I quickly summon my spear to my hand. It’s something I discovered by accident a while ago – if I concentrate well enough on what I want to withdraw, I don’t actually need to open up my Inventory properly to get it out.
That’s fortunate, because Lathani’s clearly not going to give me time to prepare. But that’s OK – I’m used to being attacked at a moment’s notice.
She springs forward quickly, even as the spear materialises in my hand. I swing my weapon at her, butt end first. The blow knocks her off course and she lands a little heavily to the side.
That hurt! she complains. I raise my eyebrows at her.
“You think an enemy is going to care about that?” I ask her.
But you’re not an enemy, she objects, sounding uncertain.
“No, I’m not,” I respond with a sigh. “But although we’re not trying to kill each other the way we would with an enemy, pain is going to come into it. Or how is one of us going to force the other to yield?”
Lathani goes completely still, as if she hadn’t thought about that.
I just…I thought it would be like with the smaller siblings. We roll around a bit and then one of us pins the other. Not…this.
“I’m not a raptorcat cub or a nunda,” I say to her gently. “I don’t fight like you do. And if you want to win, you’re going to have to adapt to that. Just like you do when hunting. Or wasn’t it you who told me I needed to improve my hunting skills?” She makes a disgruntled noise at that. “It seems like the shoe’s on the other foot,” I continue, pretending to be off-guard while actually watching her very carefully. “I guess it’s you who needs some hunting lessons from me.”
That, apparently, is a red rag to a bull and Lathani jumps at me again with a growl. Once more I swing my spear butt, and once more she’s knocked off course with a calculated blow to the ribs.
It’s a bit like sparring with Bastet. A much younger, less adaptable, less canny Bastet. Lathani is practically the same size as her and has a similar tendency to pounce with her claws and teeth bared. But where Bastet very quickly works out that a technique isn’t working and tries another, Lathani seems to ascribe to the mentality that if something hasn’t worked, she’d better try, try, and try again.
I soon realise that my nerves when starting the spar are for naught. It’s not that Lathani couldn’t win, it’s that she shouldn’t.
She doesn’t have the right kind of technique to get past my weapon. She doesn’t have the ferocity to just shrug off pain. She isn’t adaptable, and while she’s quick and strong, I’m quicker and stronger than she is. The only thing actually going for her is that she has plenty of determination: she hasn’t yet given up despite the constant failure.
I actually start using the opportunity to continue practising my spear technique, playing a bit of a game. At first I keep hitting the same spot every time she jumps at me, then practise hitting different spots each leap. It starts feeling like a normal spar, a notion that’s enhanced when I realise that we’ve got an audience – all my Bound have formed a large circle around us and are watching. Kalanthia too, of course.
On the one hand, the situation is good for me – Lathani’s inability to fight works to my advantage in this particular fight. On the other, it’s worrying: how am I going to help Lathani stay alive when she’s this poor at fighting?
Then again, was I much better when I arrived in this world? If I can learn then Lathani, who is by nature a powerful predator, should pick it up much quicker.
The nunda juvenile pauses after her most recent attempt to jump at me and glares hotly.
You’re not even trying! she whines. I glare back at her.
“You’re right – I’m not. You’re not good enough to make me try.” That hits home. I see her lips curl back from her teeth in anger. I bare my own teeth, letting my worry turn into righteous anger. “How have you managed to kill anything if all you can do is pounce?”
It’s always worked so far, she argues sulkily.
“And what happens when it doesn’t, eh? What happens when you pounce on an enemy and they aren’t where you expect them to be? What happens when they avoid your attack and then return their own?”
So saying, I shift my footwork forwards quickly and then jab at her. My spear point comes to rest against the fur of her breast. She jumps back and I pursue with quick steps. She leaps sideways, but I just shift my spear around to follow her. She jumps at me again, perhaps hoping that my movements have put me off-balance, but this time I knock the wind out of her with the butt end of my spear as I bring it sweeping around.
It’s not fair – you can attack me long before I can reach you!
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“And why the hell do you think life should be fair?” I ask, frustrated with her continuing resistance. Where would she have got the notion from, anyway? She’s not a human child, raised in a world where justice rules – or is supposed to do so, anyway. “What is fair about you hunting smaller creatures than yourself? What is fair about me being attacked by a creature several times my weight in its preferred habitat? What is fair about what happened to you at the claws of the lizard-folk?”
She bares her teeth again at me, but this time it looks more defensive than angry – the rest of her body is huddled into the ground, doing its best to present a smaller target. I sigh and try to soften my tone.
“Look, life isn’t fair, OK? You won’t always be faced with creatures who you can take down in a single pounce. So what do you do then?” I wait for a moment, but she doesn’t answer. “You have to try something different,” I continue, answering my own question. “Bastet, come here, would you?” I say, not taking my eyes off Lathani.
