaster!” Rossus blurted out, hurrying to salute her properly. The others didn’t have nearly his skill with a sword, some of them only having raw competency at best, but he wanted them to be here to be evaluated by the most dangerous swordsman in the world, a gift some would have paid mountains of gold to be able to gain. “Student salutes the Sage of Swords!” he bowed to her, the others quickly following suit.
She took the honor for what it was, an acknowledgment of her status, and neither pressed it nor ignored it. “At ease. You are not my students,” she corrected them all, and Rossus in particular, who flushed.
“I will always be your student, Grandmaster!” he stated firmly, grounding the point of his sword properly.
“That is a sad state of affairs to aspire to, Rossus,” she replied, pushing off the wall. “The king and the general are more generally competent and experienced than you, but neither has broken through to Grandmastery either, and the king isn’t even a proper Master. Lack of competition and peers has hurt your progress. I assume your incidental improvement is because you have been instructing others,” she judged.
He sighed and his eyes were downcast. “Yes, Grandmaster. Everyone has a slightly different style, and sparring with them did help me fix general flaws I noticed in myself, as well as sparring against various weapons.”
“You remember the forms. You remember the road. You remember the qualifications,” she stated more than asked.
“I could never forget them, Grandmaster,” he said humbly.
“You will go to the king and ask him to be relieved of your position as Gate Captain.” He stiffened, while everyone else sucked in breaths in shock. “You will ask to be appointed as the full-time Maester of his army, specifically in training of the sword. You will no longer be involved in ceremonial and formation training for the ornamental and secondary roles of the guard.
“Leave the instruction of performance duties to performers. You seek to be a Grandmaster. You will not devalue your sword by teaching it as a dance aid… unless you go full into that area of study of performance combat, which you have not done. Until you value your sword as the weapon it is, you will avoid pageantry and spectacle when wielding it. It is your sword, not a baton or flashy bit of metal for the enjoyment of the masses.”
He knelt down immediately. “I will make direct inquiry of the king in the morning, Grandmaster!” he shouted back immediately, feeling something work itself free of his worries and let go in the back of his mind.
She was telling him to go and be a teacher! That was high praise from the Sage of Swords! How few people had she ever even alluded to being a decent teacher during his months at her school?
She glanced away from him as he returned to his feet. “Introduce your students to me, and why you think they are worth my attention.”
“Yes, Grandmaster! Krollos, step forward!” he ordered, not looking around.
The big and beefy Common Delphan, his skin coppery, his hair red, stepped forward promptly, looking a bit overwhelmed to be chosen first. “S-student salutes the Grandmaster!” he managed to get out, bowing to her stiffly.
“Krollos has the strongest fundamentals of all my students,” Captain Rossus stated firmly. “He has a keen tactical mind and awareness of battle, although his footwork suffers and grace is not his strength,” he continued with brutal candor. “He has both strength and power and uses them well, but he relies on his armor instead of technique and reflex to protect himself.”
Krollos face flushed nearly as red as his hair being talked about like that.
Sama pushed off the wall, and took one step, instantly crossing thirty feet and was right in front of the man, so swiftly and gracefully all of the students gulped in shock. It barely looked like she had moved at all…
“Your sword,” she told Krollos, staring into his dark eyes.
His hand was trembling as he pulled out the wide blade and presented it to her.
He didn’t see her move, but the sword was out of his hands and there was a very loud crack to his right. Everyone’s eyes snapped over, to reveal the heavy sword was driven two feet into the stone wall there, quivering with the force of the throw.
“You are not a swordsman.” The pronunciation made his legs visibly tremble under her judgment. “In the morning, you will go to the smith. You will ask to be made a lousy sword, a bright, shiny, polished bit of ceremonial nonsense, light of weight and easy to carry about and handle. You will carry this piece of ornamental fluff out and around to whip out to show when needed, its splendid appearance belying the fact that your first action in a fight will be to drop it on the ground.”
Stolen novel; please report.
Krollos swallowed hard as he stared back at her. “Yes, Grandmaster,” he said hollowly, wondering what he had done to offend her so.
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“Rossus.” Her gaze never left the demoralized Krollos’ face.
“Grandmaster!” the captain replied instantly.
“When you go to see the king, you will also get dispensation from your student here to wear an axe as he performs his duties.”
Her hand came out of her vest pocket, and a box far too long and tall to be in it followed, crashing firmly to the wooden floor, and popping open as it did so. “This Axe, to be precise.”
Krollos looked like his soul was about to leave his body as he stared at the flowing green metal of the gleaming battle-axe laying there, the perfection of it stamping onto his eyeballs and his hands twitching to hold it.
