Sabre Lessons in the Isles

1588-02-04
Lynden Training Yard, Distant Isles

The morning after I agreed to train with Master Carlen Rowen, he led me to a patch of flattened grass behind his cottage.
He carried two curved blades with knuckle guards and pommels carved like horse heads. “These are not your Bononese spaghet twirlers,” he said with a grin. “This is a sabre; it sings a rougher tune.”

He set my stance tall, chest high, feet wide. Then he had me cut in great arcs from the shoulder. The strikes were unlike the precision of Maros’s compass star or the wrathful overcuts of von Lychenar; here it was momentum and flow, letting the blade’s curve do the work.

Rowen mocked the tucked in guards of the south and called them delicate as lace. He said the free cities favor honesty of motion over clever feints. “We fight to keep our towns free,” he added. “Your Bononese masters fence for courts and coin.”

We stepped and cut across an eight pointed star scratched in the dirt. Rowen’s version was looser. He told me to move from waist and hips, to blend steps like a dance, to let each cut cover the hand that made it so defence and attack shared one line.

Sweat ran down my brow and the wind lifted the edge of my sleeve. I felt how the arms that learned the lute still remember rhythm. The sabre’s beat was faster, more percussive, yet there was music in it.

Rowen laughed when I said so. “Aye. Every blade speaks a different language. Learn to listen and you will never be tongue tied.”

By sunset my shoulders burned and my fingers blistered, yet I felt new air in my lungs. Each master had shown me a facet of the art. With Rowen I would learn to cut through the wind and let the sea itself carry the stroke.