“Hold!” cried a voice, a furiously commanding voice, one that trembled more from rage than fear. I didn’t understand what was happening or who could possibly belong to a voice like that, but the man holding me spun around, dragging me with him, and then I saw.
The one who had shouted for him to stop was a woman.
“Release her at once!” the woman ordered, so angry she should have been emitting bolts of crackling electricity. She stood with feet spread wide and head held high, dressed in tight gray cloth breeches and white shirt rather than imad and caldin, leather sandals on her feet, a leather band holding her long hair back. Her left hand rested on the hilt of a sword, a large sword for such a large woman, but no more the size of a l’lenda’s sword than she was l’lenda high. The big blond man holding me stared at her speechlessly for a moment, and then he threw his head back and laughed.
“You would have me release her?” he asked the woman, sounding as offensive as it’s possible to be. “Surely you ask such a thing for you wish to take her place in my arms, yet must you first grow as lovely as she. A rella wenda this one is, dark-haired and green-eyed and softly weeping. Show me the manner in which you weep, wenda, and perhaps I shall choose you instead.”
“You may choose me more easily than that, gendis,” the woman returned with a snort of ridicule, looking the man up and down in scorn. “Continue to hold that girl as you do, and you shall quickly have me-just behind my sword. Remove your hand from her, else I shall remove the hand from you.”
“You dare to think yourself able to face me?” the man snarled, wildly furious at the way the woman had insulted him. Gendis meant someone without a single redeeming feature, a total loss, an absolute yahoo, and his mind seethed with fury. With a single, sharp thrust of his arm he threw me to the ground behind him, then drew his sword and raised his head. “Were you truly a wenda, your death would be a loss,” he growled, beginning to advance on the woman. “As you are not, weerees, there shall be no loss at all.”
With the last of his words he charged the woman, sword up and swinging, fully expecting to connect with his target. The woman, however, hadn’t grown furious at being called a plaything and a toy as he had expected her to, and wasn’t simply standing and waiting for him to cut her down. She danced fast under his swinging blade, drawing her own weapon as she turned, fully balanced, completely unhurt, and totally prepared to meet his next charge—which came almost immediately. The man was even angrier at having swung and missed, his mind filled with the most out-of-control rage I’d ever felt, emotion rather than thought sending him forward again. He slashed again and she avoided the swing a second time, still making no effort to do anything other than make the man appear clumsier than he was. A third swing came and then a fourth, the woman dodging nimbly and the man stumbling, and the foaming fury in the man’s mind almost made me ill.
I sat up on the ground where I’d been thrown, half in the dirt and half on the man’s verandah, one hand to my ribs on the left where the whole side felt bruised. The woman was continuing to lead the man all over the area, her movements precise, her mind cool and controlled and not at all afraid, her thoughts busy with some sort of plan. It was fairly obvious that the man wasn’t exactly the best with a sword, but he was big enough and strong enough to swing the monster thing, and if he once connected with any part of the woman, it would be all over for her. I sat and stared at the two of them, holding my ribs, wondering if the woman meant to kill the man or simply keep leading him around until he dropped from exhaustion. A couple of his swings had been so wild that he’d ended up with the woman behind him, and if she’d wanted to she could have put her sword in his back. I was sure she had been even more aware of those openings than I was, but she simply wasn’t interested in them and I thought I knew why. She seemed to have contracted a disease called honor, and I sincerely hoped it wouldn’t prove fatal.
The glide—and-stumble dance continued another couple of minutes, all eyes in the vicinity on it, and then came the opening the woman had been waiting for. The man was just about rabid with rage, his insane fury the only thing keeping him erect, and at last he couldn’t stand being led around like that anymore. He gripped his sword two-handed and raised it high and to the right of his sweat-soaked head, screamed wordlessly to gather every ounce of strength left to him, and charged directly at the woman with the most controlled gait he’d used in the entire fight. This time he had no intentions of plowing past her, only of cutting her in half with his two-handed swing, but instead of being upset a burst of triumph flashed in the woman’s mind. Although I couldn’t imagine why, that seemed to be what the woman had been waiting for; she immediately shifted her stance with instant readiness in her mind, set herself, then waited. The big man came at her, closer and closer, but not until that giant sword began slashing down at her did she move, jumping back at the last instant and only just far enough. The man had committed himself to the swing, and as soon as its arc passed her she would sweep in close to him with her own sword, opening him wide before he was able to so much as think about a backswing. It was what she had been waiting for—but she’d forgotten about the spectators.
Too many of the men around there were like the one who was fighting, more uncaringly dirty than shabby, casual about possessions especially if they were someone else’s, not particularly honorable and not particularly interested in being so. When the fight first started they were no more than amused, expecting the man to have no trouble with the woman. When the trouble started their amusement died, and two or three of them had gotten to their feet to urge on and yell to the man who was making them all feel like fools. When the fighter had set himself for the final charge, one of the standing men must have slipped up behind the woman in the growing dark; the first I saw of him was when he tripped the woman in her backward jump, destroying her balance and sending her down on her head. He was away again immediately, getting himself out of danger’s reach, but the damage had already been done. The woman was down and dizzy from hitting her head, and the man above her didn’t hesitate. He came forward with a yell of triumph and raised that monstrous sword two-handed directly above his head, gleefully ready to bring it down right into her.
I’d done a lot of agonizing up till then about what I could and couldn’t do to another living being, but when I saw the woman about to die all conscious thought and decision went by the boards. Without the least hesitation I hit the man with insecurity, a hard enough jolt to make him unsure about everything, including his balance. That giant sword above his head was suddenly leaning too far back for him to have a really good grip on it—or, at least the insecurity made him believe-so all he could do was twist around as he let it fall, bringing it down safely behind him before he was hurt by it. I began getting to my feet just as he turned his head to look at the woman, his eyes gauging the distance to be sure he would reach her with a single sweep of the blade no matter how insecure he felt. I couldn’t let him hurt her for trying to help me, I just couldn’t, but before the problem became critical a new element was added to the scene.