"Cunning and deception always lend themselves to it. Of covering and wounding, she is a master."

Stand in Posta di Finestra, the Window Guard, and your opponent has a very particular problem. Your sword is held high next to the side of your head, hilt near your temple, blade angled forward and down toward their face. Your arms form a frame around your own eyes, and your blade looks out at them through that frame like a face looking through a window. You can see them clearly. They see your point, already aimed, already at most of the way to home.

And because the guard is high, and the sword is already angled forward, anything they try to do to you has to go through your point first.

That is the Window Guard. An elevated, cunning, relentlessly threatening position that covers and wounds in a single fluid motion. Fiore calls her a master of exactly those two things, and once you have held her you understand why.

Where She Sits Among the Twelve Guards

Among Fiore's twelve guards, Finestra belongs to the high-forward family. Her siblings in that family are:

  • Posta di Donna, chambered behind the shoulder, loaded for the great descending cut.
  • Posta Longa, the fully extended probe with the point forward.
  • Posta Frontale (the Crown), held overhead with the point up.

Where Donna hides the sword behind you, Finestra holds it up and forward. Where Longa extends the sword into the opponent's face from shoulder height, Finestra extends it from head height with the hilt drawn back toward the temple. Where Frontale raises the sword overhead with the point straight up, Finestra tilts the point down toward the target.

Each of these high guards solves a slightly different problem. Finestra's specific gift is that she threatens the thrust and covers an incoming attack in the same body shape. Her structure is already a cover and already a threat. That is what makes her so hard to fight.

The Shape of the Window

Pick up a longsword and try it. Your right foot is back, your left foot is forward (or the mirror, depending on which side you are working). You bring the sword up so the hilt sits next to the right side of your head, roughly at your ear. Both hands are on the grip. The blade angles forward and slightly down, so the point is aimed at your opponent's face.

Your arms, the crossguard, and the blade now form an approximate rectangle in front of your face. You look through that rectangle at your opponent. That is the window.

Three things happen at once when you settle into this shape.

Your point threatens. Aimed directly at the opponent's face from head height, it is already where a thrust wants to arrive. A step forward and a small push of the arms puts your point into their eye-line with almost no warning.

Your blade covers. Any descending cut the opponent tries to bring down at your head has to pass through the blade that is already extended between you. Your angle is on their line before they have committed their own blade.

Your structure is loaded. The sword is high and back-and-forward simultaneously. From here you can transition into a descending cut (by dropping your hilt), a thrust (by extending your arms), a rising cut from the other side (by crossing the blade down and up), or a full rotation into a different guard. The Window opens onto many rooms.

The Two Windows

Fiore gives us Posta di Finestra on both sides of the body. Finestra destra (right) holds the sword next to the right side of the head. Finestra sinestra (left) mirrors her on the left.

The two mirrors are not interchangeable. Each covers different angles and loads different responses. Right-side Finestra works naturally against an opponent's cuts from their right; the mirror works against cuts from their left. A mature fencer moves between the two windows fluidly, choosing whichever side the fight is asking for.

Moving between the Window on one side and the Window on the other is one of the satisfying rhythms of Fiore longsword practice. The sword travels across the high line of the body, never losing its forward threat, and the feet step to maintain the structure on the new side. Beginners at HEMA Penzance spend a surprising amount of time early on learning to flow between the two Finestras, because that flow trains the high-line defence that most new fencers find alien.

"Cunning and Deception"

Fiore uses specific words for specific guards, and the words he chooses for Finestra are worth sitting with. Cunning (ingeniosa or close variants) and deception (inganno). These are not the words he uses for the patient Iron Door or the powerful Lady's Guard. He saves them for Finestra and Posta Longa in particular: the two guards that can make the opponent misread what is about to happen.

What is the deception in Finestra specifically? It is this. An opponent looking at the Window sees a cover in the guard's structure, and their instinct is to avoid the straight line of your blade and look for an angle around it. They might step off line. They might chamber a cut to come from below. They might pull back to reset the measure.

Each of those choices gives you something. If they step off line, your point follows them; you rotate the blade to track their new position and thrust. If they chamber a cut, you drop your hilt and your blade covers their line while your point is already halfway to their chest. If they pull back, you advance a step while maintaining Finestra's threat, and the measure closes until they must act.

The deception is that the guard looks like a defensive cover but functions as a threat. The opponent defends against the cover and loses to the threat.

The Descending Cut From Finestra

One of the most satisfying sword sensations in Fiore is the downward strike that drops out of Finestra. You start in the Window, blade forward, hilt high. You sink your hilt down and forward while rotating your shoulders, and the blade falls along a diagonal line that arrives on the opponent's head, shoulder, or weapon arm.

This is not the enormous fendente of Posta di Donna. Finestra's cut is shorter, quicker, and begins from a position that is already mostly there. It lacks Donna's cumulative momentum, but it arrives earlier in the tempo. Where the Lady's Guard bets on maximum power late, Finestra bets on decent power early.

Against an opponent who has just tried to cut you, that earliness is often everything.

The Thrust From Finestra

The straighter option is the thrust. From the Window, with the point already aimed at the opponent's face, a small forward drive of both hands combined with a passing step puts your blade into their mask, neck, or chest. The distance is short, the timing is quick, and the geometry is already set.

This is the thrust that punishes opponents who hesitate once the Window has settled on them. They look through your frame at your point. They see the point aimed at them. Their mind starts working on how to dissolve the threat. While they are working, you thrust.

Fiore's description of the thrust as "cruel and deadly" fits especially well when it arrives from Finestra, because the angle and distance are both optimal. The guard does not need a big arm extension to land home. Just a small, determined commitment forward, and the work is done.

What She Teaches

Train Posta di Finestra seriously for a few months and you begin to understand something about how high-line play works. The upper window of the body, above shoulder height, is where a lot of fights are won. Cuts from above, thrusts to the face, covers with the crossguard high: all of this lives in the space Finestra commands.

Beginners often default to the lower positions, Porta di Ferro and Dente di Zenghiaro, because holding the sword low is less tiring and feels less exposed. Mature fencers discover that the high guards, with Finestra foremost among them, control the engagement in a way the low guards cannot match. The Window makes the opponent fight up, and fighting up is harder than fighting down.

There is also a quieter lesson in Finestra about the relationship between cover and attack. The Western mind tends to separate defence and offence into different moves. Block, then counter. Parry, then thrust. Fiore's Window rejects this. Her cover is her attack. The same position that protects you already threatens the opponent. Learning this changes the way you think about fencing generally, and from there it changes the way you move.

Come and Learn

We practise Fiore's complete system every Tuesday evening at Penzance Leisure Centre, 7pm to 9pm. Your first lesson is free, all equipment is provided, and no experience is necessary. Come along and see for yourself.

Fiore's words in this article are from the Getty manuscript translations at Fight Like Fiore.