“Be worthy of the weapon,” Pádraig calls.
I don’t allow Conor the offensive this time, coming in hard and fast with the haft braced against my body. It whirls as I move, lashing out as an extension of my arm. Conor blocks and I shift my grip suddenly, dropping and spinning. The momentum carries the spear around smoothly at his waist.
He evades, and I’m off-balance. I sense more than feel the crack of his staff sweeping my legs from beneath me again. The world tilts and I land on my side.
I groan, and it’s not entirely from pain this time. Perhaps in a different environment. Perhaps with different weapons.
But here. Now. With the disadvantages I have.
I genuinely cannot beat him.
The realisation sinks deep, hurts more than I expected given it’s the outcome I need. It’s not as though I ever imagined I was invincible, or assumed I would always face less skilled opponents. But I did always believe I had a chance, before. Always believed that no matter the odds, I had at least a shot at leaving a fight victorious.
I push myself to my knees, then hold up my hand to indicate defeat. “I don’t think the weapon is impressed today, Udar Pádraig,” I cough.
There is a chuckle from the onlookers, though Pádraig doesn’t join them. “You are conceding?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I stand. “Because he is better than me.”
“You have determined this from two falls?”
“I have determined it because of this.” I waggle my useless stump of an arm at him. I don’t have to feign the heat in my voice.
Pádraig considers me implacably. “Conor?”
“Yes, Udar Pádraig?”
“Let us see if you can prove Leathf hear’s belief that a disadvantaged warrior is a dead one.” Pádraig turns to the onlookers. “Tara?”
Conor groans under his breath.
The lithe young woman who steps forward is on the shorter side of average height, bound auburn hair reaching to her waist. The iron torc she always wears gleams dully at her throat, and the deep, clearly old scar that runs from the corner of her mouth up past her eye creases the right side of her face.
She’s the best fighter here, both from what little I’ve seen and what the others have said. Aloof, though. Of the students of an age with me, she’s the one I’ve spoken to the least.
Tara twirls her spear, the latticework of art inscribed along the haft dizzying to the eye. All the students here have their own weapons, but most of them are undecorated, or have only one or two symbols carved into wood or etched into iron. Mine is the only one vaguely as intricate, and like mine, I occasionally get the sense of something more from her weapon. That faint, distracting pulse in my mind. I also get the distinct impression that Tara intensely disapproves of the similarity between them.
She glances at Pádraig, who nods.
She puts her left hand behind her back, and squares up to Conor.
Conor attacks.
It’s clear from the outset that he is not holding back; his staff sings as he probes Tara’s left, just as he did mine. If anything, he’s pushing harder here, striking with more gusto. I can’t help but wonder if he was going easy on me.
Unlike me, though, Tara seems unfazed.
The young woman moves with short, smooth motions, and there’s a repeating sharp clacking as wood hits wood over and over again. She positions the haftbeneath her forearm to brace it, then uses the ground, then meets force for force as her spear flicks upward. Stepping forward and back with calm, deliberate movements. Never worried. Never rushed.
Conor doesn’t let up; his face is a mask of concentration as he peppers Tara with feints and creatively placed strikes. None of it matters. She is always moving, always reacting, always one step ahead. Her left hand never twitches from where it is locked behind her back.
Then she evidently spots some mistake by Conor, though I don’t see it. Her spear suddenly blurs.
Conor is defending desperately. Once. Twice.
