Dancing the Warrior Read online

  Not that close. She’d been watching his hands so much she missed the feet, and now one slammed into her gut. She grunted and staggered back a step. Only a little pain, and still the Grandmaster said nothing, so apparently that didn’t count as failure. What would? Kerestel beating her to the ground, until she no longer fought back? Sen bit down on a frown. If so, he’d have to hit a lot harder.

  She hadn’t really seen the kick, but tried to copy it anyway, pivoting so her leg shot out to the side. Kerestel stepped in, grabbed it, wrenched it upward; there was a second moment of comical surprise as her leg went up without resistance, Sen not overbalancing as he clearly expected her to. But she couldn’t hit him from there, either. Trying to did make him drop her leg, at least, and then they were back to circling, Sen this time more wary of trying kicks.

  Punching wasn’t much better, though. Kerestel almost caught her arm; twisting away brought her too close, so they ended up body-to-body, and then his hand delivered a stinging slap to the side of her head. Still no word from the Grandmaster, so Sen shook it off and kept going.

  Or tried to. Kerestel took the offensive now, driving her back, chasing her down the ring, giving her no chance to attack. Behind her, drawing ever closer, lay the fence. If Kerestel trapped her against that, Sen feared the Grandmaster would declare the fight over and render his verdict—against her.

  What was he looking for, anyway? For her to win? It would never happen. She couldn’t beat this boy. They said combat was the Warrior’s true Dance, but it wasn’t like any Dance Sen had ever known. They’d given her no chance to learn it, and now she didn’t know what the Grandmaster expected her to do.

  She charged again, straight into the punches, trying a second time to knock Kerestel down. His fist hit home, not with much force—she was too close—but then he twisted and threw her to the ground. Sen rolled with it, a familiar motion at last, and by the time she came to her feet her mind was clear.

  Pick your own goal, and go after it. Sen clenched her teeth. All right. I’ll hit him once before I’m done—or damn myself to the Void, trying.

  Which meant luring Kerestel into doing something for her.

  She left her hands low, an invitation for him to attack. He did, and she retreated. Back the way they’d come, and now Sen was mostly concerned with staying out of reach until her opportunity came. There—Kerestel punched right, then left, then kicked. A pattern he’d repeated several times before. And when his foot came down—

  Sen moved almost before the second punch began, dodging to the outside, well clear of the kick that would hit only empty air. Kerestel overturned, as before, his weight a little forward. Desperately, Sen punched, but he was already twisting away—her opportunity vanishing before her eyes—

  With a yell, she copied his kick of a moment before, and her foot slammed into his ribs.

  It hurt, like someone had stepped on the arch of her foot. And she wasn’t used to meeting resistance like that; Sen staggered, much more off-balance than Kerestel had been a moment before, and then something hooked behind her knee and a palm smacked her chest, and she went down into the dirt, hard enough to drive all the air from her lungs. She tried to get up, but her body wasn’t responding, and then she realized there had been no follow-up attack.

  Wheezing for air, she rolled onto her side—and found the Grandmaster had stepped within the fence.

  By sheer force of will, Sen forced herself upright. She hadn’t won; that much was clear. If that had been his test, then she’d failed, and this had all been a waste of everybody’s time. But Sen had this much victory, at least: she, a Temple Dancer, had managed to hit a Hunter trainee in a fight. Surely the Warrior would be proud of that.

  She couldn’t look at Kerestel, at Criel, at anything other than the Grandmaster’s feet. The silence stretched out, harpstring-tight. And then the Grandmaster spoke, his mild voice betraying nothing more than it had before. “You may stay.”

  Sen heard the words, but they were meaningless sound, echoing around the empty space where her brain used to be. Her eyes sought out Criel, who nodded, reading in them some message, even if Sen couldn’t think enough to form one. The company mistress entered the ring, and Sen knelt, reflexively. Two gentle hands came to rest on her hair, sent wild by the fight; then she heard more words, and these had meaning.

