Nona found herself giving her opponents a chance, letting them swing, punishing them for mistakes rather than for effort. Clera seemed to revel in the chance to hit and not be hit, using her opponents as practice dummies, peppering them with dozens of punches as if seeing how many times she could hit them before they fell. After her first half-dozen, finished by a dull-looking giant of a farm-boy, she jumped out spattered with blood and grinning like a lunatic.
They each faced a second batch of six opponents after lunch. These were older, showing more signs of actual training, or at least more muscle and stamina. Some of the hunskas were half-bloods at least. None presented a challenge.
Come evening the crowd swelled with more fighters and others whose right to be there seemed written only in the richness of the cloth across their backs. Partnis put down his goblet and his chicken leg, moving in for closer observation. If he recognized Nona his eyes let none of it show as they studied the length of her. Nona ignored him, waiting in her corner for the third set of opponents.
The second of Nona’s six opponents was the first of the day to hit her. A tall boy with long hair blacker than a raven’s wing and a scar that gave him a permanent half-smile. He let her land a couple of punches, clearly relying on what he’d learned by watching her earlier in the day, knowing she wouldn’t go for the kill. He disguised his speed and grunted when hit, staggering back. When Nona came in to put him on the ground he struck with the speed of a hunska prime, a straight punch for which his body gave no warning, aimed at her throat. Nona dug deep and managed to take the blow on the side of her face, spinning away, spitting blood. She fetched up against the ropes and found the boy watching her, his scar-smile no longer lopsided.
‘Ouch.’ She wiped at her mouth, her hand coming away scarlet, and offered a red grin in return.
The remainder of that fight was short, vicious, and one-sided. Nona shouted ‘Next!’ before the fight-master got a chance to.
Her final opponent made the boards shake as he stepped over the ropes. A dark-haired gerant with muscle heaped along the thick bones of his arms. He was a handsome boy, a couple of years Nona’s senior, and popular too, to judge from the cheer among the attic-children – though in truth for the past few hours they’d been cheering anyone who could put up more than a moment’s resistance.
‘Hello.’ The boy grinned down at Nona. ‘I’ll try not to spoil your face.’ Meaty fist smacked into broad palm.
Nona sprinted at him, dropped to her back, and skidded between his legs. She gained her feet long before he had a chance to turn … but he never did. The foot she planted between his thighs, arching up on her shoulders as she slid between his ankles, seemed to have been just as effective as Sister Tallow had promised it would be in her classes. The youth stood without motion, shoulders hunched, silent save for a fierce hissing sound, then with no warning he fell first to his knees, then to the boards, coiled up and clutching his groin.
Day two was given over to blade. In the morning Alata and Croy took to the ring, first with blunted knives and later with wooden swords, facing a small number of the very best trainees. The handsome gerant was among Alata’s three opponents. He shot Nona a filthy look as he climbed in, gingerly this time. He lasted no longer with a sword in his hand. Alata parried a blow, ducked beneath a swing, and came up with her sword against his thick neck.
The other bouts were similarly short with no Caltess trainees coming close to victory, though the hunska boy who hit Nona did manage to score a knife-mark against Croy before she ‘sliced’ his throat.
‘Now they’ll try us against the apprentices,’ Croy said as she climbed down from the morning’s final contest. She looked less than enthusiastic.
‘You’ve seen it before?’ Nona asked.
‘We were here last year with Leeni in the fist battles,’ Alata said. ‘The Caltess don’t train their trainees worth a damn, but they do nothing but train their apprentices. No Path or Academia for them, just fighting. While we’re in Spirit class or grinding poisons they’re fighting. We get our fun in the trainee bouts. The Caltess gets its revenge in the apprentice bouts.’
The afternoon proved to be all that Alata promised. The apprentices came to the ring hardened by years of focused training. Alata, with her hunska speed, won two rounds against two gerant apprentices, the first of them the hulking redhead from Nona’s attic days, Denam. He now loomed almost eight foot in height and his body looked ready to burst with the pressure of all the muscle heaped around his bones. When Alata spun inside his guard and thrust her wooden blade into his gut he snatched it from her in one huge hand and for a moment Nona thought he would just reach out and crush her head. But the fight-master’s shouts reached him and he flung both swords down before leaving the ring cursing.
Croy didn’t win a single bout. She had a natural talent for swordplay but just a touch of hunska, and neither was enough to overcome the mismatch between her single year of sword in Blade classes and the apprentices’ dedicated training over several years.
It was Regol who first defeated Alata. The tall, sardonic boy Nona had known as king of the attic was now a tall, sardonic young man, the mocking smile and watchful eyes unchanged. He proved both lightning-fast and highly skilled, overcoming Alata’s defence in a blinding exchange of parries, thrusts, and feints. Alata lost to all the hunska apprentices and one of the older gerants too.
Both girls returned to the convent that night with the record of their defeats written across them in lines of black bruising. Croy hobbled the last quarter-mile of the Seren Way and Alata looked spent by the time they reached the pillars. As they staggered off together towards the bathhouse Nona wasn’t sure either of the novices would make it to the pool.
‘Your turn with the apprentices tomorrow,’ Alata offered as a parting shot.
On the third and final day of the forging Sister Tallow once again put Nona up first to meet the Caltess Challenge. The crowd had grown greater still. A sword fight can be difficult to see, it can be over quickly, and with wooden blades there is seldom any gore to entertain the masses. Fights without weapons are more of a spectacle: everyone understands them or can at least fool themselves into thinking they can. And blood will often flow.
‘Learn something.’ Sister Tallow set Nona moving towards the ring.
‘Not, “don’t break them”?’ Nona glanced back.
Sister Tallow gave one of her rare smiles. ‘Try.’
Nona vaulted over the ropes into her corner. A moment later Regol climbed unhurriedly into his. The Caltess children began to chant Regol’s name, quietly at first, but rising in volume, and on every side the crowd edged closer. Where the trainees had fought in their Caltess shifts, still dusty from the attic, the apprentices fought only in thick white loincloths, the women binding a heavy linen wrap around their chests.
Tarkax, the ice-triber, had moved closer to the ring, dwarfed by the gerant ring-fighters behind him. He watched Nona with mild interest as if waiting to be impressed. Yisht stood by his side, both of them muttering to each other with just a twitching of lips. Nona wondered what they would have to talk about. Perhaps just ice warriors sharing their contempt of Corridor battle skills? But Ara had said Sherzal had attended Thuran Tacsis’s ball, and Partnis lay under the Tacsis thumb. If Tarkax was his creature and Yisht was Sherzal’s …
Regol raised a hand in salute, turning a full circle before letting his eyes come to rest on Nona. His habitual mocking smile broadened into something more sincere. ‘Little Nona. You’ve grown.’