Abul grunted acknowledgement and smiled crookedly from the floor, his wooly hair darker than ever. Tae helped him up, wiped his sweating face on his arm and glanced around the circle of rangdo. Kyrin let out her breath in a long sigh and heard the echoes of others.
Tae bent in a courteous bow and held out the wooden dagger. “Abul, yours is the blunt blade.” Abul returned the bow and took it. “Kyrin, you work with Abul. Winfrey, you and Alaina drill beside them.”
Kyrin moved to her place. The blade is wood, only wood. Abul is not an Arab—he speaks from his heart. She clenched and unclenched her hands.
He was about her size, but far faster and stronger. She could see a sword in his hand, the bright blade slashing down . . . and red blood spilling from its bite. She would not be sick—
“Are you well?” Tae touched her shoulder. Kyrin shrank away, then straightened with an effort and turned to Abul, rubbing her damp hands down her trousers. He grinned and handed her the polished wood blade.
Tae’s voice rose to include every rangdo in the room. “You must see your attacker as a whole. Let the power of your blow snap into your enemy, into the point you attack. You are a whip, loose until impact. But slow now, slow. Speed comes after you set the pattern in your limbs.”
Kyrin gripped the dagger’s wood haft, knuckles white. She remembered Samson’s warm, soft feathers, his daring dives. A falcon was swifter yet.
She set her jaw. Don’t see the sharp edge—watch Abul lick his lips, shift back. Someday an Arab will stand where he does. She struck, the blade sliding before her.
Abul stepped back, trapped the dagger in a sure grip and slid forward in the correct maneuver. He did not twist her arm past the point of submission, but released her. She almost smiled. He had played this game many times with Tae.
Abul nodded gravely. She cocked her head. He did not fear her. They were rangdo, together, learning the way of the warrior.
Every sunrise and sunset, sore and sweating, falling on unforgiving planks and kicking till her legs were like lead, Kyrin learned to strike when her muscles burned, to defend against an enemy when her breath came short—or not at all. A hard palm strike to an attacker’s arm was both a defense and an attack. Sharp blows to the nose, brow, temple, or neck with open hands in the right number and sequence would drop a man senseless. Mock-kicking Abul’s knee with the blade edge of her foot at the precise angle to break it was harder.
In her practice bouts, Abul beat her most of the time. He grinned when he dumped her on the wood. She rubbed her sore behind, scowled, set her jaw and tried again. No one but the night saw her tears.
She bested Alaina at hand to hand a few times, though Alaina drubbed her and Abul with the staff. Alaina had practiced with Owin since she was five summers, at first copying his quarterstaff drills in the field, then practicing with him before his competitions at local fairs.
Kyrin thirsted to try the falcon dagger with Abul. “I know I can, Tae. I’ll take the blade and ‘kill’ him without pricking his skin.” Then it would be time to wield a true sword; she would never be sick at thought of an Arab’s blood.
Tae regarded her, his dark face still. “You must have the right motion, without thinking, without stopping. My rangdo learn unarmed fighting, then weapons.” He paused, looking far beyond her in thought, and nodded. “But Ali is not patient, so now you learn stick and staff, and how to defend against a dagger. The sword must come after.” He smiled, the skin crinkling about his eyes. “Dream of your falcon, for you have only begun. It is too soon for a bare blade. In the end you will know both dagger and sword.”
He motioned at the wool bale. “Watch, daughter. A stick alone can kill.” He seized a spear waiting for repair against the men’s hut, twitched the point from the broken shaft and dropped it to the deck, then whirled the shaft in and out around the bale, punctuating the humming of its passage with sharp ‘thwacks’ into the wool. Dust rose from the rocking target.
The wood haft swept through the air in a blur, struck the knees, poked out the eyes, and came whistling down atop the bale’s head with a splitting thump. Tae lowered his arm. “That is the first stick drill.”
Kyrin’s heart sank. He wasn’t even breathing hard. He wrapped the end of the stick in a strip of linen and set it in her hand.
She repeated his twelve-stroke drill awkwardly, whispering, “Temple, temple, collarbone, collarbone . . .” She hit with a tenth of Tae’s power. She stopped, for she could not recall the next target. Tae showed her again, swifter than before. Soon the stick was a bronze bar in her trembling, hot hand.
