“Sorry,” I said. “I forgot where I was for a moment.”
“You are forgiven,” she said with a wry smile. “But now that that is over with, I must insist that you and Lady Tess have some food. You must keep your strength up, even with everything that is going on. Especially because of that, in fact.”
I nodded robotically. “You’re right. I’ll grab something in a minute.”
She sighed and stood, then stooped and seized my arms forcefully. She hauled me to my feet, marched me to the center of the camp, and sat me down on a rock that made a serviceable chair. Then she went to my pack and pulled out a few strips of meat and a bread roll wrapped in muslin. She shoved them into my hands.
“Eat,” she said. “When you are done, there is something we must do.”
I looked up at her, curious despite my wandering thoughts. “Wait, what? What is it?”
She wagged a finger, for a moment looking a lot like Sarah. “No. Not until you have eaten.”
My interest piqued, I wolfed down the meat and bread. I hadn’t realized until then just how hungry I was—it turned out, I was ravenous.
Before I finished eating, Raven woke and came over to me, Barius lumbering behind her like a small mountain. “Hey,” she said. “Sarah called me on the other side and gave me the lowdown. She said to tell you that it was a little dicey, but she convinced your mom and her mom that you were spending the night with some nerd named Eugene. She also convinced them your phone was dead, so they’re probably going to be more than a little ticked off at you when you show back up. Be ready.”
“I will,” I said, mumbling around a mouthful of roll. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” She sat down on the rock beside me, fishing for her own meal out of the pack. “So, how freaked out are you on a scale of one to ten?”
“Honest? Twenty,” I said. “But I think I’ve gotten kind of numb about it. I’m freaked out, but at the same time it’s not like I can do a whole lot about it. I’m just waiting until Tess can finally put me to sleep and I can start figuring out how to get out of…wherever I am.”
Raven shook her head. “Well, you’re taking it a whole heck of a lot better than I would be. I’d be having a full-blown meltdown.”
I grinned. “Well, it’s probably my secret agent genes.”
“Your what?” she asked, surprised.
“Oh, it’s just a theory I have,” I said. “My dad’s always been really vague about what he did when he was growing up. I’ve never gotten him to give me a straight answer. So I always figured he was a secret agent. Like James Bond.”
Her eyebrows raised. “Wasn’t James Bond British?”
I shrugged. “He could have trained himself out of the accent.”
Raven rolled her eyes. “Right. Anyway, I just wanted to say good on you for not letting yourself go crazy.”
“Lady Raven is right,” said Barius. “It is one of the hardest lessons a warrior can learn—letting the fear flow through them. Acknowledging it for what it is, and then setting it aside and preparing oneself for battle nonetheless.”
“Really?” I asked, brightening. “That’s part of your training?”
Barius nodded. “To some it comes easily. Others must practice for years, learning to meditate, divide their minds into compartments. If a warrior cannot master his own mind, no matter how skilled he is with a sword, he is barred from joining the ranks of the Runegard.”
“I guess that makes sense,” I said, nodding. “You couldn’t have guys freaking out in the middle of a battle and running away. Or worse, shirking their duties to guard the Realm Keepers. Kind of brilliant from a training standpoint, really.”
Barius gave a little half-bow. “As always, you are surprisingly knowledgeable about such things, my Lord. For such a young age, I mean.”
Raven snickered and stood. “All right, listen: Calvin’s ego doesn’t need any help from you. Trust me.”
Tess approached, her breakfast finished. “Do you want to try sleeping again?” she asked me.
“Might as well give it a shot before Cara has me do whatever it is she wants,” I said. “Sure. Hit me.”
“Maybe you should come down off the rock, my Lord,” said Darren wryly. “Else when you slumber, you may fall off and break your neck.”
I slid off it quickly. “Right. Good call, Darren.”
Darren nodded modestly. “As my Lord is fond of saying, it is what I do.”
