A Hollow Mountain (The Brightest Shadow Book 2), page 44
"Vulnerability, most notably. You will usually be overpowered by a warrior who has focused on sein, and you lack the endurance to use full defensive arts. Your body is well-adapted to combat, but I suspect it would succumb to poisons and illnesses that a Steeljudge would ignore."
"That is a thoughtful criticism. Thank you."
"If you want to thank me, do something about it. I think your path would be an excellent choice in a time of peace, but those are not our times. If you face war, I suggest that you unbalance yourself to learn the strongest defensive art you can."
"Do you have a suggestion?" Tani did not want to leave the teachings her master had left her, but she also did not want to offend Olondris. The older woman simply frowned.
"That would take time, perhaps more time than you have."
Slaten nodded. "Melal has been gone for some time. If he truly went to search for the mine, then we have many days to prepare, but we do not have anything near a year."
Olondris turned her back on them, taking slow and deliberate steps around the side of the small yard. As she did so, she turned her pike end over end in one hand, fingers easily controlling the spin. Tani and Slaten glanced at one another before deciding to let her think. At last she came to a halt and brought one end of her pike down against the cobbles.
"Fundamental training is all very well if you have no other priorities. Practical skills are better. I have one suggestion for each of you, which I hope will improve your potency even if you do not have time to fundamentally transform yourselves."
She gestured first to Slaten, so Tani stepped back and watched. The older woman set aside her pike, pulled his sword from its sheath, and examined the edge for a moment before abruptly bringing it hard against her armor. Tani winced from the scrape of metal on metal and saw only that no damage had been done, not whatever point she intended to make.
"When you fight a Catai, or any warrior with strong defenses, you must remember that you are fighting an armored opponent. Their skin is made to to resist the cut and deflect the thrust." Olondris flipped the sword around and demonstrated against Slaten without actually touching him. "When you try to strike them thus, you are playing directly to their strengths. You may be able to force your way through with sein, but you waste yourself."
"What do you suggest, then?" Slaten asked. Olondris surprised him by spinning the sword to grasp the blade in her hands as if to strike him with the pommel.
"This is the fifth technique of the Ironmonger's Path, called the hammer stroke. It seeks not to break your opponent's defenses, but to strike the weak flesh on the other side. Against an armored opponent, you may bash in their armor. Against a Catai, you could rattle their skull or injure their organs without ever needing to break their skin."
Wordlessly Slaten took his sword back from her, turning it over in his hands. He touched the edge without concern, but hesitated as he mimed striking with the pommel. After so much time repeatedly practicing familiar movements, it must have felt strange.
"Can that actually be effective?" Tani asked. She drew her sickle knife, trying to copy the movement, yet grasping the sword and whacking someone over the head with the end felt absurd. Yes, using the dull end would likely resonate better with sein for a blunt strike, but...
"I would not suggest it for you," Olondris said, "but it is a time-tested technique, particularly for those wearing armor or with sufficiently durable skin." She turned back to Slaten. "It will not come easily at first, but you are well-suited to it. Whoever trained you before granted you an exceptional capacity to release sein in a single blow, given your strength. If you apply that capacity to a blunt strike, you will no longer find yourself failing against such opponents."
"Thank you." Slaten bowed to her, but Olondris was already turning back to Tani.
"As for you, your weakness is scattered all over the ground."
"My knives?" Tani wasn't sure what the older woman intended to teach, but she moved to pick up her fallen throwing knives. She had only taken two steps when she suddenly found herself facing the sharp point of a pike.
"On a battlefield you cannot risk running about to retrieve your weapons. You would be better suited to throwing sein itself, but I presume that your training has not prepared you for such a thing."
"No, I've always needed a physical focus."
"Then you need to retrieve that focus." Olondris used the tip of her pike to flip one of the knives into the air and caught it. After turning it in her hands briefly, she dropped it... and the knife dangled a hand span beneath her fingers.
Frowning, Tani investigated if there was a hidden string or some other trick. Instead, she only smelled mint incredibly strongly. A moment later she realized that she hadn't seen a hint of a string, she had only felt the impression of one, and then she understood.
"I am not well-suited to this art, so this is the limit of my ability." Olondris jerked her wrist and the knife leapt up to her hand. "But if you could grasp the technique, each of your knives would be tied to you by your very self. At minimum you could retrieve them without risking yourself, and I have no doubt that a clever young warrior could think of more intricate uses."
"That is... an elegant idea." Though Tani again resisted, she also realized that such a technique might not be entirely out of keeping with her own master's teachings. There were sacred texts that discussed keeping a connection to her thrown weapons, so it could be repurposed... "When can we start?"
For a moment Tani thought that she would see Olondris smile, but the older woman only nodded to them. "Why not now?"
Chapter 32
-
"Though a proper lady should keep her head covered with a turban or wrap in public, use of errant-styled hoods is acceptable in the appropriate company. One's teeth should be kept bloody throughout a meal, but thoroughly cleaned in private prior to departure. Use of human handkerchiefs is permissible where it is the custom, but discouraged in mansthein company."
