"Heigh-ho! Heave-ho!" the newbie cried enthusiastically with every swing of her practice sword.
Now, no knight of the Royal Guard could be considered a slouch. Some put more time into practicing their skills than others, but that was perfectly normal. However, watching the sheer, happy enthusiasm Katarina was putting into every swing was tickling something in the knights, many of whom were also getting ready to do some morning warmups.
"She's making me feel old," Alicetaria sighed as she got out her practice lance, a blunt, conical thing some might mistake for a club. "Why is she making me feel old? I'm not old, I'm… well, I'm not old!"
"Captain, if you can remember the old king before King Artorias, you're old," Selestia said, even as she glanced sideways at Katarina and hefted her practice sword.
"That's not old, that's experienced! Seasoned! Battle-hardened! Full of souls! Vital, youth-retaining, wrinkle-smoothing souls!" Alicetaria protested. "That's not old! ZULL is old!"
"Uh huh…" Selestia said, rolling her eyes.
"I saw that, Upitiria!" Alicetaria said, holding up her wooden lance. "You volunteering for a spar?"
"Well, if you think you're not too old for it…"
"Oh, those are fighting words… come at me! You are being invaded!"
Maria had checked on Katarina to see if she was doing her sword drills as instructed by the simple expedient of looking out the window, which was high enough she could catch a small glimpse of the knight dormitories' shared practice yard. After seeing her Squire was doing as instructed, and suppressing an unbecoming, Katarina-like wide grin at that thought that, yes, she had a Squire (!-!-!-!-!), Maria got up, did her own sword practice down in the courtyard next to the baths, had a quick bath, offered to be ravished by Rafael, had to settle for an admittedly-enjoyable bout of kissing, had breakfast with her wards (ah! Her mother! Her mother was there too! Perhaps she WAS feeling better!), saw Rafael off to work, and did some preliminary paperwork until midmorning before going down to see her squire, carrying a long bundle.
Katarina was still at it, making those strange sounds she usually did while working on her fields. That wasn't usual.
"Is there any particular reason why you sound like you're hoeing a field, Squire?" Maria asked.
Katarina blinked, only now seeming to notice her. Maria underlined training her awareness and peripheral vision. It wasn't that Katarina was inattentive. It was that her attention could be a little… unpredictable. Sometimes she noticed strange, small details before even Maria herself, and sometimes you could all but say the words 'I love you, marry me' to her face and she'll think you were talking about… well, literally anything but what you'd just said. While socially amusing, that sort of unpredictable attention was dangerous for a knight in the battlefield. Still, it was the beginning. This was why one was a squire for years. "Oh, L– Dame Campbell! Are we starting?"
Maria held off on answering, noting with satisfaction that even though Katarina was facing her and concentrating on her, her form wasn't suffering. Not something she could credit to her teaching, but wonderful to see nonetheless. "Yes, Squire. Stop what you are doing and face me."
Only then did Katarina stop doing her drills and stood in place, facing Maria. The blonde noted her squire didn't ground the practice sword into the ground like a stick. Instead, she held it at the base of the hilt in her left in a reversed grip, holding it at her waist as if miming a sheath, the point towards the ground, away from anyone. Unorthodox, but otherwise good sword discipline and passable etiquette. Surprisingly good, considering it was Katarina.
"Were you taught to do that?" Maria asked, pointing at the wooden sword.
Katarina blinked and looked down. "Uh… Oh! Yes, L-Dame Campbell. My instructor told me I should never point my sword at anyone I didn't want to hurt, and there was a bunch of other things like pointing edges away from people, but I only ever used a practice sword, so I just held it like this since I didn't have a sheathe."
Maria nodded. "Well, that ends now, Squire Claes. For the first part of your training, you will be trained in an important aspect of the sword that was apparently overlooked in your case. Tell me squire, do you know how to draw a sheathed sword?"
"Um, I think I remember how," Katarina said. "But… well, I haven't done it in a long time?"
Maria nodded, and held out the bundle. "A gift," she said, "compliments of their graces your mother and father." The bundle was wrapped in cheap paper, but at the glee and happiness Katarina showed, one would think it were bright, expensive wrapping paper. The paper was happily torn open, and Maria was amused to note Katarina making a deliberate effort to step on the paper so it wouldn't flutter away as litter.
In bundle was a simple leather belt with a good steel buckle and an empty sheath.
"Oooh…!" Katarina said, smiling in bright-eyed. "Wow, mother's never given me a belt before. Not one this nice."
"Here, let me show you how to put it on," Maria said.
The next few minutes were spent showing Katarina how to put on the belt– easy enough– and how to mount and unmount the sheath to it– slightly more complicated. Still, Katarina got the hang of it, but Maria still made her mount and unmount the sheath ten times without assistance before the knight pronounced herself satisfied.
"All right Squire Claes," Maria said, facing her Squire (!-!-!-!-!), who was proudly wearing her new belt and sheath, her practice sword snuggling fitted into the yonic object. "Your first lesson in the many skills you must learn as a knight: sheathing your sword."
