Completed [The Bronze Wood] Cutting Edge

[Nathaniel Deveraux]

Day 52, Season Summer, 501 AV

As father and son walked slowly to the Bronze Wood once again, Nate could help but bounce up and down in excitement. He was going to learn the kukri today! Or at least that was what his father had promised him, and Anton had never lied to Nate before. Well, probably he had, but the boy was blissfully unaware of it, and as they walked the older hunter went over in his head the various things that he would have to go over with his son before he'd be at all comfortable with the boy so much as touching his blade.

As they reached the edge of the forest, Anton stopped and turned to Nate, indicating that they'd reached their destination. "Listen closely, Nathaniel," Anton began, taking out the kukri and showing it to his son. The curved knife gleamed in the morning sun, the well-worn grip still sturdy and the blade well-maintained and sharp.

"The kukri's primary purpose is to chop, and its secondary purpose is to stab," Anton explained, and showed both motions to Nate, but making very sure to be facing away from his son before he started swinging the knife. "Now you try," Anton said, handing the blade to Nate, who took the grip gingerly.

The blade was surprisingly heavy for its size, and was uniquely weighted so that most of the heft was at the end of the blade. This was actually so that when the kukri was swung, the edge would be dragged by the weight across the surface being sliced, making for a cleaner cut. The sharp curvature of the blade on the inside meant that the cutting surface would always be parallel to the surface begin cut, maximizing chopping and slashing potential.

Nate tried to swing the kukri the way he saw his father do, but the blade almost leaped out of his hands, the momentum and centrifugal force of his swing combined with the weight at the end of the blade brought the kukri whirling out of his small hand and tumbling end over end into the grass. Nate felt a cold chill run down his spine; he'd just thrown his father's kukri! But Anton just chuckled and went to retrieve the errant weapon, apparently fully expecting something like that to happen.

"That was exactly what happened the first time I swung this thing," Anton mused, handing the kukri back to Nate as he trotted back. "Oh, I was sure my dad would skin me alive for losing my grip. But you've learned your lesson right? Make sure you've got a good handle on the weight of the weapon before you start swinging it. And take it slowly."

Nate nodded, taking the kukri gingerly from his father's hand and drawing the blade in diagonal lines slowly in front of him, his hands slowly trying to get used to the weight in it and gripping the knife quite tightly. Anton shook his head. "You don't need to grip it that tight," he said. "It won't jump out of your hand as long as you maintain a firm grip. But a really tight grip is going to rob you of your ability to control the weapon. Gentle but firm. Remember that."

[Nathaniel Deveraux]

Nate was not really standing in any way that would make it easy for him to use the weapon that his father was trying to teach him. But after a few clumsy swings of the weapon Anton decided to stop his son before he hurt himself.

"OK, now that you've got a basic idea of the weight of this weapon, I want you to understand the basic principles behind its use," he started, taking the basic stance so that Nate could copy. "The basic stance for this weapon is really quite simple. If you imagine a square beneath your feet, your feet should be along the diagonal, so that your right foot is facing outward, and your right toe should be facing the opponent. Now you try."

Nate nodded and copied the stance as best he could, but without the knife it felt rather silly, pointing the toe of his right foot at his father and looking down to make sure his feet were positioned correctly. Anton nodded as he looked over the beginnings of the stance taking form. "Good," he encouraged. "I might recommend bending the knees ever-so-slightly. It'll help with balance."

Nate did so, bending his knees a bit and the difference was quite impressive. He could feel how stable the stance was, and how easy it would be to resist most efforts to push him down, simply by shifting his center of gravity a bit lower. He tested the stance a bit, swaying a bit to the left, and then a bit to the right, trying to see how far he could sway before the balance was disrupted, but discovered that the bending of the knees really steadied the rest of the body significantly.

"Of course, that's just the beginning stance. You should be ready to move on a moment's notice," Anton explained. And he demonstrated, getting into the bent-knee position, but then suddenly springing forward with the kukri in his outstretched hand, before retreating backwards, his feet in constant motion as he shuffled back and forth, and side to side, dancing in and out of range of an invisible enemy.

"It is fundamentally crucial that your stance is fluid and dynamic," Anton explained as he stopped shifting about, and indicated that Nate should try to copy what he just saw. Nate bent his knees as instructed, once again making sure that his right foot was a bit ahead of his left and was pointed at the enemy, and mimicked his father's hand movements as well, his right arm with an imaginary kukri shooting forward as his legs propelled him, but he overstepped and ended up tripping on his own feet and before he could stop himself, landed face-first in the dirt.

Anton chuckled slightly, but helped Nate up, even as the boy grumbled and muttered about how the whole thing was stupid. Anton shrugged and replied, "yes, the stance might look stupid, but believe me it will save your life one day. The kukri is not a large weapon, nor is it a very heavy one despite its surprising heft for its size. Used well, the kukri is a very efficient weapon. But you have to understand its limitations in order to overcome and compensate for them."

