The Proving of Champions, Chapter 19

Fleta dreaded the fight with the tarasque, but she dared not put her fears or her mourning for Alexei into words. Instead, she put them into her training. The other leaders of the camp were clever; the one privilege she could afford was letting them argue over the details of the plain. If she thought too much she would lose out on what little time she had for training. The guilt of years spent wasting her scouting and fighting weapons bore down her like a phantom omen of the behemoth. What she had to do know is train so that she didn’t have to think when it came time to fight the tarasque. Running and stabbing had to become instinct for her, for if she paused, the whole camp was doomed.

The other leaders for their part, executed their planning with equal fury. Bertram clashed with Terrell over the location to lay spikes for the tarasque. If the spikes were too far from the gate, they couldn’t try using Peace with Other’s mimicking ability to open it. Terrell’s counter thrust was that if the tarasque got too close to the gate and stepped on it, their chances of going home were gone forever. The planning skirmished erupted into other meetings. Marina accosted Bertram on the technique and procedures for distilling poisons, and even Hereward and Lorens bickered about the positioning of soldiers during the fight.

The only thing the skald and champions agreed on was Daralis' proposal to keep the rest of the soldiers occupied to avoid nerves. The camp buzzed with soldiers and scouts preparing the last traps and equipment, and below the camp, the twang of crossbows and the thud of traps shielded teams working to bury the spikes. Peace with Others immediately served as one of their best scouts, his esoteric senses picking out dangerous beasts minutes before they would be visible or audible to humans. Marina worked mostly in an extremity of the camp on a process of refining poisons and coating the spikes with them.

When Marina was not busy with her concoctions, she visited Fleta. Marina called recovery a miracle, but Fleta thought of it as two days too late. She threw herself into running, and falchion drills to catch up, but inevitably, Marina would catch sight of her as she went to argue with Bertram and order the Thorgarick champion to rest.

The fifth day since she was injured, the second day after two soldiers died distracting the tarasque, Fleta fought Welkris with her new sword while the camp watched.

That morning, the Karatuk swordmaster had embarrassed her thoroughly with practice swords and spears. Hereward assured her that her progress in a few days was greater than he'd seen her make in months, but Fleta found it difficult to appreciate the priceless training when their practice matches ended in a three sword strokes, if not two. The only portion of the lesson Fleta managed with any grace were the running and stance drills; her legs had stamina in spades. She faired as well as any of the other soldiers in sword drills designed to building endurance in the shoulders, which is to say no where near Tarasque-fighting levels. Welkris guided her through stances and katas criticisms like "stance," "back to guard," "edge alignment" written in large letters so he could just point to them during training. The sword master did each exercise along with Fleta, but some how he never broke a sweat or lost his breath.

When Fleta was soaked in perspiration and rubbing her aching shoulders, Welkris grabbed a sword and moved into guard facing Fleta. It was a low, fool's guard, and Fleta couldn’t tell whether it was a gracious handicap or an insult.

"I'm not going to be trading sword strokes with the tarasque," Fleta complained. "Can we just skip this part?"

Implacable, Welkris remained in guard. Fleta raised her wooden sword and Welkris feinted. Fleta moved to parry, and Welkris circled her sword, hitting her hand, and forcing her to drop the sword. She picked the sword up, this time sprinting in to a full-speed circle around Welkris. He stepped just out of range as she struck. Somehow his blade found her ribs before Fleta found an opening.

Welkris nodded, then dropped his wooden practice sword for a metal one. Then the Karatuk gestured to Alexei.

The bone-white falchion rested in a scabbard quickly jury-rigged by the Valcots. Lorens apologized for the quality, but somehow, with hardly any materials, they cobbled existing sheaths into a perfect fit of deep, Valcot-red leather. Bertram promised that if they ever escaped the jungle, he would make a scabbard fit for a king. Even during the scabbard fitting, Bertram avoided calling the sword by name. Fleta was the only person in camp still called him Alexei. Everyone referred to it at the bone falchion or the weeping falchion.

Fleta reached for Alexei and hesitated. Fleta had practiced with Alexei, but she only practiced in private. She slipped out of camp over Terrell’s strongly worded objection. Beasts no longer worried her, for the sword always seemed to know when one was about to attack. These moments felt almost like a dance; the sword knew how to swing, and thrust, and feint, and parry, and guard, and she could follow as fast as the wing of humming bird. If she pushed back, with a choreography of her own, Alexei gave way and flowed with her into the most perfect versions of the steps Fleta imagined.

