“Ow!” Sasha exclaimed, somewhat after the fact, as she prodded the new bruise on her bicep. Andreyis backed off, stanch twirling, looking very pleased with himself. Sasha gave him this morning's customary dark stare and he sobered a little. She windmilled her arm, fast, to keep it loose. “Don't get too pleased with yourself,” she told him. “I hate fighting with this stupid style.”
“But I'm getting better, right?” Andreyis insisted. “That was a good strike!”
Sasha wondered if he truly appreciated how difficult it was for her to fight in a traditional Lenay style. But the Wakening would be barely a moon from now—the end of summer, the traditional time for the ceremony of manhood—and Andreyis needed the practice. Even with the handicap of her gender, there were things she could teach him in this style that the Baerlyn menfolk could not show him in the training hall.
They stood on the bare ground beneath the old vertyn tree, near the top fence of Kessligh's vegetable garden. The horses grazed across the vast upper slope enclosure, their coats gleaming in the sun. Kessligh had gone to town, taking Aiden with him. Sasha had not been unhappy to see them go.
“You're planting the front foot too soon on the second transition,” she told Andreyis, trying her best to ignore both the bruises and her bad mood, for Andreyis's sake. All young Goeren-yai males eagerly anticipated the Wakening. Andreyis's technique was good, but his recent growth spurt had impeded his footwork, and thus his timing. She refused to let him fail. “See here…the arms follow the feet, Andrey.” She took the stance, holding her arms clear, and danced the several fast steps of the racha-dan, without moving her arms. “It's like drums in a folk tune—your footing gives you the rhythm that everything else should follow. This lead foot is too fast,” and she stamped that foot to demonstrate, “the swing and plant should be simultaneous.”
“I got you, didn't I?”
“I can't defend in this style, Andrey,” she told him, with barely restrained temper. “I'm not strong enough.” One thing Andreyis did have going for him lately was his reach. She could barely believe how tall he'd become, still recalling the awkward, nervous boy she'd wrestled with, climbed trees with and defended imaginary castles with against equally imaginary hordes of bloodthirsty Cherrovan warriors. Now, the top of her head came barely to his shoulder, and the swing of his arms, though lacking the power of a grown man, generated considerable speed with stanch or sword. “Now, are you going to listen to me, or am I just wasting my time?”
Andreyis must have seen the dark look in her eyes for he held up both hands, defensively. “I'm listening. Show me again?”
She took him through all of the fundamental taka-dans, which were not so different in basic strokes to svaalverd taka-dans, truly. And she acquired several more bruises along the way, for Andreyis knew better than to pull his strokes—if he acquired that bad habit before the headmen at the ceremony, he'd remain a boy for one more, humiliating year, and have his hair cut short once more. Mostly, she concentrated on footwork, which was the one thing svaalverd and Lenay styles had in common. Except that the serrin understood balance and momentum with far greater sophistication. Sometimes, svaalverd knowledge could assist a non-svaalverd fighter, whatever Kessligh's doubts. She'd seen it herself, in Andreyis's improvements.
And saw it again now, as he smacked her stanch back to a hard blow against her right thigh. Andreyis grinned outright. Sasha scowled at him, rubbing her leg. “It wasn't that good,” she told him. “Your elbow lost extension again, you'd have so much more power if you could keep the lead arm straight.”
Andreyis slung the stanch over his shoulder and gave her an exasperated look. “You just can't stand to admit when someone's beaten you,” he told her.
“Oh you think that, do you?” Sasha said loudly.
“You've always been like that!” Andreyis retorted. “Like that time I beat you racing up the road from town and you insisted Peg had a cold? Or the time I beat you at the knife throw and, of course, you just happened to have a sore elbow? Or that time…”
“Okay then, let's try that again,” Sasha told him, resuming her fighting stance. Andreyis followed, eyes hard with concentration, lips pressed thin. “This time, I get to fight my way. Ready? Go.”
