Author: Christy Anderson
Date: May 23, 2003
You can contact me at kittyunlimitedgo.com or leave a review.
Author's Note: I thought this chapter would be the hardest part of the chapter to write, but it was definitely the most amusing and surprisingly natural style I've used in a while. I couldn't believe that I wrote so much so fast. Let the trouncing begin!
Disclaimer: Tamora Pierce owns them all. After all, if I told you they were mine, would you believe me?
The gray of dawn set upon Neal early as he grudgingly sat up out of bed. Regret filled him as he dressed, tripling progressively as he recalled the events of the previous night. Scrubbing his face harder than he ordinarily would have, Neal finished washing and looked up in disgust at his reflection in the mirror above the washstand. Two clear green eyes stared back at him from a grown-up face that he hadn't studied in quite a while, but even his reflection gave no insight into the questions that burdened his heart.
Reluctantly, Neal picked up his choice of weapons: a short sword and an unusual longer sword emblazoned with the Queenscove crest that had been a gift from his father when he had begun his studies as a page. He touched his two daggers, a long sword, and his special battle sword that sported a sturdy blade and was surprisingly light to yield, but he left them spread out on his bed- Yuki was no danger. He would have preferred to have taken only the short sword than fight her at all, but he felt too afraid that the absence of a second weapon would somehow offend her.
As an afterthought, Neal slipped on a shirt of chain mail and collected his helmet and a pair of worn gauntlets, holding them in the small of his arm. As he shut the doors of his quarters behind him, his eyes fell on the single wad of discarded homework on his desk. With a faint smile on his lips and thoughts on his first encounter with Yuki, Neal turned the key in the lock, with one question blazing in his conscience… if he prided himself so much on his chivalry, how could he even bare the thought of clashing his sword to Yuki's? Yet, his will bonded to the task ahead of him.
It was eerie, Neal thought, of how his footsteps clashed and echoed down the deserted hallway, ringing pompously back in his own ears. The hollow sound they made reflected the strangely empty feeling of the castle; of course, after the night's celebrations, no soul would be about before midday, except him… and Yuki… and their thrice-cursed argument. Neal could not help but experience a feeling of puzzlement as he wondered how it had all come about. One minute they had chatted amiably as friends, another kissed as lovers, and the last parted heatedly as bitter enemies, but where the steps came in, the map from points A to G and finally Z, was more than a tad hazy.
By the time he reached the practice yards, however, Neal felt his steel will of a moment ago crumbling into unresolve. The challenge had been a foolish idea, fueled by the heat of the moment and not the product of rational discussion. A thousand gentlemanly apologies poised on the tip of his tongue, waiting to gush forth at Yuki's arrival. Pacing the length of the wooden room like an anxious horse, Neal felt beads of nervous sweat fall down his face even as the chill wind chapped his cheeks through the cracks in the boards.
Finally, as he had presently begun to doubt whether he had imagined the entire scenario, a swirl of blustery winter wind rushed into the room, accompanying a delicate figure. Despite her small frame, however, Neal felt his jaw drop, as Yuki struggled to bolt the door, flauntingly clad without any armor and armed only with a long pointed staff called a glaive. Turning around expectantly to face him, she expressionlessly took in his overdressed appearance, but Neal caught the sparkle of mischief in her eyes before it died away.
"I did not request a duel to the death, Squire Nealan," Yuki commented to his surprise, looking very self-satisfied in a curious Yamani way. Pausing a moment to catch his response, Yuki made her way to the other side of the wooden hall when he inevitably continued to stare stupidly at the absence of her protective attire. Her footsteps clicked crisply behind him, stopping short of ten paces from the back wall, and the sounds of shuffling activity on the smooth floorboards caused him to finally turn around in surprise.
Watching Yuki begin to stretch and warm up, Neal felt his weakened, brittle will snap, allowing the guilt and remorse that had built up behind the dam to gush freely down upon him. "I… I can't do this… I… I apologize, but this is… something I can… can't…"
Across the way, Yuki's glaive continued to soar effortlessly through the air, a graceful instrument playing its fatal music for the ears of an imaginary doomed opponent, a dancing vision enchanting its victim to swift death. Thrusting, twirling, and fainting Yuki moved fluently through her exercises in a complex Yamani battle dance.
"I don't know what I wa… was thinking when I a… agreed… to this," Neal continued, stupidly stuttering over the thousands of reasons he could not fight. Glancing up from the stain on the floor that he had fixated his glance upon, Neal watched Yuki attack, dive, and defend against a blow that perceivably would have looked easy to deal to her shoulder. Neal bit his lip and tried again. "This simply isn't right," he ventured more strongly than before. "We hardly knew what we were saying last night anyway. I never meant any harm, honestly. It was all in good fun." Ashamed, his head fell again to stare at his big, stupid-looking feet. That's what they are, Neal thought to himself, a reflection of my big, stupid self.
