“Now, if you’re any kind of shot, none of your enemies should be able to get close to you. But anyone can get lucky or outmaneuver you, and you’ll find yourself in a close-combat situation.”

Jerik drew the tek knife he kept sheathed at his waist, and flipped it idly in his hand, catching it by the hilt each time. He did it repeatedly, keeping up a steady cadence as he paced back and forth in front of each of them. More than a few of them watched its progress through the air as if hypnotized. Few of them had ever practiced using a knife, and even fewer could say that they were competent.

“Nicholas, come here,” Jerik said. The young man stepped forward at once, not surprised. As the swordfighter, he’d expected to take part in some kind of demonstration. “You’re good with a sword right? Any experience with knives?”

Nicholas nodded, so he continued. “What are the greatest benefits a knife gives you over a rifle?”

“They’re faster,” Nicholas said. When he didn’t continue, Jerik raised an eyebrow. “Right, sorry. They’re faster, and they’re also lighter. The closer you get, the more advantages a knife gives you. You can disable a fighter just as effectively with a knife as with a bullet if you can reach them.”

“And if your opponent also has a knife?” Jerik asked, drawing his second knife and holding it out. Nicholas accepted the weapon hilt-first, then gave it a few experimental swipes, testing out the feel of it. “What’s the point of a knife fight?”

“Well, despite how light it is, knives are a strength weapon,” Nicholas explained. He flipped the knife to a back-handed grip and then back. “You need the strength of your arm to make sure you actually do damage, and you also need to control the other knife user.”

“Well said.” Jerik flicked his knife to a back-handed grip, then took up a basic fighting stance. He beckoned with one hand. “Show me what you got.”

He partly issued the challenge because he wanted to show the others what it looked like to face off against someone who knew what they were doing, but his main reason was to gauge Nicholas’ skills in person. The young man advanced a step, leading with his front and bringing his back foot to level, keeping his stance balanced and light. There was a slight hesitation, then he twisted his body, stepping forward and stabbing out with the knife. Jerik caught the wrist of his knife wrist with one hand and smacked it down.

Nicholas was fast as a snake, leaning back as Jerik made to grab hold of his shoulder to grapple. He slid away, then slashed back, forcing Jerik to parry with his own weapon. Again he avoided as Jerik kicked out, and countered with a kick of his own. He hooked the back of Jerik’s kicking foot right as it landed, shunting his leg to the side by an inch or two and disrupting his balance. He staggered back as Nicholas slashed out with his knife once more, only just managing to parry the knife again. Then he regained his balance and made a quick gesture to stop.

“Good one,” he said. He felt a little shaken at how easily his balance had been disrupted. The thought occurred to him that, if this had been their first fight and they’d been enemies, Nicholas could have killed him easily. He’d severely underestimated him because of his fresh face. “Explain what you did just then with that kick.”

“You have a longer reach than me,” Nicholas obliged. “So my best bet was to break your stance, and get in close while you tried to recover.”

“But why a kick?”

“It was the only moving part of your body. If I’d attacked elsewhere, it wouldn’t have done anything.”

The spectators were all wide-eyed with interest at the flurry of attacks they’d just witnessed. One raised his hand, and Jerik pointed at him. “Yes, Alex?”

“Wouldn’t a pistol be more useful in this kind of situation?”

“Yes and no,” Jerik answered. He drew his sidearm and handed it to Nicholas, who gripped it with both hands, holding it level at his face. “It’s a question of speed. If you can level the weapon fast enough, use the sidearm. If you can’t, the knife is faster.”

Moving deliberately, he demonstrated what he meant by swiping his hand up and to the side, knocking the gun out of the way, and stepping in. He wiggled his knife to draw their attention to it. “When your opponent is armed, whether its a knife or a gun, the goal is to get in close. Whichever option you have that’s fastest, use it.”

“Get in their reach,” Nicholas commented. Jerik nodded. “It’s one of the principles of sword fighting too.”

“Of course,” Jerik agreed. “Your goal is to kill your enemy. You can’t do that from afar with a knife.”

“Unless you threw it.”

Jerik stared blankly at him for several seconds before replying. “Throw a combat knife?”

“Sure. Why not?” Nicholas flipped the knife so that he was holding it by the tip, and turned on his heel, throwing it smoothly. It buried itself to the hilt in a nearby crate, making a very satisfying thock sound. “Like that.”

Jerik’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. He knew that there were quite a few knives in Menora designed for throwing, both tek, and magik. But he’d never seen a combat knife, which was weighted to be extremely heavy towards the blade, thrown with such casual ease. He shook his head in mild admiration. “I don’t think that’s something you could do without serious practice.”

“Oh definitely,” Nicholas agreed with a grin. “Took me nearly three years, but I can throw any blade like that.”

“Even your sword?”

Nicholas drew his tek blade and made a chopping motion. “Maybe not a tek sword. But I could do it with a regular or a magik sword.”

