“But…what if it’s someone from the village? Someone I know?”
“I’ll tell you what, Amelia. If someone is attacking a nice girl like you, their intentions are bad. The end. Treat any attacker as a potential killer. Incapacitate them. That’s your only goal.”
“But, what if they won’t—they don’t—stop? What if I can’t stop them?”
“Then you do what you must. Kill or be killed. You must never use what I teach you to start a fight. Only end it.”
That felt awkward. I’m not teacher. I’m not even much of a student. And I’ve had my ass handed to me by everyone in this town except the spider.
She nodded solemnly. The certainties of this poor girl’s life had been completely torn down over the last few days.
“All right,” I said. “The first thing I want you to do is really look at your sword.”
She held it up into the sunlight.
“Look at the edges,” I continued. “See how sharp they are? See how sharp the point is? You can do two lethal things with a sword: stab or slice. You use the point to stab and the edges to slice. Watch.”
I demonstrated the core moves then had her try. I started her with the basics-basics. Slices to each leg, each arm, and the throat. Thrusts to each leg, each arm, and the face. I numbered them for her. Slices one and two were right and left legs. Slices three and four were right and left arms. Five was the head. We practiced side by side, me counting off the moves, sliding around on the backyard grass until we’d worn two parallel flat places. “When you slice, don’t slice at your opponent but through him,” I said.
“Like Mom’s fresh bread?”
“Exactly. Now some practical hints. First: if you think there’s even the slightest chance you might need it, draw your sword. Pulling it out of the scabbard takes room and time, and you might not have those if you wait until the last minute. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Next, the most important thing is to stay balanced like we’ve been practicing. Keep your feet spread apart—no, more than that…keep them right under your shoulders—and try to move without crossing them. Like this,” I demonstrated a quick step across the yard toward her, which made her jump. “Now, you try. No, hold your sword out. Keep that tip pointed at me no matter what.” It was not graceful. “Again.”
The next time was better. But before we could continue, we heard snickering laughter.
Just as when we’d gone to visit Connell, a bunch of boys stood at the corner of the house. Once again, Gaither, son of the village’s head elder, was in the lead. He held a bow in one hand and wore a full quiver. Some of the other half-dozen boys carried bows as well.
“Look, it’s a girl trying to be a boy,” Gaither said. “Just like Connell trying to be a girl. Maybe you two are a perfect couple…of morons,” he added, and they all laughed.
Amelia blushed and tossed her sword to the ground. She turned away to hide her embarrassment.
I did not have the time or the patience for this today. I said, “You think a girl can’t be good with a sword?”
“She can be good at cleaning it,” Gaither said to more amusement.
Good gods, I wanted to punch that smug face until it was a red mush with eyes in it. Suddenly, all of my other worries paled next to putting this boy in his place. “Then you wouldn’t mind a little contest, would you?”
“A contest with a girl?” he said, arms crossed. “There’s only one contest I want to get into with a girl.”
I wondered if he even knew what that meant or if he’d just heard it from older boys. I said, “It’s up to you. If you don’t think you’re man enough—” I shrugged as if it didn’t matter.
“I didn’t say no,” he said quickly. He was predictable all right. “You want to sword fight with me?”
“Dude, she’s a Reaper,” one of his friends said urgently.
“Oh, look at her, she’s not a Reaper,” Gaither said. “She’s just some girl.”
“Right, I’m just some girl,” I agreed. “So here’s the deal. You shoot an arrow at that tree. If I don’t cut it in half before it hits the wood, I’ll gladly agree with you that girls can’t be warriors. But if I do cut it in half…you have to tell your friends that girls are just as good as boys.”
Of course, I was setting the dumb bastard up. Cutting the arrow should be easy with Reaper reflexes; I’d done it often enough with Keefe to know what I was getting into. But my point was to show Amelia that he was dead wrong about girls in general, me in particular and, by extension, her.
“Cut it in half?” he repeated, and laughed. “In mid-air? You can’t do that. I bet you can’t even shoot an arrow.”
