R. Salvatore - The Dame

Back and forth he worked the amazing weapon, changing hands and perfectly moving the momentum from one pole, through the leather tie to the other pole, reversing the spins.

It ended as suddenly as it had begun, the man somehow turning the nun’chu’ku so that its spin tucked it neatly under his right arm.

“Awful lot of bluster for so few words,” Jameston quietly remarked.

“Give me de sword now,” the warrior said.

Bransen drew his blade in a fluid and powerful movement, snapping the sword before him, angled diagonally to the sky. He slowly folded his elbow, bringing the back of the sword blade in against his forehead. After only a very short pause he snapped the blade down and to the side with such speed that it cracked through the air. He ended, as the practice demanded, with the tip of his blade a hair’s breadth from the dirt, angled down and slightly away from him.

Bransen kept his expression purposely grim, although he was beaming inside in confidence, bolstered by the Behr warrior’s expression, which confirmed to him that he had executed the sword salute perfectly.

“I think not,” he said, taking a slow and deliberate step forward. Jameston faded away from him a couple of short shuffles to the side, bow in his left hand, right hand positioned to grab an arrow from the quiver strapped diagonally across his back.

The warrior paid no heed to Jameston, his dangerous gaze locked on Bransen. He moved his right arm just a bit, the nun’chu’ku dropped free of his hold and unwound to its full length at the end of his grasp. He slid into a crouch, left hand coming up before his chest in a blocking position, his right arm sliding back just a bit. He gave a brief shout and stood from his pose. He never blinked and never stopped staring at Bransen as he took a couple of steps farther to the left and fell once more into that ready posture.

“What’s that about?” Jameston asked.

“He is showing me that he is unafraid,” Bransen explained.

“Should I just shoot him?”

“You wouldn’t hit him.”

“Hmm,” was Jameston’s doubtful response.

The warrior’s eyes narrowed, and his lip twitched into a snarl as if the chatter was an insult to him, which Bransen realized it probably was.

The Highwayman saluted crisply with his sword again then slowly walked his left foot forward toward the warrior, falling into a widestance, forward-diagonal crouch. He crooked his right elbow and turned his right wrist so that his arm looked like a serpent as he brought it back up high, his sword pointing forward past his head. He gracefully lifted his left hand before him, palm out. The warrior from Behr sent his weapon into a spin and strode forward a step.

The Highwayman dropped his arm, stabbing his sword forward in an underhand movement as he stepped closer to his opponent. He came up fast, handing the blade to his left hand and striking a mirror-image of the pose from which he had started.

They were barely three strides apart and then only two as the warrior from Behr gave a shout and came forward, his weapon working a dizzying blur of spins before he caught it in both hands. He turned them so the poles snapped vertically, the leather tie drawing a horizontal line before his face.

The Highwayman tried to sort out a counter. His next movement would likely end the posturing and begin the actual fighting. He tried to remember everything he had read about nun’chu’ku and the techniques involved, tried to somehow link that book knowledge against the minimal display he had witnessed from the Behrenese warrior.

He simply wasn’t sure of what he was up against here, of the limitations and strengths of this exotic weapon. A mischievous grin came to his lips and he thought himself very clever as he began to shift again very slowly.

Suddenly, thrusting his blade, turning it over so that its razor edge pointed skyward Bransen poked toward the warrior’s face but pulled up short and slashed the sword for the sky, thinking to sever the leather tie of the nun’chu’ku. The warrior didn’t try to pull the exotic weapon away; the Highwayman thought he had scored a clean hit.

But the man from Behr lifted his hands as the sword came up, absorbing most of the strike’s energy. As the blade connected with the leather but without any momentum to cut through, the warrior crossed his hands before his chest then thrust upward with his right and pulled downward with his left, the resulting turn of leather and wood nearly tearing the sword from the Highwayman’s grasp!

The warrior drove the weapons higher and stepped through, turning right-to-left suddenly as he went, his trailing left foot snapping out to kick the Highwayman squarely in the gut. Bransen had to grab his sword with both hands to prevent it from being torn from his grasp.

The Highwayman threw his hips back, absorbing the brunt of the sharp blow. As the warrior turned about before him, now driving the sword’s blade back down, Bransen went forward a short step and leaped into a twisting somersault, still holding fast with both hands and now tucking his elbows in tight to try to gain control of the movements of the weapons. He thought he could tear his sword free with the momentum of the twist and take the leather tie apart in the process, but the Behrenese warrior, again one step ahead of him, simply disengaged as Bransen tumbled past. The sudden freedom of his blade nearly toppled Bransen as he came around to his feet.

The Highwayman moved instinctively, knowing that his opponent would expect an overbalance. Taking his sword in his left hand alone, he pivoted onto the ball of his right foot, spinning around and dropping a downward backhand parry perfectly in line with the flying end of the nun’chu’ku. The metal rang out in vibration from the heavy hit as Bransen came up square with his opponent, falling immediately into a defensive crouch, hands joining on the hilt of his sword before him.

Not an instant too soon. The Behrenese warrior, offering no opportunity for Bransen to move to an offensive posture, launched a sudden and furious routine, the nun’chu’ku whipping before him in a sidelong swipe, then going into a spin above his head, where he cleverly changed hands and came in from the other side.

Bransen barely blocked.

Again and again and again the wooden poles hummed through the air up high, down low, behind the warrior’s back. He came in left and down, right across, right and down from on high.

The Highwayman was purely reacting, trying hard to follow the man’s dizzying movements to get his sword out to block. Somehow he kept up, but he felt as if he were drowning, as if the water were rising too fast for him to stay above it.

He tried to block another swing from the right, but the warrior shortened the strike and the nun’chu’ku whipped past. The Highwayman understood as the man dropped low before him, still rotating. Instinct alone had Bransen leaping and tucking his legs, narrowly avoiding a cunning leg sweep that would have put him to the ground.

He couldn’t leap fast enough, though, and he had to put all his weight to his right leg and lift his left, turning it to absorb the blow as the nun’chu’ku came around and smashed him hard against the side of his shin.

Bransen gritted through the hit and stabbed down hard. With no momentum left in the nun’chu’ku, the warrior let it go and caught it quickly with a reverse grip, then slapped the pole against the descending sword blade. Again he loosened his grip and shoved, pushing Bransen’s sword away, turning his hand over as he went, using that sword as a fulcrum to throw the bulk of the nun’chu’ku beneath it. His left hand crossed under his thrusting right elbow, catching the free pole as he sprang from the crouch before Bransen. Momentum regained as he lifted his left hand up high and over then down and back across, the descending warrior got past Bransen’s desperate defensive turn enough to send the flying nun’chu’ku pole hard against Bransen’s right shoulder.