“You just know your way around all kinds of blades, don’t you?”

The young man offered him a modest shrug. “It was all part of my practice. You worked hard to train as a sniper, I trained to fight with my blades.”

He was definitely an oddity in Menora, Jerik thought. “Well, that’s impressive, for sure. But for now, we’ll stick to basic knife practice. Help me out with this lot. Teach them how to draw a knife, how to hold it, and the basic form.”

He and Nicholas passed out basic steel combat knives to the others. These had been blunted beforehand, just to make them safe. The last thing they wanted was to accidentally have a death during training. Fortunately, they were all soldiers, so physical training wasn’t alien to them. They adopted the basic moves quickly, and within the first half hour, they were pairing up and practicing the moves on each other. Jerik paced in a wide circle around them, watching closely as they made awkward lunges and retreats. 

Nicholas might have been young, but he was a pretty damn good teacher when it came to this. He stepped in frequently to correct small faults in the styles of the platoon, either changing how they were holding the knife when they attacked or fixing their footwork as they moved. There wasn’t much for Jerik to do in the end. He’d planned on having to carry most of the lesson. This was, of course, when he’d thought that he’d likely be the best knife fighter in the entire platoon.

Maybe there was some merit to having a melee fighter in the platoon, he thought. Nicholas would probably be one of his officers. He had a level head on his shoulders. He reacted quickly, and he could manage himself in a crisis. Those qualities would make him an invaluable asset in raids and hunting missions. Not every member of a platoon could be a standard soldier type. And as that thought occurred to him, so did another.”

“Keep them going for another hour,” he called to Nicholas. “I’m off to take care of something.”

He had the basic core of soldiers selected. He’d benefit from expanding that core, of course, but for now, he needed to augment it with supporting types. A mage or two who specialized in attack and defense wouldn’t hurt. A Toad too, he thought, thinking of the specialty soldier who carried more equipment than weapons. They had all the emergency gear needed for missions, though nobody could quite remember where the nickname Toad had come from. It was a moniker that all Toads wore with pride, however. It was their calling.

With these requirements, he knew he couldn’t just expect applicants to come in of their own volition. He had to go through specific recruitment methods. The first stop was the Union Barracks, owned by Janitos and his collective. It was a short walk to Market Street from the rented training compound, one that he covered quickly.

“Welcome to the Union Barracks,” said a short, dark-skinned woman with curly silvery-gray hair. “My name is Annabelle. How can we help you today?”

I’m here to make a few consignments for my new platoon,” Jerik explained. “I need two combat mages and a Toad.”

“Is that all?” Annabelle asked, frowning down at the tablet in front of her. “It says here you don’t have any Magik engineers or a research crew.”

“Starting small,” Jerik replied.

“That’s understandable,” She said. “But Janikos requires that you have some established facilities already before doing business with us. We can’t supply you with platoon members if you don’t have the capacity to support them.”

“You can’t assign me any soldiers that are already geared up?”

“Not as staff,” Annabelle said, giving him a patient smile. “Those are part of our mercenary services. I can offer you our listing for those, but they’ll cost more than general staff.”

“I know that already,” Jerik sighed. “I hired a demolitionist, and it cost me nearly fifty thousand.”

“How did Charlie do on the job?” She asked. “He seemed satisfied with it. I think he was part of your strike against Magnus?”

“The first half of it. I took on the last part alone.”

“Yes, I saw that. The video of you killing Magnus went quite viral. I hear he’s down to company size, and frantically trying to reclaim his old gear.”

Jerik let out a loud laugh at that. “Good luck with that, I’d tell him. He can’t get back to Raid-Class that easily.”

She chuckled quietly in reply. “True. I don’t expect that he’ll be a threat to anyone for a good while now.”

“So how do I get a research crew up and running?” He asked. “I assume the first step is securing a compound.”

“That’s one of them,” she agreed. “There’s no right or wrong way to go about setting up your compound, but it’s the most important piece. A research crew can construct items and other things from the monsters that you kill. You can also hire a mule or a caravan to store materials on longer missions or raids. That way, you can farm materials in bulk.”

“I’m familiar with how that all works,” Jerik interrupted. “So a research crew and an engineer, eh?”

Annabell nodded. “Engineers are hard to come by. Not many people spend time learning the finer points of crafting items or learning Menoran enchantments when they could just grind out better equipment for themselves. It takes a unique mind to modify your weapons. If you find someone who regularly makes their own equipment, that’s a good starting point.”

“I think I have someone in mind for that,” Jerik said slowly. And he did indeed think of someone int that moment, someone who had made their own equipment. He supposed it was time to get Nicholas used to the idea of future promotion, sooner than expected. He thanked Annabelle for her time and turned to leave the shop once more. He hadn’t expected that many roadblocks for something as simple as hiring staff. Well, he thought, only time could solve that issue. For now, his platoon needed gear. And that meant it was time to go on a hunt.