Amos stood in front of the little girl. She had humiliated his little brother. It only went to show that women had no place in fighting. He saw the little girl's grandmother sitting under her canopy. The old woman funded all of their training, but the difference in how she treated them and her own blood was obvious. Her precious granddaughter got personal classes from the swordmaster. She received the best of the forged swords, the lightest and strongest. Her clothing was handsewn, and the precious stones that glinted at her ears were set in a fine net of gold.
She looked even smaller now, with her twig of a sword. His own practice sword was a wooden replica of his real one, broad and heavy. He flipped the sword in his hand and prepared for the fight... or lack thereof. The girl would pay for what she did to his brother, and it would be a while before she would be able to take another test. Before she would be able to walk.
He walked forward, smiling as her arms tensed. The swordmaster had granted her an additional privilege, a wooden shield strapped to her forearm. It wouldn't be much help, and the wood added weight to her scrawny arms. It would only slow her down.
Amos lunged forward, his wooden sword raised high above his head with both hands. He aimed for her arm first, the one holding onto her toothpick of a sword. His sword hit the ground, the tip burying a few inches into the hard soil.
Miran was a few feet away. He couldn't have miscalculated the distance between them. It was a work that had worked on hundreds of opponents before her. He struck again, this time driving the sword forward towards her abdomen. Miran moved like an apparition, avoiding every one of his attacks until he felt the weight of his sword pulling him down. Again and again, he attacked, and every time his sword touched only air.
The little girl was slippery. Amos had dealt with slippery girls before. He adjusted the grip on his sword and took a few breaths. Their fight started at dawn and now the sun no longer touched the horizon. Only moments had passed, but they were slow moments, where time slowed down and every detail counted.
Something was different about the little girl. He stopped focusing on the positioning of her feet and her body and looked at her face, looking for a clue as to what she would do next. There was no fear there. Only calculation and patience. She stood as the swordmaster taught her to, but she was still.
In the village he was from, the wheatfields were filled with sand-colored snakes that waded through the crops and bit farmers, sending them to early, unmarked graves. The serpents could've lived happy lives on the vermin that plagued the crop fields like other snakes did, but they felled men as if it was their calling. When the swordmaster gave him leave, he and other young men prowled the fields wearing leather boots and burlap sacks over them, following the winding trails of the snakes through the fields. They'd track them in groups, men protected and ready, yet the beasts were always ready for them with their fangs out and in coils ready to launch themselves at the nearest man. They bit whatever flesh could reach and aimed to kill even as their own death was inevitable.
The little girl was like those snakes. She stood in that same, venomous way, with eyes of cold fire and fingers itching for blood and death. She wasn't the same girl he had seen the week before. There was no fear in her eyes or her body. Only a stern determination in the crease between her eyebrows.
Miran kept her sword raised in front of her. The oaf was getting tired, but he had become aware that something was wrong. He was more cautious with his movements now, and his eyes followed her more closely. Miran loosened the leather strap of the shield around her arm and shrugged off the wood, holding it with her left hand. It was a heavy thing, but the swordmaster insisted. A week before, she would've cowered behind the flimsy protection.
Amos no longer scared her. She wasn't stronger or faster or better than before, but there was clarity to her thoughts that was refreshing. Amos had brute strength, but now she knew how to defeat him. All week she had recovered from her fight and watched his sparring with the other men from her room in the manor.
He had strength, and nothing else. When she exhausted that strength of his, he would have nothing at all. Miran waited as he gathered his breath. He was more tired than he let himself believe, and she had not yet broken into a sweat. She felt alive, nerves humming for movement.
She cast a glance to her grandmother, occupied with the financial affairs of the manor and seemingly uninterested in the fight. Miran seethed, the anger rising from the back of her heart. It was her grandmother's fault she was trying to fight a boy that wouldn't fit through most doorways. It was her grandmother's fault she had to train like a dog from dawn to dusk. Her grandmother had been the one to agree to the sorcerer's bargain.
Amos charged at her a final time, using the last burst of energy he could gather. Miran turned back towards him. He moved forward like a bull, with steps that were bumbled and anxious, more focused on the target than the precision of getting there. She stepped to the side and he fell to the ground on his hands and knees, his massive sword landing a few feet away.
Why was it so easy? She had observed other people fighting before. She took note of their techniques and their favorite moves, their weaknesses, and their previous wounds. But it never worked in her favor so well. Perhaps it was because the others were better swordsmen with weaker arms. Perhaps because Amos's technique was no technique at all, and it wasn't difficult to avoid a move that had no thought behind it.
Miran could've ended it then. He was unarmed for the moment. She was used to falling, and knew how to do it without hurting herself too badly. But as Amos stood up, she saw the red of his skinned palms and the torn knees of his trousers. He wasn't a man that was used to defeat, and he was growing more desperate.
A thought slid into her mind, unbidden and malicious. Her grandmother bought her weapons and dresses, things that either would make her a better warrior, or things that showed off the Carmanor wealth. One thing Miran never owned or received was a toy. Amos could be her first. She could avoid his brutish swings of the sword until the sun set and rose again the next morning. His reddening face was amusing, and the way he scrambled to set himself right, his act of still being the clear winner, was laughable.
"Do you want to concede defeat?" she asked him. She still didn't want to hurt other people. He barked out a laugh. She had dodged a few of his attacks and was now strutting around the practice ground as if she owned it. He lunged forward a final time, determined to catch her. The little girl wasn't even in position anymore, her shield held loosely in one hand and her sword behind her back. Amos aimed to beat the confidence out of her with one attack. If he managed to touch her just once, she would lose more than her confidence. The use of a limb perhaps, for a few weeks.
