Title: The Grammar of Combat
Fandom: Dragon Age
Rating: T
Length: 1,475 words
Content notes: No content warnings apply.
Author notes: Written for the ‘train’ challenge in fan_flashworks and the ‘weapons’ prompt in genprompt_bingo. Descriptions of Fenris's sword drills are adapted from Figueiredo's "Memorial for the Practice of the Montante" (pdf) and their interpretation by YouTube user Montante Niño (Simple Rules/Composed Rules).
Summary: Hawke accidentally interrupts Fenris’s training session, so decides to join in.

***

When Fenris opened the door, he had a naked blade in hand and his chest was bare.

“Hawke,” he greeted her, his chest heaving as he breathed.

Sara looked him over appreciatively. His markings, she saw, ran down the centre of his sternum before branching out into elaborate whorls across his ribcage. There was a slight sheen of sweat, highlighting the contrast of the white lyrium burns against his dark skin. Moving lower, his markings continued, disappearing below simple cloth pants. As usual, he wasn’t wearing any shoes.

“Am I interrupting?” she asked, widening her eyes innocently as she looked back up at him, even as she couldn’t help the smile that crept onto her face.

“No,” he said, pushing his hair back with one hand. “Just doing some training. Please, come in.” He stepped back from the door, leaving a gap wide enough to allow her to enter.

Sara stepped past Fenris and into the mansion. He shut the door and followed, sword in hand.

As Sara walked into the dark main hall of the mansion, she paused and looked around. It was large enough to train in. Was perhaps where he had been training. On a whim, she walked over to the staircase that led up to the bedrooms and settled herself down on one of the lower steps.

“Don’t stop on my account,” she said, and grinned, gesturing at the wide-open space.

Fenris halted near the centre of the hall. He looked down at the sword in his hand, back up at her, then held out the greatsword as if he was offering it and bowed low over it in her direction. He moved his feet into position, changed his grip, and raised the sword into a high guard. For a moment he paused there, breathing slowly. Then he burst into action.

Fenris brought the greatsword in a tight arc over his head then through into a diagonal forehand cut from low to high as he stepped forward. With his next step, he did the same on the other side. He walked forward and back, alternating sides as he repeated the move, until he returned to his starting position.

Starting again from a high guard, he switched into a different pattern. This time, he swept the sword in an arc around his head before thrusting forward as he stepped. Again, he alternated sides as he moved forwards and back. Sara could almost see the invisible enemies that this move was designed to fend off as he dispatched those in front of him with a stab through an unprotected eye or throat.

His next moves were much more complex and mobile, with forehand cuts interspersed with thrusts and defensive sweeps as his steps had him travel in a circle, defending all angles.

As Fenris continued his exercises, Sara watched as the muscles of his back bunched and moved beneath his lyrium-lined skin. His belly was hard and flat, muscles pulled in tight to support the weight of the sword as he extended it, and his movements were controlled and precise, his cuts and thrusts ending precisely where he intended.

He worked through a range of different forms obviously intended for different situations – defensive forms for when he was surrounded, unbalanced forms for environments that restricted his movement, and forms designed to defend against a variety of different weapons. Although the exercises themselves were not familiar to Sara, their grammar was. Carver had used a greatsword of similar length to that wielded by Fenris, and there were a limited range of moves available to a sword of that length. Sara had learned how to read Carver’s intentions in the position of his muscles and, as she watched Fenris’s bare upper body, it occurred to her that she could easily transfer that ability to him.

After a while longer of watching, she stood up. Fenris immediately halted, the point of his sword coming to rest on the ground next to his foot. Sara walked down the steps towards him, an anticipatory smile creeping onto her face as she loosened her shortswords from their scabbards, then drew them.

“No, Hawke,” Fenris said, holding up his free hand to forestall her. He was breathing hard after his exertions. “It is too dangerous.”

“Worried I’ll hurt you?” Sara teased. “You’re the one not wearing armour after all.”

Fenris looked down at his bare chest, took in Sara's reinforced gambeson, then lifted his sword into a field guard. Sara grinned and flourished her own weapons in a complicated pattern before readying herself.

Just like with Carver, she wouldn’t be able to absorb the force of one of his blows. But she could dodge or deflect, and she had learned how to use Carver’s superior reach against him by getting inside his guard. The disadvantage of a single weapon like the greatsword was that parrying and attacking required two separate movements, whereas Sara could do both simultaneously. And she had the advantage of having studied Fenris’s moves at leisure.

Sara advanced, shifting her grip slightly on her swords until they felt just right. As she entered the limits of Fenris’s reach, she focused on the play of muscle in his shoulders, waiting to catch the moment and angle with which he would begin his attack. As he started to swing, a diagonal reverse cut like she had already seen, she stepped in close, using one sword to deflect his onto an angle only a couple of degrees different, her other finding his left side. She halted her blade just as it made contact with his skin. Fenris looked down at it, eyebrows raised, then back to her eyes.

“Again,” he said.

Sara stepped back into her starting position. He would be watching for that this time. And indeed, Fenris had changed his guard. He was also more hesitant to attack. That’s okay, she knew how to deal with that. When she approached this time, Sara slipped the tip of her left sword beneath his sword and feinted a cut at his forehand with her right. When he moved to deflect the blow, she parried his sword into the same direction, stepped through, and pressed the back edge of her left sword up against his neck. His eyes narrowed.

“Again.”

Sara backed away again. This time, Fenris advanced, his sword making sweeping arcs that forced her to keep her distance. Sara kept back, circling around him, watching the pattern that his sword made in the air. As his sword reached its apex, she ducked past his guard, slipped her foot between his legs, and thumped the pommel of her sword into his back. He stumbled but recovered and turned on the ball of his foot to face her again. Sara raised her eyebrows at him and grinned. Fenris did not change his expression.

They approached one another again. This time, Fenris did not deploy a defensive pattern but retained his field guard. Sara went to slip her sword beneath his again, but this time he parried, turning her blade away. Sara retreated a step, crossing her swords in an automatic defence. She started to circle around him, but he kept pace with her, keeping her at bay with the tip of his sword. She tested another feint on him, but this time he didn't overcommit, keeping his blade centred and in guard position.

When he finally lifted his sword into position for a reverse cut, Sara was ready. She moved one sword to parry and the other to strike at his knees when Fenris's tattoos suddenly flared a brilliant white. Sara blinked and, as the afterimage cleared from her vision, found that Fenris had closed the distance between them. His sword clattered onto the tiled floor beside them as he grasped Sara’s wrists with his own hands, immobilising her blades as he angled them away from his body.

“You fight well,” Fenris said.

“That’s cheating,” she said with a scowl.

“Is it?" he said with a grin. "This is what I was made to do.”

Sara and Fenris were of similar height. Wearing boots, she was perhaps slightly taller. When he looked up into her eyes, she could see that his were a deep green, like the leaves of an elm. This close, she could feel the heat radiating from his bare skin and smell the musky scent of him.

Abruptly, he let go of her wrists and stooped to recover his sword. Sara sheathed her own.

“Thank you for the sparring session,” he said as he rubbed the sweat from his forehead. “But was there a reason you called?”

Sara had almost forgotten.

“Ah, yes,” she said. “I wanted to ask if you would help retrieve some mages that have gone missing en route to the Gallows. The Templars asked me to investigate.”

“Of course,” Fenris said. “Just let me put on my armour.”