A Journey and My Usual Whim (8)

The next day, Aina and Bileck guided me to the training grounds they attended.

Apparently, according to what I heard yesterday, Aina and Bileck first met at those training grounds.

Aina had started attending those training grounds two years after my previous visit, when she was ten.

For the two years before that, she had practiced swinging a child-sized wooden sword I had carved and given her.

At first, her parents apparently thought that a child practicing sword swings alone and without an instructor would eventually get bored, but Aina continued practicing on the inn's rooftop.

Alone, every day, a little at a time. Even on days when, for one reason or another, she did not grip the wooden sword, she continued without fail.

I did not know what had made Aina so fixated on the sword, but after seeing their earnest and, in a sense, stubborn child, her parents decided to have her learn swordsmanship.

An adventurer who visited the inn had also warned them, 'If you swing a sword by yourself, you cannot compare yourself with others, so you may develop misguided confidence.'

I knew several women who wielded swords, but even so, women who sought to learn swordsmanship were a minority in this world.

Thus, Aina stood out at the Janpemon training grounds, but her earnest attitude toward the sword apparently endeared her to the older members there.

Once the young men who also attended the training grounds reached a certain age, their gazes began to carry the heat of romantic feelings when they looked at her.

Among them, it was Bileck who won Aina's heart: he was more passionate about the sword and more skilled than the other young men, yet never grew arrogant from his strength. He was serious and kind.

It was, well, a sweet-and-sour story that made me grin just hearing it.

But Aina apparently said time and again that she wielded a sword because the sight of a certain Elf swinging one had been burned into her memory and would not leave her.

When that Elf actually appeared before Bileck, was his desire to find out just how skilled I was simply the nature of a swordsman—or a young man's endearing jealousy?

In any case, Bileck asked me to spar with him, and since I had the opportunity, I was heading to the training grounds.

This was truly a lot of fun.

I was happy that Aina had remembered my daily training and continued to wield a sword, and I had never imagined that she was learning swordsmanship in earnest.

The feelings Bileck directed toward me were honest and straightforward, so I found them pleasing.

Needless to say, the swordsmanship Aina was learning was not Yosogi style.

But she showed no sign of dissatisfaction, so surely she had found in this town either a sword style suited to her or a way of relating to the sword that suited her way of life.

That was a wonderful thing.

The training grounds we reached consisted of a broad dirt field and a building that doubled as a storehouse for the equipment used to maintain it and the weapons used in training. It was very different in character from the dojos I knew.

Although I had heard this was a place to train with swords, around half the people there held long poles meant to serve as spears.

Apparently, this was not simply a place to learn swordsmanship, but somewhere one could train more broadly in the ways of combat.

I suspected its upkeep was funded by public money from the Duchy of Travoia, supplied through the town of Janpemon.

While Aina and Bileck went to speak with the instructor, I leisurely looked around the training grounds.

Actually, until I came here, I had been a little on edge.

Though it was not a dojo, I had heard it was a place where swordsmen of other schools learned their techniques, so I could not rule out the possibility that it might be enemy territory.

But apparently, that had been nothing more than a needless worry.

The atmosphere here was not that of a so-called swordsmanship dojo. If I had to compare it to something, it was closer to a public sports ground for citizens.

Of course, I did not mean that as an insult to the people training so earnestly; I only meant that the place lacked any sense of exclusivity.

Setting aside the spears, the sword techniques practiced by those wielding wooden swords fell mainly into two types.

Because I had learned swordsmanship, including Yosogi style, I also knew about the major schools popular in the surrounding countries, beyond the four great schools of the Kingdom of Rudoria.

Judging by the types of wooden swords they used, their stances, and their movements, the swordsmanship taught at these training grounds was Azedda Empire-style Orthodox Swordsmanship.

Before this land became a patchwork of small countries known collectively as the Small Nations, the style had been widely known since the days when the Azedda Empire existed, and it had been adopted as the empire's official swordsmanship, just as its name suggested.

Here, 'official swordsmanship' meant that it was considered a sword art that every knight and soldier was required to master.

The reason there were two kinds of swordsmanship being practiced here, despite both belonging to Azedda Empire-style Orthodox Swordsmanship, was that the style's central principle was switching between Light and Heavy according to the circumstances.

The Light form of Azedda Empire-style Orthodox Swordsmanship kept the body nimble to confuse the opponent, then finished them with a barrage of fast, sharp strikes.

The Heavy form lowered the hips and took a stance rooted firmly to the ground, blocking the opponent's attacks before crushing them with a powerful counterblow.

The ideal of Azedda Empire-style Orthodox Swordsmanship was to use a hand-and-a-half sword, which could adapt relatively easily to either Light or Heavy, and switch between the two according to the situation, allowing the swordsman to handle a broad range of circumstances or bewilder the enemy.

Yes, that was only the ideal.

Naturally, Light and Heavy, whose movements differed so greatly, required completely different qualities.

Depending on a swordsman's build, weight, strength, personality, and various other factors, it was normal for their aptitude to lean toward either Light or Heavy.

Indeed, most swordsmen apparently focused on diligently learning only the one they were best at, and even among practitioners of Azedda Empire-style Orthodox Swordsmanship, very few could actually switch between Light and Heavy in battle.

After waiting a while and mulling over that knowledge of swordsmanship, Aina and Bileck brought a man who appeared to be an instructor over to me.

He had a gentle smile, yet a certain presence about him—the sort of swordsmanlike air familiar to me.