I walked over to the medical tent, looking for Corporal Robert. He was on the bed laying prone, shirtless, revealing a massive ugly looking bruise that was starting to form. A medic hovering over him, tutting.

“Ouch that looks like it hurts” I said to no one in particular. “How are you doing Corporal?” I asked.

“Hurts like hell, I am going to kill that little bastard the next time I see him.” he said grimacing in pain

“Well you won’t have to wait long; he should be coming to the tent any time now. The bastard challenged me to a duel, so I broke his nose. And you aren’t going to be hurting anybody for the next 5 weeks at least, if I miss my guess” I said

“Good eye” the medic stated. “I was going to reduce the swelling and let out some of the blood maybe even perform a venesection to accelerate his wellness”

“Why? All he has is a couple of bruised or cracked ribs. It will heal faster if we don’t do anything. All bloodletting is going to do is make you wrap the letting site which may cause pneumonia”

“I follow the teachings of Hippocrates and Galen, I will not be talked down to by a recruit with folksy wisdom” he said snootily.

“I also know of the teaching of Hippocrates of Kos and Galen of Pergamon, but bloodletting would require taping his ribs. This would mean he wouldn’t be able to breathe as deeply, thus unable to expel the stale air. So the foul air may settle at the bottom of his lungs and that foul air could cause pneumonia” I explained calmly “and as to why I interfere in your course of treatment: In quascunque autem aedes introiero, eas adaegrotantium opem ingrediar. Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick.” I replied reciting a passage from the Hippocratic Oath, I had done a paper on the history of modern medicine for my pharmacology class.

He looked at me, sighed “I apologise, I didn’t expect to find someone as educated as you in the countryside, especially amongst the recruits. But I still recommend a full course of weekly venesections to accelerate his healing.”

“Go ahead, but I really don’t see how reducing the amount of blood he has will help heal his bones any faster.”

I turned to Corporal Robert. “This is what you need to do for the next 4-5 weeks:

First and foremost rest and take time off work if you need to

Breathe normally and cough when you need to – this helps clear mucus from your lungs to prevent chest infections

If you need to cough, hold a pillow against your chest provides support and allows you to clear your lungs more.

After a couple of days start walking around and sometimes move your shoulders to help you breathe and clear mucus from your lungs

Take 10 slow, deep breaths every hour to help clear your lungs

Try to sleep more upright for the first few nights” I said, reciting the NHS’s recommendations on the treatment of bruised or broken ribs, it was on a poster in one of the corridors I passed multiple times daily for 3 years.

I also ground up some willow bark and snuck in some of my stolen paracetamol to make pain relieving tea to help with the pain.

“Get some rest, it will help you get better faster” I said gently patting him on the shoulder.

About this time two of the instructors came in dragging a beaten pulp behind them. They were literally dragging him by the ankles, so they obviously didn’t like the guy. The guy they were dragging looked out of it: He had a broken nose. His eyes were bruised black. He had odd lumps in his jaws, which looked to me like he had recently lost a few teeth. His jaw looked dislocated. And he had 3 lumps forming on his forehead. He looked familiar, but in that state I doubted if even his mother could recognise the poor bastard.

“WHAT happened here!? WHO did that to him!!!” the medic shouted out loud.

“The fool here accused Boss Randel of not refereeing properly, and challenged him” the one on the right spat

“He is to be treated whilst being tied to the bed and when he’s fixed he is going to the brig!” the soldier on the left said.

“Wait, is that...” I said trailing off in disbelief

“Yeah it’s Private David” the one on the left said

“I can’t believe he is that stupid, who would be stupid enough to challenge the beast of Bothra?” the medic exclaimed

I later found out that the beast of Bothra incident involved the staff sergeant singlehandedly destroying a 20 man bandit crew, whilst they tried to rob the village of Bothra. It cost me 20 laps around the camp, worth it.

“Him apparently.” I said pointing my thumb in David’s direction. “I would be careful I was you, he seemed to be going feral out there” feral was an accurate term of describing David.

I went back to the camp grounds, and we were doing spear practice again, so of we went to thrust town again, but now we were doing some straight vertical slashes as well. We continued on till about 6 in the evening and then we were told to clean up and dismissed for the day.

