As soon as he was gone, Sparrowhawk darted forward and lightly touched the hilt of a massive broadsword with a little thrill of delight.  The emotion felt rusty, unused; he pushed it to the back of his mind and looked around at the assorted implements, wondering which one to pick.
    He knew right away that an axe or pike—or anything large and heavy for that matter—was out of the question.  Eying a par-ticularly large specimen on the far wall that he assumed was a sword, the boy doubted he would even be able to lift it.  He needed something smaller, more compact.
    A rack of swords across the room caught his attention, and he darted over to them.  None of them were as large as the broad-sword; he plucked one from the rack and examined it.  It had a basket-like hilt and a very thin blade.  Sparrowhawk placed a fin-ger on the flat side and bent the metal, allowing it to spring back after a few seconds.  No.  With its wicked point, it might be good for stabbing, but not for blocking, or slashing.  He put it back.
    Three other swords were looked over and subsequently re-placed as he worked his way down the stand.  One had a blade that had to be at least an inch thick; another had a heavier hilt, so the sword itself wasn’t balanced; and the third was strangely shaped, like a crescent moon.  Sparrowhawk had never seen anything like it.  Finally, he selected one he liked.  It was well balanced, slightly longer than most of the other swords on the rack, and had a pair of shallow grooves that ran down the sides.  The hilt was easy to grip, the blade straight and sharp on both edges.  With his limited knowledge of these matters, it looked like it would be good at stabbing as well.
    Rex came back into the room as Sparrowhawk was tilting the sword at various angles so the light caught on the blade in different ways.  He was carrying a huge, sheathed sword with him.  From the long hilt, the boy guessed that he had to use two hands to swing it.  A quick glance at the master’s thick, corded arms told him that the weapon was tremendously heavy.  He looked down at his own slender limbs and suddenly wondered how long he was going to last.  All the signs were pointing to ‘not very.’
    “Ready?” Rex called jovially.
    “Sure,” Sparrowhawk lied.  The master didn’t notice.  He shifted the huge sheath into a more comfortable position on his back before pulling out the sword and giving it a couple of experi-mental swings.  Sparrowhawk swallowed, hard, suddenly very glad that he hadn’t eaten very much for lunch.
    “Now, you go stand over there”—Rex pointed with the huge sword.  Sparrowhawk did as he was told, as quickly as he could possibly manage it—“and I’ll stay here.  Do you know the rules of combat?”
    Sparrowhawk shook his head wordlessly.
    “All right then,” Rex said agreeably.  “First of all, we’re go-ing to dull the edges of the blades with these cloths.”  He pulled two long sword-shaped pouches from his pocket and held them up.  One was significantly larger than the other.  He tossed the smaller to Sparrowhawk and slid his own over the top of his sword, so the entire blade was covered.  He then tied it securely, looping the string around the hilt several times.  Sparrowhawk copied him.
    “That makes it so we can’t cut each other,” Rex explained, swinging his sword back and forth a couple times experimentally.  “However, they can still bruise and—if you swing them hard enough—break a bone or two.  So we just… go easy, all right?”
    Sparrowhawk nodded, checking the ties to his cloth.  
    “No jabs at the face or neck,” Rex continued.  “That could be seriously life-endangering.”  He paused and tapped his chin with one finger.  “I think that’s it,” he admitted.  “Got it all?”
    “Yes, sir,” Sparrowhawk murmured.  His heart throbbed un-comfortably; it felt about to burst out of his chest.  
    “Well then, what are we waiting for?” Rex cried happily.  “En garde!”
    Sparrowhawk had no clue what the phrase meant, but he rec-ognized clearly enough the stance the huge master took, sword held cocked over one shoulder like a baseball bat.  He quickly threw up his own weapon to block as Rex charged at him with a roar, swinging that giant sword.
    The force involved behind Rex’s giant swing became appar-ent when Sparrowhawk stopped the slice that was aimed at his ribs.  The sword was almost jarred from his hands; wrists aching, arms buzzing, the boy leapt back, wary now.  He was no match for Rex’s sheer strength—but the master was larger, slower, and once the momentum got going it would be nearly impossible to change the direction of his weapon in mid-swing.  Sparrowhawk was lighter and swifter.  If he could get Rex tangled up in his own mammoth swings, he might actually stand a chance.
