Chapter 5: Darkness Becomes the White Knight

Emma was off in a cloud of dust. Tearing across the field, she flew over the earth with the speed of cannon fire, and her opponents raced to greet her like there was a prize for whomever reached the Savior first. The winner turned out to be August, whose stride was longer than Liam's and had charged her clearly with the intent to impale, as though he were carrying a spear. She feinted left and he stumbled past into the now empty space.

She had to give it to him, trying to run her through with a weapon made of oak… she could almost be a little impressed.

August whirled back with renewed ire in his eyes, and Emma offered him a wink. Then she blocked Liam's oncoming strike without looking and jabbed him twice in the solar plexus. He staggered back as well, gasping for air, and met her with eyes just as angry as his cohort. And then the dance began in earnest.

Their swords clashed again and again as they parried and thrust, spun and ducked, the wooden weaponry creaking and crunching as their strikes continued to crash faster and faster together. August was now favoring a more fencing style of combat, bobbing and weaving on the balls of his feet as he fought hard to keep the White Knight at arms-length. He ended up mincing around her as he stabbed and prodded from a relatively safe radius. But Liam still lunged at her with intensity, taking wild, curved slices of the air as if accustomed to handling a cutlass instead of a broadsword and the straightness of the blade was throwing him off-kilter. Liam lunged wildly at her again anyway, a battle-cry on his lips, and Emma had to wonder if his ultimate gameplan was to splinter her swords before she could crack him across the ribs again.

Regina had been right. The man did have something to prove.

This time she managed to catch Liam across the collarbone and sent him hurtling sideways into August, who had been trying to prance away. The solider shoved the admiral upright with overt disgust.

Emma's attention quirked. The men were not fighting as a unit. They all wanted to beat her on their own, and she planned to exploit that fact fully to her advantage. The White Knight felt her mouth twitch up at the corner as she spared a glance to the mountain that had yet to move from his place on the sand. Roman towered in the distance, his armored helmet glinting in the sun as he stood solemnly unmoving with his arms crossed in front of his chest. The blowhard was waiting until she had disposed of his adversaries before he even tried his hand against her. He wasn't even pretending to engage.

Emma caught twin strokes above her head, Liam and August aligning for once, and ducked beneath their strikes and twisted so that she reversed places with her competitors; their traitorous backs now facing the royal box instead of hers. Then with a rebellious look to the pulvinus and a smile that nearlysplit herface in two, the Savior turned tail and took off at a dead sprint towards the hulking giant who had yet to try her patience.

Roman's eyes blinked wide in surprise before narrowing to suspicious slits inside his helmet. The man pulled himself up to his full height as he readied his stance and Emma watched his biceps prepare to swing with deadly force, but still, she didn't slow. It only made her race towards him faster, and as soon as she entered his radius, he let loose a long, arcing cut that could have cleaved her in two had he been swinging metal. But Emma had expected as much from someone who planted so firmly to the ground, and she merely ducked, having gathered enough speed that when she stalled her feet parallel to the ground, she skidded easily on the sandy overcoating of dirt and shot straight between the knight's widespread legs. She cracked him hard in both of his ankle bones as she passed.

Emma straightened from her crouch and kept running. Three steps. Four. Roman was howling in pain behind her and the hair on Emma's arms were beginning to bristle. Her chest burned hot under the vest she'd lashed around it and her thigh muscles trilled with unused power. She could feel the adrenaline building in the base of her spine, buzzing in her veins, swirling madly in her shoulders… and so Emma threw caution to the wind and let a little burst of her pent-up magic escape. Just for fun.

And ran straight up the stadium wall.

Up and up and up until Emma's feet were over her own head and she was soaring backwards through the sky. Roman gaped up at her open-mouthed as she sailed over him, and as she did, she conked him neatly in the middle of the forehead with the hilt of her sword.

The man went down like a sack of potatoes and Emma landed as if she were kneeling before a queen, plunging her swords deep into the earth on either side of her knees to halt the impact. Her feet immediately mourned being reacquainted with the ground, but a quick look over her shoulder confirmed that Roman was unconscious. Her feral heart did a self-satisfied flip at her success. In the grand scheme of things, she figured that counted as a yield.

One down. Two more to go.

It felt good to show off.

