“We knew you were a true Knorth!”
She still wasn’t used to taking them so casually. However, practice with another natural Arrin-thari, Bear, was beginning to help.
“The scythe-arm,” announced Randon Bran, holding up one of the curved blades. It looked like two swords without hilts, joined along a sharp crescent edge, with a wicked point at each end. There was room between the two sides to insert one’s arm, with leather straps at the inner elbow and palm. They came in different lengths, one roughly a yard long and the other about two-thirds that. For practice purposes, a leather strip sheathed the edge, capped at each end with a wooden ball.
“Choose two, one long, one short,” the randon said. “Test until you find the length and weight that suit you best. Think of them as swords. You’ve practiced enough to know the advantages and disadvantages of both lengths, depending on how close to your opponent you want to get and on your own strength.”
Jame noticed that Brier found a pair at once and donned them with the ease of long familiarity. When Dar, as usual overenthusiastic, drew back with a flourish into the guard position, Brier parried his unintended elbow jab at her face.
“Watch the spurs,” the instructor warned. “You can very easily put out the eye of the cadet behind you, and those we don’t grow back.”
He should know, thought Jame. Bear had slashed him across the face when he had helped to force the brain-damaged Shanir into the room that still served as his prison—this, after Bear had mauled a cadet stupid enough to taunt him. To this day, he was only formally let out for her training.
“Here, lady.” Brier handed Jame two scythe-arms shorter than her own. “Try these. They’re Southron weapons,” she added, to explain her own expertise.
Jame slipped them on, the first easily, the second with some fumbling and unintended clashing of steel. Unlike most Kencyr, she favored her right hand. Also, as a rule, she disliked edged weapons. However, the balance and heft of these pleased her.
“I still want to learn Kothifir street-fighting.”
Brier gave her a sidelong look. Such informal techniques had lost the Southron vital points in their initial ranking at the college, and Jame one of her front teeth, since regrown.
“Whenever you like . . . Lordan.”
The second ten-command due for this lesson hadn’t yet appeared.
“Huh,” said Randon Bran, annoyed.
With that, he set the Knorth ten at a safe distance from each other and began to teach them the kantirs of this new form.
Jame liked it more and more. Think of all weapons as part of your body, Randiroc had taught her on the journey south, and all techniques as variations of the Senethar. Other randon had told her much the same, but for the first time the words clicked. These, then, were projections of her claws, both before her and behind, the latter more of a challenge in that each move had double consequences, potentially unintended and lethal. She had deliberately placed herself to one side slightly behind Brier so as to watch the Southron flow through the forms—slash, high guard, low, parry, thrust—and tried to follow her. Around her, blades flashed in the measured cadences of offense and defense, fire and water. Oh, how elegant, as formal as some deadly dance.
Belatedly, Gorbel arrived with his new ten-command, looking even more morose than before.
“Sorry, Ran. Higbert fell into the manure pit and insisted on returning to the barracks to change his clothes.”
“But not his boots,” remarked the instructor, sniffing.
Tigger tapped his nose. “No sense of smell, Ran.” His tone was solemn, but his eyes glittered with mischief.
“Bastard,” Higbert snarled at him. “You deliberately tripped me.
Fash said something, laughing, into the lordan’s ear, and got no response. Gorbel didn’t make friends easily. Jame wondered what had drawn these two together, and then so thoroughly broken them apart.
Dure was anxiously searching his pockets. Jame hadn’t noticed his right hand before, as it was usually out of sight. The nails were chewed to the quick and the fingertips were padded with old scars.
The other Caineron were selecting and donning their scythe-arms. Higbert defiantly chose the two longest he could find. He hadn’t been here when Bran had given his instructions but still, thought Jame, how stupid.
Tigger drifted past behind him, and suddenly the former ten-commander seemed to go mad.
Higbert spun around with a yell, blindsiding the randon and knocking him into the wall. Everyone heard Bran’s head crack against the stone; then he was down. Cadets scrambled out of Higbert’s way and the wild flailing of his blades. He seemed oblivious to them, intent only on his mad gyrations. His roars contained words:
“ . . . get it off, get it off, GET IT OFF!”
Jame backed into a corner by a window, wondering if she should follow Corrudin’s example and jump out. Too late. Higbert had her pinned, without realizing it. In fact, his back was to her and her blades were up, parrying the wild, reverse slashes of his spurs. She couldn’t get at him with her hands to deliver an incapacitating pressure-point blow: six inches of steel projecting from one hand and nearly a foot from the other kept them literally at sword’s point.
Around him, she saw Brier trying to come to her rescue, but Caineron blocked the Southron’s way. Several blades had come unsheathed. Fights seemed to be breaking out all over the room, born of confusion or worse. Gorbel bellowed, ending with a surprised grunt. Obidin was trying to restore order, but no one was listening.
Trinity, thought Jame. You could be defending yourself against the cadet in front of you and accidentally attacking the one behind.
As if to prove her point, Higbert tried to ram his back against the wall. Jame barely had time to raise her points so as not to skewer him before he slammed into her, knocking her breathless. She felt something small and hard move between them, under the Caineron’s clothing. When he reared away, she saw a lump zigzag across his back, headed generally southward.
At the collision, the button had popped off her short blade and its leather sheath had fallen away. She slid its point under Higbert’s jacket at the waist and slashed upward to the collar, cutting open both coat and shirt. Something gray thumped to the floor. She snatched it up and tossed it to Dure, who hastily pocketed it. Higbert’s back was a map of red welts following the creature’s progress.
As she tried to disengage her blade, its spur caught on Higbert’s belt.
He spun around, whipping her out of her corner. Her feet hardly touched the ground as, perforce, she followed her trapped weapon and arm.
“Higbert, stop . . . ”
He answered with a roar not unlike a baited bull’s. His split jacket slid down to entangle his arms. Then her steel spur cut through his belt. Flung free, Jame rolled back into the corner by the window.
Higbert’s split pants fell to his ankles. He nearly pitched forward onto his own blades, but recovered and began savagely to slash away the ruins of his clothes. His scythe-arms had also come unsheathed and left bloody gashes in their passing. The man wasn’t a berserker; however, in this mood he could almost have gelded himself without noticing. Knorth and Caineron alike drew back, collectively holding their breaths.
As suddenly as he had started, Higbert stopped, panting, clad only in boots, blades, and bloody rags. Veins stood out all over him. He looked at one naked scythe-arm, then the other, then up, straight at Jame. With a snarl, he lunged.
Jame ducked as sharp steel gouged the wall where her head had been. She came up inside his reach. The unbated point of her short blade sliced through his leather braces at palm and elbow and his right scythe-arm spun free, out the window. They heard it clatter on the tin roof of the arcade and fall to the square below. At the touch of her bare steel resting, lightly, against the hollow at the base of his throat, Higbert froze.