    But the master was coming on, forcing him out of his con-templations.  With another yell Rex swung again—quick as a flash, Sparrowhawk rolled under the sword and tumbled towards the op-posite wall, coming up in a crouch.  The master started to turn and Sparrowhawk was on him, cloth-covered sword wailing away.  Rex fended him off with a combination of sword and fists, but not before the boy had landed a glancing blow to the huge man’s hip, and another, more direct, hit on his shoulder.  
    “Good, very good,” Rex panted as Sparrowhawk backed up once more, black eyes darting about incessantly, looking for an early warning of Rex’s next move.
    The master lunged forward with a roar, and Sparrowhawk in-stinctively raised his sword to block the expected high swing.  But Rex brought his sword down low, sweeping the boy’s legs right out from underneath him.  Caught by surprise, Sparrowhawk landed hard.  Rex sighed and started to speak, but the boy snatched up his weapon in his left hand and swung with all his might at the master’s shin.
    With a whoop of agony, Rex hopped back, sword raised to keep Sparrowhawk back.  Breathing heavily, the boy got to his feet slowly and tested both ankles.  Good—both were sound.  He could still fight.
    Rex had apparently come to the same conclusion about his shin.  After jumping up and down on it a few times, he rotated his head, cracking the joints in his neck, and jumped back into the bat-tle fast and hard, this time without any shout.  Warier now, Spar-rowhawk jumped the first swing, ducked the second, and flew past the master, scoring another grazing hit on Rex’s ribs.  
    The master spun, impossibly nimble, and came right back at him.  Realizing that fighting left-handed against a right-hander would only work to detriment him in the fight, Sparrowhawk tossed the sword back into his other hand and braced himself for the onslaught.
    He had learned from that first swing not to block Rex’s mo-tions head-on.  Instead, he skated the huge sword off the edge of his own and whirled his own in faster than Rex could blink, scor-ing a couple of minor hits before the master could bring his huge sword around again.  But Rex was simply too strong; soon he had Sparrowhawk backpedaling, desperately trying to keep the long weapon away from him.  
    His weapon slid along the length of Rex’s, continuing on down the master’s trunk-like arm.  Sparrowhawk managed to re-verse its momentum and bring it across in a slash along the huge man’s gut before Rex caught the hilt of the boy’s sword against his own blade, flinging it away to clatter against the wall.  The sword came across and knocked into Sparrowhawk’s ribs, sending the boy sprawling.  The next thing he knew, the master had placed the tip of his sword at the base of his throat.
    Rex startled him by laughing.  He pulled the blade away and leaned on it, still chortling.  With one hand he reached down to help the boy to his feet.  
    “I must say,” he chuckled.  “You were far better than I ex-pected.  I had thought that Wyve had exaggerated your prowess—now I believe he was being too modest!”
    “But you won,” Sparrowhawk ventured, confused.
    “Yes, but you weren’t alone in your defeat.  That gut shot would have finished me for sure.”  Rex clapped the boy on the shoulder, causing him to stumble slightly.  “No, you’ll do perfectly fine here.  I have no doubt of that!”
    Sparrowhawk, still bewildered, could think of nothing to say.  As though from a great distance away, he heard the horn blow, and a sudden swell of noise inside the other room as his fellow students put away their wooden counterparts.  Within moments, they had once again left.
    “Ah!” Rex said, turning.  “That’s your cue to go do your af-ter-class work!  The next time it sounds, it’s time for dinner.  Just get your sword and take off the cloth for me, please, then you may leave.”
    Sparrowhawk did as he was told, picking up the weapon al-most reverently from where it had fallen.  It had served him beauti-fully.  He undid the knots and carefully folded up the cloth before handing both covering and sword back to Rex.
    “Right, then, off you go,” the master urged with a wan smile.  Sparrowhawk managed a tentative one in return and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.