I settled down on the ground, resting my back against the stone’s rough surface. Raven stayed where she was, the dark blue of her pant legs dangling to my right. Tess sat across from me, and in only a moment her eyes snapped to pure white. This time it was hardly a second before I felt myself move between worlds—but in no time, I was coming back to Midrealm again, my body slumped against the boulder behind me and I fought to keep the meat I had just eaten from painting the ground.
“Still nothing,” I said, annoyed. “They’ve got me blindfolded or something. I couldn’t see anything.”
Raven said a word that probably would have gotten her in a lot of trouble back on Earth. “Okay, so now what do we do?”
I sighed and got to my feet. “Well, I guess I’d better go see what Cara’s up to. She said there ‘was something we must do,’ whatever that means. I swear, she’s as bad as Greystone sometimes.”
“Right,” Raven said, smirking at me. “You go have fun.”
“Sure. Fun.” I wandered away, Darren tagging along dutifully at my heels.
Cara was leaning against a tree at the edge of the clearing, picking at her nails with a small hunting knife. Her head was bent low, intent on her fingers, casting her short blonde hair down over the side of her face. She looked so cool and calm, standing there. Not a single muscle that wasn’t in complete control. Not a shake of the hand as she dug small bits of dirt from beneath her fingernails. I thought for a moment that she looked like a coiled spring trap, ready to leap forth in an instant and strike down a foe.
Then she noticed my approach and looked up at me, and a grim smile twisted her thin, pink lips. “Are you ready for your lesson, my Lord?”
That caught me off guard. “Lesson?” I asked. “What lesson?”
“Why, your combat lesson,” she said. She pushed her self off the tree and sheathed her knife in one fluid motion, coming to stand before me with her arms folded across her chest, studying me intently. “There’s not much we can do in the time we have, but I’m going to show you a few tricks that may help you on the other side. If you can somehow slip your restraints, they may help you if it comes to a physical confrontation.”
“You mean a fight?” I asked. “Me?” I looked down and waved my hands across my body. “Um, are you seeing a different person here than I’m seeing?”
Cara chuckled. “Size is of no importance. I am shorter than Barius. My arms are not as thick as his. His weight nearly doubles mine.”
“It does not!” came Barius’ indignant voice from behind me.
“And yet, which of us do you suppose would win in a sword fight?” Cara continued, ignoring him.
I thought about it. “I’m not sure. I’d give either one of you even odds. And I’d pay a whole lot of money to watch it on pay-per-view. But there’s another reason this is silly. Even if you teach me a few neat tricks here, it won’t help me much over on Earth. Half of fighting is instinct and muscle memory. Everyone knows that. My body might pick up a couple of moves, but that’s this body. On Earth, my muscles won’t be trained.”
Cara shook her head. “This is what you believe on True Earth, but it is false. Your body becomes stronger with training, yes. It becomes leaner, its muscles more defined. But it remembers nothing. Memory is in here.” She stepped forward and tapped my forehead with two fingers. Well, “tapped” is an understatement.
“Ow!” I took a quick step backward, rubbing the spot where she’d hit me ruefully. I was sure it would bruise. “Jeez, take it easy!”
That brought a full-on grin to her face, wh
ich dumbfounded me. I’d almost never seen Cara smile. I couldn’t hold back the thought: Holy cow, she’s beautiful.
“My Lord is too frail,” she said impishly. “But I will soon take care of that. All right, first things first. Stand like this, with your hands up.” She assumed a classic boxer’s pose, both arms held up before her.
“Whoah, whoah, whoah,” I said quickly, holding up my hands. “I’m going to spar with you?”
The smile vanished, replaced by a quizzical frown. “Of course. Why?”
I sighed. This was awkward. “Okay, listen, Cara. I know that this is totally stupid. I know that the way you guys think here is one hundred percent different from how we think on Earth. And I know that you are the last person I should say this about. But all the same, I was brought up not to hit girls. I’d feel much more comfortable sparring with Darren.”
Cara’s nostrils flared, but her dancing eyes told me it was from amusement rather than anger. “Is that right?” she asked, her voice carefully neutral. She turned to Darren. “Sir Darren,” she said. “Try and hit me.”
