The other Trainees stopped their practice and watched him chase his two victims around the perimeter of the salle. They watched with their mouths hanging open in amazement, and no little shock and surprise. Dethor didn’t make them go back to trading blows, so Alberich concluded that this, and not what they’d been assigned to do, was the real lesson today.

Good. Let them think about it. Not now—they were as shocked as his two victims—but they would remember, and talk about this in their rooms together, later. If they were smart enough, they would learn from what they watched now, and the next pair he chased around the salle would be better prepared for what he was going to do to them.

He drove the boys back for a good while, which probably felt like an eternity to them, taking on first one, then the other; they fought as two separate individuals rather than a pair. Another mistake, for he could hack at one long enough for the other to take heart and try something, then move on the second boy before he’d rightly got his move started. And oh, they were not anticipating the shrewd blows to shins, the absolutely rude blows to the groin…

The latter he pulled, and pulled hard; he didn’t want to lay them out, he just wanted them to know what he could do if he wished.

And what a bandit would do when they came up against him.

And if he’d wanted to lay them out—helmets or no, he’d have had them measuring their length on the floor first thing. The ringing blows he landed on their helms, he hoped, would tell them that. He used the flat of his blade on the helmets, rather than the edge, but one day, when they were better prepared to counter him, he’d use the proper weapon against a heavily armored man, the mace, against them. He’d known men to die of mace blows to the helm with blood pouring from their noses and ears…

Then he feigned getting tired, though he was barely warmed up—which, since they were feeling the strain themselves, they fell for. They pushed him for a few paces right into the position he wanted them, whereupon he turned the tables on them and dashed right between the two of them, catching both of them with blows in the back as he passed. Then he ran them around the salle in the opposite direction.