Most of us were exhausted and for once this included me as well (from last night’s activities), so we quickly washed up, ate our supper and went to sleep.

The next two weeks basically repeated the last two days, we did running in the morning followed by breakfast, followed by shield practice, followed by lunch, followed by either sword practice or spear practice. The training seemed more focused on building our stamina than actual combat prowess. We would run further, hold our shields up for longer, slash for longer and of course thrust for longer. We were taught in group battles that individual skill counted for much less than the guy next to or in front of you holding up his shield properly during the battle.

This isn’t to say that we weren’t taught how to fight properly, we were. We learnt about using the shields to trap, how to use the shield as a weapon to bash. We learnt how to hook using the spears, how to sweep at the ankles and how to properly slash with the spear. We were taught how to “fight for the centre”, which was basically an imaginary point in the middle of the slash where the two opposing slashes would collide.

But mainly it was running around building stamina.

I learnt I was not as good at the spear as I was at the sword (I was still better than any normal human). I suppose that may have something to do with the fact that I had three more months of training with the sword than with the spear. Mentally, I actually preferred the spear to the sword. I firmly believed that the spear was the king of all bladed weapons and really nothing could compensate for the reach advantage. But for some reason I was so much more comfortable with the sword than the spear. Especially the single edged Viking sword, somehow that sword came naturally to me. Ever since the first use. It was almost as if it was made for me. I suppose that had to do with my height, I was 6’1” which for those times made me Shaq (ok not Shaq, maybe Dwight Howard); the average height was only around 5’5”. Matt’s sword was taken from a raiding Viking captain and they tended to be a bit taller, so the sword being an appropriate length for me made sense.

Even so, since I started using that sword, I was simply unbeatable in the platoon. I had instinctually started combining some of Chinese broadsword techniques into my fighting style and that combined with my strange comfort with the sword meant I was unbeatable. I even bested the Staff Sergeant, which I was told had never happened. I even gained the approval of Sergeant Bernard the quartermaster to swap “David’s” instructors sword to my Viking sabre.

So that is how it came to be that I was in the demonstration area, facing off against 3 people: my own instructor Mark, a Private Thomas and another overachieving recruit (I would tell you his name but recruits weren’t given the privilege of being acknowledged). I was in the centre surrounded on three sides by my opponents. I was standing straight up in a non-defensive posture, with my sabre in my right hand and my shield in my left, waiting, about 5 breaths went by, no one made a move. Then. With an unspoken command all three made their move, Mark and Thomas came at me at the same time, both with right handed overhand swings aimed at my torso. The overachiever was a bit more clever, he did a stutter step to the left cheating over more towards Thomas’s side, offsetting his timing by half a step from Mark and Thomas. I stepped forward and lightly deflected Mark’s strike, moving it just enough that it actually struck Thomas’s strike, overachiever’s stutter step meant he avoided my entanglement and came at me directly from behind instead of my left with a thrust aimed at my spine. I was moving forward in order to deflect Mark and used that same momentum, to take another step forward, literally hopping forward, moving me out of the overachiever’s range. I used a reverse sweeping strike to try and hit Mark with the back of my sabre, but it was blocked at the last second by the overachiever changing his thrust into a parry.

This first exchange had seemed like a draw, but in actuality I came out the victor. I had neutralized their biggest advantage. Ok their second biggest advantage; it was still three on one. They were no longer behind me, I could now see all their moves and they couldn’t come at me from my blindside.

Mark and Thomas charged forward again swinging laterally, the overachiever once again lagging behind them, trying to throw off my timing. Mark swung at me from the left Thomas from the right. I used the shield in my left hand to deflect Mark and swing backhand at Thomas’s strike. The shield did its job and shielded me from Mark’s attack. I then used the shield as a weapon punching with the edge at Mark’s shoulder. I hit him fairly solidly, I felt decent contact, I wasn’t using my super strength or speed, so although the shield would hurt, Mark was still in the fight. The shield strike had a dual purpose as that strike also put me in position to block overachiever’s overhand strike. Thomas seemed surprised and hesitated for a microsecond, but it was enough, I won the centre in our clash and changed my parrying slash into a thrust, stopping just as the blade made contact with his shoulder. Thomas was out. But Mark had been clever, using the momentum from the shield strike to spin away behind me.

