David Coe: The Horsemen's Gambit

But for Tirnya, it was the warning inherent in Stri's success that remained freshest in her mind. Never again would she look at any warrior and underestimate his or her prowess in battle on the basis of a worn blade or tarnished armor. Nor would she assume that a man or woman couldn't fight simply because he or she didn't look the part of a warrior.

Others in the Qalsyn tournament had been slower to take this lesson to heart, and she had benefited from their carelessness. The first year she entered the Harvest Tournament, the year she came of age, the other combatants looked at her and saw the daughter of a great warrior, beautiful, graceful, but too weak and too lovely to be a swordswoman of any consequence. Like Stri, she proved them wrong, making it through seven rounds before finally being beaten. She still bore the scar from that tournament. In fact, she bore scars from every tournament she had entered, for though she had established herself as one of the best fighters in all the land, she had yet to win the crystal blade.

The last two years she had made it to the final match, only to be beaten on both occasions by Enly Tolm, son of Maisaak, the lord governor. Tirnya fully expected that they would meet again this year, though with a different result.

First, though, she had to defeat this giant of a man stalking her in the center of the ring. She had never learned his name; like most of the other fighters she knew him only as the Aelean. But she had seen him fight several times, and she knew that this was not a victory she could take for granted.

The Aelean was a full head taller than she, with huge shoulders and long, muscular arms. For a man of his size, he was fairly nimble: he moved his feet well and reacted quickly to his opponents' attacks. Usually, against so powerful an opponent, she would have circled continually toward his off hand and the smaller blade. But the Aelean had won more than a few of his matches with the dirk he carried in his left hand, which lashed out like a serpent at any foe too concerned with his great sword.

His greatest asset as a warrior, though, was his strength. One stroke of his bastard sword, it was said, could hew through an oak tree two hands wide. Tirnya wasn't certain that she believed this, but there could be no denying the power of the man's sword stroke. If she tried to parry more than one or two of his attacks, her arm would end up numb, or broken.

Best, then, to keep moving. Not toward his dirk, but to her left, his right. She took care to keep outside of his sword hand, so that any blow he landed with the bastard sword would be backhanded. He eyed her warily as they turned their slow circle in the dirt. He might have been twice her size, but he knew as well as she that Tirnya had her own advantages in the ring.

She was strong for one so little, though not nearly as powerful as the Aelean. But she was quicker and more skilled with her shillad, the long, thin blade used by the horsemen of Naqbae. It wasn't the weapon she used when leading her soldiers; it wasn't even the sword she usually carried into the ring. But she always brought it with her to the tournament, knowing that it would be the perfect weapon against an opponent like the Aelean. The blade was light and perfectly balanced, and its length allowed her to keep her distance, to dance at the edges of her opponent's reach. She was tall and long-armed. With the shillad she became elusive as well.

In her off hand she carried a second sword-short-bladed, but longer than the dagger she usually used. Anything to keep her distance. Some of the more powerful combatants in the tournament could fight the Aelean on his terms; she didn't dare. "A clever warrior guards against his opponent's strengths," her father had once told her, "and watches for his weaknesses. More often than not, the clever ones live to fight another day."

The Aelean struck at her and she parried with the short blade. It wasn't a particularly hard blow, but still it made her arm sting from her wrist to her shoulder. She swiped back at him with the shillad, but he jumped away and she missed. Once more they began to circle. The crowd had been loud a moment before, but with the man's attack they had grown quiet and restive. Even His Lordship seemed intent on their battle. He leaned forward in his chair, his chin resting in his hand, his eyes narrowed.

Perhaps sensing that she had allowed herself to be distracted for the briefest instant, the man suddenly lunged at her, leveling another backhanded blow at her head. She parried this one as well, but nearly left herself open to the dirk, which flicked out at her side, like silver lightning. The crowd gasped. Tirnya spun away, unmarked. Two blows she had parried, and already her arm was beginning to ache.

The Aelean began to stalk her once more, and again Tirnya circled, trying to stay outside his sword arm. She waved her blade at him, trying to reach the side of his neck, but he knocked it away disdainfully with the bastard sword.

"Fight him!" someone shouted from behind her. Others murmured their agreement. She was losing them.

Early in one of her first tournaments, several years before, she had won a contest against a larger opponent by drawing blood at the knee. Whistles and shouts of "coward" chased her from the ring that day, and she never did such a thing again. Nor did she have any intention of doing so today. She wondered, though, if those shouting at her now remembered that day as clearly as she did.

"I hope you learned something," her father had said to her that evening, after the tournament was over.

She had been dejected and humiliated, stung far more by the reaction from the boxes than by her loss in the next round. "I won't go for someone's leg again, if that's what you mean."

"It's not."

She looked at him.

"People often liken the ring to a real battlefield," he said. "What you experienced today should make it clear to you that they actually have very little in common."

Tirnya frowned. "I don't understand."

"When you're fighting in a war, your object is to win. It's that simple. You win for your sovereign, you win for your people, you win for the soldiers under your command. Nothing else matters. But here, in the ring, there are times when the cost of victory is higher than that of defeat. You lost the respect of a good many people today. You'll have to earn that back, even if it means losing contests that trickery might let you win."

It was another lesson she'd never forgotten. If she couldn't defeat the Aelean fairly, warrior to warrior, she would take pride in the manner of her losing. She smiled to herself. But I have no intention of losing.

He aimed another blow at her head and for the third time she parried. This time, however, she didn't dance away, nor did she circle to the outside of his sword hand. Instead she remained in front of him. The man's eyes widened and he raised his bastard sword again to deliver a chopping strike that might well have sundered her short blade. Before he could hammer at her, however, she delivered a sideways blow of her own with the shillad. The Aelean blocked it with his dirk, but by then Tirnya had struck at him with her short blade, coming in under his raised sword to cut him just below the ear.

The Aelean winced, closing his eyes, knowing that she had baited him, and that he had fallen for the ruse. But it all happened so quickly that the people in the boxes didn't seem to understand until the Aelean lowered his blades and turned to face the center box. Seeing the blood on his neck, the spectators began to cry out Tirnya's name again and again, the timidity of her earlier attacks now forgotten.

Over the years many in the city had grown to love her. She was, after all, the daughter ofJenoe, the Eagle of the Ring, as he had once been known, for his long reach and the swiftness with which he pounced when seeing a weakness in his foe. In recent years, as she had become more skilled with her blades and more successful in the tournaments, they had given her a name as well: the Falcon. Not as formidable as her father, but faster, more agile.