[Nathaniel Deveraux]

Nate was franky quite lucky his little tumble hadn't ended in tragedy. The sharp blade that could have been in his hand would have easily slipped in the middle of it and he could have cut a deep gash in some critical part of his body, or worse it could have turned backward and stabbed itself into any number of dangerous locations. Anton was very careful to tell Nate all of this, looking the boy sternly in the eye as he went over all the ways that little stunt could have ended very badly.

Nate, however, was quite certain that his father was overreacting. He was just fine, and as he dusted himself off he looked down at the kukri in his hand and wondered when it would be that he'd be able to get one of his own. His father had hinted before that if he learned the weapon well enough, he would allow him to acquire one, but Nate was impatient and wanted one as soon as possible. Getting back into the stance as his father instructed, he imagined a kukri in his hand and tried to remember the weight of the knife from when he held it before. He didn't know it, but Anton had suspected the boy would stumble the first few times, which was why he deliberately refused to allow his son to be holding the actual kukri during those attempts.

Nate strode forward again, thrusting his hand forward in a mock attack as his legs propelled him forward. The boy was unsteady on his legs, not used to the motion and he nearly fell over again but was able to catch himself, hopping rather awkwardly as he tried to right himself, arms flailing to the sides to keep his balance. Nate growled as he realized he wasn't getting very far, but Anton simply pushed for him to try again. He was getting there, at least, so Nate returned to his position yet a third time, and this time he tried to think of what exactly he was doing, and why exactly he was failing.

The push-off wasn't the problem. As Nate pushed off again, he realized that the bent knees and position of the feet made this action a natural one, the legs acting almost as coiled springs propelling him forward. The issue was when he needed to maneuver immediately after the spring forward, because he needed to land in a relatively stable position and he was instinctively trying to return to the bent-kneed position when he landed. Perhaps that was the mistake.

Nate tried to think back to what his father had done, and realized his father hadn't returned to the position unless he was at rest again. The position, as his father had stated, was the starter position but no one said he had to stay in it. And that was the key, wasn't it? Nate settled back into position after yet another stumble, eyes focused forward and gussying up for yet another attempt.

Springing forward from his bent-knee position, Nate thrust his arm forward while simultaneously readjusting his left leg forward to take a further half-step in the direction of the opponent, thus stabilizing his stance and not being top-heavy when he swung back around. The simple addition of the half step, as well as temporarily unbending the knees, meant that Nate finally was able to complete the maneuver without threatening to fall over or lose his balance.

In an effort to continue his success, Nate then shuffled back and forth as he'd seen his father do, trying to stay light on his feet as he danced away from an imaginary opponent. It was perhaps not the wisest idea since the ground was not completely even and Nate stumbled yet again, his left foot catching a pebble and he almost slid horizontally before he could finally reestablish his balance and right himself. Shaking his head, Nate glared at the ground as though it was the fault of the soil beneath him that he could not maintain a steady stance. With a heavy sigh, he returned to the stance and tried again.

[Nathaniel Deveraux]

"Nathaniel, stop," Anton called, and Nate dutifully stopped, his breath coming out in ragged gasps as he tried to quiet his beating heart. He'd been at it for almost twenty chimes and the constant motion was taking its toll on his legs, but it was more than just exercise. It was a way for his body to get used to the idea of constant motion, which was something that Anton wanted to get across to him.

"Try to understand the reasoning behind what we're doing here," he cautioned as he stepped out in front of the boy. "You remember that cougar, the first time we went out hunting right?"

Nate nodded. Of course he remembered. He could still feel the cold shiver of fear that snaked it way down his spine as he watched the hungry cat eye him like a piece of meat, sizing him up to see how to pounce on him and turn him into its next meal. At the end of the day it didn't really matter to the cougar what Nate was feeling or thinking, he was just meat out here. And he realized, that was what his father wanted him to understand.

"If you were paying attention you'd have noticed that the cat was in constant motion. It circled, it feinted, it pounced, but it never stopped. Motion is key to success, Nate, because an object in motion is harder to hit and you gain yourself more angles of attack."

Angles of attack. Another concept that Anton wanted to get across. Standing behind Nate, he placed the kukri in the boy's hand and held the boy's hand out in front of him. "There are nine angles of attack," Anton instructed, taking Nate's hand and showing him.

"You want to slash with a kukri, from outside inward. You can slash outward, but as you can see because the blade is on the inside of the kukri it becomes awkward to do and you have to twist it in a very unnatural way to get it to do so. So slashing inward... imagine a big circle right in front of you."