I smiled. I’d been told my smile was scarier than some Reapers’ war faces, but this time, I aimed for demure and apparently got it. “Come on, then. What harm can it do?”
“Okay, sure. Why not?”
“Really, this isn’t a good idea,” his friend said as he grabbed his arm. “Damato said she was a Reaper. He’d know.”
“Then why didn’t she show them her spine at the council? My dad said it was because Damato was just showing off to impress them.” He looked at me. “It’s no big deal just beating a regular girl.”
“I’m serious. Let’s just go hunting like we planned,” his friend urged. “It’s bad luck hanging around Amelia.”
“If you want to scurry off, go ahead. Maybe Connell needs help with his flowers.” He pulled away and stepped into the open so that he had about a thirty-foot shot at the tree trunk I’d indicated. I stood beside it, my sword raised over my head.
“Ready when you are,” I said cheerfully.
He drew the bow tight.
“Stop it!” Amelia said. She rushed over and pushed the bow aside. “You will not shoot an arrow at her!”
“It was her idea!” Gaither said petulantly. “And I’m shooting at the tree.”
“What is wrong with you?” Amelia cried. “What if you miss?”
He raised the bow again. “Look, will you stop screeching? I need to concentrate.” To me, he said, “This is all kinds of stupid. You can’t slice an arrow out of the air, not at this range.”
I just smiled and, this time, did bat my eyes.
He fired. I didn’t even think. The blade swung down and struck the arrow mid-shaft a foot from the target. Newly-sharpened, driven by Reaper strength, it did exactly what I expected, and the two halves of the arrow spun end over end in opposite directions. The tip of the sword dug into the ground. I gave my new friend a saucy wink.
Amelia clapped and jumped up and down.
Gaither stared at me. “That’s a trick,” he said. “You had that arrow already in your hand or something.”
I picked up the arrow pieces and handed them to him. “Is it your arrow or not, genius?”
“Gaither,” he corrected me, and looked over the arrow. There was no denying it was his.
“Now you have to say girls can be warriors too,” I reminded him.
He was angry now. “Look, you freak, I don’t know how you did that, but I’m not saying shit based on some damn trick.” He grabbed his quiver from the ground and stomped off around the corner of the house.
“You’re a dishonorable boy, genius!” I called after him, shaking my head in mock disappointment. I felt very satisfied.
Amelia was still bouncing. “That was amazing!”
I took her hand. “And you can learn to do it too. You can be a warrior.”
Her face fell, and she said, “No, I can’t. You’re special. You’re a Reaper. I’m just—”
“You’re not ‘just’ anything, Amelia. You already have courage and intelligence. Now you just need skill. The first two nobody can teach you; you either have them or you don’t. But skill? I can show you what to do, and then you just practice until it becomes second nature.”
She thought it over. “It doesn’t sound too hard.”
“Oh, it’s hard. It’s very hard and takes lots of practice. But it’s worth it
. When I’m done with you, you won’t have to do what anyone tells you unless you want to.”
“Will boys like me better?”
I laughed. “They’ll absolutely hate you because you’ll scare the shit out of them. But men will adore you.” And then I thought of Damato and wished I hadn’t.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
We spent the rest of the afternoon practicing the basics: thrusting, blocking, and footwork. Amelia did not complain although I could tell she was getting tired. Practice was, after all, hard work. She tied back her hair and wrapped a strip of cloth around her head to soak up the sweat. We used some of Sela’s extra fabric to brace her forearms for extra support. Sword work is very hard on the wrists.
Then, to my total surprise, she got a thrust past me. I wasn’t slacking. I had my guard up, I was balanced, and I was paying attention. She eye-feinted, and I fell for it, and then I felt the tip of her sword hit my belly.
She immediately dropped the weapon and clapped her hands to her mouth. “I’m sorry!”
