The Ippos King (Wraith Kings #3) - Grace Draven Page 0,3

Ildiko scowled at Anhuset and rolled the shoulder that had taken the brunt of Anhuset’s strike. She wiped away the perspiration beading on her forehead with the back of her hand before dropping into the familiar half crouch, her own silabat at the ready. “I only wish that had been the reason for my lack of vigor. The poor nursemaid and I were up all day with Tarawin and her sickly stomach.”

Ildiko did look particularly haggard this evening, and it wasn’t the weariness that came from spending hours indulging in pleasurable bedsport. Her heavy eyelids and the shadowy crescents under her eyes spoke of no sleep for an extended time. Anhuset recognized the signs. She’d pulled more than her fair share of long watches and guard duty. The boredom alone exhausted a person, though she suspected caring for a sick baby wasn’t so much tedious as it was challenging. She didn’t envy the hercegesé or Brishen the burden of parenthood.

The hercegesé dropped into the ready stance Anhuset had taught her: knees slightly bent, feet shoulder-width apart, body turned to the side to make herself less of a target. She gripped her pair of silabats in her slender hands, one raised perpendicular to her chest, the other elevated to her hip. The sticks acted as sword and shield. “Again,” she said.

Anhuset gave a nod of approval before mimicking her student’s stance. She lashed out, a calculated move that Ildiko parried with a quick block of one of her silabats. Anhuset didn’t give her time to counter-attack, going on the offensive with several more strikes that had Ildiko dancing across the room, grunting and cursing under her breath as she parried her teacher’s attacks.

“Better,” Anhuset said, landing a particularly hard strike against Ildiko’s crossed silabats that made the other woman stagger. “Hold with your forearms, not your wrists, unless you want them broken.”

They fought along the chamber’s perimeter, Anhuset continuously advancing, Ildiko retreating but successfully blocking each blow Anhuset attempted to land on her upper body.

Ildiko’s grim features lightened with a tiny smile, one that fled when Anhuset abruptly changed tactics, swung low, and struck Ildiko’s outer thigh with a silabat.

The hercegesé hopped to the side with a yelp and held up a hand to halt their bout. She rubbed her padded leg while glaring at Anhuset. “I thought you were just focusing on my torso.”

Anhuset arched an eyebrow. “Did I say that?”

Ildiko’s tone changed from indignant to wary. “No.”

“You assumed it, hercegesé. I repeated the same movement several times…”

“So I would assume wrongly.” This time Ildiko’s scowl was for herself. “You did say predictability was a blade with two edges.”

Anhuset nodded, pleased with her student’s echo of her words. As a novice at gatke, Ildiko made every mistake Anhuset expected her to make, but she listened closely to instruction and committed them to memory. The pain of that strike, and the bruise sure to follow, guaranteed Ildiko wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

“You learn from your enemy; your enemy learns from you. Surprise them with the unexpected by teaching them to expect the same thing.”

Ildiko wiped her brow with the back of one hand and blew a stray tendril of vibrant red hair out of her eyes. “I don’t think I’ll ever master this stick fighting of yours.”

“Every student says that until they do.”

“Even you?”

Anhuset answered Ildiko’s doubtful smile with a toothy one of her own. “Even me, and I had a lot more bruises to show for it than you ever will.” She pointed her silabat at Ildiko. “Enough chatting. Stance. Widen your feet a little more. Forearms instead of wrists.”

A brief tap at the door interrupted their next round. Ildiko gave Anhuset a questioning look, one returned with a shrug. The entire fortress knew not to disturb the hercegesé and her teacher during gatke lessons. To do so risked the formidable wrath of Anhuset. So far, no one had been that brave or that foolish except one man.

“Might as well open it,” Anhuset said, relaxing out of her stance. “He’ll just keep knocking until you do.”

Ildiko creaked the door open, a wide smile blooming across her mollusk-pink features at the sight of her husband standing on the other side. “Just in time, Brishen. You’ve saved Anhuset from yet another beating. I’ve trounced her at least a half dozen times this lesson,” she cheerfully lied.

Brishen smirked as he crossed the threshold into the chamber, but Anhuset didn’t miss the way his gaze swept his wife’s form, looking for wounds beneath