Alexei had been a phenomenal swordsmen, but his style had been brutal, relying often on shape changing to overpower the most skilled opponents, like Alber or Welkris. But now that he had sloughed off all his being except for this sword, his knowledge and grace, and the knowledge and grace of a dozen other warriors, were focused to a razor’s edge in this blade. At the end of a practice sessions in the dark solitude of the branches, Fleta found herself crying as much for the beauty she never knew that the swing of a sword could marshal as for the sacrifice of her friend.

The thought of baring Alexei and sharing that dance with the public felt as shameful as her dreams of showing up to a holiday feast naked. But the tarasque wouldn’t care how naked she felt, so she stripped Alexei from his sheath. All she had to do was follow Alexei, and her fears of embarrassment vanished.

Welkris was more cautious in this match. He circled slowly and waited for Fleta. Fleta circled at the same speed. The champion lunged to extend her range without committing to stay in Welkris's. As Welkris moved to parry and step into her range, the bone falchion counter parried, riposted, and slashed at Welkris twice. Fleta flanked the Karatuk, her footing light, ever step feeling as though it simply flowed out of the posture of the sword.

Welkris slashed hastily, more to create a buffer than to connect with Fleta. Fleta parried, then felt the blade twist and parry againt from the opposite direction, loosening Welkris grip before flying into a circle parried that disarmed Welkris. To Welkris’s credit, he never paused. Instead, he backed up, held out his hand and whistled. Esmond tossed him a spear. He immediately thrust at Fleta to control the center of the practice ring, his front leg clapping the planks in a movement so fast, few of the soldiers could follow. However, Fleta ducked around his spear and into his guard in the blink of an eye. Welkris attempted to catch several quick cuts on the haft of his spear, blocking only one of them.

On the last cut, Fleta felt Alexei yank her; this was not the dance. This was something else. Fleta scuted backwards, but the blade kept pulling towards Welkris’s ribs, the blade extending even as Fleta dragged the grip toward the edge of the ring. Welkris snug gray gambeson was sliced in three places. During Fleta’s struggle, Welkris whistled and two more soldiers stepped on the practice floor.

One soldier brandished a spear, the other a sword. Valcots both, and Fleta was unfamiliar with their training. Fleta let the sword pull her forward, and she pressed Welkris to the edge of

the ring, but had to turn before she could disarm him. Fleta dashed to the others, parrying and riposting, attacking seven times for each one of theirs, pushing them to the edge of the

ring before returning to cut Welkris's spear in half. Three more soldiers joined, and Fleta was a blur between six new soldiers. With six weapons pointed at her, controlling the center was now a disadvantage. She parried and thrust until the soldiers crossed swords and spears, tangled up in each other, and took an instant of their confusion opening to escape through. Two fighters

attempted to close the gap with their blades, but she was already behind them.

The soldiers backed up into two groups, as if to flank her, when the Alexei shivered in her hand. In the next moment, she heard the ballistae snap behind her. For any other member of the

camp, it would have been too late to avoid the bolt. Fleta, however, already turned and let the sword fly up to cleave the bolt in two.

The canvas-covered bulb at the end of the neutered bolt nearly struck Sebaston in the face. Fleta covered her mouth with her left hand.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Fleta blurted.

Fleta flushed a violent red under the stares of the entire camp, silently surrounding her. The camp broke into laughter.

The camp’s good humor or the rest of the day, well after Fleta’s injuries forced her to rest. Fleta disappeared gracefully, but Bertram and Terrell noted that she couldn’t keep up more than twenty minutes of running. Not nearly enough to outlast the tarasque. Terrell muttered about hoping their distractions would provide Fleta enough rest to finish the fight as Fleta returned to her tent, but Fleta caught phrases of a much bolder and more optimistic speech as she ate dinner in her tent. The disciples would plant their banner on the corpse of the tarasque like mountaineers, and be home in a few days.

The camp retired early to rest. Friends whispered to each other final confessions, and couples went off to discrete corners of the camp, studiously ignored by the rest. Daralis was in last

minute conference with Terrell, wracking their brains for fallback plans the whole group had not already discussed. Alexei was a sword. Fleta turned in her hammock to face Marina.

"Are you ready for tomorrow?" Fleta asked.

"I am prepared," Marina said softly, a practiced smile on her lips. "But there is no such thing as ready."