What felt decidedly not so good however, was the sudden hand grabbing her by the hair and wrenching her from the ground. Her swords slipped from her fingers in sheer surprise of the maneuver, and she cried out at the fingernails scraping angrily against her scalp.

"Well, well, well," August snarled, "so the minx does have a few tricks up her sleeve." He switched his grip so that he had her clutched around the throat. "Gotten our hands on some fennel weed, have we?"

Liam, who had been encroaching on her from the other direction, hesitated uncomfortably as her toes lifted off the earth. "That's not exceedingly sportsmanlike," she heard him mutter, but it was unclear as to which of them he meant, given their current conversation.

At that, August squeezed her neck a little tighter, and Emma cursed her preemptive gloating. But even has her airway began to constrict, she couldn't help but laugh. "Just because you can't do it, doesn't mean I'm using herbs," she sneered back, and she had the absolute pleasure of watching August's limp sage eyes simmer with rage before he headbutted her full in the face.

The knight tossed her to the ground as if she were nothing, and the resulting surge of power hit Emma like a lightning strike. Immediately her skin was on fire, her shoulder blades sizzling, begging her to unleash what lay beneath them, and the swell of fury in her chest nearly ignited in its dizzying desire to tear the man asunder. The taste of blood exploded in her mouth, sharp and metallic against her teeth, and she allowed it to dribble over her lips and pool against the dirt. Her outstretched fingers clenched around the blood-soaked earth.

If they weren't going to play nice, she wasn't going to either.

She retaliated by launching a fistful of dirt straight at August's head. The man shrieked, clawing at his eyes, and within an instant Emma was on him. She was seeing red, and only red, and she wanted nothing more than to pummel the knight's face into a bloody pulp. So she punched him. A lot. Bloodied his nose. Split his lip. Blackened his eye. She hadn't even looked to regain her swords in her rage, wanting only to feel his flesh bruise beneath her hands. And so when she caught a glimpse of her skin beginning to glow, it was with no small amount of despair.

The White Knight felt her internal groan like a prayer to the heavens. It was hard enough to come down from a bloodlust high like this, and she still had one more opponent to dispose of. But her magic was now coursing dangerously close to the surface of her skin, her knuckles glistening like sunshine underneath the crusting blood, and although her entire being wasn't radiating with the strength of a summer star yet, it was still far too noticeable for Emma's taste. She'd be forced to end this sooner than she'd hoped.

She regretfully caught August under the jaw and sent him sprawling. He curled into a ball on the ground like he was afraid she'd kick him and cradled his head in his hands. She spat some of the blood from her mouth at his feet and turned to face her final foe.

Liam was standing a good ten feet away, trembling like a leaf. He held his sword at the ready, but his face was flushed with a thrilling combination of hatred and fear, and Emma felt the heady mixture in the air as if a hazy gauze. It called to her even as she marched to where her two swords stood, still embedded in the ground, and yanked them from the earth. It dared her to terrify him.

Emma shook her head side to side as the dull whine that had taken up in her ears crescendoed into a near-deafening roar of adrenaline. She gritted her teeth in defiance and cracked her sunshine knuckles against each other to dim their sheen a little. Because against all evidence to the contrary, Emma was still doing her best to keep her otherness under wraps, no matter how badly wrapped it was. She really didn't wish to be found out other than on her own terms. And her temples were tingling something terrible when she was finally struck with an ingenious idea.

The White Knight suddenly rounded on the admiral with ferocious intent and stalked forward. And to Liam's credit, he did not retreat even in the face of certain defeat. But as soon as Emma hit the distance where they could have stretched to cross swords, she let her glamour drop.

And Liam was immediately confronted with something he was not at all prepared for.

All at once the Savior's face changed. Her features sunk in like a shipwreck and her eyes flashed the deepest black he'd ever seen. A black so deep he felt as if he could fall into it. A deep, gleaming, iris-less black that promised all of the fiery demons of dreamshade. A black that echoed like the endless sockets of a skull.

The blood still coating her teeth when she smiled didn't help the image either.

The man straight up yelped and flung himself backwards in horror, and in doing so completely dropped his guard. And then as suddenly as it had come, it was gone, and the rosy flush of her skin was right in front of his face and crossing wooden blades.

The White Knight bore down on him with no remorse, her speed and strength nearly unfathomable in one-on-one combat as he jumped to block her rapid striking pattern. A sharp swipe from the left. Another from the right. Two more jabs to the ribcage in which he wasn't quite fast enough before he caught both of her weapons crashing down on him from above.