Tae stood back, his arms crossed. Weary moments passed. He rapped, “Keep your elbows in. Wrist loose, loose! Don’t hold your breath! Guard your face with your other arm!”
Kyrin gulped, ignoring her dry throat, her burning arm and wrist. Just get it up to his ear, hit the temple, sweep up—and down to the collarbone. Then the eye—
“No, no, not the eye, the stomach!”
Her stick dropped too far for the following blow to the knees, and caught her shin. It stung but carried no weight. She bit her lip. I’m so tired I can’t break a twig.
“Enough now.” Tae held out his hand for the stick. “Go on, Ali is calling. You have done well.”
Kyrin went. Done well? She was weak and slow, her thoughts thick as a snail’s. Learning the sword would take a lifetime.
Next day Tae set a different stick in her hand. It was silk-soft, black as swamp mud, and thick as three fingers. The heavy weapon would make a dent in anyone’s head. Kyrin grinned, swung it back and forth, her wrist loose, and went at the bale with a will.
Tae watched a while and then stopped her, the corner of his mouth twitching. “You hit hard, yes. But your wrist is stiff again. Let it whip, loose the power through your hand, through the wood— to snap into your enemy.”
Kyrin tried. And the stick rebounded the smallest bit against her palm with each strike. She had gained force.
In a few moments it was Alaina’s turn. The stick hummed for her, and sheep smell rose thick from the bale with the dust. Kyrin flexed her aching hand.
She had done better. Someday Tae’s stick would sing for her. It would.
Subak was not all about fighting with a stick or her hands and feet.
One evening Kyrin knelt beside Ali’s table, a bit of broken bowl in her hand. She scooped up spilled rice with another shard of the bowl she had dropped. The ship rolled, breasting the cold ocean where it wrestled with the warm Mediterranean. Kyrin swayed and braced herself.
She would not touch the bowl again to the wood or to her master’s carpet. What had Tae said about balance? Grow roots. Be a tree. Give way and return, don’t fall.
“You don’t have the sense Allah gave a camel!” Ali snorted.
Kyrin wiped a drop of his spittle from her cheek, locking her giggle behind tight lips. Tae said camels did spit.
“Watching the sea and dreaming, or dropping dishes!” Where he sat on his cushions, Ali thumped his knee with a fist. “Not that I could get gold for you. Do you hear, worthless one?”
“Yes, my master.” She lowered her forehead to the rug. It prickled. Let him think me a reed. Wield misdirection.
His voice thickened. “Serve well, and reward will find you. Serve ill, and you become a flawed jewel. If your flaw has not already marked you,” he muttered. “But we will see. A flawed jewel will be ground to gem dust, not wasted, be it diamond or jet. . . .” His voice trailed away.
She dared lift her eyes. He gazed over her head, his lips curved, almost in happiness.
There was something of the tiger about the confidence of his thin mouth—the pleasure that his thoughts of destroying brought him, the power of using.
The tiger stared past Ali’s shoulder. She looked into those bottomless gold-green eyes, then down. When the time is right I will run. Tae and Alaina will come with me. Home
—to the beech leaves rustling under the trees. Cierheld will be warm with fires to ward off the rain. There will be hot food and enough furs. Father will wait for me.
Ali frowned and hitched himself up with a sigh. He nudged her forehead with his foot. “Go, Nasrany—and take the rice with you. Do not let me see your foul gaze till light.”
Kyrin crawled backward, rose, and chased the last sticky grains from her hands, struggling to keep her thoughts from her face. Thoughts of the falcon blade pricking Ali’s skin, of his bobbing throat, his clenched hands, the pleading in his eyes. Above Ali’s red cushions the tiger kept his captive, the falcon’s chain sliding across his shoulder. His panting mouth gloated. He hunted the falcon, and her.
Kyrin turned her head. Safer not to see the monster. If only she dared stick out her tongue at his ugly fangs. When she broke the chain, how the falcon would surge up on beating wings and its cry ring across the sky.
8
Araby
Discretion will guard you,
Understanding will watch over you. . . . ~Proverbs 2:11
On deck, eager for a first glimpse of land, Kef’s men sang about their work and Ali’s warriors joked, their robes fresh washed and white. Their swords gleamed in their sashes.
