CHAPTER EIGHT
"You've fought with a longsword before, right?" Sasha asked as she took one down from the wall of the training hall. She had stripped herself of her armor and furs, leaving her clad in a very simple tunic and greaves. Nervously, Jack eyed the training weapon in her hands. It was long, two-edged, and had no tip. It wouldn't draw blood, but it would definitely hurt whatever it hit. It looked downright foreign to him. Carefully, he took a matching one down from the wall.
"Oh, well, not a lot, I might have…er…" he trailed off. He felt the weapon in his hand, and it was alien to him. The balance was completely different from his dirk, and he could all ready tell most of his power was going to come from his wrist and elbow, not his shoulder. He took a couple trial passes with it. He didn't like the feeling very much, but he didn't really have a choice. If he backed down in the face of this girl, Sasha, after she had challenged him to a friendly match, he would look like less of a man in her eyes.
And with eyes like hers, he certainly didn't want to be in that situation.
Sasha crouched with a veteran's poise. Awkwardly, Jack tried to mimic her stance. He pointed his blunted blade at her, and waited for a long tense moment. With a yell, she thrust at him, and he just barely parried the blow. He sidestepped to try and use her momentum against her, but she v-stepped along with him, transferring all that motion into a sideways slash to make up for the missed thrust. Jack frantically disengaged and backed up, before attempting a counterattack of his own. She ducked underneath his slash with almost contemptuous ease, and came in close for a blow at his shoulder. He twisted himself quickly, and instead the blade managed to graze him. Still, it hurt.
As she came in for the backswing, he parried inside her guard and brought himself closer to force her down to the floor with his greater strength. Nimbly, she wedged herself beneath him and flipped him over her head with a simple twisting motion. He landed hard on his back, the breath going out of him. He saw the upside-down image of her thrusting her sword out to his neck to claim victory, and with a wild sort of speed knocked the blow aside. He rolled back, landing in a crouch before standing up and raising his blade at her once again.
"You fight very well," Sasha said. There was an enigmatic smile on her face as the two slowly began to circle each other. "I had despaired at the thought of ever meeting a capable warrior in my lifetime. Especially," she added coyly, "one who is so good-looking." Jack felt himself flush slightly. Had she just said--?
He didn't have time to think any longer, because immediately she had closed the distance between them and lashed out again. He leaned to the side and the blow barely passed him. He leaned in for a riposte, swinging his sword bodily with two hands. His blade met hers, and the resounding clang echoed throughout the entire village.
Brishen and Celia sat at lunch with Ivan. He had put forth a small feast of boar, cheese, bread, and a few local fruits for them. They had also been poured wine, which Ivan had promised was among the finest in the land. Certainly, it had not disappointed. Ivan himself drank a strong-smelling beverage that he called "vodka." He had offered some to Celia and Brishen, but upon smelling how strong it was, both had politely declined and opted for more wine. A loud clang, the sound of clashing blades, cut across their conversation. Ivan turned his head in the direction of the village's training hall, where the noise had issued from.
"That will be my Sasha," he said fondly, a smile creeping into his features. "She has always been very skilled with the blade…" Brishen, who had always felt a tad uncomfortable about edged weapons, politely nodded, while Celia took a generous chunk of cheese into her mouth. She swallowed after a moment.
"How has the war affected the island?" she asked.
"It has not," Ivan said, a touch of pride in his voice. "The Dominion has tried twice before to conquer us in our history, and once a greedy king attempted to annex us. But ultimately, we are an island who stands alone in the world, and we are very proud of it."
"But your warriors are very skilled," Brishen said. He was careful in choosing his words; he did not want his next suggestion to come across as an insult. "Surely they could do no amount of good on the front lines of the war with their abilities?" Ivan shook his head.
"The warriors are needed here to protect the island. The Dominion will never touch this place, and if it ever does, then the Katarin Island warriors will protect it." Brishen just nodded his head again and went back to enjoying his boar. He felt differently on the matter, but he decided that it wasn't his place to tell this man where he should deploy his own warriors. Even if they're based on one of my predecessors, he thought to himself.
