Chương 77: Chapter 76: Dual wielding

A student asked how long it takes to wield with both hands. He was told - as long as it takes to stop noticing you have two. - Regional combat records, Area 10 Kara left Waggy asleep on the bed with Pip standing near him holding a bolt in each hand, and took the war umbrella. The combat arts hall held fifty students by the time he got there, and this was only one of two classes he knew about... It was always one of the more popular courses.

Six instructors stood along the far wall with equipment racks behind them, and the class sorted itself toward them without any instructions. Swords took the largest group by a distance. Spears and staves next, then the bow and other projectiles, the knives and the unarmed stations, and finally Ken at the end, quietly looking at the proceedings. Kara stayed where he was. So did four or five others, scattered across the floor, all of them looking mildly stranded. He walked over.

Ken saw him coming, and his eyes went wide for a brief instance as he noticed the umbrella.

"Wait there," he said.

"I'll be with you in ten minutes." He took the others first. A girl with a hand-made crossbow that Kara suspected was not going to be approved. A boy who had decided on the net and had clearly never handled one. Two students who had chosen nothing and were hoping to be told. Ken worked through them quickly, giving them pointed advice. Kara spent the time watching the rest of the hall, because there was nothing else to do.

The sword group had already separated into three tiers by ability and none of them knew it yet. The spear instructor was correcting the same fault in four different people and calling it four different things. At the bow station a second year was being extremely helpful to everyone around her and getting nothing done herself, and the instructor had noticed and hadn't decided yet whether to stop her. Kara was just starting to get bored when Ken came over, stopped, and looked at the umbrella properly.

He walked around it once where it stood against Kara's shoulder.

"Cedar shaft. Forge-blued fittings. The thread used for the canopy."

"Yamaarashi quill."

"I know what it is." He looked at the ferrule.

"Isamu Tanaka made this. I've seen only one other in my life. Twenty-two years ago, at a regional demonstration in Area 10, held by a man in his forties who would not let anyone within three feet of it. It's unmistakeable." Kara didn't know what to say. He hadn't expected the usually stoic Instructor Ken to have a fan moment. Ken straightened.

"Ahem. Apologies, though you should know what you're holding is used as a heirloom among families in Area 10 fortunate enough to have gotten hold of one over the years. Not just in Area 10, masters in this field will recognize this umbrella even from a distance. You should be very proud of yourself." Kara stood a little straighter.

"Thank you, Instructor." Instructor Ken nodded.

"I have nothing to teach you about the umbrella. So you can practise what he taught you. Repetition, forms, sparring when you can find someone worth sparring. If you get stuck on something specific, come to me and I'll tell you honestly whether I know the answer."

"Yes, sure." Ken glanced at Kara's empty hand.

"Now for the second weapon. Are you keeping the chain dart, or have a couple of months of not having it changed your mind?"

"I'm keeping it, Instructor."

"Tell me why."

"The umbrella controls space. But it doesn't have much reach or offensive prowess." Kara had thought about this enough by this point.

"Everything I can do offensively happens inside arm's length, and anyone who knows that can just stay outside it. I want something that threatens at mid range." He paused.

"And I want to be able to attack while I'm moving. Together, I believe the umbrella and the chain dart would help me control the space around me both offensively and defensively." Ken seemed to think about that for a while. He looked across the hall at the six stations and the fifty students, and back.

"All right," he said.

"I'll speak to the person who can teach it. I'm not going to promise you a schedule, because that isn't mine to promise. Understand what you're asking for. Whoever teaches you that isn't a professor and doesn't hold classes, and their time isn't allocated by this department. It'll be whenever it's available, and it may not be often."

"Understood, Instructor."

"Which leaves what you do until then." Ken went to the rack behind him and came back with a length of weighted cord, a small lead ball tied off at one end. He handed it over.

"Fundamentals. Before you decide that's a wasted semester, listen to why."

"Yes, Instructor."

"Your two weapons have more in common than you might think." Ken took the cord back and let it hang.

"Everything else in this hall is a lever. You hold one end and the other end does what it is lead to do. Yours don't. Yours have mass out at a distance, and that mass keeps moving. So your work doesn't just stop at pushing one end out. The canopy and the chain dart can deflect and do damage on the way back in as well." Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. Kara turned that over.

"It is not going to be easy to master. You will need to have your fundamentals right before you can attempt it. Three things. First." Ken rotated his wrist, and the cord came alive in a slow figure of eight with his forearm barely moving.

"The wrist is a hinge. If your shoulder is doing the work you've lost the shape already. Both weapons, same motion."

"I can do that."

"You can do it with one hand." Ken passed the cord back and lifted a training umbrella off the rack.

"Do it with both. Opposite directions. Cord in the left, umbrella in the right." Kara tried it. The cord went round. The umbrella went round. About four seconds later they were both going round the same way, and then the cord caught him across the knuckle.

"You see now," Ken said. Kara reset and tried again, and by the third failure he could feel where the problem actually sat. This required him not only to be ambidexterous, but his wrists would have to be both strong and flexible. The outside of his left forearm already hurt, and his right wrist felt tense.

"This is not going to be easy," he said.