Darren’s eyes widened. “Captain…”
“Try and hit me,” Cara repeated. “Or you’re on half rations for a week.”
Darren looked at me desperately. “My Lord…please spar with her.”
“I don’t want to hit her either, man,” I said, shaking my head ruefully. “I feel your pain.”
His eyes darted wildly back and forth between us. “No, my Lord. You don’t understand. I…”
“Sir Darren!” Cara snapped, her battle voice ringing out in the clearing’s still air. “I have given you an order. You have ten seconds to follow it before you’re on half rations.”
“I’d do it if I were you, boy,” said Barius helpfully, still sitting placidly on his rock in the middle of the clearing.
Darren sighed. He stepped forward, assuming the same boxer’s pose as Cara. He took a couple of cautious sidesteps back and forth, looking for an opening. Then he stepped forward and jabbed, so fast I couldn’t even follow the motion of his hand.
But Cara was impossibly faster.
So many things happened in such a quick succession, I only caught flashes. Darren’s arm twisted around, his face a grimace. Cara’s hand mashed into Darren’s cheek, a perfectly controlled blow that was hard but not punishing. Cara’s hands like knives in two other spots on Darren’s torso, and then Darren flying through the air to crash to the ground, groaning. Cara stood there, in a perfect stance once again, resting lightly on the balls of her feet as she bounced slightly back and forth.
I realized that my jaw was hanging down, apparently beyond my conscious control. I forced it shut, aware that my eyes were like saucers.
“Holy…” I said.
Darren moaned again from the ground. “You couldn’t just do what she asked, could you my Lord?” He pushed up with his right hand, but his left remained on the ground. Trying to raise his body with one hand didn’t work so well, so he just slumped back down to the grass, giving a petulant sigh into the greenery.
“Did you break his arm?” I asked Cara, my voice breaking. I was torn between the desire to go help Darren up and the much, much stronger desire not to get one inch closer to Cara unless it was absolutely necessary.
“Of course not,” she said with a smile. She took two quick steps, and suddenly she was right in front of me. Her arm shot forward to grab my bicep, and I yelped before I could help myself. The fingers of her right hand found a spot just under my armpit, and then another spot on the back of my bicep. “I struck him here and here,” she said. “These are pressure points, common to any opponent. Hit them hard enough, and his arm becomes useless. A major advantage in a fight.”
Her hands left my arm to press hard into the area next to and right above my collar bone. I could tell she was barely touching them, but even that was almost more painful than I could stand. “These points cause intense pain,” she said. “Hit them hard enough, and your foe will be incapacitated. Hit them even harder, and you’ll knock them unconscious.” She gave a stern look at Darren on the ground, as though he’d wronged her. “I was trying to knock Darren out, in fact, but he’s got a bit more muscle mass than I thought.”
Darren raised his right hand in a rueful wave. His face was still buried in the grass.
Cara gave my shoulders a stiff pat that nearly knocked me from my feet. “So you see, a few tricks may help you overcome an opponent or two and make your escape. It’s the best I can do, and so I intend to do it.”
She took two steps back and assumed the same pose as before, arms raised once again. “All right. Again. Like this.”
Too scared now to refuse, I raised my arms. It felt like I was holding up matchsticks to guard against a rampaging elephant with rabies.
Cara rolled her eyes and shook her head—a habit she must have picked up from Sarah, because the motion was identical. She came to me and shoved one of my feet with her own.
“It’s not just the hands, my Lord,” she chided me. “The feet are just as important. Without good footwork, you’re off balance. It’s like with your swordplay. Here.”
She knelt and adjusted my foot a tiny bit more, rotating it so it was pointing not straight ahead, but slightly inward. I flinched when her hands touched me—I had a sudden vision of her picking me up by the ankle and flinging me into the woods.
She stood and took two steps back, raising her hands once again.
“Now, I want you to throw a punch,” she said carefully. “Slowly. The same way you saw Darren attack me earlier, but about ten times slower.”
