Touch of Iron (The Living Blade #1) (25 page)

They moved in tune. It felt like they were back on their trek across the Plains, their bodies recognizing each other and falling into step next to the other. She had missed this. It felt like dancing to a slow beat, interspersed with short frantic explosions in between. One move following the other, a step to the side, a beat dictating a counter-beat, resulting in a rhythm similar to her throbbing heart. She could have laughed out loud. Could have, if she didn’t know for sure that he was faster, stronger, and had longer arms. And if he hit, it would hurt like hell.

Nora ducked away from one of his snakelike grabs. But after a few near misses, he caught her forearm and held it fast, pulling her against him. She struggled to free it, flailing with her other hand, which he caught also, effortlessly. Hands pinned down, she attempted to knee him in the groin. His foot came up and stamped hers, squashing it painfully with the heel of his boot. She gasped. He pushed her away. And she was free from his steel grip but fell to the ground, jarring her hip painfully.

She rose with a groan, hearing the chuckles, and flushed.

They both stood on opposite sides of the circle and looked at each other. Her legs felt weak. The muscles in her thighs were quivering as if from the steep climb up the stairs. Maybe minutes had passed since the fight began, but Nora was panting and sweating, nauseous from exhaustion. All she wanted to do was sit down and rest up a bit. Wash and eat. And drink. Definitely drink. But here she was, in this circle, knees bent, hands raised once more, and Diaz wasn’t even breaking a sweat.

Anger surged through her. Nora summoned the rest of her energy from it and dashed at the half-wight. Her movements were ever faster; she tried to hit him, hands and feet, anything to make him feel how mad she was. He either blocked or moved out of her reach. One blow hit the space where his face had just been and, for the first time, he looked surprised.

So he retaliated, and she dodged or blocked his blows as well as she could. The slap and grunt of the two bodies locked in a struggle with each other echoed across the courtyard. He upped the pace. It was all she could do to retreat, turning her body away from the blows of his hands. But a sudden sweep of his backhand hit her hard across the face.

Nora blacked out. As she came to, the cobblestones reeled under her hands. Two small drops of blood splashed next to her thumb. Her lower lip had split near the corner, and she felt a sharp sting as her tongue probed the pulsing wound. Blood mixed with the bitter taste of defeat in her mouth. She swallowed it. She looked up and saw the edge of the circle was only a hand-width away. She had held herself quite well up to now. Maybe it was time to end the show and crawl out of the circle with what dignity she had left. Laughter rang in her ears, and she looked beyond the thin line to see Prince Bashan, gloating. She blinked away the sweat from her eyes and got to her feet.

Master Diaz stood waiting for her. Calm and set. His hands were folded on his back again. Nora wiped her mouth. Blood shone on the back of her hand. The weakness returned to her legs.

“Step out of the circle,” he said.

“No.”

“You are bleeding.”

She nodded but did not move.

“I have drawn the first blood and this fight is over. Step out of the circle.”

“No.” She paused. “Master.”

He frowned.

This time he moved to strike first. Nora deflected his blows as best as she could, but she was edging around the snow circle, trying not to step over the line. He gave her no time to pause. There was no relenting. She held her forearms over her face, glancing through the splayed fingers, trying to guess where he’d strike next. Suddenly, his hand grabbed her right arm and twisted it painfully behind her. Then he boxed the scar they both knew was hidden underneath her clothes. She shrieked in pain and fell to her knees, all power draining from her in an instant.

“Telen!” Nora heard Master Cumi’s sharp voice.

Great. More onlookers. Best thing for humiliations,
she thought.

Master Diaz did not let go of her arm. He dragged her along with him by sheer force, with her scrabbling on her knees to keep up. He finally let go after they had crossed the thin trace of the line in the flaky snow.

“This fight is over,” he repeated and let her fall to the ground.

Nora propped herself up on her elbows and glared at him from below. He blinked down at her, his face unreadable, then held out his hand. She grasped it and he pulled her up to her feet.

“I look forward to our next lesson tomorrow,” he said, not even out of breath.

