“The point is faster than the edge but don't favor it, just use what's right in the instant. You are not showing off your skill for a crowd of admirers, you are just killing and every time you move someone should feel your blade in them. Groin and inner thigh, belly and neck are the best killing hits but don't pass up an opportunity, any time you cut them it hurts and they react, step back, twitch, wince, something, and then you kill them.” Sapphire kept up a running monologue as we worked. There was something about the way he used the practice sword that told me he had never held one in his hands before today. It was a frightening thought. When he had learned he had taken wounds any time he failed to block or duck a blow. “You use the term swordplay, the first time I heard the phrase I laughed till I cried, later and in private,” he was striking at me relentlessly and I knew why it had seemed to Kerral that he was holding back, it was because he was not actually trying to kill me. Having seen him in action I could see the difference. “There is no sense of play in killing, and if you have a sword in your hand instead of a rock what difference? Bare handed or a knife, a rope, a plate, a bottle, a brick, a scythe or a rake. There is no play in it, just get the sharp bit into their body and kill them.” I was defending desperately. “You focus too much on the sword, the sword is there but it isn't everything, you learned somewhere how to see that an enemy is going to move but you need more, you need to learn to know how and where he is going to move, and then use it to be out of that and have your blade in his body.” He didn't move his feet, sometimes for a minute at a time, then he would step to make sure he was close enough to hit me with the blade, which he did with monotonous regularity. “You were better than this with a real blade and a real enemy, everyone is more focused, if not more skilled when it matters. Usually less skilled but that doesn't matter, what matters is that you are not trying to kill me and if you don't you will learn nothing from this.” He stepped in past my sword as though it wasn't there and punched me in the plexus so hard that I went down hard on my back before I knew I'd been hit. “That's enough for now. Think about trying to kill me.”
I already was.