Chapter XXXV
XXXV
SWEAT BURNS MY UNBLINKING EYES AND EVAPORATES into steam off my bare torso as Conor and I circle each other in the icy dawn, breathing hard, staves at the ready.
In the background, fog still hangs low and heavy over our hidden valley; up here on the heather-strewn slope we can see only the lazy billowing of the cloud’s top, highlighted by a peeking summer sun that I already know won’t burn away the rest of the damp for at least another hour.
Somewhere down beneath lies Loch Traenala. Each morning its mirror surface wreathed in white. Each morning hauntingly still and silent and beautiful.
The crack of wood meeting wood echoes and then is swallowed by the mists as Conor leaps forward again and I swivel, barely bracing my cloth-blunted spear enough to withstand the shivering blow. I dance back. A motion I’m not unfamiliar with, these days.
“Give yourself to the fight, Leathf hear.” Pádraig’s growl is directed at me.
The enormous, bearded man just spent five minutes working with me, adjusting my positioning and grip, showing me the best way to hold the haft so that it’s balanced and I can stay agile.
A surprisingly patient teacher. “The weapon must become an extension of you.”
I grunt a curt response. I’ve only been here a week, but it’s already a recognisable refrain.
More meaning to it than I’ve grasped, I think, despite my understanding of the Tongue having improved significantly thanks to our nightly camps during the shore-hugging, crawling, more than monthlong voyage here.
I do know the broad strokes of it well, now.
Can communicate my thoughts with concision and accuracy.
But on occasion, I admit, some of the subtleties still escape me.
Conor begins probing my left side through a series of feinting thrusts, which I command already tensed muscles not to react to.
Instead I try again to settle, to keep my focus on his movements.
I’ve sparred with him before—I’ve sparred with each of the dozen watching students, now, at various points over the past week—and they’re all very good.
Well trained and disciplined, reactions instinctual and unerringly accurate.
Back at the Academy, I always had the advantage of having been taught combat from a young age, more strenuously and more consistently than anyone else.
Here, I am behind even on that.
Conor is fiery-tempered, though. A loud and impatient and boisterous sixteen-year-old, not particularly cunning.
The smart thing for him to do is to wait for me to make a move, to inevitably open myself up for a counter.
Instead he leaps forward. Staff blurring in his hands, his control sharp and movements deft as he strikes again and again, focusing once more on my weak left but not so much that I can avoid guarding the right.
I dodge and block and dodge again, backpedalling, looking for an opening. It never comes. The loose circle of onlookers shuffles as I get too close to them, giving me more room.
A little desperate, I feint forward. Instead of falling for it, Conor lunges, cracking me on my left shoulder.
I cry out at the shuddering impact but he doesn’t stop, swivelling smoothly and taking advantage of my momentary shock to sweep my feet from beneath me.
Air explodes from my lungs as my back slams into the grass and dirt.
“You must use your body and the ground to brace your weapon more. The techniques you used were ineffective,” says Pádraig over my groans. “You are still thinking like a man with two arms.”
“A man with only one doesn’t usually bother with a spear,” I mutter as Conor leans down and offers a hand.
The sandy-haired boy is frustratingly cheerful, not smug or acting in any way superior.
They do this so often here that it’s rare anyone takes victories or losses personally. I let him haul me up.
“And yet that is your weapon.” Pádraig says it simply, no chiding in his tone even if it’s implied. “You must make yourself worthy of it.”
“I have repurposed them for our fight, warrior. Their processing capability is limited,” I murmur in Vetusian.
He frowns at me. Not understanding the language. “What?”
I shake my head uneasily, trying to clear it.
I didn’t mean to say it; the words were just …
there. Did I hit my head that hard? I exhale.
Take in the faces of the other students surrounding us.
I am among the oldest of the two dozen or so training at Loch Traenala, I soon realised when we arrived.
Some are as young as twelve. “Of course, Udar Pádraig.”
Pádraig continues to frown, but lets my strange muttering slide. “You are trying to protect yourself too much,” he continues. “You are twisting away from the fight.”
“Yes. I lost my arm,” I point out, somewhat snippily this time.
“The bigger problem is that you lost your nerve.”
A ripple goes through the gathered group. I redden. Straighten. He delivers the words calm and rock steady as always, but there’s no doubting he’s trying to goad me.
And I have to let him. I’m by far the worst of the oldest half dozen students, and while I intend to keep it that way, I still need to look like I’m doing everything I can to prove myself.
Not that it’s hard. I have never liked losing.
“Fine.” I snatch my wrapped spear off the ground. “Let’s try again.”
I don’t have to feign the majority of my anger.
I am bigger than Conor, taller and older, though much of my bulk from the Academy has been lost to a more stringy leanness now.
I’m not ashamed that he beat me—he is genuinely talented, as is everyone here.
I am more than annoyed that Pádraig seems to think it is my spirit, not my injury, that is at fault.
Conor shrugs and we circle again. I’m smarting from where he made contact, both side and shoulder. I let the pain focus me.
“Be worthy of the weapon,” Pádraig calls.
I don’t allow Conor the offensive this time, coming in hard and fast with the haft braced against my body. It whirls as I move, lashing out as an extension of my arm. Conor blocks and I shift my grip suddenly, dropping and spinning. The momentum carries the spear around smoothly at his waist.
He evades, and I’m off-balance. I sense more than feel the crack of his staff sweeping my legs from beneath me again. The world tilts and I land on my side.
I groan, and it’s not entirely from pain this time. Perhaps in a different environment. Perhaps with different weapons.
But here. Now. With the disadvantages I have.
