20. Long Climb #2
She didn’t announce herself. She didn’t need to. The sound of her sword clearing its scabbard was announcement enough, and the look on her face made both standing boys back up a full step without conscious decision.
Behind them, Grit appeared in a doorway that I could have sworn was empty five seconds ago.
He held his long knife low against his thigh, and the corridor’s dim light made the blade difficult to see against his dark clothing.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t move. He just stood there, blocking the retreat path with nothing but his presence and the suggestion of what he might do with the weapon if someone gave him reason.
“Seems like you forgot to count,” Maise said.
Pol had recovered enough to assess the new situation.
Two opponents had become four, the ambush had reversed itself, and the smart play was retreat.
He wasn’t stupid, whatever else could be said about him.
He collected his dignity and his friends, and the four of them squeezed past Grit’s doorway with the careful movements of people pretending they’d chosen to leave .
“Thanks for the timing,” I said, rubbing the feeling back into my shoulder.
“Grit saw them setting up an hour ago.” Maise sheathed her sword. “We let them commit before we moved. Wanted to see who’d show up and how they’d do it.”
I looked at Grit, who said nothing. He’d watched the ambush develop, tracked their movements, positioned himself and Maise for the intervention, and done it all without a word of coordination that I’d heard.
In my previous life, I’d have called that sergeant-level tactical awareness.
In this life, he was ten years old and already better at it than grown men I’d served with.
“You let me take the first hits,” I said.
“You can take hits,” Maise replied. “And now they know that even when they catch you alone, you’re not alone.”
The logic was ruthless. Let the ambush happen. Let them commit. Then show them that the team functioned even when separated, that attacking one of us meant answering to all of us. It was a message delivered through violence, which was the only language the Stone Yard truly respected.
Erik’s people didn’t try again.
◇ ◆ ◇
The eighth day came around with the regularity of a headache.
Every week, the Stone Yard’s training population gathered in the main practice ring for voluntary ranking matches.
Voluntary in the sense that nobody forced you to enter.
Mandatory in the sense that refusing to fight told everyone exactly what you were worth.
I’d been fighting in every one since our second week.
Lost most of them. Won a few against opponents my own size who made mistakes I could punish.
Learned something from every loss, which was the only currency that mattered when you were ten years old and fighting boys and girls who had two or four years of additional growth.
Today’s opponent was a boy named Calder, twelve years old, acknowledged bastard, competent with a sword and shield combination that gave him options I didn’t have.
He outweighed me by forty pounds and had the reach advantage of someone whose arms had finished the growth spurt mine were still waiting on.
Danzing refereed from the edge of the ring, arms crossed, that enormous sword propped against the wall behind him. His expression gave nothing away. It never did.
“Danarre. Calder. Standard rules. First blood or submission. Begin when ready.”
Calder settled behind his shield with the patience of someone who’d learned that bigger fighters win by waiting. Let the smaller opponent exhaust themselves attacking, then punish the opening. Solid strategy. Boring, but solid.
I circled left, keeping my blade high. The Knight Brand sat warm but quiet between my shoulders, present but unhelpful, like a dog that watches you work and can’t be bothered to fetch.
I’d stopped expecting it to show up on command.
When it came, it came. When it didn’t, I had to be good enough without it.
Calder waited. I tested his shield with two probing cuts, both deflected cleanly. He didn’t counter. Patient.
I changed angle, moving to his sword side where the shield offered less coverage. He pivoted to track me, shield repositioning, feet shuffling across packed earth. Good footwork. No wasted movement.
The Red Gale would have ended this in eight seconds.
Feint high, duck the shield, drive the spear through the gap at the armpit.
Kill shot. But the Red Gale had a body that matched his experience, and I was a ten-year-old whose arms tired after fifteen minutes of sustained sword work and whose legs were still two inches shorter than they needed to be for the techniques my mind remembered.
I attacked with a combination Danzing had drilled us on the previous week.
High cut shifting to low thrust, the standard deception that works on opponents who commit their shield to one level.
Calder read it. His shield dropped to meet the low thrust while his sword came over the top, aiming for my head.
