Book Two, Rule Five, the Plates

Okay, we've looked at the initial text for Rule Five, so let's get into the plates. There are nine of them, and of that number there are three pairs of beginning and ending plates. The remaining three are a beginning with two potential endings. Now that we know what to expect, let's get to it!

Here we begin with our fencer standing on the right. We're in fourth on the outside, and our point is aimed at the hilt of our opponent. Since our sword is slightly below our opponent's, if they try to pick us up in second, it will only take a small cavazione to remain free. As a bonus, it will be pretty simple to perform the cavazione such that we end up with our sword crossing over the top of our opponent's, leaving us in a very strong position. Fabris' words are that "the opponent may believe he can find the debole, but he will find the forte instead," due to the fact that as we perform our cavazione we are constantly advancing, bringing our forte into play earlier than expected. If our opponent does not move, we can simply continue to our ideal measure and wound them as-is.

If our opponent takes the opening they see above our sword, we see the outcome of this in the next plate here. (Yes, the perspective has flipped and our fencer is now on the left.) You can see the slightly dropped hilt of the opponent, as they are trying to keep their own line covered as they attack. We perform a tight cavazione and wound them in fourth, as our forte will be pushing against their blade in the tempo of their attack. Note the passing step being used here; all of the forward movement in Book Two are "natural steps," or one foot in front of the other, until there's a possible lunge to drive the point home. Should our opponent be pressing an attack without moving forward, all we need to do is lift our point above their blade and continue forward. Our forte will make contact with their sword, and we continue in to wound them. If they try to retreat so as to gain time and space to parry, we can go back to an old favorite to avoid the parry and wound them in second underneath their blade.

The next sequence has us standing in fourth on the inside of our opponent's blade. Note how squared off we are - Fabris says that our chest is "wholly exposed" which sure isn't an understatement. He does clarify that the purpose of that is to invite our opponent to attack on that inside line or at least move to find our blade as a precursor to an attack at this giant opening. If on the other hand our opponent doesn't move, Fabris notes that we should just move in with our forte on their debole and strike them. Okay, straightforward enough.

The followup plate has a few interesting layers to it. The accompanying text is really straightforward. As we approach in fourth on the inside, our opponent turns their blade into fourth to cover himself, find our sword, and strike us. The solution that Fabris gives us is to perform a small cavazione after running our sword along theirs, and using the angle that being in fourth gives us to allow us to strike them in turn.

What I find interesting here is that while Fabris notes that this works because we are "in motion," our cavazione happens because our sword is "stationary." The distinction between us as the fencer moving relative to our opponent while our sword as our sword is stationary relative to ourselves is, well, neat. Certainly it makes sense when it's all laid out like that, but I think that most of the time, we don't separate the weapon from ourselves in terms of what's moving and what's still. Doing that lets us describe how we are constantly closing measure but noting that we're keeping the weapon relatively stationary can open up a number of options that we can look at.

In addition, Fabris doesn't call it out, but I think that there's some off-line movement happening with the passing step in plate 145. We're pushing our opponent's blade out somewhat, but I think clearing a little bit farther off in that direction would probably help with getting past the point of their sword. Now that I'm writing those words out here though, I'm second-guessing that. Maybe we can just pick up our opponent as they're rolling into fourth and the point of their sword is still outside of our presence, before they angulate it back into our chest? I think that's possible. Both reads strike me as plausible anyway, and I think working it through slowly would help me settle on one side or the other.

Moving on to the next set! As expected, we begin in fourth. Our opponent is in second and we're in the outside, pointing at his hilt. (We're on the right side in all three plates in this sequence, for a change.) As in the previous exchange, we're leaving out chest fairly wide open as an invitation. Of note is the fact that our chest isn't squared off towards our opponent as part of this invitation, unlike the previous play where we were showing a mostly flat chest as part of the invitation. Playing around with the stances on my own, it seems that this is mostly because of how the orientation of the shoulders impacts the arm and wrist in terms of where we can point our sword. If we want to point our blade towards the inside, then squaring off is fine; it doesn't inhibit our arm angling itself in that direction. On the other hand, if we're in fourth but trying to point to the outside, squaring off means that we're really going to notice our shoulder being impinged and relatively immobile. Additionally, to get the angle for the sword to point outside, we'd need to angulate our wrist to a point that's pretty uncomfortable and also remove any good arm structure we'd otherwise have. It's like our shoulder position makes a big difference with Fabris! (This is not a surprise.)

