Iron Knights by Robin Bennett

Author:Robin Bennett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: knights, humour, magic, castles, boys adventure stories, boys' magic stories, fantasy, robot knights, swords, fighting, jousting
ISBN: 9780956868497
Publisher: Andrews UK
Published: 2013-07-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

Training

The next morning, after profuse thanks and goodbyes had been exchanged, Giff loaded up with leftovers and they set out.

It would take them over three weeks to get home.

The rest of the journey was hard - mainly thanks to Venn. They slept out in the open, rising just before dawn, whereupon Venn would make Giff and Pail join him to wash in the nearest freezing stream. When Giff wasn’t looking, Venn had also thrown all of the greasy leftovers that he had procured from Dirg straight into a ditch; they were forced to live off wild berries and the occasional lean hare they managed to trap.

After their swim, Venn would tutor his friends for an hour in swordplay.

‘It’s all about balance,’ he would insist, over and over again, as they repeated the same movements until both were ready to drop down with exhaustion. ‘Lose your footing and you’re dead.’ Often, he would give Giff a shove, who almost always fell over with a shout of annoyance. ‘Balance and speed! Learn the moves; practise until you can do them even if you’re only half alive.’ And so they learned the cuts, the thrusts, the parries and the hacking that all knights had to master.

At first Pail could hardly lift his massive sword. Giff complained pretty much all the time about blisters. But Venn just forced Pail to work even harder on his upper body strength, and put a horrible paste of charcoal and dung on Giff’s hands until he shut up about them.

After working on their swordsmanship they would have a cold breakfast of whatever leftovers remained from the night before. Venn would tie Socrates and Knobble to Havoc and ride slightly ahead of his friends who, stripped down to the waist in spite of the cold, ran panting behind for mile after mile over hilly, wet, stony, muddy, bleak, horrible countryside.

Giff genuinely thought that Venn had turned into some kind of sadist and that they would both die of exhaustion before he was through with them. But Pail, who had got used to this new, more serious Venn, could see the benefits; certainly in Giff, who had lost so much weight he now looked pretty good in his armour. As for Pail, his arms, which had carried nothing heavier than books for seven years, became knotted with sinewy muscle. After two weeks, he could wield his sword with a fluidity and speed that would not have disgraced a fully trained knight.

‘Been meaning to ask you - what’s that?’ enquired Giff one morning as he watched Venn strap his sword back onto Havoc after a particularly gruelling session. Giff was pointing at the hilt of the weapon and a curious series of metal loops that wound around the base of the finger guard. Venn stopped what he was doing and handed his broadsword to Giff who took it in both hands with a surprised grunt.

‘It’s something I made myself,’ he said with an uncharacteristic hint of pride on his voice. ‘I call it a blade breaker.

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