The Battle of Swords Has Begun...

A very serious duel...

I swing my sword in a glittering arc and my opponent parries it skillfully. Our swords clash repeatedly, mine sometimes striking on her golden shield. My opponent is retreating fast and I advance, apparently gaining the upper hand, even if I only have a sword and she has a shield. But then my opponent uses unfair tactics. With surprising speed she spins her double handed blade and sinks the point into my knee. I say "Ouch!" and hop around on one leg for a few seconds and then the duel is recommenced...

True story...minus the glittering swords, sinking in of the point into my knee and the skill Sarah (my friend - and opponent in this particular duel) and I were apparently wielding them with.

Me hopping around on one foot due to a (not) serious leg injury 

All weaponry was made by the master swordsmith I believe I have previously mentioned. If you want to see how he made Sarah's sword he's done a blog post on it recently. 

But all this started with our Bright Lights Group (a discipleship thing for girls) having a singing-at-the-old-peoples-home-day-whatsitcalled-thingamajig.

There were ten girls, me included (Oh and my two older sisters were part of the ten - they're the leaders) who went, and it was all good and fun. When we got back everyone left except for aforementioned Sarah and her two littler sisters. Their mum had gone to do something or other, and so we played a card game while we waited for her to return. When she did we hadn't quite finished the game, and so she decided to drive up to the neighbours (also friends of ours) and left her children to walk up after her.

But...(here comes the interesting part) Sarah had brought her new sword and shield (I'd already seen her other 3 swords) to show me and we had a duel (already described) before they left. Swordsmith Zach had already made me a nice battle sword - perhaps a little too long for me but who cares...

Then we walked with them up the road, Sarah and I seemingly cutting our heads off by the way we were carrying our swords. My younger brother Samuel had got the cardboard shield I made for him out of a cake tray thing, and was carrying it around to match us. 

When we got to the neighbour's place, the mothers were talking so we randomly started fighting again. At one stage I was fighting Samuel; he had his shield and Sarah's sword (which was about as long as he is tall) I had my sword and Sarah's shield. But then Sarah and Zach's youngest sister started attacking me with Zach's two little knife things (a saxe and throwing knife). At first she was just trying to 'stab' me but then she started throwing them at me which made it harder for both of us. I don't know how many times I 'killed' both of them, but they never seemed to die.

Fighting 2 people at once really isn't as easy as it looks

There was one really cool time when I was standing around with just my sword and youngest sister of S+Z threw a knife at me. I was totally not expecting it and just whacked it with my sword instinctively. And I hit it! It's amazing how satisfying it is to do something like that.

See the knife sticking out of my foot?
(Actually it's still flying through the air and lands in between my feet)

Yeah...I'm pulling a really weird face...

Then we started throwing knives at the shield we'd propped up a few meters away. We hit it a few times and then 12 year old neighbour number 2 (in order of their age she is 2nd of three. There isn't two 12 year old ones though) well anyway, she decided that the shield was too low so I, being the only one brave enough and having enough confidence in my own abilities (such as my hand-eye co ordination), offered to go and hold it. (I may have forgot to mention these weapons are made of wood, they aren't real. I'm not that stupid.)

So there I was holding the shield by the edges (sadly there are no photos of this)....until Neighbour number 2 hit my finger with the knife (rather ouch) and I started holding the shield in a slightly different way. 

The knife flies through the air and...Hits the shield Sarah is hiding behind!
(At this particular time I was the thrower)

I only had to duck once, and it's a good thing too, because otherwise the knife would probably have hit me in the head if I hadn't. After a while I started moving the shield around so the knives actually hit it...but then...one of them...hit it a little hard...and you know...every action has an equal and opposite reaction...in other words...it broke....

But luckily it shouldn't be too hard to fix, it only needs a little super-glue. 

So we stopped throwing knives and I stopped being a target, but in the words of the swordsmith, the two swords had seen better days...namely...yesterday (well now a few days ago now, but saying "namely Wednesday the 15th of April" doesn't sound quite as good)

But all in all it was a really fun time...we'll have to do it again some day soon. We could add in some archery and that would be even cooler. Or maybe we'll just have to sing at the nursing home more often...

On Friday my injuries were: one greenish grey finger courtesy of the throwing knife (very interesting - at least the finger is, not the knife), a blue wrist from a sword, a bruise on my ankle from Samuel, and I don't think I even got a bruise from my first war wound in my duel with Sarah. And what's more my sword didn't break (yay!) So all in all I'm pretty pleased with the result!

~ Jane, Misty Maiden

P.S. All photos courtesy of my sister Clare (who is a really good photographer among other things) And thank you again to the swordsmith...You do a much better job then I could.