Star Wars_ I, Jedi - Michael A. Stackpole [39]
Despite the padding on the blade, the blow hurt a great deal. As pain jolted its way up my leg, I tried to remember some of the Jedi techniques for shunting aside pain that we’d been taught, but being in the middle of a fight wasn’t the most conducive circumstance for meditative arts. As I reeled away, Gantoris slashed at me again, catching me across the back of my thighs, making me yelp aloud.
My face burned with shame. Here I was, someone who was helping instruct the others in self-defense, and Gantoris was slashing at me with impunity. He had me hurt and I was all turned around and vulnerable. My self-image imploded as I read the shock and horror and comical smiles on my friends’ faces. In their minds I was victim and clown, and those two images succeeded in grinding the image I’d held of myself as Keiran Halcyon, Jedi Hero, into little tiny bits.
Then I got the very clear impression that the next blow would land on my right ear and do all it could to drive it into my brain. Without conscious thought, I dove forward on my belly, then scissored my legs and rolled over onto my back. My legs tangled themselves up with Gantoris’ legs and twisted the larger man to the ground. I brought my own stick around and smacked him across the buttocks, then kicked his legs free of mine.
Gantoris got up, his eyes narrowed, while I just sat on the ground and drew my knees up to my chin. I resisted the urge to rub my shin and forced myself to think past the pain about what had just happened. At that moment when I had been the most vulnerable, when I had been beaten, I had known what he was going to do and I had been able to react to it.
What surprised me was that my access to the Force had come at a point when I had been forced to abandon the image I had been trying to present to the others. Once I got past pretense and had just been what I was, the Force flowed more freely. It was as if the role I had created for myself had inhibited the flow, whereas abandoning the role brought me closer to it.
Perhaps it is not for me to sculpt the Force’s flow to my purposes, but for me to be sculpted into that which more easily works with the Force.
Gantoris pointed his practice sword at me. “Let us go again.”
I tossed my wooden blade aside. “I’m ready. Come on.”
“Take up your blade, Keiran.”
I shook my head. “Whenever you want, I’m here.”
Gantoris looked over at the Jedi Master. “Tell him to defend himself, Master Skywalker.”
Luke’s blue-eyed gaze flicked between Gantoris and me, and then back again. “It appears he is content with his defensive posture, Gantoris.”
The taller man pulled his chin up. “It is dishonorable for me to strike someone who is defenseless.”
Luke smiled. “Then, if you will not strike, he has won. Won without striking a blow. That is a lesson for you to learn, Gantoris.”
“Yes, Master.”
Luke gestured to my sword and it floated back over to me. “That, however, is not the lesson Keiran needs to learn. If you will, Keiran, defend yourself.”
I plucked the sword out of the air and stood. I started to smile and offer a challenge to Gantoris, but I realized that would just be helping rebuild the illusion that choked off my access to the Force. I set myself and offered Gantoris a quick salute. “Whenever you want to start.”
He approached cautiously, but as I watched him, bits and pieces of my visual perspective shifted. I saw a second and third image of him arise, with each of them moving to the right or the left, with arms coming up or around and only when his true form rose up to match it would I know where his attack was coming from. I realized the images I was seeing were a sense of his thought processes, a reflection of strategies weighed and rejected. When he made his choice, I’d already seen it and could sidestep it with ease.
Over the next ten minutes we continued to spar. My reading of his intention was far from foolproof, and I had the bruises to prove it.