The first outcome from this beginning is what happens if our opponent does nothing at all when we enter measure; in this case, we bring our point over our opponent's hilt while staying in fourth. Fabris reminds us of this guard's "natural strength" to the outside which will keep us safe. (Remember, the blade is stronger in the direction toward which it points, and our fourth will naturally want to point to the outside.) We'll continue in with a passing step to keep a steady forward movement, but we can extend it a bit because it's the final movement we need. We need to make sure that our right shoulder and hip are turned forward as we extend into the strike, otherwise the broken body structure could let our opponent push through and probably lead to a double-hit. As a final note, Fabris points out that if our opponent performs a cavazione to the inside to wound us from seconda the same thing happens in that our fourth can protect us just as well, which we're about to see!

So even though Fabris previously said it would all work out the same, he's going into a little more detail with the "but what if they cavazione and try to hit me with an angled second" scenario. 

Here our fencer continues forward as normal, and our sword point has already moved from our opponent's hilt to their body. Just like the illustration would indicate, our arm doesn't extend so much as reach across our body, and we can see how our torso is helping get that breadth as well. The other important point which we can see in the illustration (and is made clear in the text) is that we're catching our opponent mid-cavazione, not after they complete it. This is made possible by the facts that we are closing constantly (forcing their cavazione to grow in size) and that our guard isn't changing, so there's less movement and time needed to just pick up their blade with our forte and hilt.

Fabris points out that we can get this same end result if we're approaching to the outside and our opponent tries to wound us over our sword. We can cavazione to the inside and cause them to try and point their sword down to parry us, and we end up pushing through it. That could work, but I think that one of the previous sequences could work just as well. I'd want to play around with it though.

Finally, we have an example of what we should do if our opponent presents us with a very low guard, refusing typical blade engagement. (This has also come up in the first, second, and fourth rule as well, which says to me that this would have been a pretty common concern. Certainly this situation comes up in the SCA regularly, when people just try super hard to avoid any semblance of blade contact.)

Fabris has us point at our opponent's hilt as we have been doing, with our sword in third and directly over theirs. This means that they will need to do something other than just bringing their blade straight up and into us, and the movement to one side or the other will give us the tempo we need to do something about it. If they don't do anything, we just move straight in, stay in third, keep our hilt close to their sword and pass our blade through them. (Specifically through their throat near their right shoulder.) Straightforward enough, as we can see in the final plate.

The aforementioned final plate has some serious similarity to "their sword is held low" plates from
earlier rules. (Seen in rule one, rule two, and rule four.) It's nice to see consistency inside a martial system, but also, I think it says a lot about best practices for dealing with certain problems. Don't reach with the tip of your sword. Get your hilt to their blade. Keep your sword between your body and their sword. Push them farther out of presence as you close. All of the things we've consistently seen applied whenever possible.

Fabris tells us that we'll end up using second in this situation, if our opponent tries anything. When they raise their tip, we'll either yield around them if they go to the inside or wound them underneath their arm if they go to the outside. These reactions only work if we continue to move forward. If we don't, we'll almost certainly take their sword through the chest, throat, or face. 

That's it! That's all of rule four, so I'm going to take a minute and poke at the one huge textual thing which caused me to blink a lot and be very confused before I just shrugged and rolled with it: the fact that in the introduction to this rule, Fabris said that our sword point should be pointing slightly downward. Which kind of is exactly not what was illustrated here except for maybe when our opponent is in the extremely low guard.

I kind of want to poke at the original Italian text for this but honestly, I don't have any fluency at all. I'd be relying mostly on Google Translate which loses me any possible chance of idiomatic usage or anything else. I could maybe stretch and say that the sword is pointing down from the point so maybe it's just a translation weirdness, but the language around why we point downward doesn't seem to support that. Maybe that we keep the sword pointed down as we begin enter measure but move to pointing at our opponent's hilt as we go? I could honestly see that (as I'm staring off into space trying to visualize it) but I'd want to try seeing how these play out with a partner before I really solidly conclude anything.

That concludes rule five for the single sword! I'd like to try to get another ramble about Fiore vs Marozzo Knife Fun but I might just get taken by the urge to push into rule six and wrap up all the single sword material in book two, so I promise nothing.