[Flashback] Ifran's First Duel

[Ifran]

45th Fall, 505 A.V. The party on the state of the Royet Theatre was in full swing, but Ifran decided it was time to go back to his dressing room and avoid the crowd for a while. After excusing himself, and handing his cup to a passing servant, he found himself blocked by a man he recognized and knew by reputation. He was from the House of the South Winds, and since he did not appear to be moving, Ifran did the polite thing and bowed at the waist and straightened up. The man, about a decade older than Ifran and more heavily muscled, did the much less polite thing. He looked Ifran rather carefully up and down, and then returned the bow. Sort of. "Your performance," he said in common Arumenic, his voice a rich, but untrained baritone. "Very nice." "Thank you, sir," he replied, his own cultured tenor sounding in more complicated speech patterns. His mode acknowledged an awareness of the insult given, but a polite declination to pursue a fight. What he said next, however, was a subtle slap in the face. "Please feel free to converse in High Arumenic if you prefer." "You dance with your sword as if it were your partner," he noted, still in the blandest of common Arumenic. "You fight imaginary fights, but it is not real." His lack of poetic inflection did not even bother to acknowledge Ifran's verbal riposte, though it implied that while Ifran could memorize the heightened speech of the poets and regurgitate it, he hadn't the expressiveness and comprehension to use it in true conversation. This was a battle, but words and insults were the weapons. As yet. "I'm sorry to be difficult, but in fact, I have been trained to use such weapons in reality as well as on the stage." "Exactly like these?" "Exactly." Ifran moved toward the weapon rack that held several bronze khopeshes. It isn't far enough away to necessitate the man follow him, so he doesn't. His eyes, however, do. "These are real khopeshes, then," he says, disdaining to look them over. "Yes, I believe they are." "How did you come to learn true combat as opposed to stage combat?" Ifran needs no expressive language to understand the subtext here: Practicing forms, even with an 'opponent], does not equate true skill at arms. "My master, the esteemed Taharqa, deemed it fitting for me to be able to defend myself from an attacker, and to know the difference between the real and the theatrical in order to infuse the theatrical with the real." "Please excuse me if I have misinterpreted your story," the Southwinder said, "but I was under the impression that the children of your Noble House were only taught the aesthetic of combat." This insult was deeper; implying that an Eypharian was incapable of wielding a weapon was as much as saying a person was not an Eypharian. "Your impression is not entirely incorrect. Many of my Noble House focus on the surface of things, but true art is as real as reality, or more so, and, in my mind, I fight a real battle every night that I sword-dance." "Your story is difficult to believe," the elder man said, "because I understand you have never fought a real duel. Therefor it is more likely that your ability is a matter of your impressive artistic imagination." "I'm sorry that you lack imagination or an eye for skill," Ifran replied. Up until now, everything he had said had been a successful verbal parry, expressed in new and creative levels of etiquette. But this last was a bald insult delivered in Arumenic as common as the Southwinder's, and while some might consider that a weakness on Ifran's part, the other man choked, reddened, and nearly lost it. Round one went to Ifran of the House of the North Winds. "I suppose you would not object to proving this?" the Southwinder asked. The crowd of party-goers, sensing new reality-based entertainment to stave off their ennui, had granted them a berth wide enough for a fight, though they hovered like a ring of vultures. It was to be a duel, then. "It would please me to prove my skill upon you," Ifran replied, once again modulating his words to the height of politesse. He had scored and now, with his polite smile, he was laughing from above. The Southwinder stomped over to the weapons rack and pulled down two khopeshes, whipping one expertly around to point at the ground at his side, the other to point at Ifran, who calmly noted the diameter of their spectator-lined ring as he walked over to claim two khopeshes of his own. Then they circled and came to a stop facing each other. While the sprung wooden floor of the theater looked perfectly flat, Ifran knew that it wasn't. Paying more attention to the give of it under his feet, he remembered where the weaknesses were, where the wood gave just a little bit more than another section of the floor. Ifran bent his knees, dropping into a low squat while keeping his torso bolt upright, then stood up again to shuffle his feet into the proper stance: feet parallel, both pointed straight ahead, right foot in front of the left foot. The Southwinder did the same. Ifran's opponent turned out to have a lot of a certain quality that the Eypharians had a name for in their language, but which did not translate well into any other. Translating this concept into, say, Kontinese would be like translating one of the many words the Vantha had for snow into the Dhani snake-tongue, but it might translate into emotional intensity, and a performer such as Ifran understood it intuitively, which was how he knew that this man was simply looking to make a name for himself by dueling a rising star like Ifran. One could not have this emotional intensity and not understand how a sword-dancer could easily fight a real opponent should the need arise. He charged directly at Ifran, screaming a challenge at the top of his lungs. The movement actually consisted of a very rapid shuffling of the feet in order to stay balanced at all times. At the last minute, he drew one of his khopeshes up over his head and snapped it down toward Ifran. Truth be told, Ifran was not as good with two khopeshes as he was with one. He could learn the fight choreography easily, but the Southwinder was right about one thing: a real fight involved constant improvisation. He brought up