Snippet #2186244

The quiet of the kitchen in which Gwyn sat was broken by the rumble of feet on the landing above. A few minutes later, Faulkner, followed closely by a sleepy-looking Kit, came down the stairs to crowd the low-beamed room.

"Is it not too early?" Kit was saying, rubbing his eyes fiercely.

"Better now before someone can catch a glimpse of two men sword-fighting in Tova's garden," replied Faulkner, nodding at Gwyn as they passed. "You want to know something of it before you go to the castle tonight, do you not?"

"Well, yes," said Kit, in a tone that implied this was obviously not what he had been expecting as a consequence. "Good morning, Gwyn! Did you make-?"

He was cut off as Faulkner pulled him out of the front door of the cottage and strode down the path outside to the patch of grass he and Gwyn had ventured across the previous night. The gossamer cobwebs were now laced with beads of dew that danced and burst beneath Faulkner's boots. At the edge of the tree-line, he stopped and took his knife from his belt, reaching up to saw off a young branch from a nearby beech. After removing the slender leafy end, he tossed it over to a bewildered Kit and set about taking down another.

"Is this to be my sword?"

"You would rather we begin with steel?" said Faulkner, wielding his own branch. "Now show me how you would stand with it."

Kit frowned and tried to position himself in the fencing stance he had seen portrayed by figures in the tapestry at Kingsmead town hall when he had gone there with his father as a boy. Sword arm out, one leg lunged forward with the other limbs held back for balance. He barely had time to blink before his makeshift sword thudded to the grass. He stared at Faulkner in astonishment, wondering if the other man had really just disarmed him or if he'd somehow accidentally dropped the branch.

"And that is why no one fences on a battlefield. Mor is a soldier and the rest of his court would like to pretend they are too. Stand like this..." said Faulkner, indicating his own feet, placed about a shoulder's-width apart. "Your sword like this..."