His arm threatened to buckle as he tried to hold her off. Her brilliant emerald eyes seemed to pierce his very soul and he felt his brow crinkle. "What are you?" he couldn't help but ask.

"Your Conqueror," the blonde heathen hissed in reply.

Then without warning, Emma released both of her swords and kicked Liam square in the chest. The move was so unexpected that the man fell back like an upturned turtle and within a heartbeat, Emma was on top of him with her foot pressing into his sternum and her swords crossed at his throat. If they had been playing with steel, she could have decapitated him right then and there.

Emma leaned in as close as she dared, so that she was practically crouching on top of the admiral, pressing splinters into his neck. She watched closely as his eyes darted wildly over her savage face as if he were searching for something that was no longer there. A little part of his brain knew that it had witnessed something terrible, but it had been so fast, and so unexpected, and so illogical, that just in case he was mistaken, he wasn't about to repeat what he'd seen. And gods forbid he was actually correct about what he'd beheld because… well… that would just be so much worse for him, now wouldn't it?

"Yield to me," the White Knight commanded, finding the ritual of admitting defeat particularly enticing as Liam gulped beneath her blades. The vanquished had a certain stench to them that was unmatched in nature after all, and she rarely got to savor it so utterly unfettered.

His voice came out as a croak, "You have bested me, Savior of the Realm. I yield to you."

The heady rush of victory washed over her senses with something a little like ecstasy, and even as she fought against her skin, Emma felt bright. It was a cooling rain on war-torn land. A lover's fingertips at your throat. It was the nick of a blade, dipping into a bath, and crushing a skull in your hands all at once and she was glorious with it.

Emma thrust both of her fists over her head and screamed, and the arena's sideline went wild. Her new comrades hooted and hollered along with her, beating on their chests and cheering raucously in her shared conquest. She'd put on quite the show and even if they couldn't feel it like she could, the air was ripe with the fervor of the fight. A few of them rushed back onto the field and Garrett whipped off his shirt and spun it around like a lasso. Graham dipped his chin at her, and underneath the scruff of stubble she swore he looked impressed.

The Huntsman's voice boomed out over the celebrating showground, "Our victor is Emma Swan!"

But as she turned triumphantly to seek out approval from the Queen, her ears snagged on a mysterious outlier. Instinct ticked in her reflexes, one of the shouting men jarringly different than the rest, and without a second thought to the contrary, Emma grabbed the dagger that she always kept stashed in her boot and whirled, hurling it straight at her would-be attacker.

Her knife embedded into August's thigh up to the hilt with a dull and sickening thud.

The man went down in a crumple of bones, his outstretched sword dropping from his hand as he clutched at his leg instead and added a wail into the surrounding cacophony. And then the surrounding cacophony changed for the worse. Shock and confusion gave way to muddled anger and the rowdy ovation began to err on the side of jeering. Garrett rushed to redon his garments.

"Swan!" the Captain of the Guard bellowed, making a beeline for where she stood. "Against the rules! I said no real steel on the field!"

But the thrill of the fight was still bursting within her, and Emma spun on him, spitting rage. "Against the rules, my ass!" she shouted. "Tell that to the dung heap coming for me after he was already downed! After you called the match!"

"I never yielded to you."

The roar was back in Emma's ears as she twisted to the simpering voice. The knight's unkempt bangs were plastered to his forehead with perspiration and the skin around his fingers was pooling with blood. Graham caught her around the bicep right before she tried to launch herself at his prone form.

"You were cowering in the dirt like a child!" she spat. She wanted to tear out the man's eyeballs as another pair of hands joined the captain's to hold her at bay. "Your yield was implied."

August raised a bloody index finger and stabbed it in her direction. "You… attacked me… without… provocation," he accused, and a snarl rippled in Emma's throat. Some of his white-armored kinsman began to back away from him. "Your forfeit seems fitting."

"This," Emma fumed, "from the man who claims never to have told a lie? This is the best Leopold has to offer?" She broke free of Berkley's tightening grip on her shoulder and easily shucked off the captain. Her insides churned with fury. "You, a sniveling fool who doesn't have the dignity to fail and learn from your betters with grace?"