one of his own khopeshes, rotating his wrist so that the handle was up high, above and to the left of his precious face, and the blade sloped down and to the right, providing a roof above him. The Southwinder's blow bounces off this roof like rain, eliciting a metallic note that Ifran imitated with his trained voice, thus preceding his true counterattack with a counterattack not made of metal. Even this true fight could be theatrical, he seemed to sing, his voice resonating as he sidestepped to let the Southwinder go by and snapped the sword down toward his unprotected shoulder. The blades were not sharp, but with their weight and the power behind them, they did not need to be. But the Southwinder was moving too fast, and Ifran's timing was off. His opponent in a duel was not the fight partner of a choreographed sword-dance; he was not cooperating. The blade cut behind and to the side of the Southwinder. Both men wheeled to face each other, back up, and get back into the stance. Emotional intensity didn't convey a fraction of what was passing between the opponents. It was the sort of limited and vulgar translation that made poets and warriors roll around in their graves. The untranslated word was nuanced with a lot of other concepts that one had to speak Arumenic to understand. While Ifran knew this word and portrayed it on stage, he did not believe in its mystical roots. The theater was his religion, and it was a matter of focus. That was all. The Southwinder attacked again, this one rather straightforward: a quick shuffling approach and then a snapping cut toward Ifran's unprotected ribs. Ifran brought both blades down to parry it, singing again the paired notes of impact. This was enough of a clue for the Southwinder to realize that wielding two khopeshes at once was dividing Ifran's attention rather than it being a completely seamless and unified whole. But even as he was making his assessment of Ifran and preparing to make use of that knowledge, Ifran was making an assessment of him, namely that the Southwinder was full of shit. He had spoken to Ifran as if he were a warrior and Ifran a charlatan, but in reality, Ahnatep was not at war. This man was a duelist where Ifran was not. Duelists tended to follow certain protocols. Sword-dancers did too, but theirs were mutable, a contract between the sword-dancers, who did not want to hurt each other. Duels in Ahnatep were generally to first blood. The Pressorah did not brook out and out blood feuds in her realm, which would call for a duel to the death, though there were accidents and ... in some cases ... accidents that were not accidents. Hence duels were a shadow of true combat in some ways, namely taking a highly disorganized, chaotic, violent, and brutal transaction and distilling it down into something courtly and sophisticated. A duelist wants blood, but some strategies were frowned upon. A duelist would generally only attack body parts protected by armor, though these two wore none. A duelist would not kick an opponent in the kneecaps or pull a weapon rack down on their heads, but both of these strategies went through Ifran's mind. In a duel, there were seconds and a judge, and the judging was subjective. A judge might not count a solid, connecting blow, even if it drew first blood, if he did not consider it delivered with a proper amount of emotional intensity. Ifran didn't give a shit about emotional intensity. He wanted to win, and he wanted to prove to all assembled that this Southwinder allahini sikeyim was not fit to lick the bottoms of his sandals. The next time the Southwinder screamed his stylized battle cry and shuffled toward Ifran, cutting and snapping his blades, Ifran parried the attack, singing the note tauntingly, spun around as he squatted low, his other khopesh coming around to hook behind the Southwinder's ankle with the blunt, hooked side, and then pulling his leg out form under him. Ifran lost the khopesh, but his opponent was pulled nearly into the splits, which loosened the loincloth under his kilt, and as he stumbled, flailing gracelessly back to his feet, his reproductive equipment fell out, flashing the audience. Several men and women laughed, including Benshira slaves. Not even smiling, Ifran bowed, acknowledging, "You have my sword." Fully enraged now, the red-faced Southwinder rushed at Ifran, his feet lacking form and one slightly injured, his swords flailing dangerously out of control, and his shriek like unto the mad bellowing of a bull who has seen red. But Ifran was more practiced with a single blade, and its hilt passed expertly between several of his six hands as he gauged the most likely direction from which the attack would come. The Southwinder was more canny than he let on, however, and he was more in control that he appeared. One khopesh feinted, drawing Ifran out, and even with a quick dodge of the upper body, Ifran still suffered a glancing blow to the face. Utterly angry now, Ifran focused that into an instant's action, accepting the momentum of the Southwinder's attack and spinning around out of the way of his other blade, aiming the flat of his blade at the back of his head. It struck his opponent with a mighty, meaty thunk, and the Southwinder lost both his blades, falling down on all eights, staring dumbly at the feet of a courtesan. "I apologize for my sloppy swordplay," Ifran apologized politely, struggling to pull his breath back into something manageable. "This was my first duel." Whether he heard the apology or was sensate enough to comprehend the words, let alone the implication that the victory was not beginner's luck, but his mistakes the only thing attributable to his lack of experience, it was impossible to tell. The Southwinder fell finally flat on his face, out like a light.

[Colombina]

The XP Wand Is Waved! I love the subtle (and not so subtle) interactions in this thread. You have a great model of Eypharian nobility and a good understanding of the culture. While you did have your character win with panache, it didn't strike me as Mary Sue because you showed a certain amount of thought throughout. Good work! Ifran's Loot 2 XP Dual Wield 2 XP Rhetoric 1 XP Dance Lore of Eypharian Duels Colombina is pleased.