This is based on a movie called Lady Hawk.
Please let me know how to improve it.
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"You need to be faster, Will," the boy's father said to him. The boy pushed himself from the ground, the reverberations still shaking through his sword arm. The boy glared at his father, his face a perfect miniature of the dark haired man.
The father had been training his son for hours a day since he turned seven. Wooden swords, little crossbows, knives, and axes littered the ground in the grassy orchard. Their mountain home now used as a training ground for the boy.
As soon as the dark-haired boy came to his feet, his father brought down the wooden training sword. The boy attempted to move faster, but his shaky limbs refused to help him. His father quickly knocked him over again. His father crouched down in front of the gasping boy.
"Can you not work on two things at once?" he asked sternly. "I tell you to move faster, and then you forget to follow through your motions." The boy struggled to get to his feet, vowing now to work on everything at once. The boy lifted his sword and tried to right his wrongs, but to no avail.
His shoulder stung from where his father struck him.
"You are better at agonizing over every move and worse at fighting," his father said with a chuckle in his voice. The boy tried not to take it to heart, but his continual failure made his eyes sting with repressed tears. His failure grew heavy in his soul. He got back to his feet, to prove himself. He fought his hardest and took some harsh blows but still was struck to the ground. The father sighed as he watched the boy spitefully climb to his feet.
"Will, I will not be here for long," he said, "the world is a hard place, and I would not have you hate me for preparing you for it." But the boy struggled to reign in his anger as his father beat him down repeatedly.
To the father, however, the boy was excellent. He learned quickly and could fight as well as any boy five years older. There was always room to improve, and the boy must improve quickly.
Soon, a rider came up the lane towards the manor. The father turned his eyes towards the rider and sighed.
"Clean up," he told his son, "I must go." The father walked from the orchard and towards the manor. The boy sprung to his feet, relieved to load all the training equipment into the little pull wagon. He rubbed his shoulders and hip. Bruises in various sizes and colors mottled the boy's skin. He hadn't known an easy day for more than two years.
The boy pulled the little wagon into the stables. His father's war horse and pack horse were being saddled and loaded. The boy felt a pit of dread settle in his stomach, but he pushed it aside as he hurried to the manor.
The manor was chaotic. The boy held close to the wall as servants rushed up and down the corridor. He saw his mother standing in the dining room near the tall windows facing the orchard and the valley below. Her white hair was pulled back away from her dispassionate, fair face. She did not acknowledge the boy's entrance. The boy remained in the room with her, as unobtrusive as a footman or servant. She never turned from her place, though she briefly met his eye in the reflection of the window.
The noises of preparing for a journey clattered on around them, with his fathers voice heard calling over the din.
Where was he going?
The battering the boy had been under each day was a far memory at the thought of his fathers departure. Who would care for him or train him? His mother frigid gaze never wavered from the windows, heedless of the upheaval around her.
The boy shook on his feet, but kept his hands locked behind his back and his face as impassive as his mothers. His eyes stung and his heart galloped painfully, but he could not break. It was unmanly.
Eventually the boy's father entered the room ready for the long journey.
"I've been called to the Crusades," he said simply. The boy's heart flew out of his chest and he felt the ground open up to swallow him. Only now did the boy's mother turn to examine her husband with a tearless, icy blue gaze.
"So, you go to die and leave me alone?" she said apathetically.
"I leave you with William," he told her, the boy's ears picking on the fact that he did not contradict her on his death. The boy's father knew he was going to his death.
The boy held his breath to keep from hyperventilating. His mother and father stared at each other for a long moment, through which the boy was as silent as a shadow. His mother broke first and embraced his father tightly, though her face remained as still as death. His father looked mildly surprised but returned the embrace for its short lived time.
His father turned to the boy, who straightened up and took a small breath.
"Work harder with the sword. I'll have Luca come and train with you. Be strong for your mother," he told the boy, laying a hand on his aching shoulder and squeezing it. The boy nodded. His father pulled out his sword, their ancestor's sword.
"I go to complete my life's quest. This space will be for you when it is your time," his father said, tapping on an empty jewel space on the hilt. The boy had heard the story of the ancestor's sword every Sunday. Its importance was as great as God it seemed. He was frightened of failing his father, and his ancestors.
The trio walked outside where his father mounted his horse, waved at the two of them and departed. The boy stood on the steps of the manor for a time, watching his father ride down the lane. His mother had returned indoors before the father had gone more than twenty paces.
The boy stood on the steps long after his father had disappeared, wondering if he would see him again.