The thrust of a heavy object into his arms knocked his attention off of the floor as much as it knocked out his wind. Standing three feet from him, Yuki frighteningly had her glaive fixed upon his throat in a challenging stance. Neal looked down at his long sword that he had propped against the wall when he had entered the room, tightening his fingers around the hilt as he fought against the protesting pain in his gut. Still smarting from her toss, it twisted as Neal deliberated with his warring emotions. "I can't fight you, Yuki," he finally whispered to the vision who no matter how temperamental, amusing, or enchanting she was would forever hold his heart.
Not ever deterred, Yuki disregardingly thrust the middle of her glaive to contact with Neal's side. Blinking in surprise, Neal took a step back, stunned that she would hit a surrendered man and knowing that it could have been harder. Quick as ever, Yuki swung her glaive again, but this time Neal was not caught off-guard and moved swiftly to block it. Locked weapon against weapon, Neal brought his face down to look into Yuki's. "Didn't you hear me?" Neal asked incredulously. "I don't want to fight you. I give up."
Yuki cocked her head to the side. "You have not even begun to try, Squire Neal," she replied, pulling her weapon back out the lock and ducking to hit low.
Surprised, Neal fell forward with the sudden absence of force, falling right over the glaive that was perfectly poised at his knees. Tumbling, Neal landed on his shoulder gently and flipped around back to his feet, his sword up defensively to defend against any blows he couldn't have seen coming.
Yuki was ready for him, swinging her glaive to the left and to the right, forcing Neal to at least block them or risk injury. Steel clashed against wood again and again as Yuki dealt blows and feinted to the side. Realizing she was setting up an assault to his unprotected abdomen, Neal dipped his sword closer to her face and caught the inside of her glaive, jerking it quickly to the side to knock her off balance before she took advantage of his precarious position.
For a moment, Yuki's left arm was jerked off the glaive by Neal's ploy and her foot fell back to keep her a-balance. As she took the time to readjust her grip, Neal risked some fast-talking. "If it's a victory you want, Yuki, you can have it. I give up! I surrender! Women are stronger. Women win." He felt the heat rising in his cheeks, inexplicable emotions and thoughts flooding him at her unpredictable behavior. The blood coursed through his veins at a dizzy pace, but whether it was from anger, activity, or anticipation, Neal couldn't tell.
Raising her glaive in attack once again, she shook her head. "I do not want a victory, Neal, just a fight."
"I can't fight you!" Neal almost screamed as he blocked a blow to his chest.
"Why? Why am I not your equal?" Yuki challenged as she aggressively brought her glaive down upon Neal's right shoulder.
For the first time that morning, the sound of metal clashing against metal rang out shrilly through the winter air as the blade of Yuki's glaive contacted with his shirt of chain mail. Neal barely had time to wince at the force of the blow before he was demanded to straighten his sword out in defense again. "Because it's not honorable," he spit out between his teeth that gritted at the numb tingling that spread through the nerves in his right arm.
"Why?" Yuki shouted. Her glaive came down at an awkward angle destined for his arms. "Why isn't it honorable?"
Instinctively, Neal's training reacted just in time, striking her glaive between where her hands were gripped, straightened, and braced for what she presumed would be a successful blow. Instead the glaive bowed in under the force of Neal's counterattack, jarring his opponent's wrists in a painful way that was all too familiar to the squire from Wyldon's one-on-one workouts. However, Yuki's rigid stance could not absorb the blow and threw her backwards, landing ungracefully and unceremoniously on her back.
Without so much as a yelp of pain as she slid on the floor before whacking her head, Yuki stood up uneasily, her mouth tightened into a thin line. Before Neal could rush over to see if she was all right though, Yuki had shook her fall off and more carefully resumed a defensive stance. "Do you think I need rescuing, Squire Nealan?" she asked as she caught his tentative move towards her. "Like all women, I am hapless… is that why you refuse to fight me?"
Neal felt his cheeks go bright red as she brought up the accusation for the second time in 24 hours. "No," he replied as calmly as he could, biting back the multitudinous retorts that came to mind. "What I said last night was meant to be innocuous. I meant no harm to you or your honor."
"Then why?" she shot back as she move towards him, her carefully concealed frustration leaking out in the new barrage of attacks she led against him. "Why is this dishonorable? You fight Kel."
Neal felt the muscles of his arms beginning to weakly protest under the heightened exertion. His breathing deepened but steadied, and he worked harder to control his emotions and defend against her assault rather than attacking. "Kel's different," Neal answered. "She opted against a life of luxury and maidenly concerns to pursue her interests in knighthood."
