Normally, they were evenly matched with the long staff, Talor being a better fighter than his brother, but Aralorn was still stiff. They fought together often because no one else wanted to face either of them with staves, long or short, in serious sparring.
As a warm-up, they played with variations on the training dances, and rather than aiming for body shots, the object was to hit a small metal plate, which dangled from a belt. Normally, there would be a third to call shots fair or foul and award points at the sound of wood striking metal, but she and Talor were veterans and cared more for the sport than for the winning or losing.
The ring that they had chosen was in the basement of the tavern rather than the one on the main floor, so they had no spectators. By mutual consent, they stopped for a bit to rest before they proceeded out of the standard patterns for some real sparring.
“So, what was that smell anyway? It seems somewhat familiar, but I just can’t place it. Something like a cross between an outhouse and a pig barn.” Talor’s voice was a bit unsteady because he was stretching out as he talked.
Breathing ridiculously hard from such light exertion, Aralorn leaned unashamedly against one of the waist-high walls that surrounded the ring. She was paying for her confinement and the long ride home with her lack of stamina.
She started to think up a reason for the moat smell but decided that there was no harm in letting him know what she’d been doing. Kai and Talor didn’t ask questions, and they also knew when to keep their mouths shut. There was nothing secret about what she had done, now that she was out of there. And it would be good to talk to Talor about what she’d found. She wouldn’t go so far as to tell him about Ren, though. She needed to think about what had happened.
“Unless you’ve been visiting the ae’Magi’s castle lately,” she said, “it probably wouldn’t be too familiar. I only wish the ae’Magi was half as honest and sweet-smelling as his moat . . .” Conditioned reflexes were the only thing that brought her staff up to deflect his from her face. The sheer force of the blow numbed her hands, as she hadn’t been holding the staff in a proper grip.
She ducked underneath his arm to come to the center of the arena and give herself some room for maneuvering. The move also gave her a chance to talk. “What are you doing?”
Talor’s face twisted with wrath as he came after her. “How dare you, worthless bitch? How dare you sharpen your tongue on the ae’Magi?”
It was his rage that saved her, interfering with the timing and precision of his attacks. Time and time again, she was able to block or turn aside his furious blows.
This unchecked anger was unlike him: A good warrior strives above all for control. She knew something was terribly wrong, but his ruthless barrage left no more time for speculation or analysis. She cleared her mind and concentrated on staying alive.
Finally, one of his swings caught her hard behind the back of her knees and she fell backward, letting his staff carry her legs up with it. She turned the fall into a roll, going over onto her shoulders and coming up on her feet. As soon as she was upright, she raised her staff to guard position, trying to protect her face and torso.
The roll had forced her to take her eyes from her opponent, and she barely saw the flicker of movement as his staff came under her defenses. Rather than the standard sweep-strike, Talor had chosen to thrust. The end of the staff caught her low in the chest and drove the breath out of her body. Without the protective padding she wore, it would have broken ribs. Had his staff struck just a few finger-widths higher, it would have been fatal, padding or not.
She twisted frantically to the side, trying to dive out of striking range. It was a desperate maneuver, exposing her vulnerable back to her opponent, and after the blow she’d just received, she knew she was moving far too slowly. Even as she moved, she waited for his strike—knowing that there was no way for her to evade the impact of the metal-shod staff.
The blow didn’t come. She completed the diving roll and snapped to her feet, staff poised and lungs working desperately for air.
Talor stood in the middle of the ring, leaning against his staff. He shook his head like a wet dog, then looked up at her in dazed bewilderment. “I don’t know what came over . . . Are you all right, Aralorn?”
“Fine.” She gasped the word out, her diaphragm not operating quite correctly yet. “Don’t . . . worry about it. No harm done, and I . . . needed a workout. Your stick work has improved, but you’re still a little slow on your returns . . . Watch your hands. You hold on too tightly when you’re mad, and it makes it easier for your opponent to force you to drop your staff.”
As she got her breath back, she made her tone more baiting, trying to get him to forget what had happened. If she was correct about the cause, then it would do him more harm than good to worry about it. It scared her that the ae’Magi’s magic was able to do what it was doing. It was just possible that he would have chosen to turn Ren into one of his puppets—but Talor had no political power. If he was affected, then she had to believe that most people in Sianim would be touched by the ae’Magi’s magic: They all belonged to him. The thought of how much power that would take terrified her.
Talor took the refuge she offered. “You need to pay more attention to your opponent’s eyes. You watch the body too much, and that doesn’t give you much advance warning. If you’d been watching more closely, you could have avoided that last hit.”
She dropped her staff and waved her hands out in the traditional surrender, and said, “Okay, you beat me. My reputation is in tatters. Just do me one favor and don’t tell your brother about it. Last time you beat me, he challenged me, then I had to put up with his sulks for a week.” It was important to act naturally.
“You only got it for a week because we had to go out on maneuvers. He sulked for almost a month. Okay, I won’t tell him. Besides”—here he struck up an obviously false pose and looked down his nose at her—“it ill becomes a man to brag about beating a woman.”
For all of his humor, Aralorn could tell that he was feeling uncomfortable. She wished she was only uncomfortable. She wasn’t surprised when Talor excused himself though they generally would have drunk a couple of rounds before they left. When she turned to watch him leave, she noticed the wolf lying just inside the doorway, his head on his front paws. Talor stooped and patted him on the back, which Wolf answered with a small movement of his tail, but his clear yellow eyes never wavered from Aralorn’s face.
Aralorn waited until Talor was gone before dropping exhausted to the floor, her back against the barrier. She patted the space beside her in invitation. The wolf obligingly got up, trotted over, and resumed his relaxed pose, substituting Aralorn’s shins as his chin rest.
They sat like that for a while, Aralorn running her hand through the thick fur—separating the coarse dark hair from the softer, lighter-colored undercoat. When her breathing had returned almost to normal, she broke the silence.
“It’s good to have you back,” she commented. “I take it that they didn’t kill you.”
“I think that is a safe assumption to make.” His voice was more noncommittal than it usually was.
She gave him a halfhearted grin.
“How long had you been watching?”
“Long enough to see you put your foot in it and almost let that clumsy young fool remove you from this life.”
She obligingly rose to his bait. “Clumsy? I’ll have you know that he is the second-best staffsman in Sianim.”
“You being the first?” Amusement touched his voice.
She cuffed him lightly. “And you know it, too.”
“It looked to me as if he had you beaten. You might have to step into second place.” He paused, and said in a quieter voice, “Finally noticed that people are a bit touchy concerning the ae’Magi, have you?”
She gave him an assessing look. “Has it been going on for a long time?”