by R. A. Rock
A huge man stepped out of the crowd. He was probably six foot four or five and close to two hundred and fifty pounds — most of which looked to be muscle.
He wore jeans and an untucked button down shirt. His hair was long and black — longer than mine — and he wore it braided behind him. He had a rugged handsomeness that probably appealed to some women.
“What do you say?” he said, looking smug as if he expected me to back down. I gave him a smile that was probably as smug as his.
“I say, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.”
The crowd roared at this. I threw him a staff and we faced off.
I was going enjoy taking this guy down.
Gideon
Chad
When we heard the cheering, Shiv, and I came out of the main house to see what was going on. Matt stayed inside to finish up what we were working on, so completely engrossed in what he was doing that he hardly noticed when we left.
We watched as Yumi helped Audrey off the ground and the crowd cried for more. We couldn’t hear what they were saying but an enormous guy stepped out of the crowd.
“Shit,” I said, knowing Yumi would not back down from a challenge.
Shiv laughed.
“She can take him.”
I sighed and not for the first time wished that it wasn’t me who had to be the heavy on this team. Yumi wouldn’t be happy about not getting to fight this guy.
“That’s not what I’m worried about, Shiv.”
I left him standing on the porch and pushed my way through to the front. Yumi and the guy were circling each other, getting ready to start. The man was a mountain and even more intimidating up close.
Yumi didn’t look the least bit intimidated.
“Yumi,” I said, catching her attention before they could get started. “Come here.”
She held up one finger to the man and took two steps to where I stood.
“What?” she said, looking happier than I had seen her in a while. “I can take him, don’t worry.”
“I know you can, but maybe you shouldn’t antagonize our only friends in this time.”
“It’s not antagonizing,” she scoffed. “It’s just friendly sparring, besides this guy needs taking down a peg.”
I agreed. That didn’t mean that this was a good idea.
“Rethinking your decision?” the guy said, menacing her with the staff. “No one will think the worse of you, little girl, if you change your mind.”
Little girl? Oh, was this guy in for a rude awakening.
I stared him down, unable to resist giving him a glare. She might not be my woman anymore. But I couldn’t help still feeling possessive anyway. I wished I could kick this guy’s ass. But that would take away her fun and there was so little I could do to make her happy these days, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her she couldn’t fight him. No matter how much I thought it was a mistake.
“Maybe you’re right.”
Yumi gave me a broad smile at this indication of permission. I crossed my arms over my chest and settled in to watch as Yumi turned back to face him. Then she gave me a tiny smirk and spun the bow in a dizzying display of prowess. Everyone was suitably impressed. Except the guy. He only laughed.
“It’ll take more than some fancy stick swinging to defeat me,” he said, and advanced hard, pushing Yumi into a defensive position.
Yumi’s staff was a blur as she blocked above her head, to the right and to the left. Then she held it upright to block a huge swing. I could feel the wind as he whipped the bow towards her head.
Did this guy think he was playing baseball and Yumi’s head was the ball? When she blocked it, the blow vibrated through her whole body.
I saw her expression change as she realized she actually had someone who would challenge her. She put on her game face and started trying. She had reached the edge of the crowd and the man held back on his last attempt to break all her ribs, not wanting to hit a spectator by accident.
Yumi used this to her advantage and blocked his staff. Then she came at him, her expression fierce, her strikes savage, her feet kicking up a cloud of dust as she shuffled. And that was when he realized that this was no joke sparring match where he was going to quickly beat some woman who thought she could fight.
They moved back and forth across the clearing, matching blow for blow. The sound of the staffs hitting was like a strange kind of percussion music. And, even though I’ve seen her fight more times than I can count at this point, she still managed to impress me.
Damn that woman could fight.
Watching her in action turned me on, like always, but I ignored my sudden desire. Wanting Yumi didn’t do me any good anymore and it only made me miserable and sexually frustrated, so I paid no attention to the stab of lust, focusing instead on the fight.
Without warning, the man seemed to get the advantage as he knocked Yumi to the ground finally connecting with a vicious blow to the ribs. She rolled through it and back on to her feet in time to block a strike that would have broken her arm if it would have landed.
This guy wasn’t playing around anymore but neither was Yumi. She hit his knees, making him crumple but not fall. As he bent, he thrust the end of his bow at her chest, but the angle was off and as soon as I saw him do it, I knew that it was all over.
Yumi saw the chance at the same time I did. She blocked his awkward thrust and twisted his bow out of hands gone slack from the pain in his knees — disarming him. The bow sailed through the air and landed on the ground with a muted thump.
This appeared to surprise him greatly, but Yumi didn’t stop. She was out for blood, now. Well, not really blood but she wanted to show him that she wasn’t a little girl.
She swiped at his head with deadly force that had all her body weight behind it, forcing him to duck. Using the momentum, she spun in a circle and, aiming low, she took a swing at his knees, which of course were his weak point now that she had injured him there. Because he was coming out of the crouch and the one knee was hurt, it was hard for him to jump to avoid it.
She made contact with his left ankle, throwing him off balance and making him grunt. It was all a blur but a couple seconds later, he was lying on the ground with the end of Yumi’s staff at his temple.