For all her proclamations of things ‘not being fair’, I don’t doubt that she’d quickly take advantage of any distraction on my part. Which she should – that would probably be the best move she’d made all ‘fight’ – but I wouldn’t want her to accidentally win on a technicality.
Yes? Bastet asks, stepping forward to stand next to me. There’s a sense of amusement in her tone – I have a feeling she already knows why I asked her to come forward.
“Let’s show Lathani how it’s done,” I tell her. Sending a look at Lathani, I warn her to watch and stay put, “or I’ll have River sit on you.” With the uncomfortable look each of them send me at that, I have a feeling that I’m not going to have an issue with her disobeying right now.
Locking eyes with Bastet, I settle back into my spear stance, levelling the point at her. No using the butt here – I can heal the wounds I cause to Bastet, and just being knocked sideways wouldn’t do anything more than give her another platform to jump from.
The raptorcat attempts to trick me with a feint, leaping forwards as if to go for my throat while instead aiming for my front leg. I see the shift of movement, though, and spot the trick in time – the sparring we’ve been doing for the last few days is really paying off.
Stabbing down at her, I miss actually hitting my Bound by a hair when she aborts her attack in the nick of time by flicking her wings. Instead of backing away as Lathani was doing, she pushes herself to one side and then attempts to leap at me from that angle.
My spear out of position, I have to scramble to hit her with the butt. The force of the impact shudders through both of us, but pushes Bastet more than it does me. She turns the tables on me, though, by twisting her head to bite at the spear shaft.
We engage in a tug-of-war as we both struggle over control of the spear. I’m about to drop the spear and attempt a different approach when Bastet beats me to it. Already braced to drop the spear myself, I don’t fall over as I might have done otherwise. I do lose my balance a little, though, and Bastet takes quick advantage.
She leaps at me, bowling me over to land on the ground with my arms and legs splayed.
Not being the first time I’ve ended up in this position during our spars, I don’t panic. Instead, I grip my spear with both hands and pull it down to separate us. Then, using my greater body-weight, I twist us around so I’m on top with my spear pressed against her throat.
“Stop,” I say and we both freeze. A moment later, I pull my spear away from her throat and push myself off her. I’d probably be considered the victor there – I could easily have crushed her throat. However, I wouldn’t have come out unscathed.
Bastet can’t retract her claws like Lathani can – her paws are more like a bird’s talons than a feline paw. Nonetheless, she did keep them away from me as much as possible which I appreciate – wounds can heal; my clothes, on the other hand, would have been torn to shreds. So while I would have won even if this was a real fight, I’d have had a lot to heal afterwards, risking bleeding out before succeeding in closing all my wounds.
Pushing ourselves to stand, I scratch at Bastet’s head as she rubs herself against me.
“Good fight,” I praise. “I wasn’t expecting that tug-of-war with the spear.”
I saw Fenrir do it with River, Bastet admits.
“Even better, then – that’s what these spars are for: learning from each other.” Looking over at Lathani, I pin her with a pointed stare. “Do you see what I mean? Bastet had the same issue as you but instead of just doing the same thing over and over again, and then complaining about it being unfair, she adapted. She tried different things. She took risks, but calculated ones. In short, she turned what you felt was an impossible fight into one which would have ended with me severely injured if she’d used her claws.”
Lathani has left her defensive stance and is now sitting properly, her eyes and ears clearly showing how intently she had been focussing on our demonstration.
I understand. But how does she know what to do? I glance at Bastet and then turn back to the nunda juvenile, shrugging.
“How do any of us? Practice. You’ve seen us practise fighting against each other every morning for the past few days. That’s helped. Otherwise, for each of us it has been getting into real fights and coming out the victor, or at least not too hurt to continue,” I add the latter thinking about Fenrir and his fights with his pack mates.
Can I join? Lathani asks, her attitude abruptly different from what she’d been showing me earlier. I raise my eyebrows at her.
“That depends. Do you accept that we still have things to teach you? That I have things to teach you?” She looks down at the ground and her ears relax.
I do. Darting a glance up at me, she then returns her eyes to the ground. Pack leader.
I move over to her and crouch down beside her slumped form. Reaching out, I rub her fur behind her ears.
With a noise of pleasure, she pushes against my hand, then stands and rubs herself against me with enough force to almost send me sprawling.
“Alright then,” I say, both pleasure and relief going through me that this whole thing seems to have worked out. “I expect to see you joining us during our sparring every day. Unless your mother has something else for you to do,” I quickly add, looking up at the massive nunda.
You’re OK with that, right? I send to her, realising that I might have overstepped. Fortunately, her response sets me at ease.
I am glad she will have an opportunity to learn in a safer environment. It is a privilege few of us have.
After spending a little more time bonding with Lathani again, I push myself to my feet. Enough lollygagging around. Time to see what impact my new points in Wisdom have had on my ability to make a connection with fire.