The slaves crowded against the rail. Misted by distance, an uneven line rose against the blue-white horizon. The hills grew.
Kyrin could not decide if they were green or grey. The ship moved around an arm of land and into a large bay. A stone quay glided over the water toward them, a mossy sea serpent. Two ships moved with it.
Kyrin felt a slight shock as rolling waves slapped quay and vessel, the stone itself forever still. She was the one moving, speeding towards them. Docked on the far side of the grey stones, a slender Greek vessel with a triangular lateen sail sprouted oars, an ocean creature of many legs. Ali’s vessel gained like a gull on the closer ship.
Tae eyed it. “Egyptian.”
Everything interested Tae. Kyrin sighed. It would not carry her home.
Wide, with a shallow draw made for peaceful waters, it had a square sail, at present furled and lashed. A man with square-cut midnight hair and a short white cloth wrapping his waist, stared at Kyrin with haughty, kohl-lined eyes. His generous nostrils flared.
Kyrin caught a strong whiff of fish and looked down.
A boat bobbed between the ships’ hulls. A blue-eyed, dark-skinned figure in a grimy turban held a limp fish in one hand and an eel in the other, his gap-toothed smile flashing, his pale eyes sharp and darting. “Sale, sale!”
A heap of strange, round orange fruits in his boat shone bravely in the midday heat, mingling tangy sweetness with the smell of fish. Kyrin’s stomach did a slow flop and gurgle with the gentle sway of the heavy eel that strained the man’s skinny, high-held arm.
She touched Alaina’s hand where she leaned over the rail, met her grin, and pointed down. Alaina glanced at the fish-seller, shrugged, and turned back to the approaching white shore.
“Alaina!” Kyrin huffed out her breath. Of course Alaina did not mind the fish; she was drinking in their new world of pale sand. Kyrin’s mouth twisted, and Ali’s vessel bumped the heat-blurred stones.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
The Egyptian on the deck across from Kyrin snorted, his dark lip curling. She glared at him. The fish seller hastily poled his vessel out of the narrowing crack of water to slip under the Egyptian’s prow and around the far side of the quay, out of sight. A few people walked to and from the docked ships, their steps slow and languid under the sun. The heat was a lion, and the sea breeze was dead.
Kef yelled and one of the crew jumped to the quay. Swaying a moment to get his land-legs, he tied a thick rope to a stone, mortared upright among the others. It was worn about the middle with use, like an open clamshell or a woman’s shapely waist.
Dry earth. Kyrin’s breath came faster. For the first time in moons the ship was still. Like Alaina, she longed for grit under her toes. It is not my land. No. But I must know my enemy and his land.
Her chance might come in those lumpy, drab hills—before Ali began his long journey to his home in southern Araby. In summer, Tae said most of Araby was skin-blistered rock and sand and spiny plants. To journey then meant death. In winter there was cutting wind, ice, and even snow.
Kyrin’s tight jaw hurt. Araby was more forbidding than Tae’s tales, and she was already thirsty. She licked her lips. The autumn here was hotter than she had ever felt, even in wheat harvest. Her mouth was dry as chaff.
Parched, sparse trees hugged the brown hills beyond the sandy crests around the bay, shrubby looking beside her majestic forests of Britannia. There were no stately oaks or laughing brooks. Rowans did not chuckle here. Some places in the Oman mountains were green and pleasant in spring, so Tae said.
Marching over the closest hill of sand, a grove of tall trees with tufts of huge, fan-like leaves clustered above sword-bare trunks extended a finger of green down the hill. It almost touched the quay.
Ah. Tae called them palms.
Two figures struggled upward under the trees. Kyrin squinted. The boys’ ragged robes flapped about their limbs. Likely they carried news of Ali’s arrival. They topped the rise then their close-cropped heads disappeared below the crest.
Above the edge, the tops of square buildings wavered in the heat. Southward, brown, desolate mountains cut the sky, their spear tips thrusting above the round shields of hills.
Kef’s men furled the sail and stowed ropes. With a bang, they lowered a plank to the quay. Ali strode forward, slow and stately. He hummed.