Emma stalked forward, snatched his extended finger from the air, and bent it backwards towards his wrist. The knight howled and her eyes felt fiery as she watched the added pain etch across his features. She leaned into his face with a glare, "Where's your honor now, Pinocchio? Where is the mighty August's unshakable valor in the face of a little fear?" The magic coiling around her spine tingled dangerously, and she released his hand with a shove. "It's slime like you that get people killed," she sneered. "At least now you'll have a wooden leg to match that growing nose of yours."

"THAT IS ENOUGH!"

The Queen's command had Emma's attention snapping up to the pulvinus with embarrassing speed. The royal brunette towered above her on the dais, her striking face unreadable as stone, but her eyes. Her eyes flickered with something completely new.

"You cheated," was all she said.

And suddenly Emma was positive that Queen Regina wasn't referring to the use of her knife.

"I-I cheated?!" Emma stammered, determined to punch down the disquieting thoughts of being outed here, right now, in front of all of these knights. Instead she doubled down on the very real outrage at the defamation of her character. "This is playing at war! The best defense is a good offense, and so when he came at me, unprovoked and unwarranted, I defended myself! End of story!"

Emma stomped closer to the edge of the arena; her chest puffed up as full as it could be, and challenged the claim in the most braggadocious way she knew how. "So if you're going to berate me Your Majesty, do it because I just cost your husband a champion, not because my opponents clearly bear a distaste for my methods."

The Queen's jaw muscle clicked spectacularly in response; the tendons in her neck snapping rigid all the way down to her clavicle as the vein in her forehead suddenly became searingly prominent.

Emma had without a doubt, most certainly, just made an impression.

But when the Queen didn't waver and simply stayed boring down on her from above, the White Knight had to wrestle the urge to shuffle her feet. The woman was smoldering crimson on crimson on crimson. The devastating dress. Her fingernails indenting the sun-bleached wood. Her stained red lips pursing tightly into a contemplative grimace. Emma's battle high was nearly gone by now, waning quietly under the Queen's liquid, studying gaze, and she despised that she was starting to feel smaller and smaller by the minute. Her stomach fizzed up in response.

"So, have I fulfilled your wishes, then?" she asked.

But the Queen didn't answer her. She blinked once, stiffening her posture with the infuriating grace of the aristocrat she had been bred to be, and skewered the captain with her glare instead. He noticeably wilted under her regard. "Get your men under control, Huntsman," Regina sneered. "Or you'll find yourself in the stocks before morning."

"And take Sir August to the infirmary." The Queen spared a withering glance for the wordsmith bleeding in their midst before her nose crunched up in distaste. She flicked her wrist absently in his direction. "The King will be very displeased should he expire before his birthday."

And then with nary a glance in the Emma's direction, the Queen simply gathered up her petticoats, spun on her heel, and disappeared into the darkness that clung to the back of the pulvinus.

"You heard Her Majesty!" Graham called out. His voice smacked like a mouthful of dirt as Lancelot rushed to his injured comrade's aid. "Pair off! Resume your spats! And don't disappoint me again!"

Lancelot managed to pry August from the ground with a lot of groaning and more than a few curse words. "Hold onto hope, my friend," he reassured his companion. "You will see the King's birthday in the arena with your sword by your side."

Both knights shot her the dirtiest of looks as Lancelot passed his charge into the Huntsman's waiting arms. August leaned heavily into Graham's side and tried to put some of his weight back on his injured leg. He sucked in a sharp breath through gritted teeth and hobbled his foot upwards again.

"Mark my words, Savior," August growled. He was pale-faced and stricken, his cheek the only bit of mottled color from where she had beaten him senseless earlier. "What I write about you in my memoir will not be flattering."

Emma was unphased. "I'm sure I'll be devastated."

Graham urged the wordsmith away from the rest of them with what felt strangely like an apology. "He's lost too much blood already," the captain muttered softly, and forced them haltingly towards the barracks at the end of the field.

Emma suffered a deep sigh. Her favorite knife was stumbling away still buried deep within that exasperating man. At some point, she was going to have to steal it back.

She found her real sword discarded near the edge of the training ground and returned its scabbard to her hip. Emma also grabbed her favorite wooden blade of the two she'd been fighting with and watched as Roman began to rouse from his unscheduled nap. She wasn't really sure what to expect from the men now, in the absence of their superior. They'd been quick to applaud her skill in the arena, but her victory had ended in contention. She wondered absently where that left her.

