He gestured to himself. "Might. Direct, overwhelming power. You see an enemy, you break them. It is honest, brutal, and predictable."
"I almost didn't," Elara admitted. "Mischief would have been faster. Might more certain."
Lin adjusted her glasses. "Others teach the line. Advance or hold. A peasant's logic." triangle strategy trainer
Her heart screamed for a clever ambush (Mischief). Her officers demanded a shield wall (Might). But Kaelen's voice echoed: A triangle is a decision.
Kaelen, a veteran weapons-master with a crooked nose and a quieter voice, stood at one point of the triangle. Across from him, at the second point, stood Lin, a former court strategist whose spectacles were perpetually askew. At the third point, fidgeting with the hem of her tunic, was Elara, the youngest city guard corporal in a generation. She was his new student. He gestured to himself
She then offered a deal: "Share our harvest. In spring, we'll help you repair your own lord's flooded fields. No blood. No oaths of fealty. Just a trade."
The cutpurses hesitated. They fled. The child was safe. You see an enemy, you break them
"Am I?" Elara said, pointing to a shadow where Lin was not hiding. "My archer has an arrow on your friend's eye. And my master," she gestured to a silhouette Kaelen had made from a broom and a cloak, "is a mage who can turn this granary to ash."