“Do you concede?” she said, breathing hard.
“No,” he said, looking grumpy.
Yumi drew the staff back, aiming a strike at his temple that would no doubt do some serious damage. I prepared to step in and stop her if necessary. Sparring was one thing. Giving one of Matt and Nessa’s people brain damage was quite another.
“Okay, okay,” he said, holding his palms up in a gesture of surrender. “I concede.”
“And do you take back calling me a little girl?”
There were snickers from the otherwise silent crowd.
This seemed to annoy him more than having to concede but he was looking at her staff, a wary expression on his face.
“Yes, I take it back.”
“Good.”
She smiled in satisfaction and stepped back until she was beside me. Standing the staff on its end on the ground like a walking stick, she leaned on it. She had already caught her breath and was pretending not to notice her ribs, which I guessed were most definitely bruised, if not cracked.
The man stood slowly, favouring his left knee.
“Sorry about that,” Yumi said, and he scowled at her.
“Yeah, well I’m sorry about the ribs,” he said.
She shrugged.
“They’ll heal. I’ve had much worse.”
Yeah, she was definitely antagonizing him now.
As intended, this seemed to annoy him further. The man was just turning to go towards the main house when Nessa appeared, coming up from the lake. She had missed it all.
“Gideon,” she said, running to him and giving him a hug. “We didn’t expect you for another day or so.”
“Yes, well, I arrived early,” he said, putting a smile on his face that wasn’t qui
te convincing.
All of a sudden, Nessa seemed to realize that there was a big group gathered and that something had been happening.
“What’s going on?” she said, looking quizzically at Gideon. When she spotted us, she said, “Oh, here’s Chad and Yumi. Let me introduce you.”
Introduce us?
Yumi grinned at me.
“Yes, please,” she mouthed at me.
“Gideon,” Nessa said. “This is Chad…”
She indicated me and Gideon nodded.
“Nice to meet you,” he said, his voice gruff.
“Same here,” I responded, shaking his hand.
“And Yumi,” Nessa said, with a hand gesture towards Yumi. Gideon only nodded at her, clearly still pissed off.
“So, you’re a friend of Matt and Nessa’s?” I said, trying to make small talk and diffuse the tension that Nessa could clearly feel but didn’t know what to make of.
“I am.”
“Yes,” Nessa said, smiling widely, so sure she was about to give us good news. “Gideon is the guide we were telling you about. He’s here just in time.”
Yumi turned her head to look at me, her eyes gone suddenly wide. She grimaced, biting her lip.
Oh shit. She had just pissed off the guy who was supposed to help us get to Winnipeg. Great. Just great.
“Not antagonizing him, eh?” I muttered to her. “He seems pretty antagonized to me.”
“Now what?” she murmured back, a contrite expression on her face.
“Kiss ass, sweetie,” I said, giving her an exasperated glance. “Kiss. Ass.”
A Guide for the Journey
Yumi
“Why does this always happen to me?” I groaned as we followed Nessa, Gideon, and Audrey into the main house a minute later. I pulled off the hoodie I was wearing for the cold as we were hit with a wave of heat from the wood stove that had a nice warm fire in it.
“Because you’re a rash, unthinking, cocky woman?” Chad said, his tone indicating he was quite irate.
“Okay, it was supposed to be more of a rhetorical question,” I said, feeling terrible — especially since Chad’s description of me was so accurate. I grimaced in pain as I walked into the house. My ribs were going to be severely bruised.
And I was kind of glad.
Because the guy was a worthy opponent. Finally.
And the sparring had been so satisfying.
But damn it, I ought to have been trying to get in his good graces, not crippling him.
Now I had pissed off the only person who might actually be willing to help us navigate the worrisome terrain between here and Winnipeg. In our time, the forest was unbroken by roads because hovercraft and small spacecraft are the only vehicles allowed. The city had been rebuilt twice since the early 2000s and everything had been created with aesthetics and protecting the environment in mind after the mess this civilization had left the world in.
But right now…
None of us knew quite what to expect.
No one from up north had ever been all the way to Winnipeg since before the solar flare that had destroyed their entire culture and way of life.
Matt and Nessa had told us that their guide friend — I winced inwardly at the thought of how thoroughly I had trounced him — had gone as far as Gimli but no further. They had thought he might take us that far because he was due to take another trip down that way soon. He went every fall.
I thought about how I might have screwed up our chance to have a seasoned guide get us to where we needed to go and felt a knot of tension form in my stomach. I rubbed my hands against my pants and winced as they hurt. Holding the bow had chafed them raw. The physical pain only made the emotional pain worse.
I had to apologize to Gideon. Right now.
But when I saw that Matt — who must have spotted Gideon from the window — had called Zoe, Ernest, Grace, and Shiv to the living room, I knew I wouldn’t have time. We were having the meeting this minute. I prayed he wouldn’t turn us down because of my stupidity.
Gideon looked around at all the people assembled in the living room and glowered at me. Then he sat down and visibly composed himself.
Everyone was chatting quietly as we took our seats — the way people do when a group gathers together. Gideon managed to smile around at everyone, leaning in to listen to Nessa as she filled him in quietly about the situation.
