Two Cats

Chapter 9

It should be fairly obvious which area I tend to visit most often.

“Gentlemen,” I said as I walked through the entrance to the Stables, spying a small group of duelists I recognized from my long hours of training and coaching with them. Three heads turned and were almost simultaneous with their smiles of recognition.

“Vincent!” the nearest of them, a shorter dark-haired fellow named Mouser called out happily. “I haven't seen you in a dog's age!”

“Mouser? You're still alive?” I chuckled at the familiar joke, extending my hand to him in greeting. He beamed at me, and stood up to shake it vigorously, as he always did.

“Absolutely! Coming off of six wins in a row, too! As a matter of fact,” Mouser looked briefly to Ashkin and Ismir, both of whom remained seated at the table, “can I tell him?”

“Mouser,” Ashkin said patiently, the blond giant of a man grinning sideways at his friend, “you can tell whom you like. I keep telling you, you're not going to hurt my feelings. You've earned it.”

“Gods ... Vince!” Mouser said excitedly, “You will hardly be able to believe it yourself!”

“Believe what?” I asked.

“I was on run number four this morning with foils, practicing against Ashkin. He ... I've got a move! It's like ... when you go around – okay, let's say that I'm you, and you're attacking me. No, wait,” he said, bubbling with excitement, “if I'm me and you're you that'll make things less confusing. Only, you're Ashkin. Okay, wait. Uh...” Mouser paused mid-thought, brow furrowing as he pondered how he might be able to explain it.

I was fairly used to this sort of thing from him by now. I raised an amused eyebrow at Ashkin and shrugged one shoulder in a 'care to explain?' gesture.

“What our comrade is trying to say is that he nicked me. Bad. With practice foils, no less ... using a move that Ismir and I figure was half accident, half brilliant. Got me early this morning, he did,” the large man said, lifting an already elevated leg onto the bench he was half-reclined on so that I could see the mass of bloody bandages that had been tied around it.

“That, from practice foils?” I asked incredulously, staring at the red-stained linen. Then I peered closer and added, “Calf!? You got him on the calf that badly with a practice foil?” I spun to face Mouser, who was beaming with immodest pride.

“It was the damnedest thing, too,” Ashkin said in an amused, rueful tone, gesturing towards his slight companion. “I was doing an overhand crescent, angled to my left because we were trading parries back and forth ... and the little bugger decides to do a shoulder roll over to my right to avoid me entirely so I'd overextend a little and turn. Except he muffs it up and his sword gets stretched out behind him because he forgot where to hold it when he does a roll, and he's half on his back and facing the wrong way suddenly, so he spins on his knees with his arm behind him to turn at me and his hand just kind of naturally...”

He made a sideways chopping gesture with his hand. I winced.

“I felt so bad at first!” Mouser grinned, obviously not feeling at all bad now. “He was bleeding pretty heavily, and I yelled for some other trainers, and when they got there they could hardly believe it themselves.”

“We had him try it again so we could figure out exactly what happened, and it turns out he can make the exact same silly mistake every time he tries. It's deadly. Ismir just barely managed to hop out of the way in time, and he was watching for it.”

“Sneaky, it is,” Ismir agreed, nodding to his injured companion. “All but for knowing, had I not? Same again for me, I think.”

“We were just sitting here having a drink and discussing its merits,” Ashkin said, gesturing invitingly towards an empty wooden stool at the table. “It's not something that we'd want to practice daily or allow to get well known, but it could be useful under the right circumstances. We were thinking of ways it could be blocked safely.”