“If you find yourself,” he continued, again addressing the entire crowd, “in the unfortunate circumstance where some fool is trying to kill you, it will not be a graceful dance of swords. There will be no songs written of your prowess. Who here has been to a tournament and seen dueling contests, and jousts, and the such?” Hands and nods. “I cannot possibly stress how little this resembles a real fight. Those tournament men have been trained to study moves, to read each other’s footwork, and are aiming to impress the lords and ladies of the court. If you have some sod villager attacking you, he is not trying to impress anyone. His attacks will be random, unfocused, and adhere to no rules of combat. And it will be over before you realize it is happening. Your primary goal is to never let any situation escalate to this point. If combat is inevitable, you make the first attack, and you do it correctly. Your only advantage is that they don’t know how to fight. Children, you see, play with sticks and you tap tap tap,” he mimicked a sword gently reflecting off another, “only making clink-clink sounds. People think they can stop a sword just by letting it touch another one. A real man with an arm of sharpened steel swinging with full intent to kill, this isn’t a thing you can simply stand there and take. They don’t know that. You do. So Simon.” He turned it to the armsmaster. “Get them to work.”

The Scotsman’s face lit up, and he did just that. The recruits would not spend this day sparring. They wouldn’t even touch a real sword for a week. Instead they would chop firewood, move stones, run the perimeter of the bailey, back to back, again and again. The goal for now would be to build their stamina. When blades come out in the real world, it often involves a fair amount of running first. A Guardsman who is out of breath after a chase is likely to never run again.

“So is that where barbarians come from?” came a woman’s sarcastic voice.