Umar stalked a little ahead of him, his hand on his sword. Ali stepped onto the stone quay, the Nubian at his heels, his Arabs behind. The heavy-laden fish seller waddled away from the Greek ship, followed by the sound of curses. His voice high and beseeching, he held out his arms to Ali, knelt, and bowed his forehead to the stone.
Ali walked by so close that his hem brushed the man’s arm. The man tried to kiss Ali’s sandals. Umar turned on his heel, circled back, and kicked the fish seller off the quay into the water. The old man’s yowl choked silent.
Kyrin flinched, glad she was not the fish seller. It was not right. The crew around her laughed. He must know how to swim, he had not seemed that simple.
The Nubian moved forward to prowl before Ali, guarding his way. Tae was silent, and Winfrey muttered.
“Move! Back, sons of infidels!” Umar raised his arms. His men on the deck herded the slaves away from the quay to the opposite side and against the rail. “Make your way to shore in the water. Your stink rises to heaven!”
Abul yanked Kyrin to his side. The rail dug into her ribs.
White light blazed off the water and blinded her. Far under the dancing surface lay a blue-crystal sea bottom. She gripped the smooth wood and pulled herself up.
“I will sink.” Winfrey whispered, her knuckles white beside Kyrin’s brown ones.
“Yes, but you will come up, and we will help.” Kyrin tilted her head at Alaina and Tae on her other side. Tae nodded and climbed up on the rail, riding the swelling breath of the ocean, legs flexing. A warrior indeed.
Winfrey eyed the water. “My thanks.” Her fingernails dug into the wood. One of the older pirates behind her was also tight-lipped.
Umar snorted. “Go, daughters of dung beetles!” He drew his sword and swatted about with the flat. He laughed when Abul sprang away from the sting and half fell over the side. A splash came from below.
Tae dived. Umar drew back his blade, turning it slightly, his eyes on Kyrin, half-lidded.
Kyrin let her legs fold and plunged after Abul and Tae.
Hot air beat at her through her tunic, then water thundered around her. She came up spluttering and treading hard, her nose stinging. The water was warm. It felt silky and fresh. She hoped the fishy orange seller enjoyed it a
s much. Where were Abul and Alaina?
A shadow slid near under the sparking surface. A sea-grey beast burst into the air before Kyrin in a shower of spray. Gracefully standing on its tail, it squeaked in a creaky-sweet voice.
“Tae!” Kyrin yelled, spluttering when water poured into her mouth. Alaina popped up in reach of her arm.
The sea beast arced over them, its body glistening. It had fins rather like a fish’s, except they were solid and thick, and its body was that of a small, skinny whale. Alaina treaded water, head tipped back, openmouthed. The creature with the goose-like beak slid into the water again, sending a wave over Kyrin’s head.
“It is a dolphin. It will not hurt you!” Abul swam beside them, his dark arms graceful in the sea foam. The sea beast slid by under the water; sunlight played over its back. Abruptly it turned to a speeding shadow, disappearing toward the depths.
“You can swim, you eel!” Kyrin yelped, and shoved Abul. Abul pushed down on her shoulders and dunked her. She pulled herself to his ankles and clung, dragging him under. She ran out of air, and came up. Alaina and the ships wheeled by. Abul grabbed her from behind, and they went under again, spinning.
Would the dolphin come back? Kyrin broke the surface, and pulled her clinging hair from her face, laughing. She stopped short. Dolphins ringed them in a great circle, flashing in and out of the water.
Leaping and crying in their creaky voices, they parted the waves around the scrambling clot of swimming slaves in a great wheel. For a moment one sea beast stood on its tail five yards from Tae, who towed Winfrey toward shore with an arm about her. Winfrey’s eyes shone.
One blink and another—and the dolphins dived and were gone. Alaina looked after them with longing. Kyrin ducked her head under the heaving swell.
Retreating clicks, wails, and squeaks came to her over the sea-sound. She held her breath as long as she could and came up with a great gasp. Panting beside her, Abul leaned back with a sudden whoop, water dripping from his chin. With a mock scowl she chucked a handful of seawater at him to cover the warm wet in her eyes.
Falcon Heart: Chronicle I an epic young adult fantasy series set in medieval times Page 8