The Golden Tablet
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 7
They camped on the third night past the river crossing in a high meadow where the grass was still green despite the altitude and a hot spring ran into a shallow pool at the meadow’s edge, steaming in the cold air.
The Keshig found it with the unerring instinct of people who knew this country in their bones and made camp around it with the satisfaction of soldiers who have been cold for four days and have just been handed a reason not to be.
Niccolò was finishing his evening notations when the shadow fell across his table.
He looked up.
Khutulun stood over him with an expression he hadn’t seen before — lighter than her usual assessment, something in it that was almost recreational.
“Put the maps away,” she said.
“I’m almost—”
“Put them away, Niccolò.”
He put them away.
She led him to the edge of the camp where the grass was flat and short and the Keshig had arranged themselves in a loose circle with the relaxed anticipation of people who knew what was coming and had opinions about it.
He looked at the circle. Looked at her.
“You’re serious,” he said.
“I am always serious,” she replied. “But this—” something moved in her eyes that was the furthest thing from serious he had seen in her— “this I enjoy.”
“You want to wrestle.”
“I want to see if you’re as clever as you think you are,” she retorted, pulling her outer coat off and handing it to a Keshig rider who took it with the ease of long practice. Beneath it she was layered wool and leather, her braid falling over one shoulder, her arms bare from the elbow down in the cold air without apparent concern.
He looked at those arms. At the shoulders above them. At the general physical proposition she represented.
He took his coat off.
The Keshig made a sound of collective appreciation that required no translation.
“The rules,” she said, circling left with the loose-limbed ease of someone in entirely familiar territory. “First to put the other on the ground. No weapons. No striking.”
“Those are the only rules?”
“Those are the only rules that matter,” she replied.
He circled with her and took stock of his situation honestly. She was taller than him by perhaps two fingers. Outweighed him by — he estimated — enough that direct engagement was a rapid path to the ground. She had been doing this since she could walk and had thrown a hundred and forty-two men who were almost certainly larger and stronger than he was.
Strength was not his answer. Speed was marginal — she was fast, he had watched her move for six days. Leverage was possible but she would know every leverage point before he found it.
He had approximately one advantage.
She didn’t know how he thought.
She came for him with the directness of someone who had done this so many times that the opening sequence was simply a formality — a controlled surge, hands reaching for the grip that would give her the leverage she needed, confident and precise and entirely correct in its execution.
He didn’t resist it.
He let her take the grip and use it and went with the momentum instead of against it, turning inside it, changing its direction, using her own force to spin them both so that when the leverage completed they were facing the same direction and he had both her arms and she had nothing but air.
It lasted perhaps two seconds before she adjusted — she was extraordinary, her recovery was nearly instant — but in those two seconds he walked her forward three steps and she had to move her feet to keep balance and moving your feet was losing ground.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.