Free Aster Wood and the Lost Maps of Almara (Book 1) by J. B. Cantwell

clearing, raised his ax, and threw it hard. The ax soared through the empty space easily, and found its target, a tree. It stuck firmly into the wood.  
    “The goal,” he said, turning, “is to learn how to use weapons. But also to learn how to use everyday things as weapons, things people won’t think to keep from you.”
    From his pocket he pulled a thin piece of twine, perhaps a foot long. He dangled it out in front of him and slowly approached me.  
    “If you can use a rope, a twig, a pin in your defense, you will soon find that you will be able to travel freely and without fear.”
    He moved so fast that for a moment I couldn’t figure out where he had gone. But as I felt the rope around my neck and his beard scratch my ear I realized what he had done. My hands moved to claw at the twine, but before they even made it to my throat he had already released me.
    I rounded on him, alarmed and angry.
    “What was that for?” I yelled.
    He smirked. “That was to get your attention.”
    I backed up several steps, but he turned away and walked to the tree where the ax had stuck. Freeing it from the bark, he turned and approached me once more.  
    “The ax is the easiest of the weapons to master. Some will recognize it as a threat, some will not, but in any case the handling and throwing of an ax lends itself to many other types of defense.” He turned the ax backward and held out its handle to me.  
    I stared at him skeptically for a moment, waiting for him to attack me again, but when he didn’t I reached out and took the wood. It was warm in my hand, and heavy, but not as heavy as I had expected. Still, the blade of the ax fell towards the ground as he released it, and I needed two hands to hoist it back upright.  
    “Now,” he said, “throw.”
    He did not offer any further instruction, so I tried to mimic what he had done when he had thrown the ax into the tree. I raised it above my head with both hands and threw it. The tool tumbled head over tail three times before landing harmlessly in the dirt at the base of the tree.
    Well, at least it landed in front of the tree I was aiming for.
    “So, not quite, then,” he said.
    He motioned for me to follow him and we both approached the tree. He picked up the ax and handed it back to me.
    “Now, try from here.”
    We were only three feet from the tree, but I did as he said. As I raised both of my arms he stopped me.
    “One arm.”
    I released my left hand from the wood and brought the ax down towards the tree trunk, hard. To my great relief and excitement, the blade stuck in the wood. A thin sweat broke out over my forehead as Kiron commanded, “Again.”
    I did it again. And again. I threw that ax so many times over the next several days that my arm began to feel like lead. As I learned the balance of the ax, Kiron had me back farther and farther from the tree, until I could hit it from fifteen feet away. I didn’t stick the target every time, but any success was better than where I had started from.  
    When he finally brought out the knife for me to practice with, I had become so accustomed to the weight of the ax that I could barely handle the tiny blade. It would fly like a hummingbird from my outstretched hand to the trunk I targeted, but then bounce off the bark harmlessly with a ping. I tried for hours and hours, but wielding the little knife was something I was hopeless at.  
    Each day consisted of learning the ways of the new weapons, and each night I spent learning to pick locks with a short pin I could hide in my pants. Kiron’s other skills, like strangling people in their sleep with nothing more than the shoelace of a boot, I was less enthusiastic about. I simply refused to believe that I could wind up in a situation where murder became necessary. I was alarmed at the violence of it all. From what he was teaching me, it really did seem that he thought I would be fighting for my life the moment I left this place.  
    But the satisfaction I felt