Nora nodded, not trusting herself to speak, and felt a warmth creep over her skin. Then he scuffed a patch of snow over the line and left the circle for the far sidewall.

Under the dark shadow of the statue of Scyld, Nora nodded again. She was shaking with exertion, bleeding from her lip, and her shoulder felt like an arrow had pierced it all over again. But the wind was in her hair and brought the sharp, cold taste of snow to her tongue next to the bitter taste of blood. And she’d never felt so alive.

A
fter another busy day, Nora
dragged her feet back up the stairs with a slight headache coming on after arguing with the miller over kegs of beer he had been secretly hoarding in the half-built mill. She’d have to talk to Cumi about the order’s stance on illegal breweries. As she came upon Scyld’s courtyard, Master Diaz was waiting for her, circle drawn, leaning on a wooden sword. Nora groaned inwardly. It was one thing to want to train to become the world’s greatest female warrior since Scyld herself, but now? Really? She was dead tired and still had dinner to orchestrate with Calla. Even though they still weren’t speaking to each other.

She laid her tallying writ on the edge of the fountain and secured it there against the wind with a stone.

“No audience today? Where are the others?” Nora asked the half-wight.

“They are inside, training Shade Padarn to fight in a shield wall.”

“Why aren’t we inside? It’s cold out here.”

Diaz cocked his head.

“You think you will only ever fight when you’re rested and when the weather’s just fine and you have nothing else to do that day? Think again. And bow before you come into the circle.”

Nora clenched her jaw and bowed her head.

“Lower.”

“You’re enjoying this a bit too much, aren’t you, Master Diaz?” She bowed with a flourish of her arms.

Diaz allowed his lips a shadow of a smile.

“Always remember, you asked me for this.”

Nora reached out for the practice sword, but he shook his head.

“No, today we will start with the basics. Today I will teach you how to roll.”

“To roll?”

To roll. As Diaz explained, she would never have the strength of a man, never the reach of a man’s arm, never have even odds in a fight. So he would teach her to be fast, to employ a mix of various traditional fighting styles, and for that she’d need to be able to duck, jump, vault, leap, and roll without hurting herself and hopefully come up on her feet at all times. Like a cat. Because this, he said, meant life or death.

“To be like a cat means life or death?”

He nodded gravely.

So she rolled, shoulder over hip and onto her feet, and again, and again, feeling very foolish.

Now jump and roll. Now jump from the fountain and roll. Now from the wall and roll. When training was finally over, she was bruised on both shoulders and hips from the cobblestones and strongly doubting her decision to do this. He beckoned her. She rolled one last time and rose on her feet before him, spreading her hands for show.

“Now come at me,” he said. “Try to knock me over. And I will throw you, and you will roll and stand. Understood?”

“You don’t think I can topple you?” Nora bounced on the balls of her feet.

“If you could, you would be training to fight in the shield wall with Padarn, wouldn’t you? Instead, we are here.”

She charged at him and landed on her back with a thud. Winded, she stared at the rolling clouds above Scyld’s sword tip, waiting to get her breath back. She heard boots approaching, and Diaz’s dark eyes shoved themselves into her view.

“You didn’t roll.” He loomed over her and looked down his nose with disappointment.

“I didn’t roll.” Nora waved a hand.

He reached down to lift her. She grasped his wrist and tugged instead, kicking his legs away from under him. It was a mean trick. But she was tired of his complacency. And anyway, weren’t you allowed mean tricks in a fight? Unbalanced, Diaz let himself fall. Nora tensed, curling up into a ball, thinking he’d crash onto her, but he gracefully rolled away at the last moment and was on his feet beside her again in one effortless motion. It was depressing. He held out his hand again, one eyebrow raised high. This time she let herself be pulled up.

