Practice swords

Butters was a squirrely little guy—quick, bouncy, and bright-eyed.
The man pursuing him around the Carpenters’ backyard was more of a bear—huge, powerful, and too fast for his size. He’d shaved his head entirely, and his scalp was the color of dark chocolate, covered with beads of sweat, and the blazing afternoon sun shone gratuitously upon all the muscle. Sanya was the size and build of an NFL linebacker, and his teeth showed in a broad smile the entire time he fought.
Even as I watched, the two men squared off, facing each other, each holding a length of wood carved to vaguely resemble a samurai sword. Butters held his in a two-handed grip, high over his head. The little guy was wearing his sports goggles, a tank top, and close-fit exercise pants. He looked like the protagonists in the old Hong Kong Theater movies—blade thin, flexible, and wiry with lean muscle that was all about speed and reflexes.
Sanya, dressed in battered blue jeans and biker boots, whirled his practice sword in one hand through a couple of flourishes and settled into a fencing stance in front of Butters and just out of his own reach, his off hand held out behind him.
“You have gotten much smoother,” said Sanya, his voice a deep rumble inflected with a thick Russian accent on the vowels.
“Still not any faster,” Butters said. And then his practice sword blurred as it swept down toward Sanya. Santa intercepted with a deflection parry, though he had enough muscle and mass on Butters that he probably didn’t need to. His return thrust slithered down the haft of Butters’s practice sword so fast that I heard it hit Waldo’s thumb. He yelped and leapt back, shaking that hand for a moment—but he didn’t lose his practice weapon.
“Smooth almost always better than fast,” Sanya said, stepping back and lifting up a hand to signal a pause in the practice. “Smooth is technique. Grace. Smooth lets you think while you fight.”
“And that’s a big deal?” Butters asked.
“Is everything,” Sanya said. “Fighting is least civilized thing one can do. Intellect is not made for fighting. You have been there, da?”
“Yeah. It’s terrifying.”
“Da,” Sanya replied. “Hard to take test while some stinking thing shoving your face into stinking armpit.” He set the practice sword carefully against the wall of the Carpenters’ little workshop and then picked up an old, worn-looking cavalry saber with a wire-wrapped hilt in a battered leather scabbard. “Hard to get much thinking done in fight,” Sanya said. He jabbed a thumb at one of his own biceps. “Muscle can be useful tool—or deadweight,” Sanya said. He jabbed his thumb at his own forehead. “But this is most dangerous weapon.”
Butters eyed the much, much larger man for a moment. “Yeah, everyone has one of those.”


Peace Talks Chapter 18, Page 170-171