But One Star of All

Second Entry - The Will of the Prince

I took a personal day the next day because I still couldn’t walk straight, which greatly amused my maid and greatly displeased my mother. However I was perfectly well enough to return to training the second day after the scuffle with the spider, and gladly I did so.

“What is the point to training you for the usual when you are entirely likely to come up against something you never expected?” I asked as one of my soldiers as she tied my wrists firmly behind my back. We had gone through a number of similar exercises throughout the last several years and they were always enjoyable, if often uncomfortable. “When I’m through you’ll pair up and do this yourselves.”

“You are a woman begging for bruises,” the trainee told me as she finished her knot, giving my wrists a tug to see that they wouldn’t slip out at an inopportune time.

I leveled a mirthful smile in her direction. “In what other way are we supposed to familiarize ourselves with the most worrisome of situations?”

She rolled her eyes and stepped back, joining the ring that the thirty-odd other elves were a part of. “I think you secretly like risking your pretty ass.”

“Never.” I nodded to the ring, unsure of who would be attacking me today. “Bring them.”

Only one person stepped out at first, from just out of sight in my left periphery, but I heard her. I spun and the guard attacked before I’d finished the rotation. She caught me around the middle and I fell hard to my side. She got her knees on either side of me, pinning my arms to my back, but I bent forward and dug my teeth into the guard’s knee.

She yelped with surprise and I was able to shake her off. She stepped back, making room for a man to step in while I was still on my knees getting up. He rushed me, and I leaped onto my toes but remained crouched. Let him think that I was going to stand. He wanted me to, which was exactly why I couldn’t. I dove forward instead and allowed his feet to catch in my back and hip, throwing him down over me. The guardwoman hurried forward to bowl me onto my stomach this time, but I raised a foot and kicked her in the middle of her back, throwing the guard over my head before she could lower herself out of my foot’s range. She was off, and I flipped onto my back just in time for the guardsman to recover enough to run for me. I put up both feet and caught him in the hips, absorbing some of the impact with a bend of my knees, and releasing his momentum as I straightened them so I could fling him over my head as well.

When they finally caught me it was several minutes later, when they’d realized that it took two of them at once to do it. The guardswoman was sitting on my calves and the man had hold of my bound hands and had lifted them to the point where if either he or I pulled, my shoulders would exit my sockets. Clever, really.

“Well done.”

I contorted to see who had entered the training room, as there were few who could do so without my notice. I had not expected Prince Thranduil, and I blinked.

“Thank you, Prince. Can we be of service?”

He cocked his head to the side, faintly, nearly smiling. “From there, I do not believe you can.”

I raised an eyebrow and one corner of my mouth. “You would be amazed.” I put my chin on my shoulder. “Off, you two. It’s your turn.”

“Must it be?”

The two soldiers allowed me to stand and the guardsman briskly untied my wrists. “I beg your pardon, Prince?”

He crossed his arms, lifting his chin. “My father has seen you fight. He has challenged me to beat you, as he tells me I could do with the humbling.”

“I couldn’t say, My Prince.” I rotated my shoulders to stretch their cramps and briefly touched each of the places I’d been pierced by the spider’s stinger, checking for dampness. None of the lightly-healed places had torn, so I turned to my trainees. “Pair up.”