"Yes, Dame Campbell!" Katarina said with happy enthusiasm. "What's that?"
"All your skills with a sword is rendered of much less use if you cannot draw your sword to use them," Maria said. "To that end, being able to draw your sword quickly and safely is of paramount importance. Just as important, you must be able to sheath your sword, as it is very impolite to be handling a naked blade when speaking politely to another, with some exceptions depending on the time and location. In the middle of the battlefield, for example."
Katarina nodded attentively and Maria was surprised to see her holding a little notebook and writing this down. Well, it showed good initiative, so she chose not to discourage it.
"To that end, you will be practicing drawing and sheathing your sword," Maria said. "As this is preparation for future contingencies, you will be learning to do so in a variety of different positions an environments. Standing. Sitting on a chair. Sitting on a stool. Sitting on the ground. With your back pressed against a wall. Lying down on the ground. Crouching. Crouching in an enclosed space. Standing in an enclosed space. And so on. Many of these places are not ideal to be when you have to defend yourself with a sword. Many of them would be regarded as certain death. However, they would be far less certain should you be able to draw your sword in such as situation."
Nearby, one of the practicing knights turned to her companion. "Hey, did you ever have to practice that? Drawing your sword in weird places?"
The other shook her head. "No, my master never brought it up. Do you think Dame Campbell is still Fuming with her?"
"That's be a backstab move if she is," the first said. "But then, I heard she's kinda weird. Strong, but weird. She jumps when she attacks."
"There's nothing weird about a leaping strong attack," the second said.
"No, I mean she jumps," the first said. "Like, from a standing start, she jumps up to the ceiling like someone had just uppercut her with a UGS and slams her weapons down on you."
"Dung pies. No one can do that. It's physically impossible," the second said. "You'd have to be some sort of twisted, fogwall-causing monstrosity to do that. Next you'll be saying she's Friede of the Black Flame and moving around like stamina isn't a thing."
"That's just what I heard," the first said.
They watched as Dame Campbell began demonstrating using her own practice sword and sheath, then began directing the newbie how to do it, correcting her hand placement before allowing her to draw. Then there was more correcting before allowing her to sheath. Eventually though, the newbie was drawing and sheathing her sword in and out of her sheath under the semi-watchful eye of her knight, who'd brought out paperwork and a sandglass and would only occasionally look up to watch her squire. The two knights would have said this was extremely lax, if Maria didn't always immediately snap out a correction when her squire diverged from the 'correct' form. The newbie, for her part, seemed almost painfully enthusiastic in doing the repetitions, humming pleasantly as she repeated the monotonous movements again and again with a mindlessness that made both knights shudder a little as they remembered their own Fuming by their knights.
About an hour later by the sandglass she had, Dame Campbell called a halt to her squire's repetitions and had her change positions to sitting on the ground. Then after demonstrating how one was supposed to draw their sword while sitting in that position, had her squire drill on it, only going back to her paperwork when she was satisfied her squire was mostly doing it right.
The watchers changed as they did though own drills, got bored, went on duty, and such, but a sort of oral tradition developed, explaining why the newbie was lying flat on her back on the ground, or crouched down, or standing in the corner between the wall and one of the dormitories and practicing drawing her sword. The newbie had a break for lunch, but then it was right back to practicing the draws in what seemed increasingly more absurd positions.
Finally, after a quick game of shield-sword-bow, one of the knights, Dame Piña of the house of Colada, approached Dame Campbell.
"Dame Campbell, it's not that we're questioning how you're training your squire," the sacrificial silver spirit said, the accepted starting phrase for questioning how someone is training their squire, "but we were wondering what this exercise is in aide of? It seems… excessive?"
"Hmm…" Dame Campbell said. It was always hard to get a read on Dame Campbell. She had such a smooth helm face. "merely plugging a gap in my squire's education. In all the years she's learned the sword, she's never had to practice having to draw her weapon from a sheath."
Dame Piña blinked. "What, really?" she said.
Dame Campbell nodded. "I'm having to get her to quickly build up the muscle memory. Having her do it in several awkward positions teaches her how to adjust the draw. I admit it is odd, but needful. She needs to learn the basics, and I'm sure you'd agree knowing how to best go from unarmed to armed is an essential basic."
"I see… " Dame Piña said slowly. She nodded. "Thank you for satisfying my curiosity, Dame Campbell."
"You are welcome," Dame Campbell said. "Thank you for being concerned. As she is my first squire, I am equally concerned about teaching Squire Claes correctly."
Dame Piña chose not to comment on the proud look the blonde had at the words 'my first squire'. Bowing to their host politely, she turned back to report her findings to her fellow knights, an amused smile playing on her face. Ah, this newbie squire and newbie knight-master were both so cute!
A/N: So, my Pat-reon is up now at P.A.T.R.E.O.N.C.O.M -/-SCM2814. If you want to support this fic, that would be great, but no pressure. But if you do, you'll also get advanced access to my new original fiction series about a wizard on the frontier, her dungeon, and the idiots around her...