Cursors's Fury

Max accepted the flask from Magnus after he finished, and drank. Then he tapped the rudius on the ground beside him. “You cover your shieldmate no matter what happens. If your other wrist is broken, if it leaves you exposed, if you’re bleeding to death. It doesn’t matter. Your shield stays up. You protect him.”

“Even if it leaves me open?” Tavi demanded.

“Even if it leaves you open. You have to trust the man beside you to protect you if it comes to that. Just as you protect him. It’s discipline, Tavi. It is literally life and death-not just for you, but for every man fighting with you. If you fail, it might not only be you who dies. You’ll kill the men relying on you.”

Tavi stared at his friend, and his anger ebbed away. It left only the pain and a world full of weariness.

“I’ll ready a basin,” Magnus said quietly, and paced away.

“There’s no room for error,” Max continued. He unstrapped Tavi’s left hand from the shield and passed him the water.

Tavi suddenly felt ragingly thirsty and began guzzling it down. He dropped the flask and laid his head on the ground. “You hurt me, Max.”

Max nodded. “Sometimes pain is the only way to make a stupid recruit pay attention.”

“But these strokes,” Tavi said, frustrated but no longer belligerent. “I know how to use a sword, Max. You know that. Most of these moves are the clumsiest-looking things I’ve ever seen.”

“Yes,” Max said. “Because they fit between the shields without elbowing someone behind you in the eye or unbalancing the man on your right or making your feet slip in mud or snow. You get an opening for maybe half a second, and you’ve got to hit whatever you’re swinging at with every ounce of force you can muster. Those are the strokes that get the job done.”

“But I’ve already been trained.”

“You’ve been trained in self-defense,” Max corrected him. “You’ve been trained to duel, or to fight in a loose, fast group of individual warriors. The front line of a Legion battlefield is a different world.”

Tavi frowned. “How so?”

“Legionares aren’t warriors, Tavi. They’re professional soldiers.”

“What’s the difference?”

Max pursed his lips in thought. “Warriors fight. Legionares fight together. It isn’t about being the best swordsman. It’s about forming a whole that is stronger than the sum of the individuals in it.”

Tavi frowned, mulling the thought over through a haze of discomfort from his throbbing wrist.

“Even the most hopeless fighter can learn Legion technique,” Max continued. “It’s simple. It’s dirty. It works. It works when the battlefield is cramped and brutal and terrible. It works because the man beside you trusts you to cover him, and because you trust him to cover you. When it comes to battle, I’d rather fight beside competent legionares than any duelist-even if it was the shade of Araris Valerian himself. There’s no comparison to be made.”

Tavi looked down for a moment, then said, “I didn’t understand.”

“You were at a disadvantage. You’re already a fair hand with a blade.” Max grinned suddenly. “If it makes you feel any better, I was the same way. Only my first centurion broke my wrist six times and my kneecap twice before I worked it out.”

Tavi winced at his own wrist, now swelling up into a large, plump sausage of throbbing torment. “Naturally, it only stands to reason that I would learn more quickly than you, Max.”

“Hah. Keep that talk up, and I’ll let you fix that wrist on your own.” Despite his words, though, Max looked concerned about him. “You going to be all right?”

Tavi nodded. “I’m sorry I snapped at you, Max. It’s just…” A little pang of loneliness hit Tavi. It had become a familiar sensation over the last six months. “I’m missing the reunion. I miss Kitai.”

“Can’t a day pass without you whining to me about her? She was your first girl, Calderon. You’ll get over it.”

The little lonely pang went though him again. “I don’t want to get over it.”

“Way of the world, Calderon.” Max reached down to slide Tavi’s good arm over one of his broad shoulders and lifted him from the ground. Max helped him over to their camp’s fire, where Magnus was pouring steaming water into a mostly full washbasin.

Twilight lingered for a long time in the Amaranth Vale, at least compared to Tavi’s mountainous home. Every night, the trio had stopped traveling an hour before sundown, in order to give Tavi lessons in the use of Legion battle tactics and techniques. The lessons had been arduous, mostly practice exercises with a weighted rudius, and they’d left Tavi’s arm too sore to move after the first couple of evenings. Max hadn’t judged Tavi’s arm ready to train until two weeks of exercises had hardened the muscles in it into sharp, heavy angles beneath the skin. Another week had served to frustrate Tavi thoroughly with the seemingly clumsy techniques he was being forced to learn-but he had to admit that he’d never been in better fighting condition.

Until Max had broken his wrist, at least.