The next days she rolled some more. Then he drilled her in the most intriguing, most important fighting techniques, like how to breathe, how to stand, how to keep her elbows by her side, how to move from the hips and watch her opponent’s hips. All the while Nora doubted he was taking this very seriously. Or maybe it was a test of how far she was willing to go before she cracked. On top of her own thoughts, she was very conscious of all the onlookers they had. Suddenly, so many people had things to do in the lower courtyards and had to pass by—it was amazing. Often during training, she saw faces at the windows onto the courtyard. She began to suspect that they practiced in the courtyard for exactly that reason. They were of the opposite sex, after all, and the nature of this training was very physical. Tongues would wag. Staring at a man’s loins could ruin a girl’s reputation all too easily, and didn’t she know?

So they trained outside, even in sheets of rain and howling winds. Two days before Solstice it hailed, and they cowered beneath the temple’s portcullis by the entrance. The cold sun shone down on the courtyard, which was filling with icy grains. Diaz wiped his face and flicked the water from his hand.

“This is why winter is normally peacetime,” he lectured and turned to Nora, who was wiping the drip from her nose with her drenched sleeve. “Weather can be a powerful ally in war.”

“Is that why you and Bashan will leave the temple in spring when the weather gets better?”

“To find the Blade. Not to go to war.”

“Oh, I guess Bashan is going to tickle Empress Vashti off the throne with the Blade, then.”

Diaz gave her a long look.

“The way of the warrior sometimes demands the death of one or a few so that many can live.”

“And Bashan knows that, right?”

“
You
should.” Diaz unsheathed his short sword and handed it to her hilt-first. “Show me what you know.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Nora took the sword from his hand and gave it a swing. Diaz watched her. Having been raised by a smith, Nora had been around swords from infancy and knew their make. Each was made according to the customer’s wishes. A sword could tell you more about its owner than if that man opened his mouth, her father had always said. Like the clothes you chose to wear or the way in which you wore them. Other people might say you could tell what a man was by the scuff of his boots, but in Nora’s home, it was by his weapon of choice.

This one was simple and elegant, without curves and flourishes, without gilded guards or flashy designs. There were no magic runes scratched into the naked blade, yet when she breathed on it, she saw the curling patterns that revealed how several metal rods had skillfully been pounded into one. Its point was tapered, and long grooves ran down the middle of each side.

“The hilt’s heavier than it should be,” she said out loud. The boss of the hilt was made of iron, as was the crosspiece, both undecorated and straight.

Diaz shrugged.

“Heavy is good. It’s unexpected. She doesn’t have much weight at the tip, but she’s still well balanced. Makes her agile. Besides, you can always bash someone’s face in with the hilt.”

“She?” Nora smiled and held the sword up, mimicking the statue of Scyld. The sword’s tip nearly touched the stone ceiling of the portcullis. “I doubt bashing someone’s face in with the hilt is a gentlemanly thing to do.”

“I’ve seen young soldiers get themselves killed by thinking the way to win fights is by knocking on each other’s sword and shield as if there were points awarded. However, the only point is to survive. And to do so, you must kill the other man. The only gentlemanly thing is to do it quickly. Now you.”

Nora nodded and gripped the sword’s leather-wrapped handle. She made sure she was standing correctly and swung the blade, moving through a few basic poses. Diaz stood at a distance, arms crossed, watching his sword flash. She could see the dark tattoos on his wrists and forearms through his wet white shirt, and the burn mark on his right hand. She tried figuring out which tattoo Owen had read to know Diaz was a chieftain’s son, but couldn’t guess. Funny how his sword was so plain and his body so decorated. A wave of heat flushed her face, and Nora concentrated on the tip of the blade again.

She mimed hacking into his sides under the rib cage, cutting open his stomach with one swift move, thrusting downward, slashing both of his thighs. If Diaz was nervous about her handling steel between his legs, he didn’t show it. The sharp tip wavered a little in Nora’s hand. The sword was getting heavy. She swung it back up to pretend to slit his throat by drawing the length of the sword under his chin. Nora swallowed hard. She had killed men that way before and shuddered at the noise locked in her memory of men drowning in their own blood. The last was the heart. She pressed the tip of the blade into the leather jerkin he wore over his chest and grinned.