Page 43 of Spears and Shadows (Defenders of the Light)
They remained in the courtyard for a while longer, Antony once again feeding Pags the peacock. Now, though, Nora was not quite as overwhelmed by the threat she knew waited for her beyond the walls of the Sanctuary.
* * *
When Nora showedup for her training with Ezra on Monday, the sight that greeted her made her want to skip over to the big man and give him a giant hug. She contained herself, however, and settled for a brisk walk over to where he was standing with a spear clutched in each meaty hand.
“Today’s the day?” she asked by way of greeting, inclining her head toward the weapons in his hands.
Ezra nodded. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. Normally, you would train in pankration for a full year before you even got to hold a weapon, but considering the circumstances, I have been persuaded to make an exception. Knowing how to use a weapon sooner rather than later might prove to be…beneficial for you.”
Nora reached to snatch the weapon from Ezra’s hand, but he yanked it out of her reach.
“Don’t think you get out of your warm-up exercises just because of these. Show me your forms before I change my mind about letting you use this.”
Nora huffed but settled into her stance without further complaint. She progressed through her punches, moving on to her kicks, which she managed to complete without overbalancing even once. By the time she was done, and Ezra approached her with the practice spear in hand, she was bouncing on the balls of her feet in poorly contained anticipation.
“Calm yourself, young firecracker. It’s a weapon, not a piece of candy,” Ezra grunted, but Nora could still sense his pleasure at her excitement. It must have been many years since he had gotten the chance to train anybody.
He handed her the weapon, and when the smooth wood touched her palms, she smiled. This felt real. This felt like she could make a difference.
Nora blinked, and her hour of training was over. As Ezra instructed her to begin her cool down exercises, she griped.
“We just covered the basic stances and grips,” she argued as she flopped down in the dirt.
“And that is a quick progression for the first day with a spear. You had barely learned the basics, and now you have to adjust to accommodate three meters of wood. If we go much further, you’ll hurt yourself,” Ezra pointed out.
She began stretching her arms and hissed to find out that he was right. She may have gotten used to exertion, but her muscles seemed permanently knotted from the added weight of the weapon. As she moved to stretch her other arm, she silently thanked Ezra for starting her with a wooden training spear instead of the bronze ones traditionally used in combat.
Still, as she took stock of her aches and pains, she was pleased to find that she had accumulated fewer bruises today than she had in prior weeks. It seemed that training with a spear involved far less of her getting dumped on her backside. She mentally added another tally in favor of the weapon.
Over the next week, Nora continued to train with the spear. Her suspicions that this would go much better than her initial training were confirmed. She found that she was granted a surprising amount of confidence with its length in her hands, almost as if it were an extension of herself that she didn’t know she had been missing until now. The stories from her favorite childhood fantasy novels about heroes who slept with their weapons started to make a bit more sense to her. She only trained with her battered practice spear a few hours a day and she had already grown attached to it. It did not seem that farfetched to think that she would never want to be too far from her weapon if she had used it her entire life. With a little more practice, perhaps she could prevent herself from acquiring more injuries that would necessitate a trip to the emergency room. The scar on her thigh did have a roguish appeal, but she had no desire to repeat the experience.
