Chapter 4: Confrontation

Location Training Camp, near Waterless Shore, Blue Wave Territory
Time Predawn 600 hours (9 hours before dawn)

After warm up exercises and stretches, Jetrel lead the class in basic forms practicing thrusting, cutting and parrying for a third of an hour. Jetrel then handed the class over to Maiho.

“The chances are reasonable that you will never have to face a singer in battle, however if you are so unlucky as to do so you will probably die, unless you listen me right now.”

“Can anyone tell me, what are the weapons you are most likely to face in the hands of an enemy singer?”

Sebram called out “War Artificia.”

“Shard hunters”, called out a trainee called Kuiquo.

“Shard mounts and shard crabs are also far more dangerous when controlled by the voice instead of by flute. There are also another weapons such as those that shoot fire and others that shoot cutting crystals. Thankfully those types of weapons are rare.”

“Can anyone tell me what to do when attacked by a hunter or other Artificia.”

“Use your shard mount against it?” suggested Hadrel

“War Artificia are too strong for a shard mount to fight effectively and shard hunters are too fast. This is definitely a delaying tactic of last resort. Most people, even those who know better will attack the Artificia, which is worse than useless. There is a better strategy. Wendam, what is rule Number Two for fighting against a hostile force supported by singers?”

“Kill the enemy singers first, kill them as quickly as possible.”

“Thank you Wendam. You eliminate the threat of the Artificia when you remove the hostile singer controlling it. Another way of dealing with a threatening Artificia is too have a friendly singer wrest control of the Artificia away from the hostile singer. Which brings me to rule number one. Kernan, what is rule Number One for fighting against a hostile force supported by singers?”

Kernan gave her disgusted look.

“Come on, I know you know it.”

“Protect your own singers at all costs,” said Kernan with grimace.

“Friendly singers are you and your friend’s best defense against hostile singers. Expect the enemy to target your singers. The enemy will often refrain from sending their Artificia into the conflict until the opposing singers have been eliminated for fear that they would lose their Artificia to your singers.”

“If you cannot kill the enemy singers quickly or use your own singers to oppose them, then your only remaining options are fleeing or surrender.”

“I will now give a short demonstration of offensive singing. Of all the weapons available to me as a singer these are one of the least powerful. However my use of these weapons is covered by tradition and common usage, so the village council is not going arrest me for doing this. Bandits or reborn are not going have this limitation though,” said Maiho as she moved to a circle of wooden and steel figures that Sebram and Feibu had helped her set up beforehand. She hummed and felt an immediate response from the longer sword. She had used it for years so this was unsurprising. The shorter heaver sword was more sluggish in its response as she had only just started using it. She paused within the circle of statues and carvings. Some of the figures had been welded together out of scrap metal using her light spear, the others she had carved out of wood using her sword.

She unsheathed her swords in a blur, as they were already bonded to her they started vibrating with the first note of the activation song. She slashed, cut and spun her swords barely hesitating as they sliced through wood and metal. She spun to a stop among the scattered fragments of wood and steel, and sheathed her weapons.

“This concludes our demonstration. Any questions?” Maiho asked.

“Couldn’t I just run you down with my shard mount?”

“Hadrel, you really like your shard mount, don’t you. No, I would take control of your mount and kill you with it.”

“How about an arrow?” asked Feibu.

“A far better solution. You might want to make sure the arrow head is metal and not crystal. Some singers can sense crystal.”

“I like to thank Maiho, for her presentation and demonstration. Maiho was a lost child and witnessed many conflicts involving singers. Group A is to form up near the practice dummies where Sebram assist you with blunted swords. Group B is to form up in the central area where Feibu will take you through basic forms. Group C is to form up in the left area where Maiho and Wendam will supervise sparring.

There was an odd number of people sparring so Maiho didn’t need to spar herself. She was increasing reluctant to spar with other students. Her wooden sword always seemed to automatically find the gaps in her opponents padding, so much so that half the students dropped their sweaty uncomfortable padding when they found out that they were fighting her. Worse her mind was flooded with ways to kill or disable her opponent, not with the sword she would have in a real combat, but with her wooden sword. It was as if her mind refused all pretense and it was getting worse. The time was approaching that the reborn would return. It wasn’t only the historic pattern of incidents every 10 hundred days. She felt it in her bones. She watched the happy laughing students and wanted to scream at them that they needed to be serious, that what they were learning could mean the difference between life and death. However half the students thought she was queer or crazy, she didn’t want the other half thinking it too. Instead she went up and down the line pointing out mistakes, correcting the sparring students, demonstrating stokes, blocks and parries.

Mundas managed to hurt his sparring partner Tarmar. After checking Tarmar over and determining that he had nothing worse than some nasty bruises, she sent him to the side to recover and took Tarmars place as Mundas’s sparring partner. Mundas’s skin between his patterns went white when he realized this. She hadn’t worn padding for years, so she looked calm and collected while Mundas looked like a drowned scrat, overheated and swimming in his own sweat. She didn’t feel too bad when her control slipped and she delivered a couple of bruising strikes on his unprotected back. She scared herself and Mundas when she came within a fingers width of crushing his throat.