So the second clash which seemed like a clear victory on my side became a draw.

Actually it was almost my loss, I was still facing forward with both my sword and shield pointed in that direction. My shield was still engaged with the overachiever who had used my shield trap to trap me instead. Mark thrusted his sword at my back, any other strike and he would have won, but the thrust left me an option at victory. A crazy, insane option but an option none the less. I took a half step forward with my left foot, pushing the scrawny overachiever away, bending my torso forward to give me maximum distance away from Mark, also using the overachiever’s resistance to counterbalance myself. Then came the crazy part, I swung my right leg in a upward arcing sweep, twisting my body, torqueing my waist to give myself the maximum possible leverage. I kicked. I kicked right at Mark’s hands. I got lucky as Mark was caught off guard and I managed to kick his thrust left. I let go of my shield using the momentum from the kick to flip my body 180 degrees, to fall on my back. Mark had slightly overcommitted on the thrust and my kick had also unbalanced him so he stumbled forwards. I used my sabre to hook his leg and trip him down on to the ground, hitting him on the thigh with the flat of my blade. Mark was out. All three of us were also on the ground, me from my crazy twisty kicky thing, Mark from the hook trip and slash. And the overachiever had also fallen down from my shove earlier. The only one not on the ground was Private Thomas who was already “dead”.

The only ones still “alive” in the battle were the two recruits. Some smart Alek in the crowd also noticed and commented loudly “these new punks are really showing us veterans up, no respect for their elders!” and right in the middle of battle, laying there on the ground looking up at the sky, I burst out laughing. The joke wasn’t even funny, but at that moment in that intensity, I burst out laughing. I wasn’t the only one, Mark and the overachiever also started laughing, coughing as they were both struggling to breathe.

No one really teaches you this, but combat is largely anaerobic. I know that every martial art teaches you to breathe whilst fighting, but during those instances of extreme high intensity, the oxygen demand by both your muscles doing the fighting and your brain working overtime to let you survive are simply too much. So the fact that after only 40 seconds we were all completely out of breath was not surprising. This had been a particularly frantic bout both sides trying to end the fight as quickly as possible. Me because I was fighting against 3 people, them because I was obviously more skilled and numbers advantage worked best when they were the freshest. Plus, this battle was happening at the end of a hard day’s grind and they didn’t have much stamina left anyway.

So there we were, on the ground, exhausted, breathing in deep lungfuls of air laughing at a terrible joke, which just happened to cut the tension at the right time.

We all got up at the same time; Mark slowly walked to the edge of the demonstration area and joined Thomas. The overachiever pried his sword out of the shield, and then grabbed the shield in his left hand. I stood up and adjusted my grip on the sword twirling my fingers on the sword as if playing a piano, waiting for the overachiever to get ready. This was now a duel of the rookies, I was obviously more skilled (and faster and stronger). But he had a shield and I didn’t.

He took a defensive stance; knees bent left leg forward, body sideways at a 45degree angle behind the shield. I was standing straight, no posture, feet shoulder width apart, sword in my right hand at the ready. He raised his sword to his waist level, the sword parallel to the ground. And I moved, attacking first. I swung overhand from my right hand side. He brought up his shield to block, correctly using the edge to block the blow, aiming to thrust right when my sword got stuck in the shield. As he brought up his shield he was blinded to my actions, at the last second I twisted my arm striking with the flat back edge of the sabre whilst also jumping to the right avoiding his counter thrust. The back edge of my sabre was flat, and bounced of the shield the natural momentum from my swing combined with the bounce brought my swing to behind his legs, which had been my target all along. I swept his legs upending him. I stomped on the shield pinning it to the ground, and pointed my sword at his neck. He accepted his defeat immediately. Letting go of his sword, and tapping on the ground twice, conceding.

“You are good!” I said, holding out my arm to pull him up.

“Wow, no one’s ever beat me that fast before” he said grabbing my fore arm.

I pulled him up to standing. “My name is Emris” I said introducing my self

“I’m Merlin.” He said.

Yup, that’s how I met Merlin, overachieving swordsman recruit number 2 at the conscript training camp outside Leicester