I gulped and took a cautious step forward, bringing my right hand around in a slow, slow motion. But rather than grab my wrist and snap it in two, Cara reached out and gently wrapped her fingers around my wrist, then pulled my hand forward so she could easily reach a point on my elbow.
“With your short arms, it will be easiest for you to hit people here,” she said. “It won’t disable them, but it will be quite painful. That should give you enough opportunity to strike the points on the bicep I already showed you.”
“Thanks,” I said nervously. With my hand secure in her grip and her other arm almost wrapped around mine, it felt disturbingly like my arm was in a tiger’s mouth and I was just waiting for the jaws to snap shut.
I don’t know if she could tell what I was thinking, but she smiled. “All right. Let’s do it again.”
She showed me the motion again. And then again. And again. Then she flipped it around and had me do it on her—not striking the point on the elbow, just placing my hand against it. Each time she’d grip my fingers and move them slightly until they were in the exact right spot. But every time we tried it again, my fingers would shift slightly. They’d be an inch too high, an inch too far down the arm, an inch too far off the bicep.
“No, here,” she said after what felt like the thousandth try, but was probably more like the tenth.
“I’m trying!” I said. “It’s hard to hit the exact same spot every time.
“Trying will do nothing,” Cara said sternly. “If you try in a fight, you die.”
“Well, you’ve had years to practice this,” I said sullenly. “And you’re trying to teach me in an hour.”
“It is not that difficult,” she retorted. “Look. Here.”
She seized my arm and placed her thumb lightly against the point on my elbow. Though she barely touched it, it ached immediately. I could feel that any more pressure would be excruciating.
I yanked my arm from her grasp. “Like I said—you’ve been doing this for years, but you’re launching me right into the thick of it. Aren’t there some basics I’m supposed to learn first? Some sort of wax on, wax off thing?”
Cara blinked. “What does wax have to do with anything?”
I threw up my hands. “Never mind. Let’s take a break.”
I turned to walk back to the center of the camp, but Cara stepped around me and got in my way. “You haven’t even mastered the first att
ack yet,” she said. “How do you think you will fare when you wake up on True Earth?”
“I think I’ll be toast,” I said angrily. “I’m probably in some sort of lockdown facility, chained to a chair and surrounded by guards with M-16 assault rifles. And I know you don’t know what they are, but here’s the basics: they’re boomsticks that explode and kill you. I don’t think tapping someone on the elbow is going to be tremendously helpful.”
“We must do what we can,” Cara said. Her voice was still even, but it had taken on that tone. That tone she got when she was masking her emotions.
“Forget it Cara,” I said with a sigh. “I know you’re trying to make me into some sort of super-specialized trained killer, but it’s not going to happen. Besides, I should try to have Tess knock me out again. Maybe I’ll wake up this time.”
I pushed past her before she could respond and went toward the center of the camp. Truthfully, I doubted it had been an hour yet. But I wanted an excuse to get away from Cara and the training that seemed more useless by the second.
Tess was leaning against the rock in the middle of the clearing, looking out at me from behind the curtain of her hair. Cara and I had been a little distance away, but I’m sure that even if Tess couldn’t hear us, she could tell we’d been arguing. Her eyes were timid as they looked up at me.
“Let’s try again,” I said, pretending nothing was wrong. “Mind if I sit there? So I don’t collapse if it works?”
She nodded silently and got out of the way. I sat cross-legged with my back to the rock. Darren settled to the ground next to me. He was still rubbing the pain out of his right bicep, but it was absent-minded—his attention was focused on Tess and me. Cara approached, but stopped a good dozen yards away. She folded her arms and gave me a stony glare.
I looked away from her to focus on Tess, who had sat cross-legged in front of me. She gave me a small smile. “Ready?”
I shrugged. “Sure. Hit me.”
Tess blinked, and her eyes turned white. I’d seen it so many times that day that it barely even fazed me. I leaned back, expecting a brief swim in unconsciousness, followed by starting awake against the rock.
Wyrmspire (Realm Keepers Book 2) Page 11