She noted that Liam and Orlund were murmuring heatedly with one another, their heads bowed together in confidence. When she glanced in their direction, they quickly looked away.

And suddenly Rolfe was coming at her.

"'Ay!" His shadow preceded him across the arena and Emma pretended she couldn't hear him. Twisting her profile to his presence, she gazed out into the field and feigned interest in whatever the twins were getting up to. But his raggedy outline only grew in her peripheral.

"'Ay, Savior!" came the ostentatious taunt again, and still after everything she'd just showcased, she was going to need to prove herself, yet again. The dirt-tracked sailor smacked her in the back of the shoulder as soon as he was close enough, "Why don't ya stick 'round 'nd find out what it's like ta fight a real man?"

The White Knight whirled around so fast that Rolfe barely saw her move, and suddenly the blonde hellion was a nose-hair away from his snout with her fist clamped forcefully around the front of his ruffled, cream-colored tunic.

Her breath broke hotly over his lips and her eyes blazed far too close for comfort. "Or how about I just punch you in the face and we call it even?" she snarled.

They held eye contact for a galling amount of time as Emma allowed her threat to fully sink in. Then she dropped the greasy redhead back to the ground with a rough shove to his sternum.

But as soon as he staggered back, the sailor's eyes darted up to meet hers again and a slow smile began to creep across his face. "I like yer style, Swan," he stated out-of-the-blue, and Emma had to shake her head once to make sure that she had heard him correctly. "Ya don't take shit from nobody." He then marched himself right back up into her personal space to nod approvingly at her bewildered expression. "Yer alright by me."

The blonde's eyebrows nearly crawled off her face in surprise as the man placed two hands on his hips and swiveled at her side, appearing to join her in appraising his fellows on the field.

Rolfe inhaled loudly and turned his nose up into the air. "I'll spar wit'cha," he stated boldly, and snuck a glance at her out of the corner of his eye; pointedly thumbing over his shoulder where August had been limping, "seein' as ol' loose-lips over there is out-the-game at least a day." He grinned a little feverishly before clearing his gullet with a rough cough. "But no mor' hidin' knives though, eh? Ya feel me?"

And against all odds, Emma felt the corners of her mouth beginning to rise at the seaman's worried little mutterings. A chuckle escaped from the recesses of her throat. "I feel you,' she replied sincerely, and Rolfe's pock-marked face practically lit up in undisguised glee.

The man then immediately wheeled around to holler vociferously across the showground. "Oi! Orlund!" he jeered, cupping a hand around his mouth to further his shout. "Come take on ta Savior wit' me!"

The look of pure panic that passed over the most rotund member of King's Army was priceless. "Oh no, I'm fine," Orrie stuttered quickly, and attempted to scramble away from his brethren with zero subtlety. He dismissively shushed the back of his hand in their direction as he ducked his bulk behind Roman, "You go ahead."

"Ya'd make me go afta' her on me own?!" the redhead postured boisterously, and Garrett clocked the growing commotion from a few feet away. His grin tilted upwards rapaciously as his eyes curved to his brother in arms. "Ta numbers be uneven now! I need backup, ol' chap!"

Rolfe beckoned to the withering knight by aggressively slapping at his thighs. "Come ooooonnnnn!" he goaded.

Garrett was behind Orlund in a second; catching the shorter man as he tried to back up further and drove him forward instead. "Yeah, Orrie. You wouldn't want to leave our dear Rolfe here in a lurch, now would you?" The knight's lithe muscles flexed under his taut caramel skin as he pushed his mouth after his friend's ear. "She is just a girl, after all," he taunted playfully. "How hard could it be?"

Emma smirked at their little game and twirled her wooden sword roguishly by her side. Orrie gulped.

"No– no thank you!" the man squeaked and tried to press back against the palms currently steering his shoulder blades. "I really would rather not!"

"Fight ta terror, ya lubnut!" Rolfe heckled, and Garrett just laughed harder as he continued to shunt a violently protesting Orlund across the hard-packed dirt. "Why ta devil wouldn't ya want ta battle this blonde demon wit' me?!" The grungy sailor thrust his hands emphatically towards the Savior at his side and twinkled his fingers. "I mean, lookit 'er! This one's ta one to tell yer grandkids about!"

