The Mongoliad: Book Two (The Foreworld Saga) (36 page)

He appraised his opponent for a moment, eyeing the man’s restful guard. It was the same stance the Frank had taken with the club wielder. Having seen that fight, Kim knew the lack of aggressiveness in the stance was meant to lull him into making the first move. If that was the Frank’s opening gambit, then Kim could respond in kind. He too could lull his opponent into thinking he wasn’t ready to attack.

He began walking forward, his staff held in his right hand, parallel with the ground. Drawing closer, he swept it into circling arcs, his hand gripping it at the center. The spin moved left, right, then left again before his right hand moved as far left as it would go. Then his left flew into motion, and he took a two-handed grip at half-staff.

Moving forward and leading with the butt, he executed three rapid stabs with the end at shoulder level, then three kicks from low, to middle, to high with his left leg, never once letting his foot touch the ground. As his left leg kicked, his right arm drew the staff back, keeping the butt focused upon his opponent. He planted his left leg and launched his right into a rounding kick as high as he could, his hips rotating with a powerful snap that launched him into a spinning leap, his right leg flowing into a crescent kick from outside to inside. Right foot and staff butt met the ground in the same motion. The Frank had slid into a low guard, and his gaze was guarded, as if he were struggling to hide his reaction to Kim’s opening flourish.
Was he disappointed that I did not attack him outright?

Kim stalked forward, the stave whipping across his body but ending always with either point or butt aimed squarely at the Frank. His movements were a variation of his previous actions, and while the Frank watched him intently, he could see the big man was not taking in the subtle differences in the motion of his body.
Closer, closer.

He reached a distance a mere length of the staff from his opponent. His stance shifted, the right leg now forward, and the point of his staff swept through the dirt, then whipped upward to face level as he skipped forward with a one-step side kick to his opponent’s middle, deeper than the earlier three, with the full force of his turning hips and left heel driving it in. He made contact with the Frank, folding him in half and knocking him to the ground.

Kim was surprised that the kick had landed, and more so that the Frank had managed to take the blow without crumpling completely. His astonishment slowed his response, and the following jab of his staff struck the ground, missing the Frank as he turned the backward fall into a roll. The larger man was surprisingly fast, and though he’d been taken off guard by the blow to his middle, the speed with which he recovered was a measure of his skill. Kim had seen men gasp for breath like fish out of water after receiving such a hit.

But the Frank was already moving again, and Kim tightened his grip on the staff.

* * *

Andreas kept moving, launching himself backward until he regained his feet, where he at least looked like a warrior. In the back of his mind, shame warred with excitement: he should have seen the kick coming; this fighter was not like the others.

His eyes narrowed on the Easterner’s hands. This shortened grip on the longer weapon made no sense; surely it would be better to hold it by the end, to take advantage of its greater reach. The pain in his midsection told a different story. Perhaps this Eastern warrior preferred the close fight.
Very well.

He darted to his right, snapping his point forward as he moved. It was not the most powerful of strikes and would not be terribly effective against a man in armor, but against an unarmored
opponent’s arm, it would be enough to disable the limb. In his mind, he could hear his own shouted commands during the training sessions at the chapter house.
Hit first; hit fast!

His blow connected a little off center—so as not to break his opponent’s arm—and the other man’s hand let go of the staff. His opponent whirled away, and Andreas stayed close, intent on pressing his advantage.

The staff whirled toward his head, a one-handed swing that caught him off guard. He beat it down, stepping out of line, and snapped the point of his wooden sword back up. The butt of the staff intercepted his strike, preventing him from landing a second blow on the already bruised arm. With a flick of his wrist, he slid his point along the staff, down into his opponent’s fingers. It would be painful but not debilitating, as pain alone was never enough to stop a well-trained man in the throes of the battle rush.

Even as Andreas’s tip struck the Easterner’s fingers, the staff was already rotating, and the end he’d beaten down slammed with an awful force into his bruised midsection. He clenched his teeth, flashing a grim smile. It would have driven the breath from him a second time, but for the fact that his lungs were already empty. He was leading with his left side, and his gambeson was well padded. The blow hurt, but it did not slow him overmuch.