"A place untouched by the war," Celia said to no one in particular. "I didn't think it was still possible to find any such place in the world."
"They are rare, young Celia," Ivan said. "We like to think of ourselves as an oasis of peace and safety for those who dwell here. Even if we were not at war with the Dominion of Fire, we would be suspicious of any outlanders. Even the king's tax collectors have stopped coming here. But of course," he laughed, "we are not complaining about that."
"Enjoy your stay here while you can," he added, taking another drink of vodka. "It is not very often on your journey that you will find complete peace from the Dominion."
The small landing craft floated gently into the shallows, and with a surprisingly loud splash several pairs of boots hit the water and sunk slightly into the muddy ground. They had been careful to loop around the island, avoiding the careful eyes of the sky bison still laying on the beach, and they now moved as quietly as possible. Still more swarmed out of the landing craft, until there was a very large contingent of Dominion soldiers standing on the once-untouched beaches of Katarin Island. Diego was one of the last to disembark, and he felt cold water swirl in his boots as he strode ashore. Once on firm land, he closed his eyes for a moment and breathed deeply, and a small cloud of steam rose from his feet as he almost instantly evaporated all of the water that had pooled in there. He surveyed his men with a critical eye.
"We move hard, we move fast," he said without a single shred of doubt in his voice that precisely that would happen. "We will stop at nothing to capture the Scion." As one, the entire unit saluted, and then formed up behind their leader. Diego began the march up the nearest hill, the one that would take them to the village that he knew the Scion was holed up in.
A horn sounded throughout the village, and immediately Ivan stood. He drained the last of his vodka in a single go, grimacing only slightly as he swallowed the strong spirit. He looked out the window grimly. "There is trouble," he said. "I must see to my village. You should go to safety, young Scion." Brishen shook his head and rose as well.
"I'm the Scion. Like other Scions before me, I will defend this place." Ivan took this with a nod, and then turned to go. As he walked out the door, Brishen walked over to the corner of the room to get his staff. Celia stood.
"I'll go get Jack. We'll see you on the front line," she said. Brishen turned around, surprise on his face.
"What do you mean, 'we?'" he asked. "You can't put yourself in harm's way like that." For the first time, Celia felt annoyance flare up within her at Brishen. He'd only met her last week. What did he know?
"You know, I can fight," she said testily. Brishen shook his head.
"That Diego is a dangerous one to cross. I can't have you risking yourself like that." Celia crossed her arms defiantly.
"Really? You can't?" she asked skeptically. "And how do you know it's even Diego? There are thousands of roving ships from the Dominion's fleet." That caused Brishen to pause. How come he was so sure that his scarred pursuer was the one who was bearing down on the island?
"I don't know," he admitted. "I just have a very strong feeling about it." He twirled his staff, and the glider's wings popped out. "Help get the village's inhabitants to safety," he said, concern etched on his face. Before Celia could say anything else, he had run out and taken wing.
Jack was starting to feel a little tired. This ceremonial duel moved at a faster pace than real combat, and the rules were killing him. In a melee, there were no rules, no regimented forms to adhere to. You struck at your opponent with whatever was at hand, and you struck to make sure he couldn't strike at you. He had no doubts that Sasha could fare just fine in a situation like that, but her mastery of this setting meant he would have to change tactics. When she came in for a slash, he v-stepped, aiming a shot at the small of her back. She dropped immediately to her stomach, and his slash passed through thin air. She waved her own sword at his ankles to get him to jump back, and then rolled onto her feet and thrust upward at Jack. He grinned. He could work this. He parried the blow, and came in for the ending thrust.
Suddenly, a horn sounded in the air, and he stopped for a moment, listening to it. The next thing he knew, he was on the floor, the wind knocked out of him. Sasha had taken advantage of his momentary distraction to disengage from his thrust and belted him across the gut with the flat of her blade. He looked up and saw her standing over him, practice sword nonchalantly slung over her shoulder. He managed to sputter, "You cheated," between breaths. She flashed a coy smile.