- excerpt from The Feminine Tooth
-
As she made her last marks on the paper, Natala sat back and looked over it again even though she knew every stroke. She was aware that her lines were rather sloppy, though hopefully not unreadable. If she focused, she could write the characters precisely, but she had simply been too impatient to endure the tedium. Her hand did not yet know the movements, and slowly crafting each line seemed a waste of time when she desperately wanted to move her thoughts from mind to paper.
Using paper as if it were a trivial thing. For so long, she had only held a few precious books, yet now she sat in an office filled with paper. She recognized that it was cheaply produced compared to her books, but it remained remarkable to her.
"Have you finished the inventory?" Foquin appeared in the doorway, shuffling in his usual curious way. He was not the richest or cleverest merchant in Torgaadi, but he was the one who was willing to accept the work of an ignorant foreigner. Judging from his girth and the rich purple shoulder wrap he always wore, he had done well enough for himself.
"It's there." Natala nodded to the wax tablet on the side of the desk, restraining any dismissiveness. Such trivial tasks were the price she paid for other opportunities. "I would like for you to look at this suggestion for ordering goods. Do you think it has any merit?"
"Hmm? What's this?" Foquin took the paper from her and peered at it, immediately frowning. "Your penwork here is truly atrocious."
"My apologies. I still have much to learn, but I hope..."
"Well, I see here at the bottom that you claim you can reduce my costs by a large sum. Have you developed a sein art to produce textiles?" He chuckled at his own joke, but he did look over everything she had written with a thoughtful eye.
Her apprenticeship to Foquin had been an enlightening experience. Not in the lists of goods and prices, which had been simple to memorize. She did not pretend to have grasped all the fundamentals of the mercantile arts, but those were essentially simple and would be mastered in time.
What had truly struck her was the fact that he built his entire life within a world of shipments and profits, just as certainly as Bloodskin men built their lives around strength and raiding. Foquin's wife, children, and nearly everyone he knew did the same. They found their world and its assumptions just as obvious as any Bloodskin, and that alone was worth the dreary days of writing lists that would have been better held in her mind.
Beyond that, she found it intriguing that he took a high degree of security for granted. He assumed that errants would be plentiful enough that few shipments would be lost. Losing some goods was merely a negative line on a wax ledger, easily erased. The idea that everything he owned could be put to the torch never entered his mind and he didn't live in fear of being torn in half by an angry warrior.
All of those things could still occur, and likely would if Espal and Portant went to war, but his confidence helped Natala understand why Slaten had been resistant to her conclusions. She still believed she was correct, but accepted that the applicability of those truths depended on context.
Her mind had flowed between many thoughts by the time Foquin finished reading through her list. He nodded slowly, regarding her with his usual, easily-read expressions: impressed, in this case. "You have a sharp mind, girl. There is much to see here."
"Truly?" She sat forward, letting her eyes fill with eager vulnerability.
"But you look too much at the numbers, not at the business between people. Yes, we could save some coin by reducing each order of perishable goods, but some wastes are part of life. So long as it is not too much, we will still make a tidy profit."
She accepted his initial judgment, but not his conclusion. "Looking at your past inventory statements, you often lose a portion of each order. If you reduce each by a fifth, you will have too little on occasion, but you will reduce loss on many other occasions."
Foquin shook his head. "Perhaps the numbers are true, but that is just what I mean: think of my customers. If they come to me for goods and I have nothing, they may go to someone else. And if there is a region-wide shortage, then having too much would be valuable indeed."
"There has not been a significant profitable shortage in your records in three years."
"Is that true?" The man stood back and blinked as if he had only just considered it. As she had suspected, his fear of great loss had blinded him to the greater loss accumulating day by day. "Perhaps it is. Yes, that winter was a dark time... but that is just when I wanted to come through for my customers."
"But in times of shortage, no one else would be able to sell to them either."
After staring at her, Foquin only chuckled. One reason she had remained with him was that he never exhibited any anger when she contradicted him. It felt wrong to her, a mental wrinkle that resisted her discipline, so she slowly smoothed it out through experience.
"One day you will learn that relationships are more important than a bit of profit, girl. But this..." Foquin set down the paper and tapped it thoughtfully. "This is useful. I had not realized just how much of my money I spent paying errants. This reorganization, with two fewer shipments every season, will save me a great deal."
"Thank you, Foquin." She lowered her head as if pleased while her mind considered her new problem.
She had included several mistakes on the paper so as to soften any actual insight, both in her sums and in her logic. None of Foquin's objections had mentioned them. It was possible, though improbable, that he saw through her deceptions. More likely possibilities included that he had not noticed, did not consider the errors worth mentioning, or that she had misunderstood something that rendered her intended mistakes doubly mistaken.
Though he'd come to help finish inventory, since it was complete, Natala could leave for the day. Yet as she moved to go, Foquin shifted into her path. He fumbled in a pouch as he spoke.
"If I took this paper and gave you nothing, I would be in your debt. And a good merchant should always manage debt carefully." He pulled a heavy wooden coin from his pouch and handed it to her. "Consider this payment for your services. Do not think of refusing, you deserve it!"