* * *

The force of the Frank’s strike jarred Kim’s arm from wrist to shoulder. His left hand reflexively opened, releasing the staff. Surprised, Kim retreated, flexing his fingers and moving his wrist. His arm was not broken. Curious, as this man seemed skilled enough that had he wanted the limb broken, he might have done so with the opening he’d taken.
Mercy? Or foolishness...?
The latter Kim doubted. In his experience, foolish men were less likely by far to live long enough to
become skilled warriors.
Or perhaps these barbarians are merely too stubborn to fall.

The Frank stayed close, pressing in on perceived weakness. Seeking to break his opponent’s momentum, Kim brought his staff about in a one-handed strike aimed at the Frank’s head. The blow did not connect, but by battering it aside, the Frank had to change his direction. He stepped away, bringing his tip up in an attempt to strike the arm again. This time, Kim was ready, and the butt of his staff turned aside the Frank’s point before it could land. The Frank was resourceful, however, and Kim felt pain blossom across the backs of his fingers as the tip of the wooden blade slid down his staff and struck them a blow that was not as hard as it might have been, but painful nonetheless.

He didn’t let go, though, as his opponent had just given him an opening. Kim kept the staff moving, rotating the weapon about and whipping up the end the Frank had beaten aside. With satisfaction, Kim felt it solidly connect, but the Frank was moving away already, acting neither winded nor broken. Leaping back, Kim endeavored to give himself space.

Instead of retreating out of reach as well, resetting their fight, the Frank chased after Kim with serpentine speed. A gloved hand shot out, seizing Kim by the wrist, and he was jerked off balance. The point of the Frank’s wooden blade snapped forward in a sudden thrust.
Bend in the wind
, Kim thought, letting his body arc away from the point, not quickly enough to avoid it altogether, but far enough to avoid the worst of it. The point loomed in his field of vision, and he struggled to bend farther. He felt the impact more than he heard it—a loud crunching noise that resonated throughout his skull—and he found himself unable to breathe through his nose. He fought against blurring eyes as tears reflexively came.

The Frank had broken his nose.

Through the haze of his vision, he saw the sword whipping around to finish him with a blow to the left side of his head. Disoriented, his
stance wobbly and not stable, he was in danger of being knocked senseless. If he let the blow land. Blocking out the pain in his face, he concentrated on his hands, forcing them to respond to his demands. The staff swung up—agonizingly slowly, it seemed—and the two wooden weapons loudly crashed against one another as he fought to remain on his feet.

* * *

It was like sparring with Taran
, Andreas realized. Getting his hand on the Easterner’s wrist had opened the other man’s defenses, and the strike to the nose—with the commensurate flow of blood—had evened the score. But the fight was far from over.
It’s not truly a fight until both are bleeding.

The nose?
Taran had laughed once when Andreas had landed a lucky strike.
That barely counts.
And he had swiftly demonstrated to the younger Andreas just how little a broken nose slowed down a resourceful and practiced fighter.

Andreas kept up the pressure on the Easterner, striking from both sides. Each attack was parried, but he could sense his opponent’s increasing desperation. His opponent’s balance had been direly shaken; Andreas could feel how unstable his stance was in how the staff bounced against the wooden sword. With each strike, the Easterner’s balance slipped a little further.
He will have to yield soon
, he thought.
One of my blows will get through, and then—

The Easterner didn’t try to block the next jab, and his left hand snaked out—the arm he had hit with the staff!—and grabbed the tip of his sword. It was a move that would be dangerous, if not outright deadly, to try with a real sword, but with wood, it was a sneaky, but clever, trick.

Andreas could be clever too, and instead of getting into a tug-of-war for his weapon, he let go of his waster, leaving his opponent holding two long weapons by their ends. His hands free, Andreas made to finish the fight with a grappling move.

