Season's Change Winter's Plight Book 1

17 Weak

A/N

This time I was able to leave the edits in bold. Let me know if this helps those of you who have read before to better detect the changes.

Always,
Shelly Keller

Every time they sparred, she made him feel weak and inferior, not a set of feelings he had ever known. She was relentless and ruthless in her attacks against him. It took a long time for him to learn to parry them. Longer than he cared for. Failure to do so earned him the flat of her blades which left welts and sometimes small cuts on his skin. Lately, as they sparred, he had felt them less and less as his ability to anticipate her next move and his own skill with his blade increased. That was until she started to allow him to attack her. He felt clumsy and unsure with nearly every movement he made. She simply danced out of the way and slapped him with one or both of her swords. It was very frustrating. He was one of the best warriors in his clan, better even than his brother was, but she made him feel like a toddler with a very sharp sword in his hands. He hated it.

Her attack came back at him blindingly fast, but it was just that single blade. She had sheathed one and doubled her hands on the hilt of the other so that she was fighting in a style similar to his. He clumsily parried the first attack and struggled to regain his footing.

"Keep your feet under you." She said commandingly and came at him again with just a single blade. "Your feet will move long before the rest of you will. They are what you must be sure of regardless of anything else. Keep your feet about you." He parried her attack a bit easier the second time and even more easily the third. "Good." She breathed at him. Was she out of breath? She slapped his hip with her blade. Nope!

"Why are you so distracted? Fight." He started to respond but was forced to duck and roll out from under her swing. He had to bring his blade back to bare and parry again before he could even take a breath or find his feet. She moved impossibly fast. "Again." She called putting him through the same maneuver over and over again until he had it just right and his blade moved into place before she moved to attack him. Then she switched things up on him and forced him to parry an attack from a different angle then another. He looked for an opening in her defenses and found none. How was he supposed to attack back? Was he? He didn't know. Was she just going to teach him how to defend against attack, or how to make one too? He saw the opening and wondered if she left it there on purpose. Was it a ruse set up to pull him out of balance and leave him vulnerable? "Yes," she answered his unasked question. "That is not the time for you to attack. Attacking then would leave you unbalanced and vulnerable to a killing blow. Good. You can learn. Stupid Human." She spoke mostly in her native tongue. He understood all but the name she had given him.

Each day he was exhausted, covered in sweat and sore by the time she called for a stop. Once more sweat was running down into his eyes. His hair was soaked through and his clothes were soiled with his sweat and would need washing. He would also need washing. They trained for hours every day. Every day after training she would tend to any wounds she left on him, send him away to clean himself and change into the soft clothes she had for him. Somehow, she would still have a meal and extra water waiting for him when he returned to their shared sleeping quarters.

He moved as fast as he could once she released him. He washed his training clothes in a hurry and bathed himself as fast as he physically could and still get himself clean. He thought briefly to linger in the heated water, but he was on a mission. He moved as quietly as he could back to their quarters. He wanted to sneak up on her and surprise her prove to her that he had indeed learned something from her. He found it odd that he wanted to make her proud, but he did. He had been practicing, trying to move like she did and silence his steps. He didn't even stop to think for one second that she might also be bathing and washing her clothes. He knew there was one pool in the cave, the one she pulled their water from. He didn't realize that there were two. He moved around the corner to enter their cave and froze at the sight his eyes fell upon.

She was bathing in a pool on the other side of the fire. She had pulled her hair up into a messy pile on the top of her head and pinned it there with a thin shard of rock. Several long silver strands had escaped it and fallen down her elegant back. He watched the firelight as it reflected off her shoulders and down her back as he stood motionless and lost. He didn't know what he expected to see or feel, but he didn't expect to see what he saw or feel what he felt. She was the first female that he had ever seen without clothes on and it was totally wrong for him to stand there and stare, but he could not turn away. Her shoulders and back were muscled and strong. Her wet black skin glistened in the firelight. He watched her move, not hearing the water she splashed over her back but watching it run down her skin over her shoulder and down past the small scar on her back. When he listened, he could hear her voice quietly raised in a soft and hauntingly beautiful song. Suddenly, he felt weak in a way he had never felt before.

His legs and feet refused to obey his command. They grew weaker with every passing moment that he stared at her. He told himself that he had no right to be there, no right to see her in that state and that he needed to leave, his feelings were wrong, and he really needed to stop them before they took root. He honestly didn't know that it was already too late for that. He was bound by duty and honor. He did not belong in that room staring at the bare back of his trainer while she bathed. Yet his feet remained rooted to the stone beneath them, his knees too weak to carry him, and his eyes trapped by the beauty that she was.