The bandit-knight found them on the forest road three days past the village of Ilmenau, and Faust, watching from the driver's bench, made the immediate decision not to interfere.
"He's mine," Isfrid said, already sliding down from the coach before it had fully stopped, Isbert's cane unsealing in his grip with a sound like a held breath finally released.
The bandit was a broad, scarred man in mismatched plate. The shortsword he carried hummed with the low, uneven pulse of something that had woken recently and violently. A Somnolent Arma, Faust judged, watching with a physician's clinical distance even as his pulse climbed in sympathy with his godson's.
Young.
Unstable.
Exactly dangerous enough to kill a careless boy.
Isfrid was not, strictly speaking, careless.
He was simply seventeen, although may be mistaken by a twenty-year-old, and had never before fought anyone who genuinely wanted him dead. Except for his grandfather when he skipped the trainings, of course.
The first exchange taught him the difference in under four seconds.
The bandit's blade came in low and fast, with no wasted motion and no courtesy.
Nothing like the formal duel against the jealous suitor he'd rehearsed a hundred times in his grandfather's courtyard. Isfrid caught it on Frost's flat by instinct alone, the impact driving him back three full steps through frozen mud, his arm ringing to the shoulder.
Isfrid was at disadvantage here: the heavy sword, which was Frost's unsealed form, was unfairly slower and less swift than the weapon of the haughty bandit. Well, it was obvious if he used the real powers of his Relic, then the situation would be very different, but in the end he chose not to.
Was it because of his pride or desire to practice raw swordsmanship in a real fight, Faust knew none of what was going on inside his godson's head.
'He's going to lose this,' Faust thought.
One hand was already inside his coat, fingers closing around the cold silver box, before he made himself stop.
'Not yet. Let him find the fear first. It's the only teacher that sticks.'
Isfrid found it on the second exchange, when the bandit's return strike opened a shallow line across his forearm. For the first time in his charmed young life, he felt his own blood run hot with the certainty that he could die here, on this road, for nothing more dignified than a stranger's greed.
Something in him went very quiet after that.
Not calm. Faust would learn, watching, that it wasn't calm at all. It was narrow, every ounce of his scattered, prideful energy collapsing into a single, cold point of attention. The frost along Frost's edge thickened, daring to unleash it chill onto the enemy; yet it never did. Though the bandit became aware or rather concscious about the terrifying aura of the double-edged blade that Isfrid wielded,.
His footwork, sloppy a moment before, found his grandfather's discipline all at once, as though fear had finally cleared away everything pride had been cluttering up.
The third exchange ended it.
Isfrid didn't parry the bandit's next strike at all. He simply wasn't where the blade expected him to be, a half-step to the side leaving the man overextended. Frost's edge, keening with hoarfrost, slipped cleanly through the gap in his mismatched plate.
The bandit's Arma screamed as it died with him, a genuine shriek of tearing metal, and then both man and weapon collapsed into a heap on the frozen road.
The sword shattered into ordinary, lifeless steel the instant its bond broke.
Isfrid stood over him for a long moment, breathing hard, blood dripping steadily from his forearm onto the snow. He did not move until Faust's hand landed on his shoulder.
"You're hurt," Faust said, already reaching for his bag.
"I nearly died." Isfrid's voice came out smaller than he meant it to. "Faust. I nearly died. To a bandit. On a road."
"Yes." Faust began cleaning the wound with brisk, practiced hands, offering no comfort he didn't think his godson had earned yet. "Welcome to the actual practice of your craft, rather than the theory of it. How does it feel?"
Isfrid was quiet while the bandage went on, staring at the shattered pieces of a dead man's sword scattered across the road.
"Terrible," he admitted finally. "I don't ever want to feel that afraid again."
"Good," Faust said, tying off the linen with a firm, final pull. "Then you've learned the one lesson your grandfather's courtyard could never have taught you. You learned it while still breathing, which is considerably more than most young swordsmen manage on their first real fight." He helped the boy back onto his feet. "The fear doesn't leave. You learn, eventually, to fight beside it instead of running from it. That's all mastery has ever been."
He cleared his throat.
"But next time, just to be on the safe side, use all of your arsenal."