As he’d been taught, and had done hundreds of times, his left hand reached toward his opponent’s throat, and his right came up for a hammer blow to the temple. His vision flashed, and his hands were suddenly not where he wanted them to be; his head rang, and rippling lines of agony ran down his frame. Dimly, he realized what had happened: as he had closed to grapple, the Easterner’s thumb had darted out and jammed itself into one of the energy points in his neck.

Again, his conditioning and training saved him, and he reacted with a knee strike, which only slid off his opponent’s thigh, expertly moved to protect the groin. His left hand was over the Easterner’s shoulder, so Andreas shifted to grab his opponent’s neck. He braced the other man as he threw his head forward, trying to smash his forehead against the other man’s broken nose.

But the Easterner wasn’t there; he’d slipped around to Andreas’s left. Andreas was still throwing his weight forward, and combined with the lock the man now had on his left arm, he was hurled off his feet, face-first into the dusty ground.

Spitting out dirt, he rolled to the side, getting his feet under him again. He had fallen on top of his sword, and his hands had unconsciously grabbed the weapon. As he came to his feet, he discovered two things: the first being that his right hand was on the pommel of his wooden sword; the second was that his left arm refused to work. Dislocated, but not broken, he hoped.

His opponent had taken advantage of the throw to go for his own weapon. He held his staff in that shortened two-handed grip Andreas was coming to be wary of, and his face—not very pretty before—was a mass of blood and swollen flesh now.

Andreas turned his body slightly, angling his right shoulder toward the man, moving his sword behind his body to hide it from his opponent. No use trying to do anything with the left arm anymore. He was a single-handed opponent now. His choices were fewer; his tactical options much less complicated.

He had no doubt this was the man who had beaten the Livonians at the bridge. This had to be the Flower Knight. The fight was coming to its inevitable conclusion. One more pass would probably be all it would take. One more chance to deliver his message.

Andreas smiled. If his plan worked, then losing this fight would be worth the reward...

Come at me, then. Let’s finish this.

* * *

Kim was surprised at the failure of his thumb strike to the Frank’s energy point. A secret technique of the Flower Knights, the strike should have paralyzed the man’s entire body, but instead, the Frank had only lost the use of his left arm. In any other situation, Kim would have been fascinated by this revelation, for it suggested the Rose Knights had access to esoteric fighting styles, techniques that relied on a man’s understanding of his opponent’s energy centers. As it was, not only was the Frank still standing but he had retrieved his sword and had adopted a truly defensive stance. It looked almost coy, the way he was hiding behind his own body, but Kim was wary of the fact he could barely see the other man’s weapon.

It was a good stance, probably one that was very effective against another edged weapon, but the staff worked better as a thrusting and jabbing weapon, and after a few weak parries on the part of the Frank, both men realized the staff was ultimately going to win. With one hand, the Frank beat each of his attacks back, but he was forced to give ground with each parry.

Kim recovered badly from a wild sweep of the sword after a parry, exposing his left shoulder, and the Frank took the bait, sensing this was his one hope to regain the fight. Kim was ready, though, as the recovery had been a feint, and the butt of his staff effortlessly pushed the wooden sword aside as it came toward him. Kim surged
into the opening and, with a sharp snap of his wrist, clipped the Frank on the temple with the staff. The Frank stumbled, grunting in pain, and then crumpled to the ground of the proving field.

The roar of the crowd came back to him, shut out before by the all-consuming focus of the fight. Kim was breathing heavily, and out of the corner of his eye, he could already see an enormous confusion on the other side of the ropes as his Mongol guards tried to calm the surrounding crowd.

A hand grabbed his ankle, and he looked down, surprised. Didn’t the Frank realize he had lost? The Rose Knight was squinting up at him, his mouth moving. Was he praying?

No. He’s trying to tell me something.

He would not be able to celebrate his victory for long. The Mongols would drag him out of the ring in a few seconds. He had so little time.

Kim knelt beside the fallen man, slipping his hand behind the Frank’s head. The man’s gaze was fierce and unwavering, in spite of the blow to the head, and he hissed one word, loud enough for Kim to hear over the roar of the crowd.