And they moved. How they moved. The bamboo swords beat a tempo against each other that was like the music of the spheres, the great soft swish of the grinding gears of the universe keeping its time.

But not for long. Each point was scored within five seconds. With warriors at this level, a single mistake led to a touch. It was too fast for Kip to even tell sometimes who’d scored the point. Other times, he only saw the luxin bloom.

Ironfist and Tremblefist didn’t rest between points, didn’t move back to the center of the circle, merely took ready positions, touched swords and began again. The score stood at five to five. Tremblefist readied himself, but instead of tapping his bamboo, Ironfist removed his left hand from his sword.

Tremblefist nodded and took his own left hand away. Kip had trained with those swords, and though both men were taller and bigger than he was, even then those swords were too big, too long to wield perfectly in one hand. If you had the hand and arm strength of an Ironfist, you did gain reach, but you lost speed. A good trade if you could hold a shield, perhaps, but not to hold nothing.

But each man moved fluidly into a fighting style Kip had never seen. They didn’t hold the sword in one hand, they merely held the hilt in one hand. Each put his other hand almost halfway down his blade. What followed was some odd blend of sword-fighting, staff-fighting, and body throws. Lunges flowed into blocks into foot sweeps. It was just as fast, but more muscular, each circling, constantly moving, using not just the point of the sword but also blade and even pommel, dodges and even jumps blurring past. The speed of the men was incredible, but in this, Kip could see the full flower of the seeds his own training was planting. Those dodges, this strike, that way of rotating the hips to get force.

A clash and a rattle of bamboo, and Tremblefist’s hips twisted and his sword point was batted aside low, but he was merely cocking the gun, his hips snapped back, the sword point dipping behind Ironfist’s knee and pulling sharply back toward Tremblefist and up.

Ironfist leapt with the cut, trying to avoid what would be a hamstringing. He did a backflip, but before he could land, Tremblefist shoved his blade in that two-handed grip against Ironfist’s stomach. Without any base, it flung Ironfist backward. There was no way he could keep his feet. He flew across the circle and landed, skidding, on his back.

Seeing Ironfist put on his ass was like seeing the moon outshine the sun. The nunks were aghast. Of course, they’d heard of the famous battle between the brothers, more than a dozen years ago in front of the whole Chromeria, so they’d known that Tremblefist was nearly as good as his elder brother. But Tremblefist had somehow quietly faded into the background since then. He wasn’t even a watch captain, while Ironfist was legend. It was said in the Battle of Garriston Ironfist had taken out whole batteries of artillery by himself. The man could walk on water. Seeing anyone equal him was a shock. Seeing someone best him? Blasphemy.

But Ironfist merely leapt to his feet and shook his head while Tremblefist grinned. They began again. They traded points, but Tremblefist led all the way. Ironfist barely tied it at nine-nine when his brother dodged back from a blow, but not far enough, and got his head yanked to the side as Ironfist’s bamboo brushed the steel bars of his helmet. In a real fight, it wouldn’t have hit him at all.

Ironfist racked his sword and pointed to Big Leo and to a nunk named Antaeos. “Pick weapons.”

“Clawed bich’hwa and a sword-breaker,” Antaeos said. It was an odd combination, both usually secondary weapons. But of course, that was part of the fun of putting masters through their paces—seeing not just what they could do if they were in a strange position, but seeing what was possible even in strange positions. As Commander Ironfist had told them many times, in the chaos of battle, you might end up with any weapon in hand, and you had to make it work.

Big Leo grinned. “Heavy chain.” He’d been working on using thicker chains. When he draped the thick chains over his draft horse shoulders, he was quite the sight. But chain weapons were difficult, brutal. You were more likely to hurt yourself using a chain than any other weapon.

“That’s a bludgeoning weapon,” Ironfist said.

“It’s not only a bludgeoning weapon,” Leo said defensively.

“But most of its attacks are, Leo,” Teia said. “You’d be making one of them fight with half a weapon.”

“Uh, then…” The big man suddenly felt the weight of everyone’s stares on him and got flustered. He shrank into himself, which made him merely much bigger than everyone except Ironfist and Tremblefist.

“Rope spear,” Teia suggested under her breath.

“Rope spear!” Big Leo said, like a starving man reaching for bread.

“Pick a number, one or two,” Ironfist said to Ferkudi. Obviously, he was making a lottery for himself and his brother for who would get to pick which weapon he fought with.

“One,” Ferkudi said.

“To yourself,” Ironfist said flatly.

“Oh.” Then, light dawning, “Oh! Oh, sorry.”

“Brother?” Ironfist said. “Be my guest.”

“Two,” Tremblefist said.

“Two it is,” Ferkudi said.

Kip and the rest of Cruxer’s squad all looked at him.

“What?” he asked, defensive. “What?”

“I’ll take the bich’hwa and sword-breaker,” Tremblefist said. The bich’hwa was Karris’s favorite, Kip knew. The clawed variety could both be used as a normal dagger (the scorpion’s tail) and as a punch dagger (the clawed feet). The training variety had the claws made of the same boiled rubber-tree sap that full Blackguards used on the soles of their shoes, dipped in red ink to make its ‘cuts’ obvious. The sword-breaker was a short sword with thick barbed notches all down one side, made to catch sword strokes, and used correctly could twist a sword out of an opponent’s hand or even break the blade.

The rope spear was even more interesting, though Kip wasn’t surprised Teia had suggested it. She’d been practicing with it in private lessons with Ironfist and sometimes Kip, who as her partner got to be her target. The rope spear was like a short gladius attached to a long rope. It could be used as a simple dagger, as a flail, or as a spear when sharply redirected from spinning to fly out straight. But the rope was what made it amazing. An opponent would think that if only he could get inside the whirling death that the blade cut through the air, he’d be safe. It was almost impossible to resist catching the rope and trying to disarm the rope spear wielder.

But that was where almost half of the rope spear’s techniques began. With a flick of the wrist, the wielder could throw nooses over her opponent’s fist or neck. Grabbing the rope was a prelude to defeat. It was still a secondary weapon—not good against armored opponents, not good in tight spaces—but it was so unusual and challenging to use well that even Ironfist had confessed he needed to do a lot of brushing up before he’d started training Teia.

Of course, he’d done the brushing up.

And he’d done it privately. Tremblefist most likely had no idea that he’d just assigned his brother to a rare weapon that was exactly what Ironfist had been practicing.

Kip still wouldn’t have wanted to try a rope spear against a sword-breaker, which was made to entangle weapons.