Sianim 02 - Wolfsbane

“I’ll try to keep that from happening.” She threw back the bedcovers, restless with prebattle nerves. She knew how to deal with those. “Rather than wait around for Wolf, I’m going to visit Falhart and persuade him to fight with me. You’re welcome to come if you’d like.”

    She found Falhart, finally, in the accounting room, slaving over the books. As she walked into the little room, she heard him swear, and he began to scratch out what he’d written.
    “Why don’t you find someone who likes those things?” asked Aralorn with a certain amount of fellow feeling. Give her a scroll of stories or a five-volume history, and she’d devour them, but account books were a whole different kettle of fish. Somewhere in the volumes stacked neatly against the walls was a large number of accounting sheets in her own poorly scribed hand.
    Falhart looked up and scraped the hair from his eyes. “No one, but no one, likes to keep the accounts. Father, Correy, and I switch off, and this is my month.” He eyed the hawk on her shoulder, nodded at it, then focused on the pair of staves she carried in one hand.
    She grinned. “Want to play, big brother? Bet you a copper I can take you two times out of three.”
    “Make it a silver, and I’ll do it,” he said, pushing back his chair. “But I get to use my staff.”
    She shook her head at him. “Your staff is fine, but someone has given you an inflated idea of what they pay us mercenaries, Hart. I’ll go three coppers and not a bit more.”
    “Three coppers isn’t enough to make it worth my time,” he said.
    “I guess you’ll just have to stay here and do the books then,” replied Aralorn with a commiserating pat on his arm. “Come on, Halven, let’s see who else we can find.”
    “All right, all right, three coppers it is,” grumbled Falhart, then he brightened. “Maybe I can find someone else to lay a bet with.”
    Aralorn examined his bearlike form and shook her head as she started for the training grounds. “And who are you going to find who will bet on a woman against a brute like you?”
    “You did,” he pointed out.
    “Yes, but I’ve fought you before.”
    They faced off in the old practice ground. It was cold, and the sand was packed hard, though the snow had been swept away. Once they started fighting, the cold wouldn’t matter. Aralorn wielded one of her staves while Falhart held a quarterstaff half again as large and twice as thick as hers. Halven had opted for a better perch on the corner of the stable roof.
    “You’re sure you don’t want to use a quarterstaff as well?” Falhart asked, watching her warily.
    “Only a brute like you gains an advantage wielding a tree,” she replied. “It’s all right, though; you’ll need all the advantages you can find, big brother.”
    Falhart laughed and tossed his staff lightly in the air. “You may have learned something in the past ten years, Featherweight. But so have I. What are the rules for this bout?”
    “Three points,” said Aralorn. “Any hit between the shoulders and waist is good. Arms, head, and below the waist doesn’t count.”
    “Right,” said Falhart, and he struck.
    His swing had more speed than a man of his size had any right to have. Aralorn stepped respectfully out of its path and tapped him gently on the temple.
    “Zap,” she murmured as she darted away, “you’re dead.”
    “No point,” grunted Falhart, sweeping at her knees.
    Rather than avoiding the sweep, Aralorn stepped lightly on the center of the quarterstaff between his hands and vaulted over his back. She touched her staff to his back twice in rapid succession before he had time to turn, and quickly bounced away.
    “Two points,” called one of the onlookers in a gleeful voice.
    She didn’t get away free though; as she jumped back, one end of his staff caught her in the diaphragm.
    “Oof.” Though the blow was light, Aralorn expelled a breath of air unexpectedly.
    Falhart backed away quickly, clearly worried. “Are you all right?”
    She shot him a mock-disgusted look. “I said ‘oaf,’ you ox. You’re going to lose this round if you treat me like your little sister.”
    “Just like to make certain my prey is feeling all right before I destroy it.” Falhart gave her a gentle smile as he circled her warily. “It’s more sporting that way. My point.”
    Aralorn shook her head. “Poor babbling fool, I think I must have hit his head harder than I meant to.”
    The two combatants exchanged