Dominic Green, "Shining Armour"

from The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection

—Beware of old men with swords. Or...Some melons get halved.

There’s a long tradition of stories where a young boy observes and learns from an older more experienced man in the practice of some profession. Some are better than others. This one is pretty good. The story portrays a society that has partially collapsed, but still has the remnants of powerful technology, and I thought this was sort of interesting. There’s also a few funny bits