Dave Smeds - The Schemes of Dragons

When her breathing had slowed to a relatively normal rate, Troy fitted his mask over his head and picked up his practice blade.

"Once more, girl. Try your best."

He did not advance. Furthermore he left her a wide, obvious opening. She hesitated, suspicious. Avoiding the bait, she aimed elsewhere. He shifted so little that her sword blunt missed by only a finger-width, but it was enough.

He planted a mark on her chest with a plain, almost casual gesture.

"You should have taken the opening," he said. "I won't give you another."

He was true to his word. The second time he tagged her in the belly almost before she realized he was charging. His head and shoulders did not shift when he moved, his spine stayed straight, his body upright. Only his legs, and at the end, his sword arm, gave away his intent. She could not anticipate his tactics.

The third time, as if mocking her, he performed exactly the same technique. The only difference was that her sword nicked his as it was withdrawn, a reflex rather than a conscious reaction.

Tears welled in her eyes. She stared at the crushed, pungent grass, avoiding Alemar's sympathetic frown and Enns's smug sneer.

"You've got a way to go, girl," Troy said. He pulled out his polishing cloth and rubbed the paint off his blade. "You're excused. Get a drink of water. You look like you need one."

She stalked off, jaws clenched. Someday, she vowed, I will be the best.

Without opening her eyes, she became aware of her surroundings: Alemar's scent, the wind batting the tent cloth, the woven texture of the blanket underneath her. She shuddered violently, tears squeezing out between tightly-shut lids. Her throat ached.

She did not understand how the memory of a single incident could evoke such agony. Look, Alemar insisted, and in her mind's eye she saw a network of bright lines, each one a filament of pain, each one ultimately stemming from a single junction-the embarrassment and humiliation she had felt on that day at the age of twelve. The filaments ran through the years, bits of suffering piled onto the old, until the aggregate formed a wound too raw to be faced. Therefore she had buried it.

Alemar guided her vision toward other, lesser junctions. She withdrew, trying to cover them up again, but with firm, compassionate maneuvering, Alemar made her look.

The barn smelled of fresh hay. Streamers of light blazed in through knot holes and around the edges of the wide double doors, illuminating the dust and hay particles in the atmosphere. Around the opening of the loft Alemar and four of the keep boys hung like vultures. The dim, striated interior of the barn made it a challenge to follow the movements of the two combatants on the ground.

Elenya vaulted a bale of hay and slashed. Troy side-stepped, putting another bale between them. She hopped back to outdistance his counterthrust. The spectators bit back their exclamations; the only sounds in the barn consisted of the loud breathing of the participants, the impact of their feet, and from time to time, the rasp of sword contact.

Troy darted down a corridor between two high stacks, out of sight of Elenya and the boys in the loft. She circled to the left, stepping carefully through a patch of loose straw. Troy chose that moment to reappear, charging, forcing an instant response. She kept her footing, parrying three times, countering once. He retreated. She backed out of the straw, waited for him to follow. He declined, vanishing around the stacks once again.

She glided to the center of the open area, listening carefully for signs of Troy's movements behind the hay. She counted silently to five. As they were supposed to do any time either combatant paused under the loft opening, the boys shoved armloads of straw at her. She danced away from the downpour, and was ready when Troy sprang out of concealment.

They fought their way around the low bales. Elenya paid close attention to her breathing. Troy understood far better than she how to conserve energy. Though she was fifteen and he nearly forty, stamina was his advantage. After half an hour of sparring, she was at the edge of losing her wind.

Yet, as they continued, the edge receded. Though using obstacles to simulate true battle conditions was one of the most difficult types of fencing, she had matched Troy blow for blow, strategy for strategy. She had two red marks on her tunic, and so did he. For the first time in four years of instruction, she stood within one point of winning against him.

Sweat dripped from Troy's eyebrows. He blew out a sharp breath between pursed lips. Elenya concentrated on his expression, as he had taught her to do whenever they fenced without masks. He glanced down. She thrust.

A sudden pain flared in her wrist. Her rapier careened through the air, landed with a hush against a loose bale, and slid to the ground. She gawked, not comprehending how he could have disarmed her. The boys above murmured in awe.

Troy calmly touched the tip of his weapon to her tunic. The paint was so dry from their long battle that it barely marked her. As she gathered her thoughts, she realized Troy suddenly seemed only slightly winded. He smoothly sheathed his blade, the corner of his lips curling upward in a familiar, self-satisfied smile.

He had tricked her. He had been far from his limit. He could have stepped up the pace and defeated her at almost any point. All the long months in which her confidence had grown, her plans been laid, her hopes constructed, had been rendered meaningless with one quick gesture.

"Another time," he said. "Maybe your luck will change." He chuckled as he opened the barn doors. The brightness of the day stabbed her eyes.

Her throat was dry from her weeping. Alemar poured water into her mouth. She choked, swallowed some, inhaled a bit, and lost the largest part down her neck. She was tired. She wanted to stop. The pain, however, had lessened. The tendrils had unravelled from the first junction, and were doing the same with the second, leaving the areas cool, green, and untainted.

She was in a sitting position, with Alemar wrapped closely around her. Wherever their skin touched, energy passed back and forth. She trusted him utterly, knew that he would guide her tenderly and well through the rest of it, but she doubted her own ability to continue. She felt like a cripple. But the more he touched her, the more her breathing calmed, the more her muscles relaxed. She drifted back into sleep as he drew her to the next junction.

The clop of her oeikani's hooves was crisp and sharp, like her mood. Ahead the great, green canopy of the forest yielded to blue sky, a sign that she was nearing Garthmorron Hold. Alemar rode at her side, engrossed in his own thoughts of homecoming.

"Look. There's the tree where we talked with father," he said, pointing to a trunk heavy with creeping vines. Keron had visited them only once in their memory, staying only two days. One afternoon he had walked along this road with his twins to have a private moment with them.

She nodded absently, still playing out in her mind what she would do after their arrival, once the homecoming celebration began and she could arrange an encounter with Troy. She imagined the scene:

"Learn anything in your year in the Old Kingdoms, my lady?" he would ask, politely but patronizingly, lifting a goblet of wine to his lips.

"The men of Numaron like their women fat," she would respond, sipping from her own goblet, "and the folk of Sirithrea are astonishingly rude."

"True, true."

"And," she would add casually, "the wizards of Acalon make fine rapiers."

Troy would pause, meet her eyes, remember he had wine in his mouth, and swallow. "That they do. Of the finest Antoth ores. But they don't let go of them easily."