But I’d anticipated the counter. I aborted the low thrust and stepped inside his reach, too close for his sword to land with any force. My pommel came up, aiming for the soft space under his chin.
He caught it on his shield. The impact jarred my wrist and sent vibrations up my forearm that made my fingers tingle. He shoved me back, using his weight advantage, and I stumbled over uneven ground, losing the distance I’d worked for.
“Clever,” Calder admitted, resetting his guard. “But you don’t weigh enough to make it stick.”
He was right. Every technique I attempted ran into the same wall: my body couldn’t generate the force my mind expected. The tactics were sound. The execution fell short by the exact margin that separated a veteran’s body from a child’s.
We exchanged two more combinations. I landed a cut across his forearm that would have drawn blood if our blades weren’t dulled for practice. He caught me with a shield bash that knocked me sideways and followed with a thrust that stopped a finger’s width from my throat.
“Submission or continue?” Danzing asked, his voice flat.
I looked at the sword point near my neck. Looked at Calder’s stance, solid and patient and ready to do this all afternoon. Looked at my own shaking arms and the bruise already forming where the shield had caught my ribs.
“Yield.”
Calder lowered his weapon and offered a hand. I took it. No shame in losing to someone bigger, stronger, and more patient. Shame lived in the refusal to learn from it.
“Your tactics are good,” Calder said quietly, pulling me to my feet. “Better than most. When your body catches up to what your head knows, you’ll be dangerous.”
I thanked him and limped back to where Maise waited at the ring’s edge.
She handed me a water skin without comment.
Behind her, Perrin was already talking to one of the attendants near the scoring table, gathering information about the day’s other results with the casual ease of someone who’d turned conversation into reconnaissance.
“You almost had him with the inside move,” Maise said.
“Almost doesn’t count in this ring.”
“It counts in the next one. You know the counter now.” She took the water skin back and drank. “Want me to spar the shield approach tonight? I’ve been working on a disarm that gets past the bind.”
I nodded. That was how it went. Lose a match, identify the failure, train the specific counter, come back the next eighth day with one less weakness. Slow work. Tedious work. But the kind of work that turns adequate fighters into good ones, and good ones into the sort of people Danzing approved of.
From across the ring, Baldir watched the proceedings from the raised platform where the legitimate heirs sat. He caught my eye, and something passed between us that wasn’t friendship or respect but was closer to acknowledgment. Still climbing. Still losing. But still here.
I held his gaze for a count of two, then looked away. The eighth day was young, and there were more matches to watch and more patterns to learn from other people’s losses.
◇ ◆ ◇
The sealed letter arrived with a servant I didn’t recognize, a woman in house colors who carried herself with the invisible competence of someone who’d served the main household for years. She waited while I broke the seal, read the contents, and processed the implications.
Report to the main house study for supplementary instruction. Tell no one the nature of this summons.
Henrik’s handwriting. Henrik’s seal. I changed out of training leathers into the cleanest clothes I owned, which weren’t particularly clean, and followed the servant through parts of the compound I’d only seen from a distance.
The main house smelled different from the Stone Yard.
Where our world carried the permanent tang of sweat, steel oil, and the medicinal sharpness of Morrigan’s treatment room, the main house offered polished wood, old books, and the faint trace of Henrik’s expensive pipe smoke that lingered in curtains and carpets like the memory of better conversations.
The study was small, private, and furnished for function rather than display. A writing desk, two chairs, a shelf of books that showed actual use rather than decorative ownership. Standing beside the desk, hands clasped behind his back, was a man I’d never seen before.
Thin. Precise. Dressed in clothes that cost more than our entire team’s equipment allocation.
His posture made Danzing’s military bearing look slovenly, every joint aligned with the deliberate perfection of someone who’d been taught that the body speaks before the mouth opens.
His hands, when he gestured toward the chair, moved with an economy that suggested he’d calculated the minimum motion required and refused to exceed it.
“Sit,” he said.
The word carried the weight of a full assessment of everything I was doing wrong. I sat.