Blade Dancing in the Moonlight

[Aurelia Whitethorn]

Be it luck or skill, Aurelia did not know, but her long sword landed heavily atop the inside of her mentor’s arm, the same arm that controlled his meddling shield. She heard him groan within his closed helmet as his armor absorbed the brunt of the dull-edged blade. The ensuing plummet of his arm revealed that her contact had inflicted some measure of pain upon him. Her Patron Knight responded with a lumbering slash of his great sword, but Aurelia nimbly circled to his left to avoid the blade’s wild arc. She could feel her heart palpitating furiously in her chest, in part because of her physical exertion, but mostly because of the exhilaration she experienced at striking her stubborn teacher. Those instances were rare.

“Do you yield?” she lightheartedly asked, jerking her head slightly to throw her loose blonde hair to the side of her face. A playful grin blossomed along her lips, a manifestation of her overflowing pride. She remembered the first time that her Patron Knight had sparred against her to gauge her abilities. After knocking Aurelia to her bottom more than five times in less than five minutes, he had called her “pathetic” with his condescending stare and literally informed her that she would never hit him at her then-current rate of learning. The defeat had been a devastating blow to her pride and had been responsible for an exceptionally long night of tears, but she had used it to fuel her resolve and improve – to become the Knight that she had always aspired to be.

It had taken her years before she had finally scored a solid hit against her Patron Knight, but that day had marked a momentous one in her life, a sort of rite of passage. It had completely transformed her relationship with the stern man, who had seemingly opened up to her and started to confer upon her a level of respect that he had once completely denied her. Unfortunately, his sense of humor had remained as dry as a clump of salted beef, but their conversations, at least, had become increasingly less formal thereafter.

“Don’t get cocky. It will take more than a lucky blow to beat me, girl,” her mentor sharply said, reverting to his condescending name for her. Aurelia shot him a glare. Ever since the young woman had become his squire at thirteen, he had known how to grate on her nerves. It was an ability that he alone could tap into on a whim, and it was one that she had come to frequently loathe about the man who was also one of the closest people to her in her life. To some extent, she valued his hardened demeanor because it kept her humble and grounded in reality, but that did not mean that it was not infuriating to deal with at times.

I’ll show you lucky, you old man, Aurelia grumbled in her mind. She stabbed her sword high at her mentor’s neck in a feint, which had the desired effect of drawing his shield upward in a parry. Before her weapon connected, though, she retracted her arm and redirected the blade in a diagonal stroke from his left shoulder to his right knee. Her long sword suddenly screeched in the night as it ran across the knight’s interceding bastard sword. “I guess I’ll have to show you that it’s not luck then,” she resolvedly said through gritted teeth, wincing as she struggled to contend against his strength.

Knowing that he would overpower her if she continued to lock blades with him, Aurelia quickly disengaged, but not before swinging her left hand outward in a wide, sweeping cut from right to left. Because she had executed the attack while she had backed away, her slash lacked the ordinary power generated by the use of her rotating hips, which she had been taught to utilize whenever she swung her sword; however, the purpose of the halfhearted strike had not been to score another hit, but rather, to fend her opponent away long enough for her to return to a neutral position.

[Aurelia Whitethorn]

With her mentor no longer within attacking range, Aurelia had time to assess her next angle of offense. Thus far, the old knight had seen through her deceitful feints and countered accordingly. She had managed to land a firm hit upon his shield arm, but that blow had neither slowed nor disabled him. Given his strength, stature, and experience, the golden-haired swordswoman doubted that his stamina would deplete before hers, which meant that she needed to find a way to dissect his seemingly impenetrable defenses before he broke hers down with his relentless torrent of heavy swings.

But what could she do? Her Patron Knight was a veteran of over a hundred battles; she had none under her belt to boast about. The soreness was already beginning to wrestle for control of her arms and legs, and she could feel the welts growing along her ridge of knuckles where she had braced her shield against the man’s oncoming bastard sword. Her adrenaline had temporarily numbed her mind to the pain, but even that mental defense was beginning to falter faster than Aurelia would have liked.

“Are you tired already?” the old knight monotonously asked, continuing to circle to keep his squire in front of him. The young woman cocked her head to the side as if to mock the audacity of the inquiry. She would not give him the satisfaction of knowing that his endless wave of attacks had drained her considerably, although she suspected that her fatigue was already evidencing itself in the way her shoulders sagged a little lower and her feet moved a little slower. The Syliran Knight seemed to sense as much. “Come on, Aura. Weariness will defeat you only if you let it. Kill or be killed. That’s our motto, remember? The second you forget that, you’re dead,” he pragmatically reminded.

Swallowing the saliva in her parched mouth, Aurelia breathed in and nodded determinedly. She knew that the man was right. Combat was a game of mental toughness; those who did not possess it tended to capitulate quicker than those who did. A thin line formed along her mouth as she clenched her jaws together. “I haven’t forgotten,” she said, renewed resolve flashing from her cerulean-colored eyes. Stepping forward and setting her shield defensively in front of her, Aurelia twisted her hips to the right to shoot her left hand forward with increased momentum. She led with a mid-leveled thrust at her mentor’s belly, extending her arm as far as it would go to lengthen her reach and drive its blunted tip home.

Her Patron Knight parried the jab with a downward stroke of his bastard sword, but before her blade rebounded against the dense sand, she twisted her arm left to roll it out from underneath the great sword and across her mentor’s torso in a horizontal slash. His shield maneuvered in time to intercept her cross-body cut, forcing his shield-arm over his sword-hand in the process. It was not the result that Aurelia had originally anticipated, but her mentor’s awkward posture planted an idea in the innovative woman’s mind.

So long as the old knight’s arms remained inconveniently crossed, there was no way that he could turn that devastating bastard sword of his against her. An eager grin danced across Aurelia’s face as she stepped into her previous attack, pushing her shield out with her right hand to slam into the side of her mentor’s own shield and consequently shove his arm even further over his sword hand. As her Patron Knight tried to square his hips and twist to face her, Aurelia continued to press her shield forcefully against the side of her mentor’s to prevent him from fully turning. Again, she was duly aware that his strength would eventually compel her awau, but she used the opportunity to drop her sword-hand low and sweep it beneath their interlocked shields at the inside of his kneecap.