Face aglow, Addison practically skipped across Warders Yard like a girl at her first feast day.  Today was the day she would begin her monumental journey towards becoming one of the legendary Warders.  Having observed some of the other female trainees, Addi had been able to decide on a basic dress code: hair tied back, not-too-tight breeches, and a looser blouse.  This was all seemingly to allow freedom of movement.  She was sure to be the shining example of a perfect trainee.

 

Just don’t tell her Warders didn’t skip.

 

She had been told to find one Cairma Vishnu, apparently a Gaidar – Addison had learned this was the term for female Warders.  After some directions from curiously amused Tower Guards, she discovered that Mistress Vishnu was a blonde-haired woman beating the tar out of a male Tower Guard.  Addi couldn’t tear her eyes away from the spar.  She watched this woman with the grace of a deer parry every attempted attack by the poor Tower Guard.  The wide-eyed trainee couldn’t believe he luck at pulling this particular Warder for her trainer.

 

Plus she was very proud she now knew technical terms like spar and parry.

 

In any case, Cairma was instantly Addison hero and idol.

Her swing came down hard on Conor's sword, it twanged and he stumbled back a little as she forward her offense. He was getting better, near blade master, but the path was still long ahead and she needed to make sure that he worked for it. He was good, but he failed at consistency in his ability. One day he was on top of his game, the next back where she started working with him as a trainee. Some days she wondered if the boy really was as useless as she first concluded and to just send him packing out. He just never took it seriously and it actually pissed her off.

 

In a fluid movement, she relieved him of his sword, pushed him back to the ground and put the tip of her lathe to his throat. "Next time, Conor, don't stare at the pretty girl on the fence and watch the blade that will kill you. Next time I will be leaving welts and there will be no healing."

 

The bashful blush on his cheeks left her with no surprise that he saw their newest companion to the yard. He always had a thing for women and swords; scared of them, but fascinated at the same time. A bloody weakness that will see him killed one day. Of that Cairma had no doubt.

 

"Yes, Cairma. Again?"

 

"Not today. Looks like I have other plans. Go shower up and convince Kostya for a spar or two. You both could use a little more practice with the sword."

 

"Good Idea. Thanks for the spar, Grandmaster." He bowed elegantly, if only he put effort like that into something that actually mattered. "I will meet you again in two days."

 

"Two days." She nodded, hooking the lathe into her belt. Turning to the fence, Cairma walked over to the wide-eyed girl standing there. "I trust you are Addison? Welcome to the Yard. I am Cairma Vishnu your mentor here at the Yard. Not only will I have the painful pleasure of teaching you how to use a weapon or two, but I will also be your guide in all things of the Yard and help you as best I can in your transition to the life of a Tower Guard; or if Light permits, a Gaidin to an Aes Sedai."

 

"So, tell me Addison, why do you want to be a Tower Guard? And what do you know about a sword? Have you ever played with sticks or?" She trailed off, allowing Addison the chance to answer.

 

 

 

Cairma Vishnu

A wide grin split across her face as Cairma held a sword to the Tower Guard’s throat; Addi envisioned one day doing the same to stupid Sandre.  Oh the things she would do to that idiot once she was a Gaidar...  A voice broke her projection into the future.  She blushed and hastily when she realised it was Cairma.   Her pathetic imitation of a salute should have had the whole Yard laughing at her – though she’d have hit anyone that did.

 

“Yes, Mistress Vishnu.  I uh...”  For the thousandth time in two days, she fumbled with the ridiculous truth of why she was here.  The beginning of her legacy simply wasn’t... grand.  It was so very damn ordinary.  “I came here because I wanted to be something great!”  That was the best she had come up with so far.  Though the way the older woman kept watching prompted her to add, with much less bravado, “I didn’t want to be just a farmwife.”

 

Now with even less confidence “I haven't held a sword in my life, though I often hit our stableboy with a pitchfork when he was being stupid.”  As if that helped.

"That is a fair aspirations. I came with much less, and I have heard much more. Either way, I am pleased to have you here. Truth be told, I wouldn't want to be a farmwife either." She winked at the girl, "I can't cook, it would be a disaster. And the name is Cairma, by the way. Titles make me feel old."

 

Jumping over the fence, Cairma turned towards the barracks and armory. "Since you seem to not have any experience with weapons, what I will do is allow you to pick your weapons and then start to teach you the basics of how to use them, care for them and all that important stuff. But as we walk to the Armory, do you have any questions for me? And do you have any weapons in mind that you want to learn?"

Still a little sheepish, she returned the grin.  The woman didn’t look that old, though certainly an adult whereas Addison still felt mostly like a child.  She was beginning to become far more comfortable with her own background after being told by a few of the others here that their stories didn’t start out hugely fascinating.

 

Cairma jumped the fence easily.  Addison did so with a lot less grace and a lot more stumbling and tripping.  To be honest, she had a hundred questions for the woman but she doubted Cairma would want to answer all or even very many of them.  Unfortunately, tact had never been Addi’s greatest virtue.  “Umm... well, we have to learn to use a sword right?  Are we supposed to have more than that?  And, why did you become a Tower Guard?”