"You let me." Then, her face grew grim. "That horn means that someone is on the island that should not be. I must go." Jack got himself to his feet, walked over to his effects, and started buckling on his weapons.
"I'll go with you," he said. He slid his sword belt into place and looped his quiver about his shoulder. But even as he did all of that, he watched in amazement as Sasha readied herself for battle with amazing rapidity. Her armor and furs were on her and perfectly in place in a second, and she held her true sword, an elegant weapon with a golden hilt, and her single-bladed axe at the ready. Experimentally, Jack pulled back his bowstring. Sasha eyed it, with its pulleys in place.
"That is an interesting bow," she said.
"Thanks," Jack said as he slung it over his shoulder. "It's of my own design. Lets me pull back with half the resistance, and shoot with twice the force." Sasha strapped her round shield across her back.
"Maybe when this is over, you can show me how well you shoot." With that, she turned and ran out of the door towards the scene of the battle, Jack right behind her the whole way.
Diego cursed beneath his breath. They were encountering much heavier resistance than he had anticipated a small island to have. He and his cohort of men had been ambushed by a troupe of warriors. They had all been young women and girls, armed to the teeth and apparently very skilled. His men held the advantages of numbers and the ability to use pyromancy, but the enemy knew the terrain and with their guerrilla style of fighting, it was impossible to tell how many of them there really were. Diego punched the air, firing off a narrow lance of flame into the trees, and he was rewarded with a cry of pain. Seeing something flashing in the trees, he ducked quickly, and an axe embedded itself in a tree directly behind where he had just stood.
He had not heard much about Katarin Island prior to his arrival. He'd heard that they were a stubborn lot, and not taken to outsiders. And from the name, he figured that it housed a shrine to one of the more recent Scions in history. What he did not know was that they had a well-trained unit of warriors at the ready to defend the place. As long as they tried to stave off attacks in the forest, they were going to be overwhelmed eventually. "Forward!" called Diego. "And torch every tree you see as you go!" As one, his troops began to march forward, sending tongues of flame out in every direction as they did. Small branches began to catch fire, and then larger ones. Leaves turned black and shriveled, and blew away as dusty ash in the wind. The beginnings of a forest fire were upon Katarin Island.
The path was clear now, and Diego could see the first glimpses of the village. It was a little larger than he had expected, and he could see there were more warriors rushing to defend it. But his tactic of laying waste to the forests was flushing the young women out of their hiding places, and he could see that he truly did have superior numbers on his side. In the face of an enemy so different and alien from everything he had encountered on his journey so far, it was a heartening thought. The figures heading towards them now appeared to be more organized, however, instead of just a defense detail. His keen eyesight picked out the very unique outline of the Scion, flying above them all. He grinned when he saw his foe, and felt a renewed sense of purpose. Drawing his rapier, he slashed violently at the air, and a raging arc of flame engulfed the treeline. His troops marched on around him, and he resolved in his mind that he would burn this island to the ground, and turn the sand to glass beneath his feet.
With his typical lightness, Brishen landed next to Jack, twirling his staff to retract its wings. A small cloud of dust was kicked up by his landing. He straightened and looked to Jack. "How many?" he asked.
"A lot," Jack said grimly as he pulled an arrow out of quiver. "Numbers-wise, things don't look good." He notched the arrow, pulled back the string, and fired. The arrow sailed through the air, its long and arcing path taking it down onto an enemy soldier's shoulder. Brishen heard Jack curse under his breath and adjust his aim before firing off a subsequent shot. His scattered arrow fire would not do much to thin out the ranks, however, and the Katarin Island warriors were not equipped with any long-range weapons, unless they opted to throw their axes in combat. This was going to be decided up close, and not even Katarin Island could come away unscathed this time.
"Charge!" Sasha yelled, leveling her sword at the oncoming pyromancers. Amid a field of explosive flame and shining blades, the valiant warriors of Katarin Island advanced, and Brishen the Scion and Jack of the Southern Water Tribe were with them.