Andreyis paused a few moments, poised on the balls of his feet, awaiting the right moment. Then he attacked. Sasha met his lead overhead with a firm blade—it jarred her arms, but when she knew it was coming, she did have the strength for it. Then she stopped being polite, swung an angular intercept to the strike that followed, deflecting Andreyis away from whatever he'd intended next, and left him open for her counterslash that smacked into his ribs beneath his right arm.
Andreyis staggered sideways at the force of it, dropping his stanch and holding his chest. “I've told you before,” Sasha said firmly, as he doubled over, winded, “you can't make training personal, Andrey. It can't be about ego and pride, it has to be about improving your technique. Now if you'll just get this stupid notion that you can beat me at svaalverd out of your head, then maybe we can get back to fixing your footwork, yes?”
Andreyis did not reply, still doubled over. Sasha's temper fled, replaced by concern. The sound her stanch had made against his banda came again to memory…How could she have been so stupid? She hadn't needed to hit him that hard!
“Andrey!” She dropped her stanch and grabbed him, carefully. “Oh spirits, Andrey! Spirits, I'm so stupid…I'm sorry, Andrey, I wasn't thinking. Are you okay?”
Andreyis took a deep breath and winced, holding his side. “I think you cracked a rib,” he said in a small voice.
Sasha swore, loudly. “Look…just sit down. Damn it, I'm such a fool! Come on, sit. Here.” She helped him down and began unstrapping his banda. Andreyis tried not to breathe deeply, or move. She lifted the padding away. “If you can lift your arm at all, I'll get your shirt off,” she told him anxiously. “Can you do that?”
“Don't bother,” Andreyis said, in a small, muffled voice.
“Don't bother?” She stared at him, aghast. “Andrey, I have to look. I can see if it's broken, then…then maybe Kessligh will have something to help it heal…Spirits, why am I such an idiot? Just before the Wakening too! What was I…”
And then she saw the grin on Andreyis's face and the reason his voice had been muffled. He was trying to stop from laughing. She stared at him, dumbfounded. Something bubbled up inside, half fury, half laughter. “You! You…” She turned about, fetched up her stanch and thought about removing his head with it. Andreyis put both arms over his head, shaking uncontrollably, but not with fear.
She threw the stanch down, hard. “You utter bastard!” she shouted at him. “I thought I'd really hurt you!”
“You did!” Andreyis retorted, now indignant despite his laughter. “It hurt like hell! Serves you right, hot-tempered wench!”
Sasha cuffed at the top of his head, but missed on purpose. And found herself laughing. “Oh thank the gods,” she sighed, and sat heavily beside him.
Andreyis made the spirit sign, with his left hand. “Don't say that,” he said. “Not in the circle.” Not that there was a proper tachadar circle beneath the vertyn tree, but one did not praise lowlands gods within them, lest the spirits be offended…
“Old habit,” said Sasha.
Andreyis winced again as he took a deep breath. “I still don't know how you do that. I was almost overpowering you for a while there, and then you just…”
“Technique is more powerful than muscle,” Sasha said simply. “If my technique is superior, my strength of muscle is irrelevant. Even Jaegar can't touch the svaalverd.”
Andreyis frowned. “So no non-svaalverd fighter even has a chance? Then how did the Saalshen Bacosh armies even take any losses in all those wars the Larosa launched against them?”
Sasha shook her head. “That's a different kind of fighting. The Bacosh wars are all armour and shields, huge formations of men with no room to swing. I wouldn't last a heartbeat in that kind of fight. You'd do better than me, probably. The Saalshen Bacosh armies are so formidable because they combine the best of human tactics and mass formations with serrin fighting technique and serrin steel and craftsmanship in weapons and armour.”
Andreyis just looked at her. It was a face that might have been handsome, were it not so familiar. Despite his eighteen summers, and the new strength of his jaw and brow, she could not help but notice the boyish ears that stuck out, or the reluctant nose. With his dark hair and funny dark eyes, he continued to look…well, puppyish. Sadly, many other girls in Baerlyn seemed to think the same. Those girls only flirted and giggled with the rough-and-tumble lads, and regarded a quiet, awkward, thoughtful boy like Andreyis with cool disdain or worse.
