Title: In the Dark

Word Count: 1,742

"How is the view from down there?" A voice said over me.

I was laying flat on my back, after I had had my feet swept out from under me by my mentor. I opened my eyes carefully, my breath finally starting to come evenly after having all the air knocked out of me.

I picked myself up and wiped the blood out of my eye that had come from a cut on my brow. Trying to resume my stance for the next fight was difficult, since all my muscles were beginning to seize up.

"You look like hell," my mentor informed me.

Ignoring the usual degradation wasn't as hard as it used to be. I was just accustomed to it by now. He did it with all his apprentices. It was easier to keep my mind from it since I was waiting for him to make a move again; since he always struck when my guard was down.

Instead, he started checking my stance, tapping my limbs back into the correct positions – using the tip of his sword to do so.

I closed my eyes against the sudden sharp pain in my thigh from where the point had dug in. I could feel the area starting to get wet from the seeping blood. I had acquired more scratches and bruises this morning than I had all week.

And then, I was flat on my back. But I managed not to lose all my breath this time.

My mentor leaned over me, and I felt like punching him, if only I could gain enough strength.

"Don't tell me you're tired already?" He asked.

I hated those words. It didn't matter that I had been doing intense training with him for two hours; I still felt I should be able to go on longer. Push myself more.

"Good," the man above me said, "I've been waiting for exhaustion to set in – you're quite hardy, you know? – Now, get up."

He walked away from me without offering a hand. I had an idea of tripping him, but I was in too vulnerable of a position to do so.

I got up without turning my back on him, since I knew that he was just waiting to put another scar into my back.

"Exhaustion comes to all good soldiers, and it is at the time that the senses are the most taunt."

He came closer and tapped me a few times on the head with the wooden handle of his long, slender sword. The sheath of the sword was strapped to his horse.

"These are the senses that a knight must never lose, no matter how relaxed he becomes." He folded his arms, "Keep your body loose, but keep your senses tense." He started to swing his sword in a slack circle. "Now, close your eyes."

I was too horrified by his suggestion to comply, since he made it sound like he was granting me a death wish.

He rolled his eyes at me. "Why must I explain everything to you? Can't you just follow for once?" He dropped his sword, stabbing the ground with it. "Do you have questions?"

"I only want the reassurance that you are not going to kill me," I said.

He let out a stark laugh, "You are kidding, right? You're my only apprentice that can think for himself and speaks his mind." He smiled, "It's a quality of a true knight to question."

I wasn't in the mood for a compliment, no matter how rare they were. "You told me last time not to speak unless spoken to."

He gave me an irritable look, "Well, you're not supposed to speak back to me."

Since I had put him in bad mood, he didn't elaborate on to what we were going to do. "Close your eyes," he said again.

I closed them, the whole area disappearing from my vision.

I tried to envelope myself into my other senses, but it felt so incoherent. I could hear the sound of footsteps, first receding and then advancing. There was the feel of the wind and the smell of spring. I could taste blood from a cut on my lip.

There was a whistling sound, and then the contact of wood hit me in the side of the head, right in the ear.

My eyes snapped open and I brandished my sword when my other hand went to my ear, which was suddenly throbbing.

My mentor sighed. He had hit me with the wooden casing of his sword.

"I told you to keep your eyes closed."

"But –"

"No."

"You –"

"Quiet."

"It's not fair!" I finally managed. "You want me to fight you blind, but I can hardly fight you when I can see."

He sighed. "That's exactly the point that you're blind. As for not being able to beat me, hopefully you'll get better."

I frowned at him, gripping my sword tighter.

"Fine. Then I'll be an example," he said.

Since he hadn't hit me with his sword – for which I was thankful, otherwise I'd be missing my ear – I looked around for a possible weapon that wasn't sharp, even though I did want to hit him with my sword.

He noticed what my intentions seemed to be. "No. Your sword will be just fine."

I looked at him as if he'd lost his sanity. He yawned at me.

My damn mentor closed his eyes. "Come at me."

I lunged and aimed a hit at his shoulder.

I was stunned when my blade met his slender one, the ringing of the metal vibrating through the sword.

He knocked my sword away and then he brought his blade gliding across my shoulder, ripping my coat.

He opened his eyes. "Either," he said, "I've set a good example, or you're not as good as I thought you were."

I ground my teeth. He had actually cut my shoulder, and the blood was welling up in beads across the thin line.

"Now, I want you to try it." He pinned his sword back into the ground and picked the casing back up. It suddenly whipped through the air and landed right in front of my head.

"You are now blind," I was told, "close one eye."

I closed it, but only because I didn't want him to accidentally poke me with the sheath.

"Now you have to rely on those other senses. You need to hear the movement and you need to feel the sensations of the ground below you and the breath around you." He stomped on the ground a couple times, then swung the casing close by my ear on my 'blind' side.

"Knights are ignorant when they rely on only one sense when we've been given five of them to use. Now, close your other eye."

I closed it, holding my sword until it hurt and straining to hear and feel everything.

"What do you hear?" He asked.

"My ear is ringing," I said, biting off my words. It still hurt from when he'd hit it earlier.

Even though I couldn't see him, I know that he rolled his eyes. "Anything else?"

"I hear you breathing."

"That's a start."

My whole body had become tense, my senses working overtime to make up for the lost sense. I could hear movement; I could feel the motions…

I reacted without thinking, blocking his lower blow, and knocking it away from my leg. I heard the casing whistling by my ear and I dodged, and leapt forward, digging the handle of my sword into my mentor's gut.

It was quite satisfying to hear him gasp for breath. I thought it was safe to open my eyes now.

He was on his knees and holding his stomach. I must've hit him harder than I'd thought.

When he looked up, he gave me a grin that I would have liked to call proud. "Now if we practice that with the daily training, you'll have mastered it in no time – even though you did quite well – but we're done now."

He staggered to his feet, but didn't show much pain when he walked to his sword and pulled it out of the ground and sheathed it.

Since that was apparently the entire lesson, we started to ready our horses for riding.

"One more thing, I heard that you were being brought into the Sinclair house." He smiled at me, "There's just one problem: you're not ready."

I glared at him over my horse's back. "I never asked for your opinion."

"I know, but I'll give it to you anyway."

I sighed and looked away. Apparently there had been hope within me that he would approve of my decision, but now he had just made me insecure that I wasn't strong enough.

"But since you are my apprentice, I'll have you know that I don't want you walking into that house with that ugly sword of yours on your hip."

The sword had always felt a bit awkward in my hands, but it had been my father's and I had not dared objected.

He handed me his sword in its wooden sheath, held fast by a clip.

The wood felt strong and smooth under my fingers.

He put his hand on my shoulder, "Pride is one thing that a knight should never sacrifice," he said quietly. "Pride for yourself, for all your skills and strengths, and for your Master. Those are the unspoken rules of a knight."

He turned from me and mounted his horse, "My only exception is that you keep the legacy of a knight, since that is a knights' sword. And I'll come take it back if I hear you've become otherwise." He started riding off without me.

I held the sword tight against my chest, feeling all the promises that seemed to be seeped into that wood.

...

"Wait, I need to breathe," Oz said, already tired out from the sword-training. I heard him mumbling under his breath the fact that he was sure that I wasn't really blind.

Those words echoed into my past, but if I recalled right, those original words were 'you are now blind'.

I smiled to myself. I had learned those tactics of sense to assure victories in battles and having the upper hand in fights that were performed in the dark.

I had never thought – or at least, I had never hoped – I would actually be using these tactics because I was blind.