The big dark room echoed with the silvery sound of moving feet and blunted weapons striking against each other. Light came in the high windows and got lost in the moving shadows below. All around the circle containing my teacher and me, the students moved back and forth in pairs, dancing with no music, trying to hurt each other. In the center, we stood still, facing one another, teacher and student, surly gorilla man looming over cantankerous monkey girl.
The sword-fighting lessons always began and ended the same, with a salute. The Sefir Zul, his thick stiff hair standing on end, raised his glittering blade and touched his forehead with the flat, then swept it to one side with a hiss of divided air. I raised my practice sword to my brow in turn and swept it as grandly as if I were bigger than Zul, instead of half his size. I had been studying with the Sefir Zul for three years. Let me do well, I said inside my head, as gently as I could.
He did not speak himself, but only began to circle around me. The Sefir Zul never talked much anyway. Following his motion, I stepped sideways, facing him, inside the bouting ring painted on the dark wood floor.
He moved too close and dropped his hand a fraction of an inch too low, as if he were underestimating me, but I wasn't fooled. It was only a standard opening, the Ibrah Kohim, suitable for use against over-aggressive opponents. I jerked my hand as if I were about to attack into it, the first variation to the Ibrah Kohim. In response, he pretended to cut at my arm, which would have been naked if I had really attacked. I feigned a flinch, and his real cut came on the other side. I had my weapon back where it was supposed to be, so his sharp edge bounced harmlessly off my bell-guard.
With his height he could have just reached over and whacked me on the head. Or maybe he couldn't, maybe I was good enough to stop him. Or he was lulling me into false security. Or maybe he wasn't.
That was one of the two things I liked best about sword-fighting: the carefully built layers of deception, the strenuous exercise of the mind at high speed, the lightning-fast decisions you had to make. The other thing I liked about sword-fighting was getting to hit people. I rarely got to hit Zul.
He drew back, circling me again. Zul's sword shone in the light. He kept it cleaner than he kept himself. The blade splashed light around the room like honey. Words, cut into the lustrous surface, flowed from the curved guard to the tip. I didn't know what they said. My own sword was a dull gray stick with an imaginary edge painted in white.
I watched everything and nothing, seeing him move smoothly for all his bulk, watching the small shifts in his hand position, feeling the changing angle of his weapon as if it were resting in my own hand, seeing the library of actions scroll past me unrealized.
I lifted my toe a little, as if I were about to make an attack. Zul began to take a half step back, as if he believed me: The first moves of a suite, one I dimly recognized. When my foot came down, he had changed the back-step to a forward step and his hand was flying forward, but knowing he would do it, I spun my blade under and around, struck his blade to one side, and thrust my point toward his chest. He danced backward smoothly, pretending to be surprised, but I didn't bother to follow because from the rhythm of his steps I knew it was the fourth Aanandani variation and all the branches that followed from that ended in my defeat. We circled one another again.
He came forward again, light on his feet for such a big man, cutting to my head, but he intended a cut to the side instead. I was there, binding his blade with mine and levering past it to drive point-first at his shoulder. He disengaged his blade sharply-
--and we were fighting at twice lesson speed.
We wheeled about one another, stepping in and out, in and out. I could feel my hand flying without thought to take the proper positions in each of the phrases: The Hand-Mihalek, the Meekum, Anthony's Stab, the Sideways Schnell. There was a name for every movement, for every pair of movements, for every combination and rhythm, and he had taught me every one himself. I could hear our blades striking against one another as if we were alone in the room. The Sefir Zul's stiff hair was jerking from side to side. He was red in the face, but then he always was. His hands and feet, as always, moved like those of a man admiring himself in the mirror, but for a change he wasn't watching the other students out of the corner of his eye. He was watching me. He was going to do something horrible again.
Well, I had nothing to lose. With Zul, I was never right, so there were endless possibilities for ways I could be wrong. I decided to try something. I increased the speed again. He followed the tempo change. All of a sudden, I was directing the lesson. He was following my moves. That had never happened before. Well, if I was in charge, I knew what I would do.
Cut, parry, feint, thrust, deceive the blade, step in, pretend to thrust again, and step out. It was a well-worn pattern he had taught me long ago, the Aegyptus. He would believe that I couldn't do anything complicated and go fast at the same time. He thought I was his student, his creation. He wouldn't be the first human to make that mistake.
Cut, parry, feint, thrust, deceive the blade, step in, pretend to thrust, and step out, his face looked bored, and I did it again. The third time, when I moved as if to make the predictable change-cut that was the first variation in the pattern, his blade was exactly where it had to be if he believed my lie, but I wasn't doing the Aegyptus any more.
