Amagro Dreygun's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

The new katana rode light on Amagro's hip, but a light blade meant nothing against a style she had never seen. Rahmar had drilled her in his forms and the forms of the yard warriors. The tournament drew fighters from lands past the hills. She knew none of their tricks. A man who fought strange would beat a woman who fought known. So she went where strangers drank, to the pub that took in every road-worn traveler in Chronchara. The fat man behind the bar poured every cup himself. A red triangle marked his bald forehead. He watched her hands as she sat, not her face. This was Jorum, who owned the place and missed nothing across his own counter. "You don't drink," Jorum said. "You're here for something else." "I need to watch foreign blades," Amagro said. "Tournament fighters. Before they fight me." Jorum wiped a cup. "Two are here now. Both cheated me." He nodded at the far corner. "Someone waters my barrels before I tap them. I taste it every night. I just can't catch the hand." Amagro looked. Two men sat apart, road-dust on their boots. One held a curved blade she had never seen, the guard shaped like a claw. The other kept a straight sword across his knees and drummed his fingers on the hilt. "Help me catch my thief," Jorum said, "and I'll make them show you everything. Drunk men brag. Drunk men swing." Amagro agreed. She sat through the evening and watched the two strangers, not their swords now, but their hands. Jorum had taught her that in one sentence. Hands give away lies. The clawblade man drank deep and slapped his cup down honest. The straight-sword man barely drank, yet called for more. When Jorum turned to the tap, the man's fingers slid a small flask from his sleeve and tipped it over an open barrel. Amagro crossed the floor and caught his wrist. The flask fell. Thin water spread across the wood. "There's your thief," she told Jorum. The man jerked free and drew the straight sword. He lunged. Amagro read the strike late. The blade came flat and low, nothing like Rahmar's forms, a foreign angle that nearly opened her side. She twisted, felt the edge kiss her ribs, and drove her elbow into his jaw. He dropped. Jorum hauled the man out by the collar. He came back and set a full cup in front of the clawblade stranger. "Drinks are free," he told him, "if you'll spar this one in my yard. Show her how they fight where you come from." The stranger grinned and stood. Amagro rose with him. She had felt one foreign edge already, and it had drawn blood. Now she would learn the rest before the ring did it for her.