Jetrel seemed to concentrate on giving individual attention to members of Group B as Feibu led them though forms. A student named Gedrot tripped over another student and Maiho had to heal a gash on above his eye. Maiho sent Mundas over to spar with Gedrot’s partner Queobo to the relief of both of them.

Maiho went back to monitoring and correcting the students. She had them change partners and was about to have them change again when Bardre stormed into the sword drill area training area with her spear twirling. Bardre marched up to Jetrel and started shouting. It seemed to be about her demonstration and whether healers could be warriors. Maiho stopped listening to the words and concentrated on the movements and body language. Bardre’s actions with her spear weren’t a nervous habit, Maiho decided. She was using her spear to deliberately bully and intimidate other people, in a way that Maiho found deeply offensive. Maiho knew Illia would never behave like this. Maiho always thought of Jetrel as kind, quiet and almost timid, but this was not the man she was seeing now. Jetrel was standing with his feet shoulder width apart, leaning forward with his weight on his toes. His practice sword was in his off hand and his right hand was resting on the hilt. Jetrel did not seem to really believe that Bardre would attack him, it was more like he was pushing back against Bardre’s aggression.

Maiho found her feet taking her towards the conflict. She felt an icy calmness that she had not felt in a while.

“Your usual tricks are not going to work, in this case, Bardre,” warned Jetrel.

“Baa, that pretty face has turned your brains to mush,” stated Bardre.

The spear tip weaved back and forward in a pattern. Jetrel and Bardre continued talking, and continued their dance. The spear dipped and shot forward. Despite the fact that Maiho knew that Bardre only wanted to scare her and was not going to hurt her, she was overwhelmed by a cold fury.

She step forward deflecting the spear with her wooden practice sword. “Not!” She drew her shorter sword with her off hand and sliding forward again cut the head off the spear. “Acceptable!” Another shuffle forward and another length of wood fell on the floor. She managed to stop her sword a few finger widths from Bardre’s neck. “If you wave that thing in my face one more time I will shove it so far up your arse that you will be spitting wood chips for a week.”

Bardre grew pale between her markings. Bardre’s eyes looked down. Maiho looked down too. Maiho’s longer sword had cut deep into Bardre’s side just below a V shaped scar. Maiho could not even remember dropping her wooden practice sword and drawing her other crystal sword. “Naedri’s Tits,” Bardre swore.

“Wendam, get me my bag. Jetrel steady her.” Maiho withdrew the sword, caste off the blood with a practiced flick, then sheathed both swords. “Ease her down.” Miaho knelt down next to Bardre. She grabbed her bag, removed healer’s balm and a healing crystal. She tossed the balm to Jetrel. “Jetrel, give her that balm, Sebram and Wendam hold her down.”

Maiho had drained one healing crystal and had almost drained a second when there was a commotion.

“Jetrel, arrest that girl.”

“Nargre, I would appreciate you not interfering with my healer, while she is trying to save my life,” Bardre groaned.

“But she tried to kill you.”

“So did you. Did anyone try to arrest you?”

“That was different.” complained Nargre.

“You shot me point blank.”

Maiho could not help glancing at the scar on Bardre’s stomach. “We are going to need to get her to a healing altar as quick as possible. I have her stabilized but her injures are too serious for me to heal them with only healing crystals.”

“I will organize a litter to carry her to one of the shard crabs,” said Jetrel. “We strike camp as quickly as possible.” Jetrel looked at Nargre and Nargre nodded her assent.

An hour later she was sitting next to Bardre on the trailer of a shard crab as they headed back to the day nest.

“I asked Jetrel to get this for me.” Bardre held out a necklace with one white crystal. Maiho heart leapt. “Give it to Leonam and tell him that he is now Assistant Spear Drill Instructor and will be in charge of my classes while I am recuperating.” Maiho face fell.

“What did you think I would let you anywhere near sword trainees after this? You are a killer. I saw it in your eyes. Your first, second, third and four thought was to kill me. I am lucky that your fifth thought was to spare my life.”

Maiho lowered her eyes, she knew that Bardre was right. “No, this one is for you.” Bardre held out a necklace with two white crystals. “Congratulations, you are now the Mounted Maneuvers Drill Instructor.”

“You can’t.”

“You don’t think we need a Mounted Maneuvers Drill Instructor?” asked Bardre.

“But I am only 21 hundred days old.”

“You have more battle experience than most of the guard. Or are you going to try and sell me that tall tale about mysterious adults rescuing you and the other Lost Children from the Village of Lost Souls. Remember I have faced you. I know you have killed enough times that it doesn’t matter to you anymore. The way you ride a mount like you were born on one and your grasp of tactics – Well let’s just say I found your analysis of the battle of Dust Falls very enlightening.”

“You heard that?” asked Maiho.

“You’re not the only one with big ears, Missy.”

“But I tried to kill you.”

“How do you think Jetrel and Nargre got the job?”