Arn made the first move.
I knew he was going to, just like he always had in the past. I could see his sword as his weight shifted forward with it, and yet for that brief moment all I could think about was the fact that I had never actually done this before.
I had written more fights than I could count. Swords through throats, limbs cut clean off, men somehow finding the strength to keep fighting with enough blood missing from them to fill a bucket.
But the closest I had ever come to holding one myself was probably cutting vegetables, and even then I had never been particularly good at it.
So when Arn’s blade came toward me, I froze, well, at least my mind did, but thankfully my body did not.
It moved so suddenly that for a moment I felt like the one being dragged along with it.
My feet slipped away from where the sword was falling, the Jian rising between us, not trying to stop the blow but catching it at an angle and letting it slide past.
The impact still sent a jolt through my arm, but by the time I felt it my body had already turned with the force, carrying the Jian back around toward Arn.
He caught it easily with the flat of his blade, and I barely noticed it as I was already moving.
It was an incredibly strange feeling, knowing exactly what my body was doing while having absolutely no idea how I was managing any of it, every movement bringing something up from within me.
And as I moved, I realised, slowly, my mind was catching up with it all. Arn pressed forward again, and this time I let the body move its own way.
That was when I realised how Yun had learned to fight.
All those years he had spent pushing his body, trying to force something out of the frailty he carried, and yet it had never given him what he had asked for.
And so, he had simply stopped asking for it, his swordsmanship adapting to it rather than fighting against it.
There was almost no force in the way my body moved, or the way the blade cut through the air.
Trying to meet Arn head-on would have been ridiculous. It would not be far-fetched to say that it might quite literally break my bones, and so it gave way whenever his sword found mine, slipping around him as he tried to close the distance, every movement somehow flowing into the next until I could not even tell when the last one had exactly ended.
I twisted past another strike, the blade missing my chest by barely an inch, and suddenly I was behind him, my Jian coming up toward the gap beneath his arm before changing direction halfway through, when he moved to intercept.
Or at least that was what I thought I had done, but somehow his sword was already there, knocking my Jian aside, and before I could recover, something struck me across my ribs hard enough to knock my breath out as I stumbled a few steps away, almost falling to my knees.
"Again."
I looked down at the dull edge of his sword.
"You could at least pretend that took some effort," I muttered, noticing that his breath had not even moved slightly compared to before, while I was already pulling in short, heavy breaths.
"You want me to lie to you?"
"Preferably."
I raised the Jian again and pulled in a breath as I went at it once more.
Only now that the wonder of actually being able to fight had worn off, something became painfully obvious.
I could not even touch him.
I could feel the slight irritation this body itself instinctively carried, the itch to land a hit on him after having failed to do so for all those years.
And yet I knew deep down that today was no different; the gap between us was just too much.
It did not matter how quickly the body moved or how strangely it bent around his sword. Every opening I saw disappeared the moment I tried to take it.
And worse, Arn rarely seemed surprised by anything I did.
It took embarrassingly long for me to understand why.
Oh.
Right.
Or at least the body that I now carried.
Arn came at me again, and perhaps because that thought was still distracting me, I stepped back too late.
My heel slipped as I saw his blade come, and for one horrifying moment my balance vanished completely, my body dropping much lower than I had intended as Arn’s sword swept toward me.
But it then passed straight over my head, and I stared up at it as Arn seemed to pause as well.
My body took advantage before I could even think about what had happened, the Jian driving upward toward his chest and forcing Arn to wrench his sword back down.
Steel rang out between us as he pushed me away.
I stumbled back several steps but remained standing this time, my eyes drifting toward the ground where my foot had slipped.
There was nothing there, just dirt.
I looked back at Arn and then back down at my hand, finally realising what that had been.
Steady Hand.
My Anchor.
So I really was more lucky now, almost as if Fate itself favoured me.
A grin plastered itself across my face as I looked at him.
"Something wrong?"
Arn’s voice pulled me back.
"No."
Then he moved again, and this time I stopped relying just on what the body pushed me to do, letting my mind guide me instead, or, well, at least a part of it.
Not completely, though. Without the body’s instincts, I would probably last no longer than three seconds.
But I did start interfering, most of it terrible.
Once I nearly walked straight into Arn’s sword, and another time he struck my shoulder so cleanly that I knew I would have already lost that arm had it been a real fight.
But slowly, something changed.
Arn started watching me differently, and I started watching him too.
There was one response my body seemed particularly fond of. Whenever Arn drove me from the right, I gave ground, turned around the strike, and answered with a thrust toward his ribs.
The first time, he blocked it. The second, he blocked it even earlier. By the third, his sword was already moving toward mine before I had finished turning.
And that was when the thought came to me, one that did not even have anything to do with swordsmanship.
I had spent years doing the same thing with words. After all, show someone something once and they notice it, but show it again and they remember it.
Keep showing it to them, and eventually they stop waiting to see what happens next. They expect it.
Arn attacked again from the right as I gave ground and turned, letting the Jian come toward his ribs exactly as it had before.
He knocked it aside as I had expected, and I in turn just waited.
My lungs were beginning to burn now, my arm growing heavier with every exchange, but I needed him to give me the same opening one more time.
And it had come sooner than I expected.
Arn pushed in from my right.
I stepped back and turned, and Arn’s sword immediately shifted to meet the thrust he already knew was coming.
Except this time, I never made it. I stepped toward him instead.
For the first time that morning, something changed in Arn’s face.
I slipped inside the sword he had already committed, ignoring every instinct in this body telling me I was standing far too close, and Arn reacted almost immediately, dragging his blade back toward me. Enjoying the story? Read on at novelping . com.
I ducked beneath it, feeling the wind move above me as the Jian then came up with me.
And finally I saw it, almost with gleaming eyes: there was an opening right in the centre of his chest.
I drove the tip of the Jian toward it.
And for one wonderful second, I genuinely thought I had him.
Somewhere behind me, I even heard someone actually gasp.
But then that bastard moved.
His sword crashed against mine and tore it away at the last possible moment, the Jian passing harmlessly beside him as his own blade came to rest against my throat.
I froze, and for a few seconds neither of us said anything.
My chest rose and fell violently while Arn looked from me to the Jian still held uselessly at his side.
Then his eyes narrowed.
"That was new."
I swallowed against the blade. "I had hoped so."
He lowered it, his eyes still on me.
"You taught me everything else."
Arn’s gaze stayed on me. "I did not teach you that."
"No."
I looked down at the Jian, my fingers still trembling around its grip.
"You just knew everything I was going to do."
"And?"
"So I made sure you knew."
His brow creased slightly, and for a moment he said nothing.
Then his eyes shifted toward where we had been standing, as though running the exchange through his head again.
Finally, he gave a small nod.
"Good."
I blinked, that single word somehow feeling considerably better than it should have.
Then Arn raised his sword again.
"Again."
My smile disappeared.
"You cannot be serious."
"Guard."
"I can barely feel my arm."
"So do not."
Wait, what?
I stared at him for a moment before letting out a long groan and raising the Jian again.