  “For eight years your body has served the Goddess in the Dance. I release you from that obligation, and give you into the keeping of Silverfire.” Criel’s voice wavered. “The Warrior has blessed you, Seniade. May she watch over you.”

  Then the hands were gone, and Sen knelt in the dust, a Temple Dancer no more.

  A Hunter trainee.

  A servant of the Warrior.

  * * *

  After Kerestel had carried out the Grandmaster’s orders—taking the new girl to have her hair cut short, supplying her with practice uniforms and showing her the refectory, the bathing-chambers, her cell in the dormitory, and all the rest of it—he went back to the office at the base of the tower. Also per orders.

  By then, the older trainees were back from their endurance ride, and open practice was underway in the yard where Kerestel and the girl had sparred. The Grandmaster was on the balcony, watching them. He abandoned that post when Kerestel came in, though, and settled back into his chair. “What do you think of her?”

  Kerestel blinked. “Sir?”

  “Your new year-mate. Give me your evaluation, based on your match.”

  The man had watched the whole thing; he didn’t need Kerestel’s opinion. This was a test, obviously. But why? “What that old woman said—is the girl a Temple Dancer, sir?” The Grandmaster made no reply. “She moves like one, I guess,” Kerestel said; he’d never seen them perform. “Very graceful.”

  But the Grandmaster hadn’t let her into Silverfire for grace. Why had he let her in? The other trainees were going to hate it, and maybe some of the masters, too. He wants to know if I saw what he saw, Kerestel realized. And whether anybody else is likely to.

  He started with the obvious. “She’s strong, sir, and wickedly fast. Flexible, too—lots more than some of us, though I don’t know how much good that’ll do her in fighting.” What was less obvious? “She learned quick, too—copied the things she saw me do, kept her guard up after the first few mistakes, found a pretty good distance and stuck to it. And….”

  Kerestel hesitated. But there was no point in being embarrassed; the Grandmaster got regular reports from the training masters. “Sir, Talon’s been yelling at me for months to stop over-turning on roundhouse kicks. I don’t think it was luck, her taking advantage of that; I think she saw it—in the middle of the fight—and figured out how to use it.” Sort of. She’d kicked him with the arch of her foot, not the ball, and it must have hurt like fury. But as soon as she stopped pointing her toes and learned how to put real force behind it, that kick would be a monster.

  How in the Warrior’s name had she managed to spot his flaw? Unless somebody had been teaching her already—but no, if she had any experience, she wouldn’t have made all those mistakes.

  “Thank you, trainee,” the Grandmaster said after a moment. “You may go.”

  Back to class, where the rumors would already be spreading. Silverfires worked at all kinds of jobs, spying not excepted; news got around fast. “Thank you, sir,” Kerestel said, and went to tell the others the truth—what little of it as he knew.

  * * *

  The whispers started before Sen sat down at the third-year table in the refectory. Before she even got to the refectory. Probably before she left the tiny, austere room that had so abruptly become her new home.

  Whispers, and stares. Not friendly ones. Trainees both older and younger regarded her with frank curiosity, half-turning from their speculative huddles to watch her; some of them looked faintly annoyed. But the thirteen-year-olds, the trainees who were supposed to be her year-mates….

  Someone grabbed a pinch of her hair and yanked painfully. It broke Sen’s resolve to p
retend she didn’t notice anything around her; she twisted to find a boy her age scowling at her in disgust.

  “Warrior’s teeth, it is true. They let a Dancer in here.”

  Her hand rose before she could stop it, running over her newly-shorn hair. It ruffled soft and alien against her fingers—far too short, now, for a Dancer’s sleek knot. But still dyed black, and that marked her for what she was. What she had been. “I’m not a Dancer any more.”

  Several trainees snorted. Sen wanted to turn away, ignore them all, but these were her year-mates; like it or not, she had to live with them. Trying for politeness, she stood and gave the gathering crowd a little bow. The boy she’d fought, Kerestel, was at the far edge, looking uncomfortable. “I’m Seniade,” she said.

