On Broken Wings (23 page)

"What was this all about, Louis?"

"We'll talk about it another time." He forced himself to look straight ahead through the windshield. The darkness was broken only by his headlights.

"No! The Father is our friend, or at least I thought so. You put us both through this for a reason, and I want to know what it is!"

"This is not a practice run, Chris." His grip tightened on the steering wheel. "This is your actual life, beginning now. You get one shot. If you blow it, that's that." He tried for calm, but it evaded him. "Father Schliemann is my pastor and my confessor. I love him dearly. My life has been far better for his part in it. You, on the other hand, are my ward. I have responsibilities to you that I am going to fulfill, no matter how much it costs either of us. And one of those is to see to it that you learn how to listen, and how to choose what you'll believe."

"But it's your religion! You believe it too!"

"No, I don't."

Her gasp was painful to hear. He kept his eyes straight ahead.

"The Church purveys two things. One is the
mythos
of Christ the Son of God and the Redeemer of Mankind. The other is the Christian
ethos
, a set of rules for living. I live by the rules, or did, until recently. I've never bought into the myth."

"Then why accept the rules?" she whispered.

"Because they're good rules. Most of them."

====

Chapter
22

"Are you ready?"

Christine raised her chin and presented her mentor with a feral smile. She had waited for this morning with a Christmas-like anticipation.

"Bet your ass."
I've never wanted to be anywhere as much as I want to be here in your basement, with you, learning this. Except in bed with you, in your arms.

Louis grinned. "You might find yourself changing your mind about that. What is combat, Christine?"

"Huh?"

"What is combat? How does it differ from other kinds of human interaction?"

"Well, you're trying to hurt somebody."

Louis cocked an eyebrow. "You're never trying to hurt somebody under other circumstances?"

She thought it over. "Well, yeah."

"So what's the difference?"

"Well, you have to have an opponent."

He waited in silence.

"And he has to be trying to stop you."

"From doing what?"

"Whatever you're trying to do!" She was growing impatient.

"And what are the rules?"

"Um, do there have to be any?"

He shook his head. "There have to be none."

"What?"

"You heard me. If it's combat, it has no rules, only objectives. That's really the defining characteristic."

He went to a wooden rack across from his punching bag and lifted a large, gently curved sword from it. She had never seen him handle the thing before, and had wondered why he had it.

"This is a medieval saber. A thousand years ago, it was one of the most potent weapons a man could carry. Moreover, possession was restricted by law. You had to be a member of the ruling class to own one legally."

He swung the sword in a complex pattern that defeated her attempt to track it.

"You can kill with one of these, if you have enough strength and skill. Of course, it's a little conspicuous, and it takes a lot more effort to use than most people would guess. Would you want to have to tote one around?"

"No."

"And why is that?" He laid the tip of the saber in his left hand and held out the sword as if offering it to her.

"Because there's better available. We have guns now."

He nodded. "Yes, we do. And for quite a wide range of combat situations, a gun is a better weapon than a sword. In fact, there are a number of cases where bare hands are better than a sword, but that's beside the point for now. If you were in a combat situation, where you had this and your opponent had a gun, what could you do about it?"

She looked hard at the old weapon. It had a certain antique beauty and simplicity, but she couldn't imagine ever wanting to wield it.

"Not a lot. Try to take the gun away from him, maybe?"

Louis snorted. "I hope you never have to do that, Chris. The odds are going to be on his side. But one thing you wouldn't do is to shout, 'Hey, that's not fair.' Right?"

She laughed. "Silly man!"

His face went dark. "I'm trying to make a very important point here, Chris. Combat means
no rules
. What he has is what you have to deal with, period. If you can't face his size, his skills, or his armament, you'd better be prepared to run."

"Well, you know I can do that."

He glowered. "I said
prepared
to run." His voice had acquired an edge she hadn't heard before. "Emotionally. You don't ever duke it out with someone who's got the edge. A lot of guys have been killed by pride and unwillingness to admit they're facing superior force. Chris, this might be the most important thing anyone will ever tell you. Do you understand?"

His eyes bored into hers. Her sobriety returned with a rush.

"I understand, Louis."

After a moment, he nodded. "All right. There are many different approaches to combat, and many different states of armament you can find yourself in when the lead begins to fly. We're going to start out with basic unarmed techniques for several reasons. First, your body is the only thing you can rely on absolutely. You simply can't leave it home. Second, many of the techniques of unarmed combat are good stepping stones for learning the use of various weapons. The control of your body you acquire from perfecting your barehanded techniques will translate into improved control of your weapons. Third, barehanded combat skill is invisible. Unless he knows you very well, your enemy doesn't know you have it. That could lead him into underestimating you, which is usually a decisive advantage for you."

He weighed the sword a moment longer before returning it to the rack. His deadly seriousness was beginning to seep into her. She found herself wondering whether she was truly ready for this.

It doesn't matter. He's ready. Therefore, you'll be ready, whatever it takes. It's taken him too long to get to this point.

