She missed her target, but caught Gowse in the stomach. His foul breath came out in a grunt and he let go!
The momentum of the blow carried Arabella away. She collided with a few of the surrounding airmen, who immediately shoved her back toward Gowse. Now she was flying feet-first. Again she brought her knees up to her chest, and struck out with her heels at the last moment, connecting solidly with Gowse’s nose. She felt a sickening crunch, like the carapace of a shikastho breaking beneath her heel, as she ricocheted away. Gowse cried out and clapped both hands to his face.
This time Arabella caught herself on an angled stanchion. She hung there for a moment and assessed the situation.
Khema had often conducted mock battles with Arabella and Michael among the crags and rilles beyond the plantation fence. “Aren’t you going to finish me, tutukha?” she’d taunted once, lying panting in the dust after a solid blow to the leg. “Or are you too soft-hearted?”
Arabella had blinked at the weapon in her hand—in reality nothing more than a lightweight bundle of thukathi-reeds—marveling that she had finally managed to land a proper hit on her itkhalya after so many months of sparring. “I’ve just cut your leg off,” she’d said. “You’re no threat to me now.” She’d tossed the reeds aside.
“No threat?” Khema had said. And with one swift motion, not using the supposedly severed limb at all, the Martian had pivoted herself upright and brought her own bundle of reeds down on the leather at the junction of Arabella’s shoulder and neck. “Now we’re both dead.”
A few beads of blood squeezed out from between Gowse’s fingers, tumbling in the air as they drifted away. Arabella cried out, a wordless howl of rage, and pushed hard with her legs against the stanchion, driving her outstretched fists with all her strength into the hands that clutched Gowse’s injured nose.
Gowse shrieked in pain, scrabbling ineffectually at Arabella as she collided with him, wrapping her legs around his waist and seizing his shirt in her left hand for leverage. She raised her right fist, preparing to drive it down a third time upon the already broken nose.
“That’s enough,” came a firm voice from behind her.
Not releasing her grip, Arabella risked a quick glance at the voice. It was Young, the eldest member of her mess. “Ye’ve beaten him,” he said. “Now let him go.”
With one last hard glance at Gowse—he seemed to cringe from its impact—she shoved the man away. He bounced off the floor as she caught herself lightly on an overhead beam, leaving a bloody handprint.
She looked around at the sphere of airmen. Her whole body trembled from exertion and late-arriving fear, but she worked hard to keep it from showing.
Several of the men nodded appreciatively, then turned away. The sphere melted away in moments, as quickly as it had assembled, the men drifting off to their hammocks or the head.
Gowse remained, floating near the deck, grasping the ladder’s lowest rung with one hand and holding his nose with the other. “I think ye’ve broken it,” he said, wincing, his words indistinct.
“You said something about a lesson needing to be taught,” Arabella observed.
“Aye,” Gowse muttered. “Aye, that I did. And someone got hisself schooled, a’right.” He reached out with the hand that was not holding his nose, sending himself slowly tumbling. “Would ye be so kind as to bring me some water, lad?”
Leather sacks of water were kept in a net at one end of the deck. Arabella brought him one, tossing it to him from some distance away in case of a ruse.
“Thanks,” Gowse said, pulling the stopper with his teeth. He swigged down half the water and used the other half to wet his shirt-tail and mop up some of the blood from his face. Droplets of reddish water drifted everywhere.
After cleaning himself up a bit, Gowse looked up to where Arabella still hung near the overhead. “Good fight, lad.” He nodded. “Good fight.”
“Thank you,” Arabella said, not knowing what else to say.
“We’ll do better with that gun tomorrow.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“That’s all a man can do.”
Airmen, Arabella reflected, were a strange lot.
*