Thursday, June 11, 2020

Book Two, Rule Four for the Single Sword

Yeah, I know, I said I'd have this up a bit ago. These days though, time is a lie! So here we are.

Fabris opens up by saying that this rule is "also founded on an undetermined placement of the sword as you proceed against the opponent." Where rule three focused on proceeding to the outside when you could, this rule focuses more on the inside line, which Fabris points out "requires greater skill." 

To begin, our advance occurs with our chest square on to our opponent's point. This is essentially an invitation, as Fabris says that we really want to convey the impression that we're going to deliberately run onto their sword. This is explicitly to get them to keep their sword directed at our center line.

As we step into measure though, we step off to the side with the foot we enter with. If we're stepping in with the right foot, we step off to the right. If we're stepping in with the left, we step off with the left. When we do this, we'll lean our body off in the same direction, removing it from the line of our opponent's sword "while the opponent's openings will now be open to [us]."

We're keeping our sword near to our opponent's, so we can defend ourselves easily if they attack us as we enter measure. If they don't do anything, we keep going on the side we've already stepped toward to close them out of line completely, and wound them as we take a second step.

If instead our opponent follows our body with the point of their sword while we're taking that first step off line - and this is a pretty neat action - we move forward with the other foot (which Fabris notes "by then should be in the air") and bend our body over it so we move off line to the other side. Then we just go forward and wound them.

Fabris says that these processes are meant for when our opponent keeps their sword point in line with our upper body, more or less. If their point ends up "directed against [our] knee, or even lower" we just move forward straight against it and close out their blade downward with our blade on top, such that they can't lift their sword. When we do this, we need to be very sure that our hilt is what lowers the most, and that our point does not fall underneath their blade at all. If that were to happen, our opponent could wound us with an easy cavazione, since we'd need to perform a contracavazione at close measure. If our point is correctly situated relative to our opponent's blade though, we can wound them while they try to perform that cavazione.

Finally, Fabris notes that if our opponent is to the outside, we shouldn't need to adjust our hand. If they're on the inside though, we'll need to turn our hand slightly into quarta, but be careful not to lower our hilt and create an angle that we could be wounded through.

That's... that's it. It's really short. It's deceitfully straightforward. It also has twelve plates following it up, and I spent a good amount of time flipping back and forth between this section and the plates, trying to make sure that I was visualizing things correctly, which is what most of the next post is going to be. Also, lots and lots of plates.


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