wish that all the tents were done and we had twice as much food. The winter comes without much warning here. I once knew a man who could predict the weather. He told me that the air had a tartness to it before a snowstorm, but I could never smell it." He was talking to himself more than Aralorn. Abruptly he turned on his heel and headed toward the center of activity.
Aralorn watched as he stopped and laid a hand on the shoulder of an older woman plying a needle. Whatever he said made her smile.
Aralorn had watched him on and off when she'd been in the Rethian court, and he'd impressed her. At fifteen he'd been working in the background to keep his father from destroying Reth without undermining his father's seat on the throne. Here, he gave the people something to do so that they wouldn't sit and think about what they'd lost and what their fate was to be. He was a master at the art of ruling - but it cost him. He looked as if he'd seen ten years more than his eighteen. She wondered if he'd live to see his nineteenth year. He probably wondered about that too.
Since Wolf had asked her to stay out of the library, Aralorn did her best to keep busy. It wasn't difficult. Without Pussywillow or Wolf, only she and Myr had the training to teach the motley band of rebels how to fight.
Haris was easily the best; the heavy muscles that he'd developed swinging a smith's hammer lent an impressive strength to his blows. Like most big men he was a little slow, but he knew how to compensate for it. In unarmed combat he could take Aralorn, but not Myr.
The rest of the camp varied from bad to pathetic. There was a squire's son who had at one time been quite an archer, but he was old and his eyesight wasn't what it had been. One of the farmers could swing a scythe but not a sword. Then there was the farmer Traven, whose greatest asset as a fighter was his size, which he more than made up for by his gentleness.
"Okay now, keep your sword a bit lower and watch my eyes to see where I'll move. Now, in slow motion I'm going to swing at you. I want you to block overhanded, then underhanded and then thrust." The big farmer would have been a lot better off if he could forget she was a woman. The only way that she could get him to strike at her was it' she did it in slow motion. But when they sped things up, he wouldn't use his full strength. She was about to change that if she could.
"Good," she said when he had completed the maneuvers. "Now at full speed." He blocked and blocked, but his strike was slow and careful, lacking the power that he should have been able to put behind the blow. Aralorn stepped into it and inside. With a deft grip and twist, she tossed him over her head and into the grass. Before he had a chance to move, she had her knee on his chest and his sword arm twisted so that it would hurt him; maybe enough that he would fight her when she let him up.
There had been a collective gasp from her audience when she tossed the farmer on his back. The move looked more impressive than it was, especially since he easily outweighed her by a hundred pounds.
Stanis, who was watching, put a finger on his chin and said, "I wouldn't pin 'im that way, Aralorn. Two coughs from a cat and I'd be out of it if it'd been me you caught."
Aralorn raised an eyebrow and let Traven up. Stanis had been born to a group of traders, traveling clans no better than they should be. It was very possible that he had a few good tricks up his sleeve.
"'Right, then. Come on, Stanis," she invited.
He did. She must have pinned him a dozen times, but he kept slipping out of her grasp. Drawn by the noise, Myr quit his bout to come and watch too. Soon the whole crowd was cheering for Stanis as he broke away again and again. Aralorn quit finally and raised her hands in surrender.
"Magic?" she queried Stanis as she shook his hand.
Stanis shook his head, gave her a wary look, then grinned and nodded. "Most of 'em are easier with