Dawn found Cara stretching in her attic gable, preparing for another round of exercises. Not that this round will be any different, she thought, wrinkling her nose at the floor while she pressed her face along her calf and reached for her foot.
Memory flashed, slowed, lengthened, played out before her as if her mind held a scrying bowl and she were chained to its rim.
The air was so cold, it might have shattered with a touch. The fire burned low, licking her back with tongues of heat. She faced the wilderness beyond it, resisting the urge to turn and curl around it for warmth so she didn’t lose her night vision.
The moon waxed above mountains and cast shadows on shadow. She rubbed her thighs and calves, trying to work the aches out of them.
Her muscles burned with the strain.
Another might have found the land empty of anything, filled only with darkness. But she’d grown up here, or in land very like it, at least. Where another would find nothing but rock and dirt and sky, she could see that those were just the outlines.
The textures of stone, the patterns in the gravel, the majesty of a cliff, contrasted with a solitary pine or patch of brush—all of these drew her eye, saturated her senses with more than she could absorb at a glance.
The floor of the attic was pine, well scrubbed and smooth and glossy with the patina that only came with age and loving use. There wasn’t an insect carcass or mouse dropping in sight.
Because at night, the scrublands came alive with creatures of all sorts. From her seat on a stone, her back to the fire, she could catch the barest glimmers and flashes of a curious pair of eyes, staying just out of range of the firelight.
Bushes moved against the light breeze as a hare scurried out of his hidey hole, ears twitching and alert for predators. He quivered in the anticipation of flight.
Cara stood. Her blood thrummed in her ears. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes—
—and saw the hare dash back beneath the shrubbery as a muffled stumbling became audible. Cara felt her forehead and arms break out in a cold sweat, the droplets clinging to hairs standing on end.
She wiped her palms on her sleeves and loosened her sword in its scabbard, just a bit too large for her yet—
—and moved into the first guard position, low to protect against an attack from below. Her wrist tilted, and the blade slid into a parry.
Her foot edged forward, her arm twisted, and she struck at the invisible assailant. A pause, and then she blocked her midsection.
Not that the sword block did any good against her Master. He smashed his way into the soft evening scene, tripping over every protrusion of rock and cursing loudly enough for that pair of eyes to wink away.
The hare was firmly ensconced in his burrow. Cara wished she could join him.
Her Master almost fell into the circle of firelight she had been guarding. He plopped on the bare earth, missing his blankets and furs by a good foot.
Cara turned completely around to face him, sword still raised in the guard position. The fire blinded her owled eyes.
Middle parry.
Middle strike.
High block.
High parry.
High strike.
Again!
Low block.
Low parry.
Cara’s body moved through the exercise, as slowly as her tired muscles could manage.
Carefully. Slowly. Precisely.
“And what d’you think you’d be doin’ with that, eh?” Spit sprayed from his mouth. He wiped his face with the back of one hand.
Cara lowered her weapon with difficulty. It was longer than her arms were. “You couldn’t ward a flea off with that thing, let alone anything that’d make trouble. Time to change that.”
Cara swallowed. “Now, sir?”
Her Master’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, now. And you stop when Cern himself tells you to stop.”
Low. Middle. High.
Block. Parry. Strike.
Low. Middle. High.
Block. Parry. Strike.
Master Chattin had long since fallen asleep, but she dared not cease her exercises. Her back ached with half-healed welts from the last time she had tried to stop a task before he’d permitted it.
She continued on with the simplest of the routines any Hero learned—the only one he’d teach her, no matter how hard she begged—until she thought her wrists were swollen as large as crabapples and she heard the deep, rattling snores that told her he’d be of no use to anyone until past noon the next afternoon.
Quietly, her steps light as a sparrow on the wing, she tucked her sword away into the weapons pack. The fire was nothing but coals, coating the hearthstones with a faint red patina.
She checked on the iron kettle that held the morning’s porridge, simmering on the edges of the former campfire, and headed to bed with a faint prayer to any and all gods who may be listening.
Because if Master Chattin had had enough spare cash to get drunk at the inn a few miles away and over the next ridge, then he’d found the work he’d gone into civilization to find, and she needed all the strength she could find.
Cara realized that she’d stopped moving, the sword frozen in its highest strike above her head as if she were chopping down the sun. She took a deep breath, and another, still holding the blade in its final position.
Slowly, carefully, deliberately, she lowered her sword and stared at it.
The dull sheen of its edge reflected a stripe of morning dawn onto the opposite wall. The hilt’s leather straps showed wear in patches that matched where her fingers had kneaded and palmed the material away.
But it wasn’t the wrappings or the polish that bothered her. All through the exercise, she had felt… off, somehow. While the sword was fine—old, worn, a hand me down, but fine—it was too short for her anymore. The balance was wrong, the weight too slight for proper movement.
It was a child’s sword, Cara realized, and it no longer fit her hand.
She fingered the hand guard, one nail tracing the rough etching “C” scratched into the underside.
A rap at her door had her spinning to face the intrusion, sword in guard and hand behind to stay clear of the fight.
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