Anne Mccaffrey_ Dragonriders of Pern 20 by Dragon Harper Page A

smells of an impending attack grew harder to detect—masked, Kindan guessed, by leaves, flowers, or other greenery. Blows landed on him and he whirled around defensively, only to connect with nothing. He started sweating, his breath became ragged, his nerves flared.
    “Stop,” Mikal ordered. Kindan stopped. “Rest. You can’t win when you’re winded.”
    Kindan was about to protest that he couldn’t win when he was blind, either, but stopped as he realized that not only could he win, but that he already
had.
He calmed himself, took several deep, steadying breaths, and listened carefully. He heard the merest of noises, smelled the faintest of smells, then he whirled and connected, hard, with Mikal’s blade.
    “Better,” Mikal said, his voice full of approval. “Now, take your blindfold off and fight me left-handed.”
    By the end of the day, Mikal had Kindan parrying alternate blows with either hand.
    “Tomorrow,” Mikal told him as they trudged back to the wherhold, “I’ll teach you how to go for the eyes.”
    “I don’t want to blind him,” Kindan said, aghast.
    “But he wants to kill you,” Mikal replied. “Think what you’re going to do about that.”
    All through his dinner and singing, Kindan mulled over the ex-dragonrider’s words. Even as he crawled into his bed, he thought them over.
    Kindan slept fitfully that night.

    “No one fights well when they’re worried about their eyes,” Mikal told Kindan as they started their practice the next morning. “And, as you’ve seen, it’s nearly impossible to fight when blinded.”
    Kindan could only nod, appalled at the thought of blinding someone. His friend Nuella was blind, and though she coped with it very well, Kindan knew from first-hand experience—walking through the dark, dust-laden mines just after a cave-in—what that meant to her.
    He knew that Vaxoram was bigger, heavier, older, and had the greater reach.
    “A person’s reaction to a thrust to the head is instinctual,” Mikal went on. “They will always parry the blow.”
    In a quick series of exchanges, Mikal demonstrated this on Kindan. Kindan felt sweat and cold fear running down his back—and he
knew
that Mikal would not hit him.
    “Now, I want you to attack my head every third strike,” Mikal said.
    “But I might hit you!” Kindan protested.
    Mikal looked around the practice area he’d chosen. “There are no rocks or holes here,” he said. “If you get me within a sword’s length of the edge, we’ll break. Otherwise, I’ll be able to take care of myself.” He raised his sword, one of the heavy wooden practice blades they’d been working with. “And this is more likely to give me a black eye than a permanent injury.” And with that, Mikal thrust forward, sword raised toward Kindan, giving him the choice of fighting or being hit. Kindan fought.
    They continued for two hours, breaking only four times. Once, Kindan nearly landed a blow on Mikal’s cheek, just below the left eye. Mikal, on the other hand, landed a solid blow on Kindan’s right cheek; Kindan knew that it would be black and blue in the morning.
    “Good,” Mikal said as he lowered his blade after their last bout. “We’ll get some water and food. When we start back, we’ll use a dummy.”
    After a quick bite to eat and a gulp of water, Mikal brought Kindan over to a hastily built figure. It was dressed in Mikal’s old clothes, a stick forced into the ground with a crosspiece tied to it at shoulder height representing arms. The clothes were filled out with old straw, so that the overall effect was that of a scarecrow. However, Mikal had rigged ropes to the “hands” so that he could pivot the scarecrow around the upright pole. The scarecrow’s head was a gourd with two large holes in it where eyes would be. In the holes Mikal had placed two ripe tomatoes.
    He handed Kindan a steel blade and walked back to grab the ropes behind the scarecrow.
    “Now go for the eyes,” he ordered. Kindan