I genuinely cannot beat him.
The realisation sinks deep, hurts more than I expected given it’s the outcome I need.
It’s not as though I ever imagined I was invincible, or assumed I would always face less skilled opponents.
But I did always believe I had a chance, before.
Always believed that no matter the odds, I had at least a shot at leaving a fight victorious.
I push myself to my knees, then hold up my hand to indicate defeat. “I don’t think the weapon is impressed today, Udar Pádraig,” I cough.
There is a chuckle from the onlookers, though Pádraig doesn’t join them. “You are conceding?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I stand. “Because he is better than me.”
“You have determined this from two falls?”
“I have determined it because of this.” I waggle my useless stump of an arm at him. I don’t have to feign the heat in my voice.
Pádraig considers me implacably. “Conor?”
“Yes, Udar Pádraig?”
“Let us see if you can prove Leathf hear’s belief that a disadvantaged warrior is a dead one.” Pádraig turns to the onlookers. “Tara?”
Conor groans under his breath.
The lithe young woman who steps forward is on the shorter side of average height, bound auburn hair reaching to her waist. The iron torc she always wears gleams dully at her throat, and the deep, clearly old scar that runs from the corner of her mouth up past her eye creases the right side of her face.
She’s the best fighter here, both from what little I’ve seen and what the others have said. Aloof, though. Of the students of an age with me, she’s the one I’ve spoken to the least.
Tara twirls her spear, the latticework of art inscribed along the haft dizzying to the eye.
All the students here have their own weapons, but most of them are undecorated, or have only one or two symbols carved into wood or etched into iron.
Mine is the only one vaguely as intricate, and like mine, I occasionally get the sense of something more from her weapon.
That faint, distracting pulse in my mind.
I also get the distinct impression that Tara intensely disapproves of the similarity between them.
She glances at Pádraig, who nods.
She puts her left hand behind her back, and squares up to Conor.
Conor attacks.
It’s clear from the outset that he is not holding back; his staff sings as he probes Tara’s left, just as he did mine. If anything, he’s pushing harder here, striking with more gusto. I can’t help but wonder if he was going easy on me.
Unlike me, though, Tara seems unfazed.
The young woman moves with short, smooth motions, and there’s a repeating sharp clacking as wood hits wood over and over again.
She positions the haft beneath her forearm to brace it, then uses the ground, then meets force for force as her spear flicks upward.
Stepping forward and back with calm, deliberate movements. Never worried. Never rushed.
Conor doesn’t let up; his face is a mask of concentration as he peppers Tara with feints and creatively placed strikes. None of it matters. She is always moving, always reacting, always one step ahead. Her left hand never twitches from where it is locked behind her back.
Then she evidently spots some mistake by Conor, though I don’t see it. Her spear suddenly blurs.
Conor is defending desperately. Once. Twice.
Tara spins her weapon impossibly in her hand, changing direction at the last moment and cracking Conor in the hip. Conor flinches and then Tara is barging into him with a shoulder, sending him flying backward to skid along the grass until he comes to a wheezing stop.
“Very good, Conor. Your footwork improves.” Pádraig doesn’t look surprised. Tara isn’t even out of breath.
Conor, to his credit, nods gratefully as he gets to his feet. Annoyed that he lost, but not surprised and not bitter.
I assume that’s the extent of the lesson, but Pádraig looks around. “Seanna. Miach. Come and help Conor.” He eyes me, checking I’m paying attention, after he calls the names.
Seanna is fifteen, and the fair, dark-haired girl is short for her age, but I’ve seen her move and she is as fast as anyone. Miach is closer to my age, athletic and clever. The two step forward without hesitation, separating to place themselves at equal intervals around Tara.
I barely restrain a scoff. Tara will have a blind spot, inevitably be unable to see at least one of them.
There’s no starting signal necessary; all three students launch in at Tara at once, not giving her the opportunity to take the initiative.
Staves whir and then Tara is moving, ducking and weaving and somehow anticipating where Miach—who is directly behind her—is aiming, slipping below the blow and blocking the other two with an angled spear braced against the ground.
It doesn’t stop there. Tara spins and kicks the grounded spear into a vicious upswing that catches Seanna in the chin, then allows the motion to continue, smoothly slinging it along her shoulders and twisting to take the brunt of Conor’s next hit.
Miach is going low even as Seanna is falling, but Tara leaps so that her body is briefly sideways, over the top of the swing, then regains her footing smoothly and uses her momentum to let her spear snake through her grip into something close to a javelin throw.
The thinly wrapped edge cracks Conor in the temple.
Tara is already moving after it, catching it before it falls and then whirling, using the ground once again to block another two quick strikes from a wide-eyed Miach.
Tara backs away and at first it seems as though she’s retreating, but then she sprints forward, plants her haft in the ground and vaults, foot lashing out in a vicious kick that collects poor Miach in the ear. The boy goes down.
Tara scans the three on the ground, checking they’re not getting back up. Breathing hard, at least. She steps over the groaning forms to stand briefly in front of me. Commanding my attention as she finally, slowly brings her left hand from behind her back, before walking away without a word.
Pádraig comes to stand beside me, watching Conor and the other two pick themselves up.
“You do not have to be less, Leathfhear,” he says softly. “Not unless you wish to be.”
He moves on, calling on a couple of the younger students to perform a drill, though almost every eye is still fixed admiringly on Tara. It’s hard to blame them. It shouldn’t be possible. It’s not possible.
The problem is, I know exactly how she did it. It was hard to see in the quick-fire action, but at the end, just before she finished off Miach, I saw her eyes.
They were completely black.