“I would be glad to show you in slow practice,” she said. “It’s a very useful stroke, but only against that particular attack. If the Marshal permits?”

Marshal Berris seemed as awestruck as Valthan. “Please,” he said. “I was taught how to face an other-handed fencer, but only quick retreat and regroup if someone switched hands.”

“Let’s have that blade,” Dorrin said, as if the fellow holding Valthan’s wooden blade were one of her own cohort, and he handed it back, hilt-first, very politely. She checked the tip. “I’m sorry, Marshal—I cracked this blade. You’ll have to get another. I’ll be glad to pay—”

“No, no … these are practice blades; they break; it’s their nature. Here—Sir Valthan, do you wish to be the demonstration model, or shall I?”

“I,” Valthan said, reaching for the replacement blade. “I’ve never had someone disarm me with that move; I want to see how it was done.”

“Very slowly, so they can see,” Dorrin said. “Do exactly what you did. Do you have a count for it? If so, call it out.”

He complied. The feint before the switch, one and two; the change of hands, three and four, but his foot was already moving in the diagonal step.

“If I had stood still,” Dorrin said, standing still, “he would have had an excellent draw cut here …” As he moved past her, she allowed the cut, fore and aft. “That’s how it’s supposed to work. Now, if you don’t mind, at the same speed, repeat.” He returned to his place and began the same moves.

This time, moving at his speed, she demonstrated the footwork that moved her out of danger, and gave her opening to strike. She held up her hand and they both halted at the moment of contact, showing how the leverage was all hers by correct placement.

“It’s a viable parry even if you don’t disarm your opponent,” she said. “But at full speed, it will usually jar them enough to cost them their blade, if your own has some weight.”

After that, the Marshal wanted to try it, and soon Dorrin was tiring. It had been a very long day. He recognized that, and agreed to meet her at the inn the next morning to talk.

“That trick,” Valthan said, on their way back to the inn. “It’s just a trick of fence?”

“Yes,” Dorrin said. “What did you think? Magery?”

“It was so … unexpected.”

“I learned it in Valdaire,” Dorrin said. “My third campaign year with Phelan. I’d taken a gash from someone who did what you did, only with steel, and a man with a withered arm approached me after, and said he had a foolproof response for such attacks. I didn’t believe him, but it turned out he was a fencing master famous there, and though it cost good gold, it has been worth it since. He had lost the use of one arm to a poisoned blade, and knew more about fencing one-handed against many attacks than even the Duke’s armsmaster Siger. Practice it in your mind, and in a salle only in private; use it only at full speed, and no one will know what you did.”