"Oh, it is good if but for god it would kill you later? - yes please hit me both."

Gabriel would normally just hit people but with Robert and Jenny both hovering he is pretty hesitant to whack their foster child over the head with a stick.

This is something Nicole can rescue him from, probably, he's pretty sure a woman hitting Iomedae is going to come off as less alarming to his extremely normal coworker. He will look over to where she's sitting - she's chatting with the sewing group politely and sipping water, which is not how he'd recover between fights - and see if he can wave at her. 

Nicole is more than happy to stroll over! After Gabriel explains to her with a few quiet words, she can tap Iomedae in the helmet. "This is light."

Tap again, slightly harder - "This is still light."

Tap again, right on the borderline - "This is just about light, but if you don't want to get hit very hard you can call it good when you're new, and people won't hit you so hard."

Tap again, hard enough to make Iomedae move - "This is good."

"...I think that would not kill me even with steel! The helmet is American."

"You'd definitely be dead with no helmet, though, right? And with a medieval - not American - helmet, it might break it." 

"Break a not American helmet, yes. So good is, if not wear American armor, and no God, then would be dead?"

"....I'm not sure what you mean by no God. If you mean - it would be a miracle and you'd have to get lucky but you could be alive - yes, absolutely."

"I mean, - people who work for God, who no warriors, what they called."

"...hmm, monks? Nuns, maybe? Clergy? There's - a lot of ways to work for the church and I don't think any of them would be relevant?" 

"God not save the dying?"

"Not to the best of my knowledge."

Nicole is aware of some things like - incredibly magical healing fountains deep beneath the Earth or possibly in the fae realm which might save the dying - but they seem to work perfectly well for atheists and Hindus and Buddhists and pagan witches and other people who don't believe in the Abrahamic God. 

"I will tell him he should do that! I think I know now what good is and Lucy won all the fight, or all but one maybe."

"No! You won the first one, I was stupid and gave you the opening but you still won it, and then when I hit you in the leg you only would've lost the leg - we go down to our knees, to simulate a leg injury, but you can keep fighting - and then after the hold you won two fights, with that scorpion shot and that face thrust - I didn't think you knew how to do that!" 

Out of context that would sound like a relatively normal sort of thing for a religious person to say - Iomedae will pray to God to spare the wounded, that's lovely, plenty of Crusaders probably did that - but for her to be calibrating blows off the assumption that God would save her, it kind of sounds like she actually thinks God might. Gabriel was tentatively hypothesising raised by the fey, but there's no fey that would tell their human changeling child that they had a direct red telephone to God to ask for their blood to stay inside their body please.

Unfortunately there is absolutely no way he is getting this kid alone to ask questions like do you know about magic and are you aware that magic is supposed to be secret and where the hell is Taldor anyway.

"I think a couple of Lucy's were light, yes, when you were moving away from her so she didn't catch you as close as she wanted to. It's always hard to tell as a spectator, but you're pretty fast on your feet. And Lucy, you still forget your hip sometimes."

She does NOT forget her hip, she's done HOURS of pell this week, it's just sometimes she's feinting and sometimes she's tangled up and sometimes she's doing the smaller-fighter thing of trying to use the spring of her knees for power rather than rotation. She's going to smile and nod though because smiling and nodding is the polite thing you do when the knights are wasting time talking instead of letting her get hit with a stick, which is how she actually learns. 

" - I think if you lose a leg you die always. Other person then has more -" she doesn't know the word for it but she demonstrates. Someone without a leg has no reach and can't move very fast and it should be easy for the uninjured fighter to kill them.

"Oh? Want to try?"

"Yes!"

Nicole has been training really quite hard for the past several months because she wants knighthood badly. If she had a white belt, she'd be totally unconcerned about Iomedae - no newcomer should be able to touch her if she doesn't want them to, no matter how talented - and thinking of going easy. She doesn't, though, and that means she cannot slip up in front of Gabriel and Reynhard and risk them thinking badly of her. She's been kicking everyone's asses relentlessly because right now she has something to prove. 

She goes to get her helmet and, when she pulls it on, her whole mindset switches into a fighting stance. The world looks so different through a visor. It makes her brain see everything in terms of threats and openings and movements and joints, rather than colours and faces. 

"She's really fast," Lucy whispers to Iomedae. "...go get her."

(Then she's already bouncing off to get water and see if anyone else wants to fight her.)

Nicole salutes Iomedae gracefully and settles comfortably onto her knees. "Alright. Same rules as a normal fight, but you can't walk all the way around my back, and it won't matter if you hit me in the leg because I already lost the leg. Whenever you're ready."

Ah okay 'can't go behind them' makes it a harder problem. It still ought to be a substantial advantage. Iomedae will start not-circling-because-that's-not-allowed and then attack.

Nicole doesn't actually seem like she puts very much effort into blocking at all. The very corner of her shield just conveniently strays barely into the path of Iomedae's sword. It's a lazy motion, the precision hidden behind a shrug-like roll of the shoulder.

Iomedae staying at range and using her reach is not a bad idea; Nicole can't reach most of her without really lunging. But there's no real way to attack with a sword without putting your sword arm in range of the enemy. She shifts her weight forwards off her heels - another tiny motion that gives a deceptively large boost to her range and power - and twists to bop Iomedae across the forearm. Fast enough to sting, but not very hard, because most people really don't require forearm shots as hard as bodyshots. (She's seen a broken ulna once, in Crown, and she has no desire to see one again.) 

"...good?"

"I wouldn't question your honour for saying light to that, I hit it right on the borderline. Lots of people would say good because they don't want to be hit as hard on the arm as in the body. If you break your arm you can't train for six weeks at least. Up to you." 

Nicole is settled back on her heels quite comfortably, ready for Iomedae to try again.