  The boy who’d pulled her hair flung his hand up when another tried to speak. “Don’t bother answering her,” he growled. “She won’t be here long enough for names to matter.”

  “The Grandmaster let me in,” Sen told him, nettled. “You don’t get to overrule him, do you?”

  “You think getting in means it’s all over? That all you have to do is wait seven years and you’ll earn your name?” The boy stepped in close. He was taller than her by a couple of inches, and used it. “We fight to stay here. The room you’re in belonged to another trainee, who failed out earlier this year. And you don’t get to go home, you know; once Silverfire takes you, they keep you. In whatever job you’re fit for.” His smile made Sen’s gut clench tight. “You’re going to end up shoveling out the stables.”

  Like the girl who had taken the horses, earlier today. Was she a failed trainee?

  Sen opened her mouth, not sure what she was going to say—but movement at the other end of the room stopped her. A dais there overlooked the ten student tables, and men and women were entering to take their seats. These, Sen knew from Kerestel’s introduction, were the Silverfire masters. Their entrance made the trainees scramble into position, lining the benches along their tables, with guilty expressions that suggested they should have been waiting quietly when the masters came in. Only when the last sound faded did the man at the center—not the Grandmaster—bow his head and say, “We thank the Warrior for this blessing, the food to keep our bodies strong.”

  His perfunctory words appeared to be the only blessing they bothered with; everyone sat when he was done. Hunter schools might have begun as Warrior cults, but that was a long time ago. Aside from the small shrine Kerestel had shown her—very small, honoring only the Goddess’s fiercest Aspect—there was little sign that they remembered their religious origins. Sen, for one, was determined not to forget, but she wondered if she should still pray to the other Aspects. Just because she served only one now didn’t mean she should ignore the others.

  She settled for closing her eyes and reciting a quick mental benediction, on the grounds that it couldn’t hurt. By the time she looked around, the masters had gone to a side table, covered with platters of food. When the last of their number was done filling her plate, the eldest trainees rose. Sen couldn’t help but notice how few of them there were: a scant handful, compared with the mass of children at the farthest table. They moved with the same lethal grace as the masters, a grace similar to and yet different from that of Dancers. Their bodies were weapons, not works of art. And yet it was art, of a sort.

  Serving went in order of seniority. When Sen followed the rest of her table—hanging back to save them the trouble of elbowing her to the rear—she found, to her dismay, that the platters had been thoroughly demolished. The few shreds of meat left behind by the older trainees were snatched up before she could get near them, and many of the fruits and greens were gone, too. If nobody brought more, practically the only thing left for the youngest trainees would be the heaping bowls of rice.

  She hesitated, one hand on an apple. Glancing over her shoulder was a mistake; now she saw murder in the eyes of the younger ones, who hadn’t much seemed to care about her before. She hadn’t spent two years eating plain rice, earning her way up to better food. Who was she, to take this for herself?

  The boy’s words echoed in her ears. We fight to stay here. With all the hostility around her, Sen would have to fight harder than anyone else. She couldn’t do that if she was weak from lack of food. And if she left the apple there, it would only go to the bullies in the next year, the ones who shoved their way past the others.

  She took the apple.

  But it sat like lead in her stomach, as everyone ate in silence. That book of tales hadn’t said anything about this. Not surprising, really; Hunter schools didn’t exactly share their secrets with outsiders. But if this boy was telling the truth—and he was far too gleeful to be lying—

  Then that fight against Kerestel had only been the first test. And if she failed any of them, there was nowhere to go. A Dancer’s consecration, once broken, could not be restored.

  Sen gritted her teeth, swallowing down a mouthful of rice. Then the answer’s simple. You just have to succeed.

  Warrior—give me the strength to do it.