And just for a moment, Emma began to think that being stuck in this uptight palace for a month might actually not be so bad.

Regina idled for a little longer than was proper after making her decree and consequently found herself hovering just behind where the draping overhang provided shade to the back of the pulvinus. She was having a hard time mustering up the desire to leave so abruptly and eventually resigned to standing silently poised in the sunlit shadow, indulging in her odd wish to remain.

Only for a bit, the Queen promised herself, and once more she let her gaze fall into the audacious arena.

She watched for the crack of wood-to-wood, wood-to-skin, flesh-on-flesh, to see if she could catch the bellicose compactions with her gaze before the sound traveled up to her ears.

She watched for the fluid lines and the sharpened angles; for the ferocious speed and plunging limbs and for the over-extended movements that made undertakings go awry.

She watched for the throbbing pulse of more that had seemed to radiate from the White Knight's being right before she had bested that zealous admiral from her husband's navy.

…Or at least she would have, if she hadn't kept getting sidetracked by the cocky smile that now seemed permanently attached to the aforementioned woman's face.

Because in the Huntsman's temporary absence, what had originally started as individual sparring matches had somehow dissolved into a massive mock-battle free-for-all, and although Liam and Lancelot were still exuding a fair amount of wariness in the blonde warrior's presence, the majority of the regiment had joined in the jocular skirmish. Even her brooding twins had hesitantly tossed a few blows at someone other than themselves.

Berkley whomped Orlund a good one in the back of his scalp. Garrett got in two solid punches to Lancelot's side before Rolfe tried to climb him like a tree and sent him toppling into Rivers. And Emma, the sneaky devil that she was, succeeded in felling the goliath Roman once again by getting underfoot and tripping up his trunk-like ankles. The pillar of a man crashed hard into the ground and sent a tsunami of filth flying everywhere; most of which caught Liam full in the face. The entire field hooted at the sputtering display and Regina found herself giggling at their antics as well.

The brunette suddenly stopped. Royalty did not giggle.

The Savior, that Emma Swan, was going to be a problem. She stared entranced as the knight's chest pitched pleasantly under the vest she's lashed around her lissome body and the thin shirt that she'd laid beneath it began to cling to her skin due to perspiration. Her pale face had tinged a slight shade of pink in her exertion and with every strike of her sword, her wild blonde locks, which were hardly tamed by the twine she'd used to tie them back and were beginning to dampen with sweat, managed to capture the mid-morning glow in the air and arrest the light from the sky.

Interesting, how she'd never considered sweat to be appealing before.

The Queen swallowed hoarsely as she stroked her abdomen through her corset, straightening the wrinkle-less dress flat against her body as the first beams of the sun began to crest over the top of the mighty oak standing sentinel at the end of the arena. The sundrenched streaks poured into the dingy space to illuminate the creaking floorboards at her feet.

If she didn't leave now, she'd be late. And a queen was never late unless it was intended to make the subsequent entrance as grandiose as possible.

Regina needed to remain unnoticed.

And so with one last lingering glance over her shoulder, the Queen descended down the backway stairs and disappeared across the royal grounds of Leopold's illustrious estate.

The next time Emma snuck a glance up at the royal box, Regina was fully gone. A little disappointed frown fluttered across the knight's face as she did a double-take and attempted to peer further into the shadowy shade of the pulvinus, hoping to spot a striking silhouette.

Just how long ago had the Queen departed?

Finally seeing his opening, Rolfe sprang forward and cracked his would-be attacker hard across the bicep; so hard in fact that a few splinters from his sword embedded themselves in Emma's sleeve and scraped painfully at her skin. The blonde winced as she spun to glare at him.

"Aha! I gotcha ya flea-bitten trollop!" he yelled victoriously. The seaman pointed his sword boastfully at her chest as he leapt away from her again. "Ya sure ya weren't off savin' the realm from liddle fairies, not ogres, were ya?"

Emma immediately snapped back to the present. She knew better than to drop her guard like that, and especially not for some prickly royal who she knew she shouldn't give two shits about anyway.

The White Knight crouched a little as her feral grin slipped back into place. "You've never actually seen an ogre, have you Rolfe?" she teased. "With a face like yours, they might have even declared you a princess."

And then she lunged for the grubby sailor's knees and tackled him to the ground.