Read Online The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner - Free Book Online Page B

for me to learn: parries and ripostes, with no particular purpose that I could see except to make me turn my wrist in funny ways and feel like even more of a useless idiot. He would never even show me how to do them properly, just talked talked talked until I got it right, it seemed, only to stop his voice. I began to wonder if he was ever going to teach me to fight for real.
    So it was a great startlement to me, the day he stood waiting for me stripped to his breeches and shirt, holding a powerful sword with an intricately woven basket. It was not a practice sword. It had an edge, a real one.
    I drew in a deep breath. Guard, feint, parry, riposte…I could do this. I would have to, to keep that evil blade from me. Venturus had thrown his jacket over the rack of practice swords. He smelt sweaty, as if he’d been drilling already. But when I went to pick up a weapon, he stopped me. “No. You no sword. You stand.”
    His sharp steel tip directed me to the center of the room. I stood there at the guard, miming a sword in my hand.
    “No guard!” my strange teacher corrected. “You standing stand.”
    I stood still, my arms at my sides. He raised the sword in one swift motion. I flinched.
    “Stand.”
    I said carefully, “I think that you are going to hurt me. I can’t just stand here without—”
    “Good. Good you think. No laughing sword. Laughing sword is death sword.” He smiled, showing large yellow teeth. “But Venturus not to hurt. No hurt if stand, no move. No-o-o move.” I didn’t move. Slowly, but perfectly steadily, the sword was swinging in a great arc towards me. I watched it come. I thought as hard as I could about how much practice it must have taken for Venturus to be able to keep it at that steady rate, without wavering.
    The blade stopped at the cloth of my shirtsleeve.
    “No-o-o move.”
    I did not move. He swung it suddenly to my knee, and I would have jumped except that I was afraid he’d hit me by accident then.
    Venturus stepped back a pace. “Good.”
    So quickly I had no time to be frightened, he had the tip at my neck. Without appearing to change his stance, Venturus extended his arm a crucial fraction simply by tightening his muscles, and the metal pressed into my skin. I knew it did not break through, although I felt it all the way down to the small of my back. I did not swallow until he’d taken it away.
    “Yess,” he said in his satisfied hiss. He was not even winded. “Now you see.”
    “See what?” I demanded hotly. When I lose my temper, I’m afraid it’s gone. “See you are the biggest show-off in the world, or see you nearly scared me out of a year’s growth?”
    He lowered his blade and twirled it at his side in a very show-offy way. “Hmm,” he observed to the air around him, “little scared duke-boy gets anger.”
    “Yes, I get angry when I’m scared—what do you want me to do, cry?”
    “Anger,” Venturus said, “is enemy to sword. Many angry men killed by sword.”
    “Is that so?”
    Venturus made a tour of the room, working the sword in flashy patterns so that I had to keep well away. “Fear,” he observed to the air, “is enemy to sword. And fear to sword is friend. You see now?”
    “No.”
    “No? Why not? You have eyes, but you no see. I teach and teach, but you no learn. Why you no learn, silly duke-boy?”
    I took a deep breath. “I see one thing,” I said, “and that’s that I’ll never be any good at this. And you know what? That’s just fine with me, because it was never my idea in the first place, remember? So why don’t you just go ahead and tell my uncle that I have too bad a temper and I’m too scared and stupid ever to be a decent swordsman, and then we can all go home!”
    He turned to me with real hardness in his eyes. The sword was down at his side, but for the first time, the man truly frightened me. “Do not sharpen your tongue on Venturus,” he growled. “Do not command like to some servant.” His nostrils flared as he