I nearly jumped up and down with joy. If I can teach a human girl to sneak in a poke against a Reaper in just one afternoon, well, maybe I was worth something after all. “Don’t apologize, Amelia! You did what I trained you to do! That is the highest compliment you can pay your teacher!”
“But I hurt you!”
I looked down. There was some blood but not much, and the injury was quickly healing. Huh. Stupid human dress. Never would have happened in my dress leather. No matter. “No, it’s fine. Your mom may kill us both for getting blood on the dress, but you just did something amazing.”
“I did?”
“You did,” a new voice said.
Damato stood watching us. The smile slid off my face. I gripped my sword just a little tighter. He continued, “I fought a Reaper once. I didn’t even brush him with an edge before he sliced me open. And I’m no beginner.”
By the eyeless god of Rellek, I hadn’t heard him approach, and I’d just been stabbed by a neophyte swordswoman. Andre would mock me for weeks if he found out. “What do you want?” I said, keeping my sword ready and hoping for a fight. I whispered to Amelia, “See, this is why you keep your sword drawn when bad guys might be around.”
“I’m actually here to talk to Amelia,” he said. “Privately. And I’m not the bad guy.”
“I suppose not compared to the hell gods or Demon scavengers.” I let my look do what my sword should have, and I took a protective step toward Amelia. “Why do you want to talk to her? On behalf of the elders? Looking for another girl to publicly strip?”
“No, strictly on my own.”
“If you want to speak to her in private, you’ll have to kill me first.” I raised my sword in his general direction.
“Is that what you want, Amelia?” he asked, ignoring the bait.
She nodded at once. “You can say anything in front of Aella.”
“I wonder if Aella feels the same way?” he muttered, but before I could respond, he said, “Amelia, you can’t stay here in Cartwangle. Even if the council decides not to execute you, it doesn’t mean somebody else won’t take the initiative the first time the crops fail or people get sick or there’s bad weather. They’ll claim it’s Lurida Lumo’s wrath because of you, and they’ll either kill you outright or sacrifice you again.” He was right, of course. Why didn’t I think of that days ago?
“Where am I supposed to go?” she said in a small voice.
“Do you have relatives anywhere?”
“I have an aunt down in Mastill, close to the coast.”
“That should be far enough.”
Her eyes got wet. In an even smaller voice, she said, “But this is my home. I don’t want to go.” My heart broke for her. I never knew what it was like to have a real home, a place with a mother and father who welcomed your existence, but I did know that I wasn’t going to let this excuse for a man rip it away from her without a fight!
“And you don’t have to,” I said. “That’s why I’m teaching you to fight.”
“Well, you need to go too,” he said to me without the gentleness he’d used on Amelia. And I hate being told what I need to do.
“Before they kill me? Let them try.”
“No, before something happens and you kill someone.”
He was not Eldrid or Adonis, but I heard both of their voices in his words. And I reacted the same way I did to them; I got madder. How dare he? How dare he treat me like I’m some wild animal, devoid of self-control? I raised the tip of my sword until it was in his face and snarled, “I do not run away from things. And I don’t abandon my friends.”
He calmly pushed the tip aside. “Aella, you know what we saw at the cave. Whatever you killed, it wasn’t Lurida Lumo. He’s still there. He’s still waiting for his sacrifice. If Amelia doesn’t leave, it’ll be her.” Why was he so calm while I was so angry?
“And if I do leave, it’ll be some other girl,” Amelia said. “That’s not right either.” Then she frowned. “Wait…you said what? You saw something at the cave?”
“There’s something still in there,” I said. “It could be more spiders, or—”
“It could be one pissed-off village god,” Damato finished.
“Hey! What’s going on?” Heod said as he came out of the house. He glared at Damato. “What are you doing here?”
“Advising both of these young women to leave town,” Damato said. “But for different reasons.”
“Amelia’s not going anywhere,” he said. “And Aella’s welcome here as long as she wants or until her Reaper friends come to get her.” Was I that obvious? How did everyone know I was a runaway?
“He wants me to go stay with Aunt Xora,” Amelia said.
