The Grey Tower

Her punches were well formed but there wasn’t much strength behind them. She needed to embrace the idea of punching through her target. They also needed to work on strength training, but strength without mastery was useless. "Will we spar soon?" She asked, green eyes sparkling with anticipation. "I'm... actually a bit scared of sparring with you. You'd beat me to nothing, I think."

Terric couldn’t help but smile at her enthusiasm. “Not yet, Avyra, there are a lot more things you have to learn. If you are that eager to practice fighting, I could teach you how to block or how to escape grapples in our next lesson.” He thought for a moment. “Actually, there’s something I can show you now. It doesn’t require strength or really fundamentals. It’s more of a concept that I want you to take to heart.” He let her throw a few more punches before standing up. “There are places on the human body that when hit, squeezed, pressed, whatever, cause a lot of pain or stun parts of the body. These are good for anybody to learn, but especially helpful for somebody of your stature. Striking a pressure point can be more effective than trying to go for a knockout blow. Don’t be afraid to kick a man in the unmentionables. It’s a quick and easy way to gain the upper hand.” He reached over and gripped his left tricep and gave it a sharp pinch. Wincing he said, “That’s another good place to cause pain. Try on your own arm.”

Wow, I can’t believe she actually did it! Terric thought to himself. It shouldn’t have surprised him that much. Much of learning pressure points involved standing around testing them on yourself or your friends. “Ok, I can teach you more pressure points over time, now we should practice stances again. Assume the first stance.” As he said this, he settled his weight on his rear leg, gently bending his knees and bringing his open hands up into a guard position. Once she assumed the stance, he stood to inspect her stance making minor adjustments.

“Danos al’Sheen was right to a degree, knees are indeed a good target for anybody. If you can knock your opponent down you have an advantage. If you are carrying a knife and in a position to go for their knees, I would suggest stabbing the knife into the side of their thigh and dragging it up. You should hit a major artery that way.” He added the last part in an extremely casual voice.

Her question took him back years. He was a young boy again. His older sister, back from her first year as Far Dareis Mai, placing a sharpened spear in his hand and telling him she would teach him. “My sister, Tessa, she was the first person to teach me how to use a spear. I was eleven. Before that I had played with toy spears, as I assume Wetlander children play with toy swords.” That had only been the beginning. If he had chosen to become a herder or a potter or apprenticed to a blacksmith, that would have been it. He had become Aethan Dor; he had had several other teachers in his life. “I joined my society at sixteen. There I truly learned how to use a spear. I trained under the spear master Vishik.” Those weeks practicing stances, sparing, and learning how to fight as a group under the hot sun had served him well. Vishik’s words echoed in his head to these days. "So I guess, I’ve been training with a spear for fifteen years. But I think you want to know, how long I have been using a spear to survive. I fought in my first battle ten years ago.” He had found himself being overtaken by memories of home a lot recently. And so, he was brought back to the Three-fold Land. He was a young man again, barely more than a boy. He was a newly trained Aethen Dor of seventeen and he stood in the first line of battle. Next to him, stood his mentor Murin charming, handsome, and confident. He was everything Terric had and still wanted to be. Across the battlefield, stood over five hundred Stone Dogs who had to either be killed or made Gai’shain. Retreating was not in their nature, their honor depended on it. They had managed to break through those lines and recover the stolen herds of goats but they had taken heavy casualties. He himself, had started the beginnings of an impressive scar collection with a spear graze to the ribs.

He brought himself back to the present. “Ok Middle stance,” he said assuming the stance with both feet parallel and shoulder with apart, knees bent in a nearly sitting position. “We’ll hold this one for a while.”

Terric had to think. He rarely dwelled on his childhood. Not because it was bad but because it had been rather uneventful. In many way’s he felt he hadn’t truly been born until he had become a Red Shield going on eleven years ago. “I would play at algai’d’siswai with the other boys and girls of my hold. We would run around shouting and trying to poke each other with spears. Sometimes my friend Raya would ‘borrow’ her little sister’s dolls so we could rescue them from evil Shadow Runners,” he paused, the memory turning bitter sweet. “How could I know, one day I would have to rescue her and her sister from real Shadow Runners.” He gritted his teeth trying to bring the conversation back to happier memories. "Tessa, my sister, she taught me a lot about surviving in the Three-fold Land. She taught me everything she could after becoming a Maiden of the Spear. Even before that, our parents would take us out into the desert while our Sept was on the move. They would show us what plants were safe to eat and what to avoid. There is a cactus in my homeland that grows an extremely sweet fruit. The spines are sharp and barbed though and the fruit’s skin is thick. Tessa showed me how to cut the fruit free and cut away the barbs. She would sometimes bring me bags of the things that she had cut the spines off of.” He could almost taste the sweet fruit. “To bad they are nearly impossible to find outside the Three-fold Land. I haven’t had one in over a year.”

They had held middle stance close to two minutes now as Terric’s mind wandered homeward. The ache of training reminded him of his time under Boden and Vishik, and thoughts of the cactus fruits reminded him of his sister. These memories mixed hitting him with a wave of homesickness unlike he’d felt before. He stood from the stance, “Rest a moment, then we’ll practice break falls. If we have time afterwards we’ll practice balance.”

“I don’t know how well the fruit will travel from the Three-fold Land or if any Hama Valon venders sell any but it’s a thoughtful gesture,” it was. He was surprised and rather touched that she was so adamant about it. If she managed it, he would have to find her something special. He found it rather amusing that she would use the jewelry her family made for games when she was younger, but he should have expected it. From his short time in the Tower, he had heard stories of Avyra’s mile long mischievous streak.

She asked him where the stories of Aiel savagery came from. That was an easy answer. “Most Wetlanders only know Aiel through battle. People make up stories about their enemies all the time. It’s easier to get people to band together to stop some vile darkfriends than to just fight some other people who are only a little different than you are over something like grazing territory. And since battle is a core part of my people’s way of life, we happen to be quite good at it. The Wetlanders know us through our reputation. The Borderlanders are Wetlanders who are quite like the Aiel actually but other Wetlanders don’t seem to have quite the same fear reaction. Maybe it’s because they aren’t separated by a giant mountain range.” He shrugged intending to give the idea more thought. Then he was hit by a piece of morbid curiosity. “What kinds of stories do Cairhinen tell about my people? I won’t be mad. At you at least.” He wasn’t sure if she could make him mad actually. Well he trusted her not to try at least.