Instantly the anger slightly contorting Yuki's face changed into an odd self-satisfied look, a look of superiority, a look of someone who had foreseen the outcome and knew that they would win. "On guard, Squire Nealan," she called out, less forceful and more amused this time. "I too have chosen this."
Neal watched in stunned awe as Yuki's technique changed before his eyes. Her attack became more certain, more fluid, more lethal. Using her glaive more like a staff than a sword with her grip spaced further a part, she knocked his defenses helter-skelter, jarring his sword out of position or more frequently, his arms. Instead of reacting instinctively, Neal had to concentrate his thoughts on her motions, train his sword with her staff. After a couple of near misses as Yuki moved into a closer range, Neal felt uncomfortably cramped and stepped back, giving up ground.
Yuki moved with him, herding him back into a corner, as his mere defenses were not proficient enough to stop her advance. Increasingly, Neal felt the pressure and the fear building up that he would be trapped like an animal to her mercies.
Tentatively, Neal struck back, slowly trying to reverse the direction of the action. Yuki's glaive bit at his sides and came disturbingly close to disarming him. He watched her more carefully, feeling gradually more positive towards attacking back now that it seemed as if her anger at him had ebbed or perhaps it was her abrupt change in confidence, the brash look on her face that proclaimed she would triumph. As Yuki lunged forward to pinion him to the wall, Neal ducked to bring his sword around to smack the broad part of it into her side.
Instead, Yuki contorted her body to the left, lifting her glaive over his head and following through with a blow to the side of his cheek.
Neal stumbled backwards, his ears ringing deafeningly in protest, and he felt a trickle of blood at his nose. Yuki's next blow came soaring for his shoulder and Neal dodged to the left to avoid it. Another blow with her glaive missed his back by a mere fraction of mark and instead lodged itself deep within the wall.
While Yuki freed her weapon, Neal took the time to scramble to his feet and brace himself for anything she would have to offer. Blocking her attempt to the side of his head, Neal bit his tongue nearly in half as she reversed the thrust of the pole like a seesaw and smacked it right into his hip. Drawing his sword up evenly with his elbow, Neal pushed Yuki back a step, throwing all of his weight into moving her back. As she fell a second step, Neal pulled back and locked her weapon into place. When he tried to tilt his sword around in a circle to disarm her, however, Yuki got her glaive free and brought it down upon his wrists.
Neal let out a sharp cry of pain, almost dropping his sword from the waves of shooting pain it sent up his arm. Yuki's attack, on the other hand, did not let up, and thankfully it forced him to forget it and recover quickly. In a desperate attempt to turn the tide, Neal swung his sword haphazardly at her chest. Caught slightly off-guard, Yuki was forced to hastily catch his sword up above her head.
With weapons locked high in the air, Neal stared Yuki down, peering into her vivacious chestnut eyes that sparked from their arduous exercise. Besides the blood, which had dried, Neal felt the beads of sweat forming and running down his face and covering his neck and down his back. Their heavy breathing joined time as they both gulped in the thin and biting oxygen of winter. It had been a while, though, since Neal had felt chilled. Instead, he was sure Yuki would agree that the room was burning up. Feeling her equal heaving and seeing the strain of the muscles in her arms, Neal took in a deeper breath. "Truce?" he barely got out before he was forced to take another mouthful of air.
Yuki shook her head. "Not so fast, Squire Nealan. It would seem that I am winning at the moment."
"You wish," Neal muttered playfully as he drew back and tried to aim for her side. Yuki easily countered the blow, now locking their weapons at the waist.
Tired of waiting, Neal made the first move, feinting to the right. When he tried to jab the hilt of his sword into her arm to disable her front, Yuki ducked low and out of reach of the blow, poking the end of the pole into the middle of his foot. Barely biting back a curse, Neal drew his foot back out of her range as quickly as if a snake had bit it, while Yuki brought her glaive up horizontally and thrust him back onto the floor.
Neal felt his wind rush out him as he less than gently rammed his posterior side into full contact with the less than gentle floor. As he dropped his sword aside and closed his eyes to keep from passing out, Neal felt a gentle knee pressed onto his chest, and he opened up to see Yuki's glaive pressed imperceptibly against his throat. "You won," he croaked, "you won."
Neal heard a clatter as Yuki tossed the weapon aside. Drawing closer to his face, Yuki smiled crookedly and let out a few chuckles of stifled laughter before she turned her face away. "I said I could trounce you."
His cheeks burned red as he poignantly felt her knee still in his chest and his back pressed against the floor in defeat. "You did," Neal admitted fairly, now breathing more deeply from something other than exercise. He struggled to rise into a sitting position, and Yuki began to oblige by removing her knee, before Neal's hand touched the back of her neck and caught her in a kiss.
To be continued...
