Margo sighed. “Why am I learning to use knives I won’t carry?”
”Because I’m thorough and careful. Don’t argue.”
”What are these others?”
”This is a skinning knife.” It was a relatively flat, wide blade with a thin spine, and very delicate compared to the fighting knives. “It’s specialized for skinning an animal. This,” the next blade was curved, thick, and shaped nothing like any of the others, “is a hunting knife. Filleting knives,” he held up yet another, “are similar to skinners and completely useless for our purpose. Now, this odd-shaped little jewel is a Ghurka.”
It was a strange, zig-zag shape, with an ornate hilt
”This,” he drew a crescent-moon sword blade, “is called a scimitar. You’ll learn to use them, but the chances of your running across them are fairly slim because of relatively limited geographical distribution. Now, this Tanto,” he drew a blade shaped something like an Exact-O knife, “was designed to penetrate enamel-style armor in the Orient. It has the same tip shape as some Asian fishing knives. Again, limited usefulness as a fighting knife, but we’ll work with it because you may run across one if you end up in the Western Pacific Rim. Japanese samurai swords and halberds had the same blade shape, just longer and heavier. Now, last but not least is this little jewel.”
The final knife was a T -handled thing like a corkscrew, but the blade was shaped exactly like the spear-point dagger-except that the whole blade was only three inches long and the inch closest to the handle was little more than a dull-edged, narrow rectangular bar.