Oh, for Christ's sake, Nag, shut up. I know it's important.

He stepped back onto the exercise mat and faced her from about ten feet away, his bearing oddly formal. To her surprise, he bowed to her from the waist, smoothly and slowly. To her greater surprise, she returned the gesture without thinking about it. He smiled.

"We begin."

***

He trained her.

"Combat is about advantages and how fast you can use them. Everyone has both strengths and weaknesses: you, me, those creeps who came here for you. You never pit strength against strength. You always look for weakness. If you can concentrate your strength against your opponent's weakness before he does the same to you, you have the advantage, and you win. Otherwise, you lose."

"You make it sound like a game."

"It is a game. There are no rules, and the stakes are your life, but aside from that..."

He melded philosophy and physics with gymnastics and calisthenics. The initial movement drills were designed to get her thinking in three dimensions, the first and most important hurdle a new student of the martial arts must surmount. She soaked it up. After only one session, she was ready to proceed.

"Strength is an advantage, but not the only advantage. Speed trumps strength, and so does mental agility. You have to have a wide range of tools, and they have to be available all the time. A lot of people who think of themselves as ace fighters have one or two tricks that they use exclusively. Whatever else they might have learned once is gone. If you've got two moves, you can beat anyone who has just one. If he's got two, all you need is three. When I'm done with you, you'll have about a hundred."

"How many do you have?"

He smirked. "About a hundred and one."

Before the end of the week she had mastered balance, kinesthetics, and all the natural levers and flexures of her body. He was not an indulgent teacher. He knew the quality of that body, and of the mind that controlled it, and he was determined that her competence should equal his own. He put her through balletic drills of ever-increasing speed and complexity, and criticized even microscopic deviations from perfect form.

"Get your weight off your heels, damn it!"

"Why?"

"Because you can't spin when you're flat-footed like that. Spin is one of your best ways of generating force and evading a blow." He demonstrated with a lightning triple pirouette that descended into a tight crouch, his head less than three feet from the floor.

"Well, if I'm supposed to be on my toes all the time, why couldn't I have worn my pumps?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Because they don't go with my old shirt, and because I don't want a spike heel through my solar plexus."

She came to understand her body as a weapon: what it could do, what its proper targets were, even how to field-strip and maintain it.

"When it's necessary to strike, kick. Never punch. The thrusting power in your legs is more than three times what you have in your arms. Plus, there's less chance of damaging an ankle than a wrist or a finger. Your hands are for grabbing and for manipulating weapons."

"Grab then kick?"

"No! Just kick. If you have to grab, you've lost the initiative, and you have to think pure defense. You don't want anyone inside your reaction perimeter if you can avoid it."

By the end of June, she had absorbed and perfected more hand-to-hand combat techniques than the average professional soldier ever sees demonstrated. Nor did she ever fall into the kind of pattern, locked into a small number of favorite techniques, that makes a fighter vulnerable to an opponent of greater versatility. He had to struggle to keep his lessons up to her rate of achievement.

"Gravity is a constant. You'd rather work with it than against it, believe me. Get your center of gravity below his as quickly as possible."

"Like this?" She plunged to a squat and swept an arm at his knees.

But his knees were no longer there. He had somersaulted forward over her, spinning around all three axes, landed prone behind her, and pulled her down backwards by her shoulders, laughing all the while.

"No, like that."

The summer proved to be a hot one. The basement exercise room, naturally cool, became the place they spent the greater part of each day. They would rise with the sun and descend to the basement, emerging as seldom as possible thereafter. As June gave way to July, he introduced her to aerial moves: forward, backward, and lateral flips, attacks from above, and jump-spin-kick combinations that had challenged him severely. She launched into each new sequence with joyous power and a total disregard for any danger.

"My God, Chris! I was certain you were going to land on your head."

She rolled up off the exercise mat and whirled toward him. The pirouette terminated with her arms around him.

"Thank you for worrying, Louis, but I've got this stuff under control."

He was not satisfied merely to equip her with moves and combinations. He trained her body to respond to surprise attack, while he trained her mind to trust the response. He taught her how to use the slivers of time between blows to analyze her adversary and choose among alternatives. As she learned to combine her physical and her analytical skills, he found himself watching her raptly. Her natural grace made it more like a dance than a fighting drill, though there was no mistaking its deadly purpose.

July faded into August. The air turned uncommonly dry for central New York, foreboding a quick and colorful autumn. He taught her the use of weapons of all kinds, from sticks and stones to automatic firearms and explosives. He even taught her how to fashion weapons for impromptu stabbing and gouging, for slashing away a hand or head.

"Wherever there's glass, you have potential weapons. If your opponent is any good, he'll know that too, so don't delay. Watch." He turned to face a rectangular-frame easel, on which he had mounted a pane of window glass. His right hand flattened and struck the pane near the top, a thrust too fast for the eye to follow. As the fragments of the pane fell to the mat, he opened his hand to display an oblong segment that he'd caught flat against his palm.