Fortified by some homework with the Duello TV longsword channel, and a solid re-read of some classic Robert E. Howard Conan the Barbarian stories, I headed off to my final Academie Duello longsword class on Thursday night.
The reason behind my prep work? Very simple: although there's no test to establish competency at the end of the course, we were scheduled to spend the final class proving our skills in a practical fashion by dueling with each other and the students from the companion Introduction to Rapier course which has been running at the same time as our class for the last four weeks. When our instructor Miguel had mentioned at our previous class that we'd be doing this, I was a bit apprehensive: my impression of the relative strengths of the two weapons led me to expect that rapier users would butcher us with speed and reach.
To my surprise, this turned out not to be the case. The leverage provided by the two-handed longsword grip repeatedly allowed me to push aside the rapier and go inside the reach of the blade for a cut or an oblique thrust. It also turned out that I may in fact have some minor skill in the area of swordplay, to the point where one of my fellow longsword classmates actually said, "Wow, you're good at this!" I found that I was repeatedly outscoring my opponents by two or three to one, whether it was against longsword or rapier.*
At the end of the evening, there was a brief graduation ceremony,where we were presented with our Green apprenticeship cord by our instructors. The head of the school, Devon Boorman, was in attendance, and cheerfully informed us that we now knew more about swordplay than 99.9 percent of the rest of the world - although they're doing their best to change that percentage, one student at a time.
Although Academie Duello offers a comprehensive list of options for people wishing to move forward in their study of the sword and achieve further mastery, I don't plan to continue - I'm happy to have received my green cord and become part of that .1% of the global population.
That being said, if you have any interest in trying something a little bit different, or have some curiousity about swordplay after seven seasons of Game of Thrones, I would unhesitatingly recommend an Academie Duello class. The instructors and staff are uniformly friendly, knowledgeable and helpful, I found both the historical and practical information to be interesting, and hey, you get to fight with swords.
Arte, Ardore, Onore!
- Sid
* To be honest, I can't attach too much significance to this. It's a bit like being the best walker out of a group of one-year olds. It's an achievement of sorts, but Usain Bolt certainly isn't going to view me as a threat.
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