People slightly older than herself told her that dojos had been like this before the Change. She didn't remember, since she hadn't studied the martial arts then, though she'd been a state-level gymnast and track-and-fielder in middle school. Today she began with a series of stretching exercises and kata.
Now I know what it's going to be like to he seventy, and arthritic, she thought after a moment. But she gritted her teeth and persisted, then did a routine on the parallel bars and vaulting horse, and some tumbling on the mats, stopping now and then to drink from the water fountain.
After the sweat started and joints and tendons loosened a bit she ducked into the ready room and picked up a blunt practice sword and heavy wicker training shield-a middling-sized four-foot shield, since she was tall for a woman and about average for a man. Then she went back outside, setting the shield's bandolier-like guige strap around her neck. That took part of the weight, and she could use it to sling the kite-shaped defense over her back with a quick readjustment.
Tiphaine took stance in front of one of the six-foot posts, left foot advanced, left fist up under her chin, which put the upper arc of the shield just under her eyes and the point at about knee level; the convex triangle almost completely covered her body. The sword went up overhead, hilt forward.
"Ya- hi!" she shouted from the bottom of her lungs, and attacked. "Haro!"
A chip of tough oak flicked out, even though the practice sword had neither point nor edge. It was also a lot heavier than her real blade, but that was all to the good-a woman had to work harder to build upper-body strength, and train harder to maintain it, one of life's manifold injustices. Eighty minutes later she stepped back and let the rounded tip of the sword fall to the ground, propping the hilt against her body and working her hand and shaking it. Every impact on the unyielding hardwood jarred back into her wrist and arm, and the hand felt as if someone had driven a wagon loaded with bricks over it; she was breathing deeply but not panting, and her sodden clothes clung as if she'd waded through a river.
The experience was familiar, and pleasant enough normally; she'd done at least as much and usually much more six days in seven since her fourteenth year. In Lady Sandra's Household, she'd usually done hours of classwork afterwards, too; the consort insisted on her personal retainers getting book-learning as well.
While she caught her breath she looked around, and found the castle had thoroughly come to life. Two men-at-arms and a double pair of crossbowmen trotted out through the main gate on routine patrol against bandits, lances in rest and crossbows across backs; spearmen and more crossbowmen paced their rounds on the fighting platform, or watched from the towers. Bread was baking in the kitchens, and the rich, earthy smell made her acutely aware of being famished. Iron rang on iron in the smithy, and a grinding wheel made a tooth-gritting sound as it bit into metal. Carpenters' hammers knocked; children and dogs ran about, and mothers called to them from the windows of their apartments. Two girls with broad straw hats and skirts kirted up carried a load of laundry in through the gates between them in a big wicker basket with handles on either side, and a wagon full of cut fodder followed. The doors of the chapel were open, and Father Peter's housekeeper swept it out, giving Tiphaine a curtsey as she noticed her gaze. She was a buxom young woman with caf-au-lait skin set off by the-expensive-saffron of her tunics and headdress, which made the new overlord of Ath wonder slightly about the priest's lack of interest in sheets:
And a number of the garrison were working out; many of them looked more the worse for wear than she'd felt when she woke. Tiphaine had only a vague throb of headache now, and a hot shower and breakfast would cure that. One of the diligent ones was Sir Ivo.
"Hi," she said as he stepped back and rested his blade over one shoulder; he'd put his hauberk on for the drill, which was conscientious of him. "Where's Ruffin?"
The young knight grinned at her and pointed the sword towards the second story of the barracks. The two and their lemans had slept there in cubicles usually occupied by the senior married men-at-arms, since Mathilda and Rudi were in the keep's guest suite; everyone had bumped the one below him out of their quarters, until a couple of rankers ended up on hay in the stables.
"Maybe the arm's still bothering him. But I doubt it. They got thin partitions up there, my lady," he said. "It sounded like he and Joyce were celebrating again."
"Christ Jesus, I hope for her sake he brushed his teeth first," Tiphaine said, and they both laughed; you didn't get dainty in the field.
Then she looked critically at the garrison troops at practice. "You know, Ivo, the men-at-arms weren't half bad hand-to-hand, and the infantry's drill is OK and none of them are really fat, but some sure got tired 'way too fast. That'll get you killed as easily as not knowing the counters when it's for real-no rest breaks. We need to schedule more aerobic conditioning and sweat them hard."
"Yeah, no dispute, my lady. But remember a lot of them have been out here in the ass-end of nowhere since the castle was built."
"This isn't the ass-end of nowhere. Barony Chehalis is."
Ruffin chuckled; neither of them liked the Stavarovs. "OK, this is within wiping distance of the ass-end of nowhere. It's too far north to skirmish with Bearkillers most times, and too far west for Mount Angel or the Mackenzies, and too far south for a levy against the Yakima towns. And these guys, they're old men. Some of them are thirty, or even more."
The remark made perfect sense in their trade. Endurance got harder to keep up after your twenties, but there was more to it than that. Men who'd come to the warrior's life as adults after the Change were rarely really first-rate by the standards of the generation who'd trained since puberty.
"They're what we've got and I want their stamina built up," she said. "I'll run 'em up and down the stairs to the walls in armor for a couple of hours every second day. Any of the footmen who can't take it, we'll give early retirement. And find some tenant's kid to train as a replacement. There's always some who don't want to spend the rest of their life staring up the ass of a plow-ox. Also, I want to get them working on unconventional stuff, not just fighting in ranks. Mackenzies are too damned good at sneaking around."
"Tell me," he said fervently. "We'll have to check on the ones settled on the manors with me and Ruffin, too. Likely they're worse than this bunch and spend most of their time farming their fiefs-in-sergeantry."
He paused, and almost shuffled his feet. "Ah, my lady, I want to say thanks again, for giving Debbie and me our chance. I'd have been glad to get something east of the mountains, even, much less prime land like this. Sorry if I was, you know, a bit of an asshole to start with."
"You got over resenting the position I pee in, Sir Ivo," she said, slapping him on the arm with the flat of the practice blade. "Joris didn't get over it and you may notice he's not here."
Despite the fact that he could take you or Ruffin, easy, she did not add. You two I can trust. Joris: I'd trust him to win in a fang-in-ass competition with a rattler.
Aloud she went on: "And hell, I've been known to do a convincing imitation of the aforesaid orifice myself, from time to time. Hel lo!"
That was prompted by the appearance of Rudi Mackenzie and Princess Mathilda. They were in children's versions of practice gear, padded gambesons of thick, quilted linen and small helmets with barred face-shields and boiled-leather protectors on elbows and knees. A ripple of silence followed in their wake as they walked through the gates and over to the practice ground, and a ripple of curtsies and bows for Mathilda's rank. In a way it was a damned nuisance to have them here while she was trying to settle in and get a feel for the place; in another it was a tremendous honor and responsibility, of course.