War God for Hire- Gladiator David Burke (bookreader TXT) 📖

gleeful he got watching Kyle smash rocks with blows of the maul. He was likely one of those guys that liked to see stuff being smashed.

“You will need to hit them hard enough to penetrate the armor, get past a shield, or take their legs out from underneath them. That part should be easy enough for you. The harder part will be for you to control the swing enough to not kill or irreparably cripple your opponents. As you know, that will have very negative consequences for you.

“So now we want you to practice with these dummies. Attack the one on the far left first,” Simon said.

As he spoke, Kyle noticed how the dummies had been arrayed in a semi-circle in front of him. Overhead, the morning sun had given way to a full noon day. Kyle felt the heat beating down on him; winter was gone, and spring was upon them. He felt the excitement build within him as it was finally going to be time to put to the test all these skills he had been working on. He’d been in this place before with a bat on his shoulder or a glove on his hand, but never with armor and a maul.

He took aim at the first of the dummies. The trainer instructed him to aim for the head, so he reared back and let loose with a full power swing. As the maul’s head almost reached the side of the dummy’s armored face, he began to pull back. The purpose of this, after all, was to demonstrate control. He needed to demonstrate power, but not fatal power.

Sure enough, the blow landed. And off went the head. Splinters flew in all directions while the helmeted dummy head rolled across the sand. Kyle looked at the trainer and felt a flush or red rising on his cheeks. That hadn’t gone as he expected.

“If you did that to a hardwood dummy, just think what you would have done to a normal human enemy. Skrug would have likely survived that, but the rest of your fellow fighters would be dead. I think it goes without saying that you have to control your strength better than that,” Simon said.

After that first failure and since they only had five more wooden dummies to work with, Kyle was instructed to practice on a slab of stone. He was frustrated with himself. He knew the principle behind what he was being asked to do, but was finding it oddly difficult to force his body to perform in such a manner.

Hilde’s voice broke in and gave him some insight as to why it might be so challenging. She said, “Your problem is that you are at least in part the war god, not the arena god. Krig would never have worn armor like that, but that is because warfare is real. It isn’t a show. And showmanship is very much a part of the arena.

“So, just like the instincts and knowledge buried in your head have made it easy for you to learn more than three dozen weapons over the past few weeks, it also makes it difficult for you to treat combat as a game. Think of it like this. Would you have been able to easily go out and play a game of baseball with little children and not properly swing the bat or clumsily miss a catch?”

“Of course not. Good habits are one of the keys to being a great ball player. Engaging in bad habits, even for a limited time, is a great way to undermine all the essential skills that you need to survive,” Kyle replied.

“Well, the part of you that is still Krig knows that pulling your blows when fighting for your life is sheer folly. For Krig, it would have been an affront to his very identity,” Hilde said.

“Makes sense, and there is a part of me that agrees with that sentiment. Problem being, I can’t really go around killing people in an exhibition match. And you already heard them say that there will be consequences if I do. Until I’m sure I can get these manacles off, I don’t know that I want to risk that.”

“For now, you are going to have to focus on tactics. Even Krig understood the value of training, so perhaps if you think of this as rough training rather than actual combat between equals, it will be easier for you. The truth is, that if you tap even a fragment of the essence stored within you, none of these fighters stands a chance,” Hilde said.

“Okay, I will try to think of it like that,” Kyle said as he began trying to work his swings of the maul so that rather than splitting the boulder he was hitting, they were just chipping tiny bits of rock away.

At first it felt silly. Like using a sledgehammer to tap in a finishing nail. But the more he practiced, the easier it came to him. He began to realize that he could strike rapidly without necessarily hitting too hard. The many lessons with daggers, rapiers, light swords, and other more delicate weapons came back to him.

It might not be the natural use of a maul, but his strength and agility were up to the task if he pushed himself. More than that, as he began to think of it as a tactical training exercise in precision, his skill level rose. His natural combat instincts took over. The maul was not a weapon of precision, but that very fact made it a challenge. And neither Kyle nor Krig had ever backed down from a challenge.

“That’s enough. Looks like you’ve got it down. Saber was right, you learn stuff far too fast. It is downright uncanny. Now I want you to try to dent the armor on the head of the second dummy without actually taking its head off,” Simon said.

Kyle just nodded and moved back into position. His blood was pumping too fast with all the