“Good for him.” It was nice to see Heod finally stand behind his daughter.
“Heod, I can’t protect Amelia, and despite what Aella says, I don’t think she can either,” Damato said. “Eventually someone, S’Grun or one of his ilk, will do something drastic, and that’ll be that.”
“He says Lurida Lumo is still in the cave, Daddy,” Amelia said.
That got Heod’s attention. He looked at me. “Is this true?”
“Something’s there,” I agreed. “But I don’t know what. And neither does he,” I added with a glare at Damato.
“Was anyone planning to mention this?” Heod demanded.
“Look, we can talk around this all we want,” Damato said, “but the simple fact is, Amelia needs to leave before she gets hurt, and Aella needs to leave before she hurts someone. I can’t stress either of those enough.” He paused for effect. “I’ll be back tomorrow to check on things. I hope, by then, you’ve seen that I’m right. I really don’t want any more bloodshed than is necessary.”
I knew he meant that, which made my anger seem even pettier. But I stayed angry anyway. “He’s not chasing me off,” I muttered when he was gone.
“Or me,” Amelia said.
“Hmph,” Heod said then went back inside. I could tell he was thinking over Damato’s warning.
“What do we do now?” Amelia asked me when we were alone.
“We keep practicing,” I said. “No matter what, you need these skills. There’s one more thing a sword can do that we’ve not covered. Gliding.”
She swallowed hard but pushed through the fear and nodded. I showed her how instead of using force against force, she could meet an assault and glide her sword around to turn a parry into an attack.
And so we cut, sliced, and glided until the sun began to set and the light became too iffy. Amelia didn’t get another lucky shot through my guard, but she did improve her speed. And gliding turned out to be her forte.
“Very good,” I said after one particularly well-executed move. “You did that exactly right.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s super,” a familiar sarcastic voice said.
Gaither had returned, this time wearing a sword. He only had one companion with him, a fat boy with unruly hair. I recognized the look in his eye: He had someth
ing to prove now. I knew it because I saw it in my own expression whenever I looked in a mirror. This was the first time I realized how off-putting it must be to everyone else. I made a mental note to work on that at a more convenient time.
“Now what, Gaither?” Amelia said, tired.
“I want to see how good you are,” he said.
“You saw me hack an arrow in half,” I said.
“Not you.” He pointed at Amelia. “Her. The girl who’s pissed off our god.”
I knew Amelia had learned a lot, but she was exhausted and in no shape for a real fight. I said, “Go home, Gaither. Find a puppy to kick or a child with candy you can steal.”
He drew his sword. My inner defenses all went on alert. He said, “I’m not leaving until I see if she’s any good.”
“He’s not leaving,” his toadie said. “You heard him.”
“You’ll leave in pieces if you don’t go now,” I said and stepped between Amelia and Gaither. Amelia’s lucky shot had spooked me a little, and I held my sword ready.
“No, that’s okay,” Amelia said. “It’ll be good practice.”
“I don’t think he sees it as practice,” I said.
“I’ll take it easy on her,” Gaither said smugly. “After all, she’s just a girl.”
Well, that settled it all right. Amelia wasn’t about to back down, and I didn’t blame her. I said, “This will be by Royal Dueling rules. You familiar with those?”
“Yes,” he said. He didn’t twirl his sword or show off with it; I’d have been happier if he had. He just stood with it loose in his hand pointed vaguely in our direction neither on attack or defense.
“And I’m the referee,” I added. “What I say, goes. Is that clear?”
He mock-bowed. “Of course, your highness.”
“Your highness,” the toadie repeated, and giggled.
The sun was at the horizon, and the light did not make it easy to distinguish distance. I hated to put a tired beginner in this position, but the set of Amelia’s jaw told me she wasn’t about to quit.
When I looked back at Gaither, there was sudden uncertainty in his eyes. I don’t think he expected to have to back up his words; I knew that feeling pretty well myself and had gotten my own ass handed to me many times because I was too proud to admit I was outclassed.
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