The Camelot Spell - Laura Anne Gilman [72]
They had, he suspected, the same teachers—or at least teachers who taught the same style. But that blade, so exotic looking, suggested that she had learned from other masters as well. Gerard would have to be careful.
Before the thought was finished, he felt her behind him, moving more swiftly that he could imagine, the blade scoring across his shoulder blades and almost cutting through the leather that protected him.
He cursed, turning to face her, reluctant respect in his voice.
“Language, child,” she said, still smiling. Then she lunged in turn, her blade shimmering in the candlelight. Gerard refused to be distracted and beat it away with a heavy clang of his own blade and forced himself within her fight-circle. Dangerous, so dangerous; with her speed and the lightness of her blade he was at a disadvantage. He could practically hear Sir Bors bellowing at him now about stupidity and getting killed.
But he was there, barely a handspan from her body, and bringing his sword up for a disabling blow….
Suddenly he was on his back, breathless, his hand holding onto his hilt only through instinct, not intent.
She had kicked him! And, he realized, feeling the bruise forming already, had she been able to stretch her leg out farther, he would have been incapacitated long enough for her to finish him off.
Gerard rolled left as Morgain came in for the kill. He got to his feet as she spun around, blade outstretched, her face drawn back in a fierce snarl that would have looked natural on her cat.
“Dirty tricks? I should have expected such from you.” In fact, he should have. Sir Bors would have had him back at basic trials if he had been there to see such foolishness. Never expect honor from a dishonorable source.
But Sir Bors wasn’t here.
Gerard matched her, snarl for snarl, and went on the offensive again. His sword wasn’t as nimble as hers, but he knew how to handle it as well as most knights twice his age and experience, and he had an advantage they lacked.
He could play dirty, too.
On his next lunge, Gerard didn’t go for any of the usual targets: heart, arms, or legs. Instead, he drove the blade directly at her lovely, unprotected face, aiming for the spot directly between her eyes.
She backtracked, as he’d suspected she would, and tried to regroup. He pressed, moving forward faster than she moved back. It left him slightly winded, but the urgency of the situation gave him stamina he might otherwise have lacked. He beat against her blade once, then again, until she spat at him and leaped out of the way, just before he would have backed her up against a patch of bare wall.
“Never let them get hold of a tapestry, boy,” he could hear Sir Bors say. “That’s just another weapon you’ve given them.”
He felt the kiss of her blade just as he began to turn, incredulous that she could react that quickly. A small part of his mind dealt with the injury: a shallow slash across the back of his left leg. Bloody, but not deadly. It would hamper his ability to move, however, the longer he had to stand on it. Finish this, he thought. One way or the other, time’s wasting. Finish it.
A flurry of action, lunging and then lunging again, driving her back when she expected to step forward and attack at will. He shut down the part of his mind that was aware of the pain; shut down all awareness of anything save the blades flashing and twisting in front of him, the smell of blood in his nostrils, the feel of the heavy metal in his hand, the rightness of it all. None of this was directed; his mind had retreated and let instinct take over in a place that he knew was dangerously familiar to the berserks, the mad warriors of the cold lands Sir Bors told stories about.
But it worked. Without knowing quite how he had done it, he had driven Morgain into a corner, parrying her attack and slamming both blades into the wall, hers held there by the greater length and weight