He picked up the sword, frowning at the specks of sand that coated its surface. A flick of the wrist and it was clean again. Amos risked a look at the audience. His fellow trainees wore pitying looks. Unlike the beginning of the match, they were no longer aimed at the little girl.
"Concede defeat, Amos."
It was easy to see now, that size or age or experience or practice didn't matter. Not without temperament. Amos was better than her in almost every way, but one thing he would never gain was patience. At the end of the day, he possessed the urge to bully, but the instinct of prey. His breathing grew more frenzied, and the mild irritation on his face morphed into fury. He wasn't angry at her anymore, but at himself.
He muttered under his breath, "Stupid... little... girl."
They had ignored her victories at first. She was better at fighting than most children her age, but her father had been one of the swordmaster's best students. She had started defeating them one by one. Last week was the first time she had cheated, and all of them had breathed out in relief. She was only human after all. Spoiled and privileged, but flawed just like the rest of them. Now, he was having second thoughts. Amos practiced against the graduates of the swordmaster's academy and sometimes managed to win. When they won, he didn't make it easy for them.
"Stop running away and fight!"
Miran smirked. "If you manage to touch me even once, I shall."
They were all wrong. The girl wasn't like the rest of them. He leaned on his practice sword and considered accepting defeat. There was no way the others didn't see what was happening, how different, how abnormal she was. Her eyes which had been innocent at the beginning of their duel now glittered with anticipation.
Taro was no longer disinterested. She stared at the practice ground, at Amos's massive hunched over figure. The test had been meant as a punishment for the child, but it was her opponent that was in pain. The chill of the morning had evaporated with the sun, replaced by a blazing dry heat that she felt sucking out the moisture from her own body. The boy tried again and again, but Miran dodged and moved. She moved away from the edge of his blade with grace, with calm, as if the entire fight had been choreographed days before. The large boy, almost a young man and nearly a graduate of the swordmaster's academy, failed each time. Her granddaughter stood a few feet away again. She was not fighting him, but playing a game and making him the fool. It had been hours, and while he was exhausted, she was unphased, just as she had been at the beginning.
A southern wind blew through the courtyard, bringing a brief respite from the heat of the mid-morning. Miran breathed in the air that smelled of the river to the south. She could smell the fresh fruit of their orchards that lay close to the river, the boiling tea from the kitchens, and most of all, she could smell Amos's defeat. It was no longer about winning for him, but merely about keeping face. She saw the other swordsmen and she knew things were changed forever. She was no longer the little girl they had to practice with. Now, they would avoid her for an entirely different reason. It wasn't seemly to delight in other people fearing her, but it was easy. It was exhilarating.
"I concede," Amos gasped out. Miran froze. He was on his knees, exhausted and defeated. But it wasn't a true defeat, and they would say she had not truly won. None of the others had heard his concession, and Miran no longer wanted it. She dropped the shield at her feet. She hadn't wanted to fight at all, but she was never given a choice. It was only fair for her opponent to face the circumstances.
"No," she whispered. "We do not leave here unless you defeat me."
She was being vicious, in a way she had never been before. Miran paused for a moment. The day was in her favor, unreasonably so. She felt like the god Rakt stood behind her guiding her with his blood-washed hands and stripping her opponent of all of his strength and courage. But the god never listened to her before. None of them did, no matter her prayer. Something different had taken root at her very core, dark and inky, and it was blooming now. It unearthed the anger she could not express her entire life and spread it to her tongue, her mind.
"I–"
Miran raised her leg and planted a firm kick onto the center of Amos's torso, knocking him backwards onto the ground. She walked closer, planting the tip of her practice sword at the centre of his collarbone. If she pushed down, it would create far more than a bruise.
"I choose when this ends," she hissed.
If the day had gone in his favor, if his aim had been true, she would be in the infirmary already. She knew cruelty too intimately. Her grandmother's was a kind of it, a distant cruelty that was inflicted for her own convenience. Amos's cruelty was one of pride, one born of thinking he deserved something simply because he had the power to snatch it from others.
The air grew cold as she stepped back. With two fingers, she motioned for him to stand back up.
"I think it is clear who has won," the swordmaster said, walking onto the practice ground.
"No, I do not think it is, master. We shall fight again," she said.
Her teacher stared at her. Miran was one of his favorite pupils, eager to learn and eager to impress. But today she was a girl possessed. He looked at Taro for direction, and the old woman shook her head.
"You shall fight again, but tomorrow," he suggested. He did not know how to deal with this Miran, and he could sense his usual treatment for insolence, a few lashes with a switch, would do her no good.
She started to argue when the first raindrop landed on her nose. It did not rain often in their little kingdom, but when it did it fell as a torrent. Soon the soil of the practice ground would become mud. She threw her practice sword at Amos.
"Put this away," she said. She paused at her grandmother's place and bowed. Miran hoped there would be some sign of difference in her grandmother. Taro stood up and returned Miran's bow, her face impassive as always. Miran cursed herself for expecting a word of encouragement or praise. Those things were not meant for her. Amos's brother walked onto the practice ground and helped his brother to his feet, dusting off his clothing and asking how he was. Even someone as hateful as Amos had family who cared for him. All she had was an old woman who had no love to give her or anyone else in the world.
"Are you satisfied, grandmother, or should I prepare for another test?"