"Thank you." Natala smiled as she took the coin. It was an unforced smile, though not due to sentiment: the coin was proof that her efforts had concrete value. Since she was uncertain what response he would find most authentic, she decided to redirect his attention. "My people used mostly metal coins. Do you know why yours are wood?"
"Why? Couldn't tell you." Foquin pulled a handful of lesser coins out of his pouch and stared over them. "But it is a good system. Anyone can pull ore out of the ground and try to make coins. But true steelwood is rare, only a few groves across the nations."
"But surely some attempt to create false coins from other woods."
"Of course, but that's why you always see me run my knife over payments. And it is not so easy as that, because to carve the coins is no simple task."
"I see."
"There are stories of ruffians sneaking into the groves and hacking down trees, I will admit, and there are always false coins. But it is certainly better than everyone running about with metal in their pockets!" Like many of his statements, he did not explain what was obvious to him, and in this case she chose not to inquire further.
With her work complete, Natala departed to join the others. She met Laeri at the central errant watchpost, and as usual the other woman had many thoughts to share from her day. Natala pretended a very different sort of interest to her true concerns, gradually teasing information from her.
By observing the northerners' statements and campaigns, she was learning something no other Bloodskin had understood: exactly how the errants reacted to raiding. It was not so simple as striking back when they had been raided too often, but a complex mix of local variables and what precisely failed to pass through the mountains. Natala did not yet understand enough to use errant counterattacks as a tool, but it was only a matter of time.
Her first thought was to find a way to draw them down on the Bloodskins, to eradicate Bufogu and every other raider in the clan. Now she suspected that would be shortsighted, even if she could arrange for it. No, she needed to gather more information before the men of her clan returned south.
"-and for the first time I actually heard some of them speaking of the Hero!"
Natala immediately gave Laeri her full attention, though she had already been feigning it. "Did they meet Melal?"
"Oh, no, he's still looking for... you know what." Laeri smiled happily to herself. "But the errants hardly ever talked about the Legend, and when they did, they treated it like some old story. But today when they were complaining about the border, some of them said that maybe it would be good if the Hero came to solve the problem. It's a small thing, but it's a good sign, you know?"
Perhaps it was only a trivial event given too much weight, but speaking with Slaten and Tani had given Natala a healthy paranoia regarding the Legend. Even considering only what she had witnessed with her own eyes, where the Hero was involved, the rules that helped her frame reality often ceased to apply. Everything was suspect, even her own thoughts.
Undermining her basis for viewing the world was enough to make Natala wish Melal dead. According to the others, that wouldn't help.
Since Laeri had learned nothing else of interest, Natala let her mind drift over hypotheticals until they returned to the house. There they discovered that the evening meal was simmering and the warriors had already returned. They had waited, in some sort of quaint politeness, and instead bided their time by playing the game of beasts.
It was less a game than a test of skill, yet Natala still watched curiously as Tani and Slaten attempted to best one another. Though reaction time seemed to predominate, there was a mental element nonetheless. The possible reactions were so few that she imagined anyone could memorize them and react instinctively, yet if they did think about their movements, it was not a game for the slow of mind.
Slaten and Tani traded matches evenly, fumbling their movements as they attempted to change their positions at such rapid speeds. When Slaten eventually turned away, Tani attempted to compete with Mantyos, losing hand after hand.
"Dragon bites manticore!" Mantyos playfully had his fingers bite at Tani's hand, making the warrior throw up hers.
"Again! How do you keep beating me?"
"You may be much faster than me, but I do have eyes." Mantyos tapped his fingers just beneath them, as if they might be confused about what eyes were. "A smith requires arts to see the tiniest imperfection in the metal, and it works with warriors to a lesser degree. I can only move once, but I can see how your hand is moving right away."
"That is impressive." Tani sat back and stared at her own hand, wriggling her fingers. "But I'm going to beat you eventually, I just need to figure out the sein..."
"I'm sure you will, girl! I look forward to the day!"
Though Olondris's face held an expression as harsh as on their first day, she no longer stood apart from the group. Instead she sat in their circle, appearing stern but occasionally entering the conversation, as she did at that moment. "The day you can consistently beat Mantyos will be the day you have mastered your sein. If you can do so, your reaction time will be equal to any Ironlord."
Tani smiled and shook her head. "And what about the day when we can beat you?"
"You are unlikely to beat me." Though Olondris spoke flatly, Natala noticed that she actually made eye contact. The old woman kept her face impressively neutral, but her eyes revealed her thoughts. Careful observation had taught Natala to discern the slight differences in the way her gaze rested on her husband, analyzed threats, or considered others.
"We are not ignoring you!" Mantyos rose to his feet, sweeping both Natala and Laeri into a crushing hug that she chose not to evade. "Come and eat! We have something truly special today!"
He said that every day, some manner of joke that Natala recognized without really understanding: she evaluated the man's cooking as proficient but unremarkable. They all helped bring the various dishes to the table and then sat down to eat. For a time there was no conversation as everyone focused on filling their stomachs.
