The Training - Part 4

The training lasted a good long while and like before, Octavia ended up shattered by the end of it. Althea had taken her through all of the weapons on the table, but even then at the end of the session, she said that this was just a small number compared to what she could come across.

For each weapon, Althea went to attack Octavia and told her how to defend herself with her staff. Some attacks were easy to deal with, overhead swings needed to be blocked by raising her staff up so it hit the shaft, same for ones on her sides. But after a while, she started to use more complicated strikes. Complicated in terms of defending them, such as the simple lunge, which when using a staff involved a lot of getting timings right. It involved bringing her staff across to knock it to the side while moving her body out of the way as well.

Althea then moved on to swiping at her tail, attacking with the pommel of the sword, and bashing with the shield. All of these required some variant of the usual block in order to stop the attack, or in some cases just lessen the blow, as the shield bash was more to break a person's block than anything else.

She did the same with the staff, halberd, mace and dagger, taking her through the many ways to defend and block against a good number of attacks.

There were so many different ways to block attacks and so many ways for them to attack you. How she would be able to remember all of this she didn't know. But, there being this many, as long as she generally knew how you need to block a specific weapon, how you actually do it will just be down to what you have at hand, or the situation.

After Althea exhausted all of the weapons she had available, she then talked about gauging what an attacker will do. If you can figure out how or when a person is going to attack, you then have more time to figure out which of those blocks or counters you need to apply.

"Ok, I am going to attack you, and I want you to watch my body as I do so. Don't worry, I'm not going to hit you. Now watch." Althea said as she picked up the one-handed sword on its lonesome.

Althea then got into her combat stance, slightly bent knees, legs spread apart, and flexible, making her ready to move and attack at any time. Once she was in place, she then performed a simple swipe with the sword, like how an untrained thug or bandit would attack.

Thankfully, as she had stated, she didn't end up hitting Octavia. She was far enough away that only the air rushing from the swinging blade managed to hit her.

"Now, just before I swung, what did you see?"

"…"

Yeah, she didn't have an answer for that. While she had been watching, all she saw, was her attack with the sword. What was she supposed to be seeing?

"I…err."

"Don't worry. No one gets it the first time. Now, I'm going to do it slower, and I want you to watch my arm first."

Doing the same motion as before, Althea, pulled her arm back with the sword, slowly this time, and then followed through with the same swing.

"Whenever someone goes to swing a weapon, a lot of things happen. For one, when you know you're going to actually do an attack, your grip always tightens. No matter the weapon, you should be able to see them grip harder, which is done to make sure it doesn't just slip out of their hand. Some people may already grip it hard well in advance, but most people relax their grip when they're not attacking. Feels more comfortable that way."

Althea performed the same swing, and Octavia this time could actually see it. It was faint, but she did see her fingers close around the shaft a bit more, and the sword twist slightly.

"Another thing you can spot is the shifting along their arms. To hold a lot of weapons you need to be strong, and stronger people have larger arms. When they go to attack, you can see the arm tense and bulge up, showing they are going to move the heavy weapon in their hand."

Octavia watched her again, and as she said, could see her muscle shift and tense up as she got into the swing.

Althea took her through numerous scenarios with different weapons, showing how you can tell someone was going to attack with the weapon, and in some cases, how they would. With a one-handed sword, aside from seeing how they moved their arm, there wasn't really a way to tell how they would swing the sword at you. But for a two-handed weapon, how they orientated their grip on the sword or staff, it was possible to 'judge' which direction they would swing from.

Octavia air quoted the judge, as it wasn't an exact science, given that one orientation, could lead to several different swings. While problematic, it was still valuable knowledge as things to look out for when in a fight.

She eventually got onto a sword and shield, which she stated was the hardest one to gauge. The main reason was that the shield blocked everything.

Depending on what type of shield they had, it could almost be impossible to tell which direction they were attacking from until the last few seconds. A buckler was no trouble. Its size being mainly for agile fighters who are looking for a little added protection, giving their non-dominant hand a use. But any shield larger than that was a problem.

From larger round shields to tower shields, it was impossible to figure out what way they were positioning their grip or even see most of their arm to tell when and which way they are swinging. Large round shields were normally accompanied by a sword, which was again problematic, but it was tower shields that were the worse, being accompanied by a spear or something similar. While just the sheer size of it was enough to block your view, a spear was generally held at the end of the shaft, being well out of sight.

Because of all of this, Althea didn't have much to say on judging before the attack and could only bring up the importance of knowing how to block these attacks, because it was harder to tell.

…

The session continued and Octavia learnt about the many ways people can hurt or get hurt. As she had imagined, it would take a great deal of time to actually commit it all to memory, but for now, she had a good grasp on how to deal with one-handed swords. This was on Althea's recommendation.

"As you have seen, there is a lot to take in. I would say you should learn everything about dealing with one-handed swords and go from there. The only people you are likely to get attacked by are bandits and robbers. Being what they are, they generally have cheap weapons and don't have much combat experience, which is where a one-handed sword comes into play. They are cheap, many people make them, and you can use them quite easily without any skill. The same goes for one-handed clubs and axes, which generally have the same principles as dealing with the sword."

Octavia took that to heart and focused on the single weapon for the time being.

Which she was very thankful for, given Althea's next words.

"Right, next we shall put it all together and see how you do."

Just remembering their first fight, she got very worried, but since it was training, Althea stated she would be doing things slower, in order to see if Octavia could react in time to defend herself and attack back.

Althea took up a wooden one-handed sword and got into position. Octavia followed, holding the wooden staff, and slithered till she was in front of her.

A quick nod was all it took before they got started and Althea almost immediately went in for a swing. The first of which was an overhead swing.

True to her word, it was slower than when she had battered her in their first fight. Not to say it was a snail's pace, but it was slow enough that she actually had a chance to block it.

She had missed the tells on her fingers and arm that she was going to swing, but seeing the type, she was able to bring her staff up in time and block the attack.

Her sword thudded into the wooden staff and caused vibrations through both of them. It also very slightly bounced off of the staff, of which Althea continued the momentum, allowing her to bring it down, and aim for the top of her tail.

Octavia was very much focused on the sword, and she could see the direction it was heading in, allowing her to quickly bring her staff downwards to block her next attack.

As Althea pulled back for another attack, Octavia saw this as an opportunity to go in for a strike. With the sword being in Althea's right hand, she pulled back and swung the end of her staff, aiming for her unguarded left.

While Athea was attacking slowly, Octavia was not. Nothing unfair about this, of course. Althea is a very well-trained knight in many weapons and Octavia lacks a good deal of combat experience. Either way, it seemed that even with her attacking at her full speed, it still wasn't enough to actually hit Althea.

As she pulled back her sword, she was able to see Octavia's swing and ended up bending her hip just enough that the end of the staff just skimmed her body.

Damn. Although, it was something that Octavia kind of expected.

"One of these days, I will manage to hit her in a fair fight." Octavia couldn't help but think to herself.