"It is not." Ken took the umbrella back.

"Once you are able to do it well enough, swap hands and do it again." Kara grimaced slightly at that.

"Second. Recovery." Ken flicked the cord out and brought it back, and it stopped hard at the halfway point, dead in the air for a moment before he let it drop.

"As I said, the dart can strike going out and it can strike coming back, but it is only as effective as your control of its direction and momentum."

"It can be redirected in flight."

"It can. By the body, mid-arc, and by somebody who's done it ten thousand times." Ken looked at him.

"You are not going to be redirecting anything for a long while. Until then, the return goes where you sent it, so send it somewhere useful."

"How do I train it?"

"I'll be calling holds at random, all semester, any time I see you working. Weapon stops inside one beat. If it's still travelling, it was not in your control." Ken handed the cord over.

"And for the dart on its own, hang a bell at chest height and strike it on the way back. Never on the way out. Most people find that impossible for about six weeks and then find it easy forever. There's very little in between."

"Third?"

"Third is the most important if you want to control both weapons at once." Ken tapped two fingers against his temple.

"You can't watch both weapons at all times. Half the time the canopy will block your view as much as your opponent's. And the dart is thirty feet out with your eyes on the person, not the metal."

"So I need to know where it is by feel."

"Exactly. Chalk the ferrule. Put a board behind you and shift its position all around you after each exercise. Keep your eyes on a mark in front of you, and strike where you believe the board is." Ken shrugged.

"Then turn round and look. The distance between where you thought it went and where it went is the only useful measurement in this conversation."

"And the dart?"

"Keep a bowl of water on the floor, angled. Keep a target behind you or wherever you want. Start close. You sight it in the reflection and you throw." He watched Kara's face.

"Most people hate that one." Kara thought about what four weeks of Fluid State and a stream full of children splashing water on his face had done. This was going to harder.

"I'll manage, Instructor."

"Good." Ken stepped back.

"Be proficient in these before whoever teaches the dart finds an hour for you. If you're not, they'll spend that hour teaching you what I've just told you rather than about the dart, and I don't know how many hours you'll get in total."

"Understood."

"Then go and work. And Kara." Ken nodded at the war umbrella.

"Don't spar with that in here. Somebody might lose an eye and it won't be you." Waggy was awake by the time he got back and had rearranged his own bed into a shape that suggested strong opinions about how it had originally been made. Kara had bought it with his internship credits, thick and soft and ridiculous, and Waggy had accepted it as though it had always been owed to him. Vixen was there again with her boots on Glasses' chair, which appeared to be becoming permanent.

"You've got that face," she said.

"I've had this face since I was born." Vixen rolled her eyes.

"Anyway, I've got a profile to figure out," he continued.

"Whom are you stalking?" Vixen smirked. It was Kara's turn to roll his eyes.

"It's for the committee. Phinx wants a candidate who complements me." Kara set the umbrella down and sat on the edge of the bed.

"So I need to somehow figure out what I'm not."

"Oh, this'll be fun," Vixen said.

"I was afraid of that." Glasses had already put down what he was holding.

"Start with what you are. Easier that way."

"Hmm... let's see. I'm not bad at noticing things. I'm also good at planning." Kara turned it over.

"And I can hold a position when somebody pushes."

"You can hold a position when somebody pushes you," Vixen said.

"But you're not good at pushing."

"That's... True enough." She turned to fully face him.

"You never start anything with people. You respond well but you never open. Which is fine right up until the room needs somebody to break the ice, and then you're standing there awkwardly waiting for something to happen. You're good at reacting, not initiating." Glasses made a small sound of agreement that Kara considered unnecessary.

"So the person," Vixen went on, counting on her fingers.

"Outgoing. And by outgoing I don't just mean someone who's loud. I mean someone who'll walk up to a stranger and start the conversation."

"And who won't back off when it gets sharp," Glasses said.

"You handle confrontation by absorbing it. Somebody has to be able to meet it."

"But not by shouting," Vixen added.

"That's worse. You want somebody who doesn't mind saying something uncomfortable straight to a person's face while not being rude or offensive. That's rarer than it sounds."

"Alright, fair enough. And there's a fourth," Kara said.

"They have to notice things and then do something about them. I know people who notice everything and respond to none of it."

"You're describing yourself."

"Well, maybe... On a bad day."

"A lot of what we've described have to do with high EQ," Vixen said, "which you'll observe is one of the things you have least of."

"I... I've observed. I prioritized other things. Such as IQ, to help with actually making good plans. Which some people lack."

"Whole bunch of good that does when you're in a room with people you've never met before."

"Get a room," Glasses quipped and quickly looked away as both of them stared at him. Glasses leaned back.

"Anyway, how are you testing for any of it? Obviously can't just be an interview."

"That's the part I have to figure next."

"Are the rounds set?" Vixen asked.

"Not yet. And I wouldn't tell you even if they were." Kara looked at her." Especially you."

"What, why especially me?"

"Because you'd have it out of me in four minutes and then you'd tell nine people by lunch, out of pure generosity." They glared at each other for a moment.

"Ahem." Glasses turned around as they both turned the glare on him.