Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
AUDREY
Mages highly secretive about resources, attendance, and movements.
Open about training, spells, etc. Many within internal power structures seem very happy at first but upon further conversation they are exhausted and have the confidence of someone who knows if they look down, they’ll see they’re flying without wings.
Let Stefan know I’m fine, just keeping a very low profile.
Advisor has come to visit me, so still have options open.
Stefan just needs to learn to love dick. —Rubes to the Man in the Mountain
La’Angi Orchard
Hands braced on my hips I stood, staring at the still-rare sight of the yellowed leaf on the ground.
I imagined my lungs working like a bellows, pumping the air through my body.
My limbs were tired. I had aches that I knew, from my experience going too deep too fast years ago, could turn into semi-serious injuries.
I’d been training during every free moment, and plenty that weren’t, too.
I daydreamed about combat. In my dreams, I fought my father.
Not in an alarming way, but like it was training drills, similar to what I did with Kaelson.
No real warmth, just what was required, what was smart and what was best. That was how I spent my sleeping hours.
“Drink,” Isolde told me. The skin of water she tossed me hit between my breasts. I grabbed it before it could hit the dirt too, turning back to my training partners.
I didn’t assess their readiness to go again. We’d done this yesterday and the day before, and the day before that, too, except those days we hadn’t had Kaelson to switch in. Both Chay and Thomas could keep going.
Isolde’s words of assessment rang in my head. They’re training smart. Just reminding their bodies of lessons learned. They aren’t giving everything, because they know they can’t. And you can’t, either. Not all the time, not on every front.
There was nothing left I could do to make the faire a success.
Nothing left for me to plan or finesse for the tourney.
Any changes I made from here would be different but not necessarily better.
That wasn’t because it wasn’t perfect, but because I’d already reached the limitations of my skills and resources… and possibly even surpassed them.
Until people started arriving, and things started to go awry, there was nothing else for me to do except hone my edge.
“Only a few weeks before the faire,” Kaelson said, stretching out his shield arm. “I haven’t asked how you feel about that, m’lady.”
Everyone else had. Oh, I simply can’t wait or I’m so nervous but also so excited were the standard responses I gave.
It was strange to see Kaelson without his tabard. Had I ever seen him in shirtsleeves? There was a wide scar on the outside of one of his forearms. It was as silver as the thick pelt of hair that protected the rest of the limb.
I feel like I can’t settle into anything else until the faire is done and I’ve survived the tourney.
The balls, the feasts, the social soirees.
I knew I could do it, but I wasn’t sure exactly how, yet, or what it’d cost me.
I doubted I’d have time to maintain my training schedule.
I was relying on that window of time to recover from the pace I’d set and would scale back in the aftermath.
My father would be riding through the gates on the other side of the harvest, and the apples already hung low on the branches.
“While these two old bastards recover, we can go again,” Chay said, giving me a nod.
Brought back to myself, I unstoppered the skin and drank deeply.
Isolde held out my shield, which I took one-handed.
Once the water was gone, I let her take it from my hand and took my sword from her.
In the clearing, a few stray yellowed leaves peeked out amid the grass, flattened by the day’s lessons.
Chay bowed. He lunged, I avoided. The way he turned his foot, the shift of his weight, the angle of his elbow told me before he moved what he’d be doing.
I reacted, aiming to keep a distance, forced to defend.
Through every step of his onslaught, hopelessness beat through my veins.
I could see it coming with enough time to hold him off, but that was all.
“The fight is out here,” Isolde called.
I sucked in a quick breath. Chay’s eyes were deep enough to drown in. The ground beneath my feet was soft from the rain a few days ago. The weight of the gambeson over my shoulders was comforting. A small part of me longed to go back to the summer solstice, when Thomas had gifted it to me.
Chay reversed his sword for a brutal downward slash that hit my shield with enough force to make my elbow ache.
I pushed forward, but I had as much strength as a piece of bread at the bottom of a bowl of stew.
He pushed back and I staggered, dodging to the side, dropping down low and kicking off along the ground, tucking and rolling with my shield and sword.
Except I was flattened partway through by a boot on my spine.
