A/N: Just a short drabble-y thing. I found pictures of the new UK Darren Shan covers today, and there's actual pictures of Mr Crepsley/Arra/Gavner/Darren/Mr Tiny on them! I was quite amazed :)

Lessons

One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, and a swift kick to the ribs and his opponent trips and tumbles with a grunt to the ground below him.

Larten doesn't really imagine he has any particular aptitude for the game. The bars bore him, at the very least, but he's quite light on his feet and he's always enjoyed this kind of light fencing. He has realized he's more capable of balancing properly on these thin planks that the burly, stronger vampires. It feels good for just this once to be the best, even if only a week ago he'd been a half-vampire. He's proud of himself that already he's just as capable as everyone else in Vampire Mountain.

But he's running out of challengers. He has defeated five other vampires older and more experienced than himself that night, and there's a combination of superiority and trepidation that prevents others stepping in to spar with him. The seasoned vampires have no desire to be looked on like amatuers if they are defeated by a young newcomer, and those as green as Larten himself are too unsure of themselves. And so the red-haired man leaps from bar to bar and looks around at all the vampires that could challenge him but are too afraid to do so.

He might not have offered himself up for defeat if he hadn't spent the majority of the night drinking ale, and this had brought about a new courage--or stupidity--that tempted him. "Come on!" he cries, the corners of his thin lips twisting up into a smirk at the prospect of another win. His blood almost boils with the desire to be moving again. Larten doesn't know it yet, but this desire for bloodshed is what really connects him to his bretheren. "What, are you all afraid?"

He'd known that this was going to force a reaction out of the throngs--if there was one thing vampires seemed to hate, it was being called cowardly. There was a little murmur from those gathered around the criss-crossed panels of wood, and he turned to greet whoever had decided they wanted to take him down a peg or two.

But if he'd suspected it was going to be another of the beast-like, burly men he'd faced all evening, he'd been mistaken. His newest challenger was tall--though not in comparison to his own impressive height--and slim and dark-haired and pale-skinned. The lights of the flickering candles providing the light for the Hall flashed against her skin, patterns dancing across it and lighting her grey eyes.

"What?" she snapped crossly when the hand that grasped his staff failed to move. Then, seeing him falter under her scrutiny, he caught a little smirk in the candlelight. "What, are you afraid?"

The very prospect that her slim arms and soft skin could frighten him of all things is ridiculous, and he doesn't even bother to humour her; just sneered and raised his staff in a long, sweeping stroke.

"Hardly," he answers, and moves to sweep her clean off her feet without any fuss, but she side-steps him. He just chuckled. "I'll not go easy on you," he called, knowing without turning that she'd spun away somewhere behind him. "No allowances here for being a girl."

He doesn't see her mve, but now she's on the bar next to his and a little above it, and although it's clear his chauvanism has not amused her she smiles all the same. The crowds jeer as though they agree with the sentiment he has expressed, but somehow even that doesn't faze her.

"I never asked for any allowances," she answers, and then before he can blink strikes her staff hard against his sternum.

The blow winds him, completely unexpected, and he stumbles back and has to catch and steady himself to keep from falling. If she struck at that moment she'd be able to knock him straight off, but she doesn't, and Larten doesn't miss that courtesy. Perhaps a strike from behind is below the belt: he can't help but respect her just a little for that.

The crowds still don't think it's much of a fight, but Larten decided it isn't just the reflection of the torchlight in her eyes that makes them glint--it's a spark of determination and indignance at being thought so weak and helpless. Before he can think too hard on that she's struck him again on the backs of his knees, and he has to stop from stumbling.

The ruthlessness he sees when he turns is what first makes him wonder. Gavner had mentioned a woman that he'd sparred with a couple of nights before, and how difficult she'd been to defeat. He wished he'd been listening so that he might remember her name, but he supposes that doesn't matter. What matters is that he's starting to realize that there might be something in this fight after all.

Finally he hits out with his first defensive stroke, and she blocks it before it grazes her shoulder as intended. The crowds around them seem largely impatient--most of them eager to see one of them fall, especially if it's her--but a few are watching warily, as if they, like Larten, have seen something in the way she stands and waits that made them worry.

After another five or six experimental strikes from both sides, both contenders realize that the other isn't likely to fall out of sheer bad balance or lack of skill. And so Larten decides arrogantly that rather than prolong her humiliation, it would be courteous of him to finish her off quickly. And so he leaps forward to take her by surprise, and swings his staff around to knock her sideways and to the floor.

But the loud clack of the wooden poles meeting tells him that she had been expecting it, and before he can rethink his strategy her mysterious grey eyes glint and she sweeps her staff down between his ankles and twists.

The fall is not pleasant, and it knocks the wind out of him, but what is less pleasant is knowing that he's been bested by a girl, and the stunned silence of many of the vampires as this realization dawns.

The only thing for him to do really is to stand and brush himself off and head off quick before anyone can laugh at him. He's terribly angry when he returns to his chambers that night for reasons he can't wholly explain, but even that doesn't stop him from going in search of her the next night, and the night after that, and even the night after that, just to see her mischevous grey eyes sparkling in the candlelight again.

Chauvanism has no place in Vampire Mountain anymore. Larten Crepsley--and many others who take breakfast the next day with a broken arm or a sore head--has learnt his first lesson with Arra Sails very quickly indeed.