Shadows of the Scriptures

TWENTY-THREE: Cold Lessons

Sleep was hard to find.

The girl pretended to be asleep anyway, hoping that would trick her body into obedience. But when she heard a low grunt and the crunch of pebbles her pretense was blown. She creeped open her eye to the size of a slit, to find under the dim light of a dying flame that Lalmeja and his acquired cudgel were absent from where they had lay.

She shut the slit, trying to sleep. She would have succeeded too, had not a swishing sound sliced at her dreams.

Sighing quietly, the girl got to her feet. Taking care not to step on pebbles she hunkered down to a heap of orange rocks. She peeked over their top.

The Ardaunt was making use of a tree trunk as a practice sword. A thin bole, thin as the girl but twice as long. He was lunging at invisible enemies, thrusting, jabbing, swinging up, swinging low, swinging hard enough to behead.

Fascination gripped the girl. She knew swordplay, of course. Or rather, she knew of it. But she had not known one man could cut down two dozen if he knew how to swing well enough, like Lalmeja had cut down those bandits.

Then again, he was no man. He held the trunk in his hand like it were a pick.

The girl found her head inclined, her body pressed tight against the rock. Eyes captured by the suave motions the trunk-sword made, hewing at air.

They covered by-and-large fifteen miles the following day. She could tell since she had become used to keeping track of her heartbeats, and her steps, and a lot of things she would have paid no mind to till a month ago.

Lalmeja caught a rabbit for dinner. She cooked it over a spit. She ate all of it, him none. His ways were still a mystery to her; he seemed to eat less than a toddler, then lift grown men with three fingers like they were toys.

The girl was tired by the time Belraed sank in the sky and Cupar rose, but she made herself stay awake. This time she had to pretend to not be sleepy to keep herself from dozing off.

When she felt the Ardaunt’s weight shift behind her, she counted to fifty beats then stalked away searching for where he was. She scowled at the night when she could not find him, and squealed like the rabbit in her stomach might have done before it died when his huge hand descended on her shoulder.

“Why you not sleep?” he asked her, not ungently.

She had been caught off balance, in the kind of frame where one cannot help but be honest. “I . . . wanted to learn,” she blurted out. “Learn fighting. From you. Sorry.”

Lalmeja frowned the way only Ardaunts can, in the low purple moonlight that gentle edge to his vast forehead become a pit to fall in. “You are small,” he croaked, turning away. “Sleep.”

The girl felt anger stewing in her bosoms. She hardly realized her Wolf was snarling until the knife had jumped into her hands. His special knife.

Lalmeja stared down at her. She fully expected to feel his powerful fist on her silly mouth, but he only shrugged. “I do not know how to teach. I try. Okay?”

Her eyes swelled. “Okay,” she said.

A week later the girl was covered in bruises from head to foot, stiff in areas she was sure were supposed to be flexible. She was learning, slowly despite being a fast learner, that fighting was just another form of pretense. You pretend to be in control and charge of your muscles for long enough, and gradually they obey you to do fearsome things.

The mermaiden had a name for itself — herself — which was little more than a hooting sound.

She used to have a name, or so she said. Well, nay-eem is what she really said. She used to be a normal human girl once. She didn’t have memories of then, she said, only the knowledge that they were true.