Lunge in Tertia (Plate 9)
Commentary
Jonathan Allen
This is a continuation of the Lunge in Quarta. While L’Ange will talk about parries and disengages further in a later lesson, this provides a good introduction to the concept. For the parry, rotate your hips so that your blade pushes the opponent’s slightly offline. Don’t move your hilt, this is all done with the body. This will make for a stronger parry and allow you to counter-attack that much faster.
Also be warned that if you parry too wide, you’ll make it easy for your opponent to disengage beneath your sword. He’s still going to try, but there is no sense in outright giving it to him.
Speaking of the disengage, you don’t have to lower your sword. As your draw back your right foot and lower your left hand, that will cause your point to dip. It’s practically unavoidable, so don’t waste movement pushing it down even farther.
For the gathering step, only allow ball of your right foot to touch the ground near the left. Then immediately step forward again for the trust in Tertia. If you allow the heel of your foot to touch the ground, you’re adding an extra tempo to your footwork.
Returning the left hand, it is going to swing backwards at you lunge in Tertia. Think of it as one smooth motion starting to drop as the right foot comes back and continuing the arc as the foot goes forward again. The final position of the arm should be nearly parallel to the body, palm out.
And interesting thing to note about the left palm is that it affects the point of the sword. If your left palm is down the sword travels straight. If you turn the palm out, as per the illustration, the point drifts slightly to the right. Not much, and this is easily overcome, but you can use it to your advantage when thrusting above the opponent’s arm.
You may find your opponent raises his hilt somewhat, or simply keeps is high. If he does this do not be tempted to raise your hilt as well. Instead you should still perform the long, low lunge and merely raise the point to compensate. (Though note at some point his hilt will be so high that you are better off attacking below.)
The counter is in chapter 8, plate 12.