Anton drew the kukri with Nate's hand in a big circle perpendicular to the both of them. Then, he brought the blade up and slashing downward from the top, then from the bottom, slashing upward. The vertical angles of attack were typically for hitting the vulnerable spots on the human body: the head and the groin. Against a smaller target like most animals the most reasonable targets those strikes would reach would be the head or the chest.

The next to angles of attack followed, as Anton brought Nate's wrist swinging in from the left and right. The horizontal angles of attack were usually reserved for coming in from the side, and often used in conjunction with a backhand strike or a kick to distract the target while the blow came in. The fact that it comes in at around chest-height usually means that the attack from these angles are visible, but they were also among the more natural of the strikes available to the kukri.

Finally, Anton showed Nate the four diagonal angles of attack, coming in from the upper left, upper right, and up from the bottom left and bottom right. These angles were usually used with large sweeping motions and were designed to cause long, severe gashes, or perhaps to push the opponent back since most opponents tended to not approach when faced with someone swinging in wide angles like that. It was also used to attack softer targets like the collarbone area, or the next and armpits.

But Nate looked up with a confused expression on his face. "But that was only eight angles of attack!" he observed, and Anton nodded, glad to see that the boy was paying attention. "So what's the ninth?" he asked, and Anton grinned and replied, "Well, what do you think it is?"

[Nathaniel Deveraux]

Nate thought. There was the eight that he'd seen, and maybe the ninth was in between them but that didn't seem likely. Because there were infinite number of angles between diagonal and horizontal or vertical, and they were probably covered by the eight angles he was seen anyway so they didn't really count. So what could the ninth be? As he thought, he tried to think back on what he'd been taught so far and he realized that the very first thing he did during his father's training was to lunge forward. The last angle of attack, then, would be on a completely different plane.

Stabbing the kukri forward, Nate tried to keep in mind all the things he learned before, such as making sure to take the extra step forward and not keeping the knees fully-bent in order to grant himself extra stability in the stab. The extra weight of the kukri nearly sent him off-balance anyway and Nate had to adjust and correct himself in order to not take a tumble into the grass. Anton nearly jumped when he saw Nate's imbalance but relaxed when the boy seemed alright.

"Nathaniel, you must understand that the kukri is a very dangerous blade to be taking a tumble with," Anton cautioned, as he held out a hand to right Nate up again. "It is crucial that you understand this because if you take a fall the wrong way, the kukri will slice into your arm, your leg, or even your chest and that will be quite bad for you."

Nate gulped and nodded, as he observed the keen blade of the kukri with newfound respect for its cutting power. He knew that having that blade drawn across his flesh would leave a nasty cut, and even a featherlight touch would be enough to draw blood. It wouldn't take much to create a self-inflicted wound that could turn very dangerous.

"If you do find yourself falling over for whatever reason remember to turn the blade of the kukri outward, away from your body," Anton suggested, as he twisted the blade in Nate's hand to do just that. "Really, it should be facing outward anyway. There are very few reasons you'd ever want the blade of something this sharp facing you."

Nate nodded as he tried to absorb what his father was telling him. Make sure the pointy end was facing away from you so that it didn't cut you when you fell. Made sense, and the fact that his father hadn't admonished him meant he'd been right that the forward thrust was the ninth and final angle of attack of the kukri. Nate felt proud that he'd been able to discover this, but the lesson wasn't over as his father led him over to a tree and showed him several loose branches.

"Nathaniel," he began, "the kukri is primarily a tool and only secondarily a weapon. For us hunters, we need a blade that is sharp, and good for cutting and hacking and a kukri is excellent at both. I want you to try to hack off some of these here branches to get a sense of the cutting force of a well-maintained kukri."

Nate walked up to the tree and eyed the branch that his father indicated warily. It seemed to be made of fairly sturdy wood, and about the thickness of two or three of his fingers, but he experimentally tapped the blade of the kukri against it and discovered that the blade sank a tiny bit into the wood, as though thirsty to cut into it. Nate brought the blade up and swung it down, and he could feel the edge bite into the wood easily, the heavy weighted end carrying the edge across and through.

"A good kukri should feel like that whether slicing through wood, or muscle, or bone," Anton explained, taking the weapon back from Nate. "But a blade is only as good as it is being maintained. Remember to always check your blade for any chips or cracks and get them repaired immediately. This kukri could well save your life someday and you must maintain it at all costs, do you understand?"

Nate nodded, but his head shot up when Anton mentioned maintenance. "Does that mean you're gonna let me have the kukri?!" he asked, eyes shining with excitement, but Anton just laughed and shook his head.

"Not today, Nathaniel, not today," he replied, tucking the weapon back into his belt. "Come on, son, let's go home."

~Fin~

[Orion Michaels]

Grade on hold
Just as I said in your other thread, I can't release your grade until you fix your ledger. PM me when it's done and I'll post your grades.