If anything his face hardened as she told him our story.
Fuck. How was I supposed to make this right?
Grace caught my eye and gave me a questioning glance. I must have looked upset and I tried to pull myself together. I gave a tiny shrug. She would see.
“I’d like to call this meeting to order,” Matt said with a broad smile. “And I want to say welcome to our good friend, Gideon, who is with us again on his way south.”
Everyone clapped politely and Gideon’s smile looked less forced this time as he grinned at Matt and shook his hand.
“Gideon,” Matt continued on. “We wanted to ask a favour of you for our new friends. This is Shiv, Grace, Audrey, Chad, and Yumi.”
“Hey,” he said, to Grace, Shiv, and Audrey, who he hadn’t met before. I tapped my foot soundlessly against the carpet, tension twisting me into a tight knot.
I rubbed my left hand where the Celtic knot marking was still invisible from the covering cream we had used. Chad and I had got a couples marking when we were still happy together and I often rubbed the spot when I was under pressure. I wasn’t sure why I did it. But it seemed to comfort me.
“They need to get to Winnipeg and we were hoping they might travel with you as far as Gimli.”
“Really,” he said. “And why would I consider taking a bunch of newbies into the woods with me?”
Nessa looked a little taken aback, but Matt seemed like he had expected Gideon to question their request.
“They’re not all newbies. Chad, Grace, and Yumi are from this area, too.”
“Really?” Gideon looked skeptical. “Where?”
“North of Thompson,” Chad answered. “Our parents had some land on a lake up there. We grew up in the forest.”
“Which lake?” Gideon insisted. “I know every body of water in Manitoba, from Churchill to Winnipeg.”
“Wintering Lake,” Grace said, her normally friendly face was now closed off. It seemed that she wasn’t that impressed with this guy either. Good, at least I wasn’t alone in my assessment of him. “Did you need our finger prints and retina scans as well?”
Shiv met my eyes.
Was she going to give us away with that kind of futuristic talk?
“Maybe blood tests and a full family history?” she added.
He stared at Grace a moment, then he laughed.
“Hm. Feisty, are you?”
Grace raised her eyebrows at him.
“I am.”
“We grow our women strong up north, Gideon,” Chad said, standing. The three of us stood up, too, sensing that this was a moment of solidarity. Audrey didn’t stand up, but I couldn’t control her behaviour and I wasn’t going to leave Chad standing against this guy alone.
“Strong? Or bitchy?” he said, really crossing the line into asshole territory.
“Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference,” Chad said and Grace made a little gasp of indignation. “The question is… Does that intimidate you? You feel threatened by strong women?”
“I don’t feel threatened,” Gideon said, standing too and adopting a posture that showed that he did feel intimidated and was trying to hide it. The other people in the room were quiet, watching this stand-off play out.
“Your behaviour says otherwise,” Chad said, really giving it to him. “And my question is… Why would I want to go into the wilderness with a someone who feels threatened because a woman can kick his ass? Because, frankly, it’s got me wondering… What kind of a man are you, really?”
And with that, Chad turned and left the room. The three of us followed. Audrey was sandwiched in a corne
r and I chose to think that she couldn’t get up and leave and that was why she hadn’t.
I wrapped my hands around my arms, wishing I had grabbed my hoodie as we were making our statement. It was freezing out here.
We were crossing the yard when Gideon called out to us from the door. He hurried toward us, an expression of respect and maybe a little guilt on his face.
“Hey. Chad,” he said.
Chad stopped and faced him, with no sign of his usual affability on his face.
“You’re right, man,” Gideon said. “I was out of line back there. I’m not usually quite that much of a jerk. My mother and sisters are strong women and I respect them. I’m sorry, Yumi and Grace.”
“I’m sorry, too, Gideon,” I jumped in, needing to apologize. “I shouldn’t have…”
I trailed off, not sure what exactly to apologize for.
“I shouldn’t have…” I wracked my brain.
He took pity on me.
“It’s okay, Yumi. I was just pissed that you got under my guard and make me look like a fool in front of people who usually worship the ground I walk on.”
“Worship the ground you…?” Grace looked incredulous but she stopped short.
“If you forgive me, then I forgive you,” I said, holding out my hand. He shook it hard enough that I wanted to make a face but I didn’t. “And will you please consider taking us with you to Gimli? At least you know that you have someone who can actually fight if need be. And I’m not the only one of us who can fight.” I indicated the rest of the group.
“That’s true,” he said, like he hadn’t considered it. “Sometimes I run into trouble and it would be nice to have back up for once.”
“Okay,” Chad said. “So where do we go from here?”
“Well,” Gideon said, smiling as though he was one of those people who completely forget about a fight the second it’s over. “I think we get a good night’s sleep and then… we go to Gimli.”
Canoeing
Chad
This morning at first light, we had said our goodbyes to Matt, Nessa and everyone and got on our way. Audrey almost hadn’t come but Gideon had somehow persuaded her. They didn’t speak the same language but I was guessing there hadn’t been much talking going on. I didn’t want to know exactly how he had done the convincing, because that would probably be too much information. But she had changed her mind and that was good enough for me.