She schooled her features to not let the scowl form on her face. If there was one thing that she hated when mentoring and meeting new students it was knowing they would ask that question. Her past was hers alone and not once had she felt comfortable with the truth of it to the younger generations of the Yard. Pulling a page from Aran's books, she instead lied through her teeth. A terrible habit, but a necessary one. "I have 5 older bothers and I wanted to learn how to beat the snot out of them, so I came here. Picked the largest weapon in the armory, the zweihander which is about 6 feet of blade, and later learned that my brothers picked on me because I was their only sister. It is interesting what you learn about your family later in life." Well, not a complete lie through her teeth, but close enough. "I am also trained in the Quarterstaff and Dual Blading; using two swords instead of one."

 

They arrived at the armory, Cairma pushed open the door and let Addison enter in. "Go ahead and look around. Ask me anything you want. And don`t think that just because I am not an expert in something means that I can not teach you it. Except maybe the whip, got myself in the head once as a trainee and decided that I was safer using a blade."

Never having had siblings, unless one counted Jake though one really shouldn’t since had Addi stayed in Braden’s Hill and married it would border on incest, she imagined having five Jakes around the farm being general nuisances.  If her parents had given birth to more children, maybe she wouldn’t have had to run away and, no doubt, cause her father much grief...  Damn, Cairma was talking and she wasn’t paying attention.

 

As the doors to the armoury opened, Addi’s eyes went wide.  Before coming to the Yard, she had never really seen a real weapon up close before, hunting bows and utility knives did not count despite being the weapon of choice for any local homicides.  Yet, here was a huge room filled with weapons of every shape, size, type.  Her eyes skimmed over walls hung with more different kinds of axes than she could count.  Addison tried to picture herself wielding one of them, most of which were bigger than she – even for her, the mental imagine was preposterous.  Remembering Cairma’s comment about whips, she avoided those; plus, if the Warder hit herself with a whip, Addi was sure to.  She also barely glances at the spears or clubs, meandering only briefly before making a beeline for the swords.  So shiny and sharp and...  Memo to self: Warders do not think of swords as toys.

 

Since her mentor had once wielded a six foot blade, Addison had already decides she should give it a try.  Unfortunately, Cairma had also spent the last... who knows how long training whereas Addi had absolutely no experience lifting heavy deadly weapons.  The sudden clang of metal hitting the stone floor and the squawk of a very alarmed adolescent girl, complete with adolescent girl volume and pitch, ruined an attempt at surreptitiousness.  Face as red as the blood she was lucky not to be shedding all over the ground, she quickly moved to much more manageable blades.

 

After much hefting, swinging, and stabbing motions, she finally decided on a three foot long spatha.  While still heavy and awkward, it fit into the visions she had of slicing open Trollocs and beating Sandre bloody.

 

When the girl moved towards the longer blades, attempting to pick up the Zwheihander -a blade that she had her own mentor carry because she was not yet strong enough, Cairma had her first view as to the influential nature she now had over the girl. It had been a long time since one that was this impressionable was in the yards -the last being Braxton who -after many amusing adventures- turned out alright. Then again, there were times where it was debatable the boy would have survived as a trainee let alone a lesson with the sword. Moving to keep the blades from empaling Addison, Cairma was pleasantly pleased when she decided to choose the Spatha. A good blade, and one not often chosen. Good both one-handed or two handed, she could easily teach the girl the versatility of the blade throughout her training. However, since it will take a lot of work . . .

 

"Is that all? Just the one blade?" The girl nodded, "Well you can choose more later if you wish. But the Spatha is a good place to start. Lets go outside and have a seat where I can show you how to care for the blade." Helping the girl find an appropriate sheath for the blade and some oil for it, Cairma took her outside to a small bench just along the fence that separated various training yards.

 

"Now, you don't want to just leave this in the sheath. You will not be learning to use this blade right away as we will be practicing with lathes at first. But it is never too early to become intimately familiar with your weapons. To keep a blade rust free, you start by applying oil on the blade. Natural oils like mineral oil, camellia and clove oils are very good. To oil the blade, first clean it with cloth or a paper towel. Then apply the oil leaving only a thin film." Cairma showed her with her own blade and motioned for Addison to do the same. "This should be done every night before you go to bed for the first few months just to get into the habit. After that you probably only need to do it once or twice a week or any time you use it. Think you can handle that?"

She was supposed to have more weapons?  Now that she thought about it, most of the Tower Guards practically bristled with knives and swords, spears, quivers of arrows – every and anything sharp and deadly.  Addi glanced once more around the armoury, overwhelmed by the sheer number of different weapons.  What would work well with her sword?  How the hell was her sword any different than any of the other swords anyway?  What in the Light had she been thinking yesterday?  She suddenly felt incredibly stupid for knowing absolutely nothing about her chosen profession.  Bloody self-doubt.  She just nodded Cairma’s question and was rewarded with the name of her sword: the spatha.

 

Cleaning her sword seemed easy enough; she’d done much the same with the metal bits of the workhorses’ harnesses.  As for sharpening it, well that was something of a different story.  For one, a sword was a great deal larger than a kitchen or hunting knife.  It was easy enough to keep a whetstone steady on the edge of a six inch blade, but along three feet of steel?  By the time her mentor was through with the lesson, Addi’s knuckles and fingers bled from half a dozen cuts and scrapes; yet she still couldn’t keep pace with Cairma’s, for each time Addi ran her stone over the edge of her sword, the woman had made three or four strokes – and her sword was far longer.

 

After suggesting Addison see the Yellows about her hands, her second trip to the infirmary in as many days, Cairma dismissed her.