The wind was knocked out of me. I looked up, gasping, along the blunted blade to the face of my main training partner.
“You need to rest,” he told me, as if I’d proved his point.
No. I dropped my sword and shield, lunging up, grabbing his wrist and pulling him off-balance.
But he’d been training grappling with me and Isolde.
He didn’t move like a Matri’sion. At least, that was what Isolde said.
Not like I did. He had strength. Our bodies were chess pieces, our limbs levers, our joints weaknesses.
I rolled across the ground with him, refusing to give in.
Yet no matter how I refused, my strength was sapped.
I tapped out before I did serious damage, before he even forced me to submit. Here, at least, I could see a few steps ahead. He was setting me up for an arm lock that would hurt to resist. I couldn’t muscle out of it, but I knew what it’d take me to try to outmaneuver him.
“You’ve got better,” Isolde told him, reaching past him to offer me a hand up.
I took it. He fell back, wiping his face. “Thanks go to you two.”
She grunted, clasping me to her chest. “You’re in good form today.” My legs were shaking. “You know what I’d like to see?” she asked Kaelson and Thomas. “The three of you, taking on this guy.”
I saw them exchange glances and shrugs. “After this, I need to return,” Kaelson told us. “Apologies, m’lady. You can continue if you wish.”
We all knew I needed to sleep. Instead, I nodded. Isolde’s hold didn’t change until I shifted my weight away, and even then, her hand stayed on me.
I didn’t need to conceal anything from her. But I wanted to.
I retrieved my own shield, my own sword.
Chay was wiping his brow. I’d made him sweat, but it didn’t bring my pleasure.
I’d learned if someone said It’s a bit warm, Chay started to sweat.
During the summer he’d had perma-damp beads across his collarbones.
He didn’t stink with it, but I suspected he would if he wasn’t one to bathe frequently.
The idea of climbing in and out of a tub made me want to weep. If I didn’t soak out some of these aches…
Thomas and Kaelson fell in beside me. Their rhythm was familiar to me now. I was in the center because I was the weakest link. They’d put me in the safest position. It wasn’t too often we’d trained with me on a flank.
Chay swung his sword lazily, rolled his shoulders, settling the fabric more comfortably against his skin. Then he started to advance.
I’d seen the same fight moons ago, early on.
It had been as much to skill him up as me, and I knew it, but I wasn’t sure if he did.
Either way, he’d learned. He moved fast to one side, trying to outflank us, pinning down Thomas.
Kaelson and I shifted, flanking Thomas, pressuring Chay.
He moved again, coming toward the flank I held I knew all I needed was to turn back his blade and soon enough I was back in the center.
We pushed him back, of course. One knight, even the best, against three?
I couldn’t kill my father like this.
Chay was breathing hard, attacking aggressively, keeping us moving. I didn’t know what Isolde wanted me to learn from this. I knew how this ended.
Chay scrambled back from a short jab from Kaelson’s spear, leaving his back open. I moved my shield and brought my sword down in a slash that protected my hand, taking no risks. He saw me too late.
Before the blow could land, the force of an arrow sinking into my shield made me stagger forward. Another hit the corner of Kaelson’s.
I wanted to laugh, but I was too tired. Chay, grinning, turned to Thomas and got in close, where his spear wasn’t useful.
“Never underestimate your archers,” Kaelson said, with the air of a tutor.
I thought of trying to pull the shaft out. It’d require juggling my sword. The fight was done, the lesson learned. We’d forgotten the fifth person. Not that she’d ever participated in the shield wall strategies before, but it only took once.
One person, in one moment, could change everything. That was what she wanted me to know.
I wondered when she’d say the words to me. I let her take my practice sword, and then the shield. I went to the nearby stream and washed my face. They did the heavy lifting of getting us ready to go, the packing up, the saddling of horses.
I had made progress. I knew I had. I must have. There was no way I could live and breathe the sword without having learned something.
My reflection was fractured in the water’s surface. I needed to re-do my hair.
I could’ve lifted my arms if my life had depended on it. But today, it didn’t. I knelt by the water, feeling the damp from the ground soaking into the fabric of my pants.
The faire was so far away, and yet so close.