Arc 3: Dogma || Chapter 1: Wounds
The winter arrived early and lingered too long. It came down from the heights, and swept up from the cold seas in the south, blanketing all the land in bitter white. It choked passes, buried cities, and brought hungry things out of the deep woods.
Oria’s Fane did not escape the snow. Ice froze over the sacred pools, silenced the trickling streams, and fused the webs of the Cant Spiders to the trees so they seemed a crystalline hive encircling the sanctuary. It ate the sound of blades crossing, giving the scene in front of me a muted quality. Despite the chill, my apprentice — disciple? squire? — sweated from exertion, her hawkish features tense with concentration.
“Footwork,” Ser Maxim growled from where he sat on the steps leading up to the main shrine. Clad in a heavy fur cloak, he looked a grizzled mountaineer with his untrimmed beard and mass of gray hair. Despite that, the gold in his eyes shone bright in the overcast morning.
Emma heard the old knight’s surly criticism and hesitated a moment, a fatal mistake. Oraeka swept in with a savage downward swing of her broad-headed spear. More than a head taller than her opponent and built like an ogre, the she-elf’s swing had enough power to cleave marble, and rend the air with an audible whistle.
Emma misjudged the timing — not to mention the position of her feet — and nearly lost an ear to the elf’s blade. Yelping, she stumbled back and slipped on a patch of ice only thinly buried by snow, collapsing into one of the frozen pools. She barely kept a grip on her ornate sword.
Once she’d found her feet again, Emma stood there a moment to catch her breath. Wheeling on the old knight she snapped, “you can’t just say vague things like footwork and expect that to be of any use.”
“You cahnt expect anyone to give you detailed instructions during a battle,” Maxim shot back, mocking her aristocratic inflections. They came out stronger when she was irritated. Returning to his normal gruff drawl he added, “you weren’t paying attention to the ground again. You’re not always going to be fencing on a dueling ground, milady. Your old trainer might have given you some fancy swordplay, but we’re teaching you real combat. It isn’t clean.”
Face red with effort and embarrassment, Emma turned to me for help. I leaned against one of the marble statues at the edge of the Fane’s central circle, wrapped in the warmth of my cloak. My apprentice, on the other hand, only wore light sparring clothes in the winter air, warming herself with exercise instead.
Instead of giving her any support, I nodded to the side. Emma glanced in that direction, then let out a surprised hiss as Oraeka made a jab at her.
“Pay attention,” Maxim mumbled in a bored voice, distracted a moment as he lit his pipe. “Match isn’t over.”
“You are…” Emma paused to parry a wasp-quick jab. “A sadistic… curmudgeonly… wicked old… geezer!”