Chapter 15 #3
He shifts his stance, demonstrating the smallest movement – a pivot of the hip, a change in weight.
‘If a blade appears behind you, most folk do one of two things: turn hard and cut their own flesh on the knife, or go limp and give the bastard choices. Neither serves you.’ He guides her with two fingers at her hip, light but certain.
‘Small turn, quick movements. Now your heart isn’t where he expects.
He has to adjust, and in that splinter of time, you move. ’
Marian exhales through her teeth, forcing the breath low like John taught her. She pivots again, the stick sliding just past her ribs instead of into them. The air hums with the motion.
‘Good,’ Allen murmurs. ‘Catch the hand, not the blade. He lives or dies by his grip.’ He shows her the joint, angles the stick across his own wrist, and lets her see the mechanics. ‘You don’t need strength, just leverage. Step here, weight on the outside edge, and press.’
Her stick slides under his wrist, his arm folding neatly into a shape that would drop any man to his knees. It’s a dance disguised as survival, and for a heartbeat she almost forgets the pain beneath her bandages.
‘You don’t need to be stronger than him, merely smart enough to stay beyond the reach of his elbow.’ He rotates, guiding her stick under his, levering his arm into a shape no body enjoys.
She repeats the movement. Shift. Catch. Step. Each time smoother, quieter. Slowly, the memory loosens its grip.
‘Now, once you have someone this close, you have a few options.’ He ticks them off with his free hand. ‘Bite the forearm. Knee to groin. Stomp the knee. Or – my personal favourite – turn his own hand toward him.’
He walks her through the steps slowly: her stick anchors his wrist, her forearm presses, his own imagined blade angles back toward his belly. Even pretending, she feels a thread of savage satisfaction pull through her.
‘Again,’ he says.
They run it until her body starts to find the corners without him naming them. Shift. Catch. Step. Leverage. His pace never rushed, each repetition sanding more fear off the memory.
Little John watches, correcting with a knuckle or brief touch: a knee too straight, breath too shallow, a stance that’s crept narrow. When Marian’s attention frays, he simply breathes, an anchor she can moor to without looking.
Like clockwork, her second meal of the day appears outside her door without fanfare, only a single knock to signal its arrival.
She quickly devours it before continuing.
She grinds through it. Sweat beads at her lip.
The bandage pulls. But she pivots on instinct now, catching, stepping, driving a phantom fist into a phantom knee with a satisfying thud of boot against mat.
‘Good,’ Allen says, a rare solemnity in it. He slashes slowly toward her midline. She pivots, the willow skimming fabric instead of flesh. She angles the stick to catch his wrist and drive it away. He feints and when she starts to chase, he clicks his tongue.
‘Don’t stretch,’ he warns. ‘Make him come to you. Let his greed overextend him and then punish the reach.’
They run it again. Marian baits, retreats a hair, and when he overcommits the next cut, she slides past and brings her willow down on his hand with a crack that stings them both.
Allen laughs, delighted and a little proud. ‘There she is.’
They keep going until Little John rests his meaty palm on her shoulder in a way that says ‘enough for today’.
Exhilaration leaves Marian shaking. Her bandage is damp, red colouring the beige material.
Her palms are raw where the wood rubbed.
But under the ache, a different heat takes hold – fierce, bright, alive.
Allen sinks to a crouch across from her.
‘What you survived . . .’ he says quietly. ‘It rewires the world until everything looks like a knife. The point of these drills isn’t to pretend it never happened. It’s to give your body new endings from which it can make new beginnings.’
New beginnings. The words press behind her breastbone until she has to look away.
‘I want them to regret underestimating me.’ Marian swallows, the sting at her eyes not entirely from sweat. ‘To feel the fear I felt, when they see me coming.’
Allen’s gaze doesn’t flinch. ‘You’ll get there.
But if I toss you steel today, you’ll lean on it and someday, when your hand is empty, you’ll fall.
Our aim is to build the foundation out of pieces no one can take.
Breath. Balance. Timing. Then, when Lox gives the word, we’ll put iron in your palm and you’ll make poetry of it. ’
‘And if he refuses?’
Allen’s crooked grin returns. ‘Then I’ll teach you to hang a grown man by his own belt.’
A startled laugh breaks out of her, raw and grateful. ‘Thank you.’ Her eyes cut to Little John, his bulk filling the entirety of the doorframe, eyes softening like a meadow in the sun. ‘Both of you.’
They leave with a nod and Marian moves to the washbasin to clean up. The ache in her ribs flares with every motion, but something inside her begins to steady. A root pressed into the dirt of a different life.
Maybe she can’t undo what’s been done to her. But here, in this quiet bough above the forest floor, with a bard and a giant who teach in breath and bruises, Marian begins to believe she might someday wield her body like something that belongs to her.
Not a thing shaped by fear, but a blade honed by choice.