  * * *

  The unarmed combat salle made her truly understand, for the first time, that the home she’d known for most of her life was gone forever. It was an open, airy room with windows just beneath the high ceiling to let in the light, and the wood of the floor had been worn smooth by countless years of feet. Aside from the strange equipment—piles of padding, wooden contraptions whose purpose Sen couldn’t guess—it was enough like the rehearsal halls of the Temple that homesickness hit her like a blow.

  The man waiting inside was nothing like the company teachers, though. His thick body was much more heavily muscled than any Dancer’s, and scars formed twisted ropes along his bare arms. More than anyone but the Grandmaster, this man held Sen’s future in his hands.

  The boy who’d refused to give his name last night hissed into her ear, “Talon will eat you alive.” Then he fell silent as the trainees lined up and bowed.

  Talon. Hunter names were rarely soft, but this one put a shiver down her spine.

  “Warm up,” he barked, and that was the only command he gave for some time; the trainees immediately began what was obviously a well-rehearsed sequence of exercises, while the master circled the room. This, Sen could do. She relaxed into the movements, pleased to see that her flexibility equaled or bettered that of the other trainees. Her satisfaction faded quickly, though, when they got to strength exercises. Other Dance traditions used the arms for more acrobatic moves, but the Great Temple’s style was more about lower body strength. Sen’s arms shook before they were even halfway through the push-ups.

  And Talon saw it. She heard the quiet huff of his scorn—but no amount of gritting her teeth could make her arms firm up. Grimly, she did what she could, and drew in a breath of relief when the warm-up was done.

  Until the master spoke again. “Pair up. Ninth pattern. And if your partner doesn’t block enough, then for the love of the Warrior, hit them. New girl, over here.”

  Was this better or worse than him sending her to stumble along behind the others? They were performing something like choreography, a pre-set pattern of strikes and blocks, watching her out of the corners of their eyes. Sen tried to put them from her mind and focus on the master.

  “Do you know anything yet?” he asked bluntly.

  No use in lying; he would discover it soon enough. “Only what I picked up from Kerestel, when we fought.”

  Another huff of breath. “And Jaguar put you in the third year. Well. I guess we start with the basics.”

  To her relief, the basics turned out to be within her reach. If what the other trainees were doing was choreography, then what Talon showed her now were the steps, the component parts from which other things would later be built. Maybe it was a Dance, after all.

  But not like the one she knew. Talon would demonstrate a thing, once, then make her repeat it again and again while he circled her and smacked errant bits of her body into place. The right positions weren’t hard; the problem l
ay in remembering to stay there. Every time her attention moved on, things drifted back to where eight years of habit had accustomed them to be. Her feet turned out, her shoulders pressed back, her butt tucked tight under her spine. Talon began to grunt every time he corrected her, and the sound got more irritated as she went on. Tension knotted Sen’s muscles, making her more awkward. She nearly jumped out of her skin when he suddenly roared, “What are you staring at?”

  This was directed at the other trainees, who went back to their neglected patterns with guilty energy. Talon scowled at them, then back at her, and shook his head. “Can’t spend all my time on you. Practice what I’ve shown you. Until you have that, no point in teaching you any patterns. Get to work.” And he stalked off to correct the other trainees.

  Perversely, his neglect made her more afraid. Followers of the Warrior or not, there was more to being a Hunter than just fighting; in the days to come, she would be learning politics, medicine, how to survive on the road, and more. But fighting was the core of it, and that blade cut both ways. Her physical talents had gotten her in here, but her old habits could get her thrown out just as fast.

  She watched the trainees out of the corner of her eye, trying to get a sense of what the steps should look like. Weight downward, into the ground. Body sideways, but not twisted too far. Economical motions, moving in as straight a line as possible. Kerestel, if she was any judge, was one of the better ones out there. It made her feel a little better about how their fight had gone. She would have lost to any of these people, but at least she’d lost to somebody good.

  The boy from before caught her watching and glared at her. Sen turned her attention back to her own movement. The sooner she proved her dedication to the Warrior, the happier they would all be.