At an hour past noon a crowd gathered around the circle in the courtyard. Many locals from the village across the river came, as well as members of Liran's guard and household. The courtyard was crowded with people. News of Elena's challenge had travelled fast.
He walked around the circle, avoiding eye contact with his subjects. He needed to maintain his focus in order to meet the challenge. He stepped inside the circle boundaries.
The Captain was already there. She stood slightly back from the centre with her eyes closed. A meditative focusing, Liran thought. It was different from how his teacher instructed him to prepare with his eyes open but fixed forward on his opponent alone, his mind blocking out everyone else. It was a kind of tunnel vision he could now turn on at will.
"Choose your weapon," said the Captain, opening up her eyes. It was his prerogative as the one receiving the challenge.
"I return the right to my challenger," he answered. Perhaps she would last a few minutes longer this way.
She shrugged and walked over to a rack with a variety of practice weapons piled on it. She reached out her hand as if ready to choose, but held it there for a moment, thinking. With one swift motion she grabbed a short sword and tested its balance. She returned to her place in the circle.
Liran wasn't sure what to think about her choice. In her place, he would have selected a long staff. The longer the weapon, the easier it is to stay out of reach of your opponent. Especially since he had much longer arms to begin with.
He selected a similar weapon, but one with a little more weight. He stood across from her in the circle and waited for the arbiter to give the signal to begin. A gong rang, its echoes filling the yard. The two bowed to the arbiter and then to one another and the match began.
Both took a ready stance, legs spread and bent slightly, to leap any way needed without notice. Liran was prepared to be cautious, not wishing to hurt the Captain accidentally, but he knew he must make the show of effort or he would look bad too.
The Captain ran forward so fast that Liran was taken aback, but after years of practice he parried her effort by instinct. She began the zatara number eight with this move, which was a difficult form. He followed her move and they began the patterns of the dance that were the forms. Strike and parry; strike and parry.
It was an ancient art. The forms were developed so long ago; their history had long since been forgotten. A zatara was a combination of patterns. There were many of these, and they took years to learn and master. They could be used in training or performed in challenges. But in challenges the zatara could be followed in order, or switched at any point. It was the ability to respond and overtake the challenger and impose one's own choice of zatara that determined who would be the winner and it would be the arbiter's decision as to who performed the best.
Continuing to follow the Captain's lead in her choice of Zatara for the moment, Liran waited to force a change in the pattern to one of his own choosing. He wanted to see what his adversary was capable of. While the zatara she selected was difficult, it wasn't especially so, which made it tricky to make an assessment.
Several moves of this dance had passed and it was time for Liran to advance the match. A sideways sweep from right to left with her sword should have indicated to him to lean back and avoid the blade, but instead he leaped over it and spun around which forced the pattern into a new zatara: number seventeen.
Elena didn't appear troubled by this. She rolled away as he lowered his blade from above to where she had been. With sharpened blades, this was no game to play lightly, even if points were taken away for a stumble or if a weapon ever did touch flesh.
It was getting hot now with the sun only just lowering from its noontime high. Sweat began to trickle into Liran's eyes which stung and made it hard to see. He should have worn a headband. The Captain still looked calm, almost serene. He began to wonder; was she more skilled than he believed?
She raised her sword, but midway up she swung it sideways, aiming for his sword which was sweeping diagonally across, meeting it with a jarring clang of metal. It shook Liran as he realized she had changed the zatara again, and this one he identified as number forty three. He realized that he was entirely wrong about the Captain. She was much more advanced than he had first estimated. A great deal more, for this was one of the final forms that numbered forty seven in total. Only another master--an amir--would attempt this. Now Liran finally decided to put his full effort into this match. It was time to apply the weapons of greater power: maru.
In his mind Liran formed a ball of fire, made from energy that he focused into this shape, and compressed until it was smaller, hotter, and denser. He raised his hand and faced it upward and a real fireball appeared hanging just above his palm.
For a moment, Liran's vision blurred oddly. He stared ahead at the Captain but he no longer saw her standing there. Instead he saw a light as bright as the sun with its centre in her place. He blinked twice, and it was gone. Once again he saw her standing at the ready.
Maru as bright as the sun? He recognized what he had just seen as a special talent that occasionally struck him: the ability to see the aura of a person's maru. He had no time to think of that now.
With tight mental control he flung the ball directly at the Captain, who suddenly looked a little worried. It was a move directly from the final zatara. He wondered if she knew this one, and if so, how would she fare with it?
The corresponding move, according to zatara forty seven, was to create a maru shield to block the fireball. But she didn't do that. Instead, she met the fireball with a swing of her sword at just the right angle to make it shatter into flying sparks. It wasn't a move in any zatara, but it worked, which surprised him. It must have surprised everyone else, for the entire crowd cheered. The arbiter, however, called the match complete, and announced Liran the winner, having disqualified her defense. The crowd clapped politely, but there were mutters and grumbles among them. The rules of the forms were strict, and left no room for creative solutions.
Relieved to have come out unscathed from a difficult situation, Liran managed a smile as the Captain approached and bowed.
"Well met, Captain," he began, still breathing hard.
"And to you as well, My Lord," she replied. She was soaked through with sweat.
"You did say that you have been a student of the forms for only ten years?" he asked, putting the sword back on the rack.
"Yes, for as long as I have been in service of the Queen."
"You didn't put yourself on the list of circle members. I still don't know your ranking. You are much more advanced than I would ever have guessed.""
"I am Denar-amir, which is why I didn't quite know what to do with the fireball."
Liran shook his head; that couldn't be, not in only a decade.
"I must admit I didn't see your ranking either."
"I am Katar-amir. I am the highest ranking member in this circle."
He could see her thinking over the whole business in a new light. "I think I may owe you an apology, My Lord. I shouldn't have made that challenge given the difference in rankings."
It ought to have pleased him to see her discomfort, but he remembered he owed her a debt for her part in liberating his son and his home, and if she had really managed to attain such a high ranking in only ten years, it was a stunning accomplishment worthy of his respect.
"I think I owe you an apology as well, Captain. I underestimated your ranking. I thought you were trying to embarrass me. You did very well despite the difference in ranks. I commend you."
"I would have gone further in training, but as I am without maru, I could not advance."
While he said nothing, Liran thought her assessment preposterous. All creatures possessed some maru, although the hilliri were generally gifted with a far greater portion than the trillas. But he had seen her with his special sight; a blaze of bright light. If his ability was correct, she was far more powerful than anyone he had ever seen. Why she wasn't aware of this was utterly beyond him.
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I hope you enjoyed this instalment of Unsheathed. It's one of my favourites. If you did, please consider voting so that it has a chance to receive some more attention by rising up the ranks in the Fantasy category. I also enjoy comments, so please feel free to let me know what you thought.
Cheers!
Rebecca