Yes, but you almost wish she didn't.

"That is not a bad idea," she says. "We are not making as good a time as I had hoped, so at our current rate we will likely get there just before nightfall. I do not want to enter the city after dark, so we might as well spend some time making you slightly less useless with your spear." The way she said that, you're not entirely sure it wasn't a dick joke. Surely not, right? Right, you agree with yourself, then thank Brighid.

She stops your travels a couple of hours later, with the sun still hanging above the mountains. There's still at least a good hour or hour and a half before sunset; you ask, "I know I asked whether we could stop early to train me, but isn't this a little too early?" Instantly, she brings the butt end of her glaive up and smacks you hard in the belly with it, just under the edge of your breastplate.

"First lesson: Do not question your instructor. I do not want to hear anything out of your mouth except breathing unless I ask you a direct question. Do you understand?" You glare at her, rubbing your belly -- that had hurt. She obviously thinks you're taking too long to reply as her glaive whips out towards you again, this time catching you on your upper arm beneath your pauldron. It's only the blunt wooden end of the weapon, but she clearly knows exactly how to get her point across with it.

"Ow! Jesus, lady. Yes, I understand."

"Good. Now, take your spear in both hands and show me how you think you are supposed to use it." Again with the potential double-entendres... Regardless, you grasp the haft of the spear firmly in both hands, turn slightly sideways to her, slide one foot forward, and point the spear in her general direction. She looks bored as she whirls her glaive around, knocking the spear from your grip and then slamming into the side of your knee, sending you crashing to the ground. You open your mouth to yell at her, but she waves her glaive at you and you snap your mouth shut with a click of teeth. You scramble back to your feet and collect your spear from where it landed several feet away while Brighid watches.

"I have seen better fighting stances and firmer grips from foals playing with toy swords. I know you have the crippling deficiency of only having two legs and so cannot help falling all over yourself, but losing hold of your weapon is the cardinal sin of combat. Even if you have another weapon on your belt, you are completely **** for the second it takes to unsheathe it, and no opponent of any quality will allow the opportunity to pass them. Even being knocked ass over head as you were is less dangerous than allowing yourself to be disarmed. I will now attack your weapon. Each time you lose your grip, I will make you regret it. We will not stop and eat until you maintain your grip through five attacks in a row or you die trying."

What follows is the most miserable hour and a half of your life to date. Brighid's Might far outmatches your own, and matching her skilled use of her weapon with your complete lack of a Skill with yours is not even close to fair. For the first half hour she effortlessly disarms you as you try everything you can think of to hang on to your weapon, and each time she gives you a new bruise with the back end of her glaive and a new scathing remark on how terribly you are performing. At first you are angry at her sadistic treatment of you, but after a dozen or so beatings, you begin to realize that although she is doing it in the rudest possible manner, she's actually giving you tips on how not to hold your weapon. The first time she strikes your spear and you flow with the movement, hands grasped tightly but not too tightly around the haft, actually deflecting her attack instead of being too stiff and letting all of her energy crash into your immobile weapon and send it flying from your hands, you smile in triumph. Then she performs a follow-up attack, tangling the head of her weapon with yours, and wrenches it from your grasp again.

Finally, as you begin to wonder if there are any un-bruised parts of your body and whether it might be easier to just ask her to kill you and have done with it, an extremely welcome prompt appears in your mind's eye.

Congratulations! You have reached level 1 in Spears. You are now Unskilled with Spears.

As soon as you dismiss the prompt you can feel the difference. You suddenly know that you weren't bending your knees enough and that you were holding your elbows too close to your body. The next time, you make it to Brighid's fourth attack before she disarms you, and even the expected crunch of her glaive against your side is less of a hardship now that you know you're making progress. It takes you another half hour to get to five strikes with your weapon still in hand, but you receive another level each in Spears and Light Armor during that time.

Finally, Brighid's onslaught ends. She hadn't even worked up a sweat! You're drenched in the stuff. She says to you, "It took you long enough. Training is over for tonight. There is a creek over there; I suggest you clean yourself off and polish your spear before you sleep."

You follow her advice and indeed, a few meters away from where she was taking off her armor is a small creek, just a meter or so across and only about thigh deep. You quickly strip out of your armor and clothes and look yourself over. Sure enough, you are absolutely covered in the sickly yellow-gray color of bruises in the process of forming. You are going to be miserable in the morning. On a hunch, you bring up your status screen, and sure enough you've lost almost thirty Health points! What's worse, there is a notification pulsing in the corner of your vision that you hadn't noticed in the middle of having the stuffing beaten out of you. You focus on it and it expands into your vision.

You are Wounded! You have acquired a Minor Wound: Heavily Bruised. You have -10 Health until you recover from the Wound.

Indeed, looking more closely you can see that a portion of your Health bar, a little less than 10% of the total, is a darker red than the missing Health. Well, that explains something you had been wondering about since you looked at the description of your Patch Wounds spell. Speaking of which, now seems as good a time as any to try it out. You fish the box of holding out of your backpack and retrieve one of the soothebalm leaves from it, then put it back in your bag. As with Flame Jet, you somehow just know how to perform the spell. You crush the leaf and rub the sticky sap inside all over your body, then press the remains of the leaf between both palms and begin to speak words you do not know the meaning of. A soft green-gold light accrues around your hands and then spreads down your arms and over your body as you continue chanting. After 10 seconds, the glow fades and your pain immediately begins to ease. You look back down at your body and the bruises have faded almost completely, as if they had been healing for a week; opening your status sheet again, you check your Health and find that you have twenty more current Health than you had before your spell and the Minor Wound is gone. You guess that removing the Wound also restored the Health it was penalizing you. You sink into the stream to wash the sweat, grime, and sap off of your body and groan as the cool water further soothes your wounds. Then you hear a rustle in the underbrush near the stream and you stiffen.