Kingdom's Fall

Chapter 15, Part 2

There was something about the Captain of the Sparrowhawk that got on Kara’s nerves. He was polite enough around her, and that was part of it. If she had to say it was anything, it was that he was far too polite to her. She could sense the reserve he displayed around her was a front he put up, and suspected that he was only doing it whenever she was in the vicinity. The rest of the crew were polite, but distant, offering no conversation and stepping carefully round her as though she was no more than an expensive cargo. She had eavesdropped on a few exchanges between sailors about certain parts of her body they found more notable - and discovered she had a ready smile for the one particular crewman who quite sweetly defended her absent honour by clouting another round the head for it - but it was nothing more than she had been exposed to when working a taproom. The captain was different. He didn’t just ignore her; he was closing her out, and although she hadn’t known him for more than a few days, she already found it infuriating. She wanted to bring it up with Aiden, but the two of them seemed to be on such good terms that she couldn’t see him doing anything other than defend his friend. Instead, she found another way to vent her frustration.

“You really need to watch what you’re doing,” Aiden told her, lowering his weapon and stepping away. Kara had rushed in aggressively trying to get past his guard and score a hit on his head, but he had evaded it easily and jabbed her in the stomach, blowing the anger right out of her.

“Need something to keep you from falling asleep,” she said, feeling the muscles in her belly contract painfully as she straightened up. Captain Walker had denied Aiden’s request to train Kara on the deck, but had given them permission to make use of a hold below decks that was, for the moment, empty of anything but a few spill-over barrels of the crew’s supplies. Depending on where he was standing Aiden had to crouch to avoid hitting his head, but other than that the space worked well.

“Again,” Aiden said, lifting his makeshift sword. He had found an old spar, the remains of a cut-off left for repairs and split it with an axe to make something of roughly the right length and shape of a broadsword. He’d whittled it down to take the worst of the splinters out of it, and wrapped the “hilt” in canvas.

Kara’s weapons were two cutlasses, donated for her use by the crew. They were ugly-looking blades, broad and thick. They looked more like giant butcher’s knives than swords, and were stained from exposure. The edges, though, shone deadly keen; they had been freshly sharpened, and she’d been shown how best to keep them that way.

Aiden had blunted the blades by burying their edges in a line of soft clay before wrapping the whole thing in canvas. It kept him safe, but made handling them feel clumsy and unbalanced, and Kara felt ridiculous waving the two cloud-white wedges around when she was meant to be learning to fight.

Kara attacked, and was warded back straightaway by the point of Aiden’s sword. Running straight onto it would mean little more than a bruise, but he had told her to think of it as being real, and deadly. Get past the sword first, she thought, and then you get to clobber him. With that thought in mind, she charged him again, and was rewarded with another, harder shot in the midriff for her trouble.

“Why don’t I get a proper sword?” She asked. Aiden lowered his guard and straightened up slightly.

“Learning how to fight with a sword is difficult,” he said. “It takes a long time to get the basics right, and even if you had the time to learn them, they wouldn’t do you much good. Those swords you’re holding aren’t just swords. They’re clubs, hand axes, daggers, pots, chairs - they are anything and everything you can pick up and swing with one or both hands. This isn’t the kind of training that’s going to make you a master, Kara. I’m trying to get you to pick up just enough that, if the worst happens, you can keep yourself alive.”