"Pitre, wake up."
"Huh, what, why?"
"Pitre, wake up now. It's time to train."
I was slowly coming to when I heard that. It had to be in the middle of the night. I trained early, but never in the middle of the night.
"What. train? It's still early."
"Get up boy. You train now or not at all.
My father was persistent and the tenor in his voice wasn't allowing for an answer other than "yes, and right away.". I did my best to get dressed in pitch black. My father hadn't even lit a lantern. The only light was starlight that shown through the window. The moon wasn't even present on such a dark night.
I was still groggy when I opened the door as my father sat on a stool outside. The weather had started to turn warm, and the snow had melted weeks earlier.
"Come on lad, we have a long way to go, so grab your sword and lets get on with ourselves."
A sinister smile parted my fathers lips, and he took of in a run. I hastily grabbed my sword and began chase. He barely made a sound as he glided across the ground. I on the other hand crashed and rambled through like a drunkard after a long night at the pub. He would change direction without any notice and several times I had to stop and try to listen for him. He would only alert me to where he was with a sharp whistle. I never heard a branch break or the slightest crunch of leaves. When I heard that whistle, I would sprint off in the direction it came from, crashing through more brush. We passed through the clearly that was mostly created by me cutting trees down, and I finally knew where I was. I began to get an idea of where we were going. There was a river a few miles from the clearing in the direction that my father ran.
I hurled myself through the tree line and onto the stone of the riverbank. I saw the silhouette of my father sitting on a large slab of rock. My breath had left me long ago, and I was trying to catch it back.
"Show me what you have learned. Right side first."
From the stern nature of his voice, I knew I wouldn't have time to compose myself. I readied as much as I could and began. The rocky terrain made each step treacherous, but I made it through with my right side with only a minor stumble.
"Very good lad. I see you continued to practice your right side despite me telling you to work on your left. Let's see if that hindered your practice for the left. Left side now, and pick up your pace."
I passed the sword to my left hand with a light flip of the blade. I took a deep breath, and as I let it out, I sprung to life. I felt more aware than I ever had. the sword wooshed as it sliced through the spring air of very early morning. My feet planted firmly despite the precarious terrain. As I finished the final step and block with the sword, I noticed a change. I didn't seem to feel the sword in my hand. It became as light as a feather, and the ground felt as if I was standing on flat rock. I took a deep breath in as soon as I finished and the world around me came back. I felt the weight of the heavy practice sword, and the bumpy stones under my feet. I began to hear crickets chirp in the trees, and even the river run. It wan't until that moment that I realized that I hadn't heard any of that until then.
"Ah, you felt it, I can see it in your eyes. Tell me what you are experiencing boy."
"I don't know how to describe it."
"Nonsense boy, just tell me what put that look on your face."
"I didn't notice the sound of the river, or the crickets in the trees. My sword was weightless than was full of weight, and the ground felt as flat as the stone slab you were sitting on, and then it was as lumpy as a bowl of porridge."
"I knew you could describe it."
"What was that? Why did everything change?"
"That my boy, was what it feels like when you become one with your sword. That is what the first movement is all about. It teaches you how to let your body and your sword blend into one another. You aren't supposed to feel that until you know the entire movement, but when my Captain showed me, he did something very similar to what I just did now. For some reason he took a liking to me, and advanced my training faster than the others. That is why I ran you down here and put you on uneven ground. This is what my Captain told me back then. 'If you go to an extreme you can find things out about yourself that you didn't know you knew'. I had no idea what that meant back then, but a few weeks ago, that came back to me, and I understood. That is why we are here tonight."
"What are you talking about papa" What do you mean tonight, isn't it just very early morning?"
"As for the very early morning, no, it is only a couple of hours since you went to sleep. I needed you to be in an unusual state. It dulls your senses and I needed to see if you could focus, and you did. What I'm talking about is that by making you do the parts of the movement that you know while you are groggy from sleep, out of breath by running, and on an uneven ground that you hadn't practiced on, it put you in a different state of mind. One that would allow you to open yourself to a different type of feeling. What you experienced is known as Swordsman's Euphoria."
"Swordsman's Euphoria?"
"Yes, to someone looking upon you, it would look like you were in a state of pure bliss. Your eyes widen and a smile crosses your face. Your movements become graceful as if you are dancing and not slinging a sword around."
"Did I look like that, really"
"Indeed you did. I wanted you to feel that. That feeling may save your life someday. If you are ever in battle, that feeling will be the difference between living and dying. If you are set on being a knight, I will give you every tool at my disposal to help protect you, and this one is one of the best tools I know."
"How does it work? How do I do it again?"
"How it works, is it heightens your senses. Your eyes getting wide, is allowing you to see everything within your vision, and process it faster than you would normally. From what my Captain said, your heart and breath slow down. This keeps you from tiring too quickly. I don't know for sure if he is right about that, but I can tell you, that I was able to fight much longer than the average soldier after I learned how to do this. Doing it again is going to be a bit of a challenge. We can do this every time to get it started. The good news is, that once you have done it, it is easier to call upon it, and it gets easier each time. You are going to have to focus. Remember the deep breath that you take before you begin? That is how I learned to focus. That breath would settle me down and I would collect myself in that moment. That was the first step to getting you there."
I went through everything that just happened in my mind. When I started on my right side, I didn't take that deep breath, I just went right into the movement. I stopped and took that breath before the left side, and I did feel myself come to focus. I hadn't realized it then, but I felt the weigh drop from the sword, and the stones smooth under my feet. Each lift of an arm or leg was effortless.
"Come on now lad, let's go home and get some sleep. You have a big day ahead of you tomorrow. You need to start practicing that focus, and you have some new moves to learn."
We walked back to the village in silence through the woods. There was still a mild chill in the air in the moonless spring night, but it felt good. I felt good.
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