“Are you going to Petrodor with Kessligh?” he asked finally.
Sasha stared at him, incredulously. “And abandon Lenayin? What does Krayliss do when he arrives in Baen-Tar and discovers I'm not there? At least if I'm there, I can…I don't know. Try to keep him under control somehow. The man's only a hairsbreadth away from open treason.”
Andreyis stared at his boots. “I don't understand,” he said quietly. “I don't understand why Kessligh would leave.”
“That makes two of us,” Sasha said darkly.
“Is there…is there something in the Nasi-Keth beliefs that…I mean…” He seemed at a loss for words. Sasha knew how he felt. “So much of what the serrin think is so strange and…I don't know, maybe he has his reasons. Reasons we can't understand.”
“I'm Nasi-Keth,” Sasha retorted, “and I don't understand.”
“Aye, but you're not really Nasi-Keth.” Sasha frowned at him. Andreyis blinked. “Well, you are Nasi-Keth, but…but you're Goeren-yai first, aren't you?”
“The serrin don't think like that, Andrey. They can be many things at once, not like humans who can only be one thing at a time. The Nasi-Keth aren't a religion, they're just a collection of ideas and none of them are exclusive of other ideas. So most of the Petrodor Nasi-Keth are Verenthanes too—they practise serrin teachings, yet they pray to the Verenthane gods and hold temple communion like any Verenthane. So there's no reason a Goeren-yai can't follow serrin teachings…hells, a lot of Goeren-yai already do, sort of. Serrin have been coming here for centuries, they've left a lot of knowledge behind.
“But serrin don't have a religion. They don't believe just one thing. They…” Damn, she'd tried to explain this to various Baerlyners before, but it was difficult. Now, it seemed important to try…for herself, as much as Andreyis. “They have a way of thinking; they try to be rational. It's not that they don't believe in anything, they do…but that's the problem, they believe in everything. They don't go around saying this is impossible or that's impossible, like humans do. They accept everyone's beliefs because they know they can't disprove them. And anything you can't disprove is possible, right?”
Andreyis frowned for a moment, thinking that over. Proof. No Goeren-yai, and no Verenthane, ever thought of proof. The spirits, or the gods, didn't need to be proven, they just were.
“So if Kessligh's just being rational,” Andreyis ventured, “maybe…maybe he's right to go to Petrodor. Maybe he's just smarter than us, maybe he can see things we can't.”
“Aye,” said Sasha, nodding. There was a slow-burning fury inside, now that the shock had worn off. And it was building. “He's being a general. In the Great War he had to make nasty decisions—liberate some towns, leave others to die; keep some men in reserve, send others to die. Nasi-Keth teachings make him good at that. He's a rational commander. He didn't believe he was going to win a battle because the stars were in alignment, or because the priest gave him a holy blessing—he knew that it was up to him, and him alone, and he didn't just leave it to faith. That's why he won all the time.
“He did that with me, too. He wouldn't say nice things when I might want them said. He wouldn't comfort me, or give any real affection. He wanted me to be strong enough to take care of myself. It's all a part of the pattern, Andrey. He's so damn sensible and intelligent it makes me want to throw up.”
“But…” Andreyis's gaze now was worried. “But if he's thinking like a general, then surely…surely he's going to do the right thing in the end, no matter what we might think of it now…”
“Don't you get it, Andrey?” Sasha snapped at him. “Don't you understand? All that man ever cared about was the Nasi-Keth and the serrin. He said as much himself. He never renounced those loyalties to my father and, my father was such a soft-headed fool, he never demanded it. He's not interested in saving us, he's only interested in saving them! And now he's been to Halleryn, he's seen what Krayliss is up to, and he's decided we're all a lost cause and he'll go running off to Petrodor to take care of what's truly important to him!”
Sasha got to her feet and snatched up her stanch from the dirt. “Lenayin made him a hero, it gave him all this status with the Nasi-Keth, and now he's got it, he's finished with us. Well, he may be a great general, and he may be smart and rational, but he's got no heart and no soul! Damned if I'll end up like him. I'd rather stay here and die for something I believe in.”