Shigmur didn't smile as Elenya assumed her stance. That, too, was bad. Apparently, he had more sense than to scoff at unknown antagonists.
He made the first move, a sudden thrust. Elenya shifted her hips abruptly, turning her torso away. The point jabbed empty space just in front of her breasts. She held her own weapon upright in front of herself, so that the man's sword edge brushed her own, but it was only a precautionary measure. Her body movement had been enough.
The spectators murmured, impressed, as Elenya wove from side to side. She slashed three times, an irregular rhythm aimed at three different points. The man countered easily, the last time opening a tiny slit in her sleeve above the left elbow.
He tested her again. Elenya parried his blow but lost ground. Though more than twice her weight, he was light on his feet.
The crowd noise grew stronger off to one side. People made room for Lonal and an authoritative group of men, older than most of the warriors. The duellists were oblivious, and the newcomers did not attempt to interrupt. They took places in the forefront of the spectators.
Elenya had clipped a shoulder seam on Shigmur's robe, but it had been a wild stroke. She was forced back another step. Alemar wiped his palms dry. Shigmur was neither impulsive nor unskilled, as the attackers at the water hole had been. The crowd's opinion of him was clear in the way they anticipated his victory each time he moved.
He thrust again. Elenya twisted away, but less gracefully than the previous time. Alemar noted the tenor of the thrust – aimed precisely at her shoulder, where the muscle was thick and risk of a fatal injury smaller and pulled so that penetration would not be deep if the strike succeeded. Shigmur's control was superb.
Not so Elenya. Wheezing, she made another reckless swipe. Alemar began to worry. She was exhausted from the trip through the eret-Zyraii, and though she knew the saber almost as well as the rapier, her skill could be just deficient enough to make her question herself. She was getting impulsive.
Don't kill him, sister, he thought. The humiliation was written in her posture, and he knew what she was capable of in such a state.
The duellists continued to circle and feint. They had engaged eight times now, far more often than an ordinary contest – certainly much longer than a fight to the death. It was a challenge to be able to score against a well-matched opponent without causing serious harm. A definitive move eluded them. Alemar had to consciously remember to breathe.
Elenya's veil quivered from the action of her lungs. Worn, as well as unused to the climate, she had no stamina. She faltered slightly. Immediately, Shigmur rushed forward with a series of power slashes that kept her backing up as fast as she could, each impact threatening to snap her saber. His movements were stunning, most of them hidden within a blur. All eyes seemed riveted to his scimitar.
Alemar, however, watched his sister. He stopped worrying.
Abruptly, the man's sword flew through the air, flipped out of his hand by a tiny but accurate movement of Elenya's wrist.
Children's eyes bulged. The men in the foreground grunted in surprise. Shigmur wielded his imaginary weapon for a split moment after he had been disarmed. He cried out and stared disbelieving at his own hand.
The sword splashed into the sand behind him.
Alemar sighed. Shigmur had pressed too soon. Thanks to her size, Elenya had rarely trained with anyone weaker than herself. As long as she had any strength left, she was capable of tricking a power fencer.
Elenya stretched her swordpoint forward and made a tiny nick on the back of her challenger's hand, which he offered to her, his expression a mixture of surprise and respect. He didn't seem angry.
A flood of words poured through the crowd, cut short by an elder's sharp command. Another order followed, and Shigmur bowed deferentially to the source and walked back to his original companions. Elenya remained in the center of a circle of highly intrigued Zyraii.
Fumlok was called to the elders and questioned briefly. The cripple was especially meek, blending into the audience as soon as permitted. The elders traded a few comments among themselves, and Lonal came forward into the circle.
Elenya waited, saber lowered but still drawn. Lonal stopped a few paces away.
"You are a good fighter, which I had already seen. This morning you had cause to fight. But this is too small a thing," and he flicked the cloth of his own lowered veil. "You do insult to all present by refusing to reveal your face. I cannot demand it of you by law, but if you persist, you will duel every warrior in this camp, one by one."
Something in his tone told Alemar that Lonal would be the first one Elenya would have to battle. He saw her fingers twitch. If Lonal had physically threatened her, she would have dealt with it. But he had approached with undrawn weapon, so close that he could not have escaped a critical wound should she care to deliver one. He stood within her power, yet told her what to do.
Alemar knew that part of his sister would have been glad to fight every man of the tribe. She would have known her measure against such a task. She was not defeated, yet she had won little beyond passing admiration. And in order to have her way, she would have to go through Lonal. They both knew that her victory over Shigmur had been a combination of surprise and luck.
The war-leader remained as he was, supple arms lax at his sides, breath easy and regular.
Elenya took off the veil.
The crowd was silent. She shook loose the thick black hair framing her delicate features. The children of the clan were the first to express their astonishment.
"Reimi!"a small boy shouted.
The tribe chattered. The stern, stultified visages of the elders melted in shock. And Lonal, after having so tranquilly dealt with the situation, suddenly looked very young and, so it seemed to Alemar, a bit frightened.
Lonal stared at Elenya's chest and crotch. "Is it true? Are you a female?"
"Of course."
Lonal looked as if he had been betrayed. He turned to Alemar, as if to double-check that he were, in fact, a male.
"Fumlok!" he yelled.
Fumlok limped forward.
Lonal didn't look at the cripple but said fiercely, "Explain to these two what this means after I leave." To the twins he added, "Go to your tent, and do not come out until bidden." To Elenya he said, "You have destroyed me."
The war-leader, no longer the confident figure they had known up to that point, strode off, the block of elders in his wake. The twins were left to the stares of women and children and soon slipped into their tent to escape them.
"What happened?" Alemar asked Fumlok.
The little man kept gulping and opening his mouth like a fish. At first, Alemar worried that the discomfiture concerned Elenya's gender; then he realized that Fumlok had been terrified to have been so close to Lonal's anger. When he could finally speak, his answer was tentative.
"It is a religious question. Toltac, most high of the Bo-no-ken, must judge."
"I don't understand."
Fumlok pointed to Elenya. "She wears white. She plays theju-moh-kai, the duel. And she kills a man in combat. Women cannot do this."
"Why not?" Elenya demanded.
When Fumlok replied, he spoke only to Alemar. "Because women have no souls."
IV
LERINA PLUNGED INTO THE WATER,feeling the tug of drenched fabric against her body. The warmth of the Dragon Sea enveloped her, familiar as a lover. She surfaced, flung the salt water from her hair, and waded, waist-deep, toward one of the many small islets that dotted this section of Cilendrodel's coast. Fishermen and smugglers feared the reef offshore, providing Lerina with a privacy broken only rarely by visitors combing the tidewaters for shellfish. The isolation pleased her, the beach and the islets a refuge to which she would escape whenever possible, often spending entire days sunbathing or diving. Her favorite place of all was a tooth of land about a hundred lengths out. From the coastal side it appeared to be steep and rocky – inhospitable – but the far side had been worn by the ages into a minuscule beach, a treasured place she had never shown even to her lovers. As now, she went to it when she needed relief from the uninspired existence of Garthmorron Hold.