He was sure I would be. I had fooled him. So he missed me, because I wasn't there. Instead, I was striking him with a loud whack on the join between his shoulder and his neck. The whack was too loud. I realized the room was silent. His face red with anger--or was it astonishment?--Zul lifted his thick finger to acknowledge the blow, stepping back.
The skin where I had hit him was red, right between the grimy edge of his collar and the roots of his beard. A welt was already rising. He was going to have a dark blue bruise there, a big one. If I'd had a real sword with a real edge, I would be looking down at him on the floor. There would be blood. It was exactly what I had always wanted to do to him.
I was still holding my weapon out, ready for defense, but now I dropped it so that the tip touched the floor. "Sorry, sir," I said.
Then the whole side of my head felt as if it had blown up. He had slapped me with the flat of his blade. He didn't look angry any more. Now he looked triumphant. "Is your opponent dead, troll girl?" he said with confirmed contempt. "Never drop your weapon until your opponent is dead."
I closed my eyes. Somebody in the back of the room snorted.
Zul went to the tall mahogany cabinet in the back of the room and reached inside. He came out with a neat pile of leather in his huge hands, and a long glittering thing lying on top of the pile. "Go away, Malka," he said, handing it to me. "I can do nothing more with you. You are done."
I took the pile in my arms, staring up at him in rage. He raised his blade and touched his forehead, brought the sword forward, then swept it to one side with a hiss. I put my practice sword in my other hand, lifted the glittering thing from the top of the pile, and swept it grandly back at him, looping it in a final flourish. Somebody else gave a tired laugh. Zul glared around him, the clatter and slide of practice started up again, and a student stepped into the lesson ring and faced the Sefir. As I turned and walked away, I heard him blow his breath out.
He was making me graduate, even though I wasn't done. There was more I wanted to learn.
There wasn't any ceremony besides the clothing. When Zul gave you your armor, whatever grade it was, you were finished. You put it on and went away and couldn't come any more.
I walked stiffly back to the locker room, stuffed the cotton student armor in the laundry bin and laid out my new gear to see what grade I had attained. I picked all the pieces up, one by one. I put them all back down, one by one.
This armor was soft, thin, and flexible. It was almost dusty-looking, not so rough it would catch a blade, supple but strong enough to turn a point. The helmet was no more than a cap. The plastron, carapace, and arm-guards were sewn together into a padded jacket with a collar. The leg armor was just trousers. It was armor that said its owner didn't need armor. It was armor just like Zul's, and I knew I deserved it, but there was something fishy. Zul would never grant Sefir rank to anyone if he could help it.
Since I had it in front of me, I tried it on anyway, pulling everything on over my black shirt and skins. The jacket's waist and shoulders fit me exactly. There wasn't anybody else as small as me in the school, so they must be mine. I felt wonderful in it, and I didn't want to take it off.
The sword was long, thin, sharp, and almost weightless. It caught the light with a watery gleam and sent small reflections skittering over the room. The gleaming guard swept over my knuckles when I grasped it, and the grip fit my fingers exactly. When I cut the air, it hissed. I put it in the back-scabbard and drew it a few times, listening to the sliding noise. The Mighty Sefir Malka.
I put the cap on, tucked my curly black hair into it, and cocked it slightly. In the middle of the locker room, I stood in the on-guard position, my knees slightly bent, my back straight, my shoulders relaxed, and I drew the blade a few more times, cutting grimly at phantoms. Malka the monkey, fighting back! I could smell the leather. I closed my eyes and shuffled over to the full-length mirror at the end of the locker room, banging into the benches on my way and feeling along the fronts of the lockers. I wanted to surprise myself.
I opened my eyes. There I was. It was a surprise, all right. The surprise was, I was still Malka, still a small maiden with big wide eyes. From the neck down the image in the mirror was a mighty sword-fighter, the way a scale model looks like the real thing. Every detail was perfect, but I looked like a doll in a costume, or a dressed-up cat. At least I didn't have big furry ears and dainty whiskers.
I made a snarling face at myself in the mirror, and laughed. No matter how fiercely I squinted, my eyes were round and clear. Even when I glowered, my brow just crinkled. I felt as if I were scowling, but the scowl looked like a sulk on my rosebud mouth. A Malka doll in a sword-fighting costume. Grr. Ha.
Zul's joke was a nasty one, but if he had given the stuff to me it was mine. I would go wave my sword at him like the performing monkey he obviously thought I was, and then I would march out of the school, I would keep the armor, and Zul could boil his head. I screwed my face up, stuck my tongue out at my image, drew the sword, and strode back into the hall.
And stopped. There, in a perfectly staged scene, was my next-to-worst nightmare.
A man in the orange uniform of a Web Witchfinder, an Enforcer, was standing there talking to Zul.
This page last updated July 10, 2000