Without ceremony, Sama reached down, hooked the spike at the top with two fingers, and without regard for its weight, spun it up and down into the hands of the taller man before her effortlessly. His big hands closed about it as it smacked down, and the powerful soldier went right down to his knees with a crunch as he caught it.
“You are an axeman, not a swordsman. Although I could train you in such, I leave that duty to my husband. When you want to master Crystal Splitter Axework, come to Eismoor and ask for my husband Briggs, and tell them your Maester sent you to put you on the proper road.
“Your Axe’s Name is Jade Moon. Fill it with victory and bear it well.”
Krollos swallowed desperately and clutched the Axe in his hands as if his life depended on it. “Yes, Grandmaster!” he tried to shout in gratitude, but it came out kind of squeaky.
Sama stepped away from in front of him. Captain Rossus twitched his chin, and the brawny soldier hastily got back to his feet and nearly stumbled to his place back in line, clutching his new weapon.
“Annai! Step forward!” Captain Rossu ordered, and the petite woman, coming up only to Sama’s chin, alertly hopped forward, trying to remain calm and steady as she did not dare meet Sama’s probing eyes.
“Annai is the most graceful, coordinated, and elusive of my students. She lacks the pure strength of arm of the others, but has great endurance, speed, discipline, and focus, and her determination is noteworthy. Her size plays against her, but she is fearless in closing upon a foe, practices with the bow daily to present a ranged threat if need be, and spends more time in practice than any of my other students.”
Annai flushed at the naked assessment, but said nothing even as her cheeks colored.
“She is a finesse combatant, and unsuited for line duties on a battlefield,” Sama stated coldly, completely unmoved by sharing a gender with the woman. “The sword she wears is too heavy for her to wield properly against an armored foe. She is best suited as a secondary combatant in a Daisho set, and for special operations duties.”
Annai’s expression was doing topsy-turvy fluctuations as the things she had been working for all her life were thrown in disarray before her. She had worked so hard to become a perfect soldier and officer, and this cruel assessment had tears springing to her eyes.
Captain Rossu’s expression, however, was quite enlightened. “Very good, Grandmaster!” he said expectantly, anything but concerned.
“Student Annai, you will follow your Main Axe to the smith in the morning, and get issued a properly useless and shiny piece of polished nonsense to wear around on official ceremonial duties, although those should soon be rare and infrequent.”
Everyone blinked as the Grandmaster drew out another case from her Vest, because they hadn’t seen the first one vanish. This was held in one hand, the lacquered and lovingly carved oak flipped open, and two Daggers were revealed within.
The long, wide, and reinforced guards made it plain they were sword-catchers, although the razored gleam of their edges actually cut at her eyes as Annai stared at them, forcing her to blink and flinch and look away as she sucked in a breath.
“When your Main Axe Krollos goes to learn how to actually use that cleaver in his grip, you will take your Talons and go with him to learn how to be his Left Hand with the techniques of the Swallow Guard, and together you will form a Daisho team.” The lid of the box was snapped closed and thrust into her chest, and Annai’s instinctive grasp on it was the only thing that kept her from stumbling back.
There wasn’t the slightest twitch in Sama’s stance to indicate the shift of weight, either.
“Y-yes, Grandmaster!” Annai almost sobbed, stepping back and also going down to one knee, clutching the case to herself.
Rossu’s curt gesture urged her back to her feet, and she fairly hopped up and went back to her position in line, the case clutched firmly to her chest, still blinking at the tears on her face at the roller-coaster assessment she had just been put through.
Captain Rossu was fairly ecstatic. He’d never seen anyone but a hyn go through the Daisho training, so this was definitely a first! It appeared the Grandmaster was definitely approving of his students!
“Dalvers.” The High Delphan-born son of a minor noble family swallowed and stepped forward. “Of all my students, he is probably the most natural with the sword. He suffers from constant distractions, lack of focus, coasting on his talent, and a general lack of self-worth reflecting his lack of magical ability in a noble family with his bloodline, all of which affect his improvement in his skills and duties,” Rossu said ruthlessly, watching his student’s expectant expression falter and fall immediately, especially as Sama’s withering stare fell on him and made his whole body quiver.
“A Seven.” There was an odd note in her voice, even as she stepped forward and palmed his entire face.
It took all his efforts not to instantly clutch at her hand, or it would have, had not his skull instantly been wrapped in a grip so tight that it seemed to hammer on his very heart and soul, freezing his hands in place before they could dare to touch her.