This was a warship.
Zala had been wrong. The merchants she’d thought she was fighting weren’t merchants at all. They must have been lightly armored soldiers who hadn’t had enough time to prepare themselves.
Mantu and Sniffs stopped to stare, but their shock wore off quicker than Zala’s. Before she could shake her stupor, both men loosed their arrows at the enemies high above—in the ship’s true crow’s nest. But something pulled Zala’s attention down to the stern.
Sniffs barked at the top of his lungs. “Yeah, man! We get two! Big up yuh chest!”
“Like I said… nothin’ but beginner’s luck,” Mantu said with raised eyebrows.
“So we get all they loot, ya?” Sniffs asked as he cleared his nose again. Mantu turned to claim his prize, but Zala was already gone.
“ ‘Ey where you goin’ off to?” Sniffs bellowed in outrage. “You lose! Leave your bow with us.”
Zala tossed the bow over her shoulder as she ran. She didn’t turn her head to look and see if Mantu or Sniffs picked it up—she couldn’t spare the two another thought.
“Zala?” Fon shouted after her, her voice almost lost in the rush of battle.
“That’s right! Get to work!” Mantu shouted, his voice sounding like his hands were cupping around his mouth. “Find me somethin’ nice. I’ll take rum over wine if you can find it! Don’t worry none, we’ll cover you from right here.” He and Sniffs howled all the while.
But Zala didn’t care to listen. Jelani needed her help.
Chapter 3
Zala
Vaaji soldiers surrounded Zala’s husband like a swarm of red, white, and green wasps poking at him with silver-tipped stingers. Even at her distance on the far side of the ship, Zala could see sweat soaking the bandana wrapping his shaved head. Had it not been for the captain and the other crew members who fought at his side, he’d already be dead.
Zala’s feet pounded on the wood of the deck and her sword led the way as she fought soldier after soldier, each skirmish more difficult than the last. The first pair had been easy downs—they hadn’t seen her coming. But even as the rest caught on to her desperate charge, they fell one by one to her steel. She cut through spine, kidney, and heart. None of them could match the determination of her blade.
But Zala couldn’t keep it up.
The closer she got to the ship’s stern—and the closer she got to Jelani—the thicker the Vaaji formation became. A trio of soldiers had turned on their heels and met her blade for blade. The leader edged his curved sword over his buckler, and the two at his side moved to flank with spears in hand. Pirates called it the crane formation. Zala called it cheating.
She peered over their heads. There was no way around them, and she knew Jelani wouldn’t last long. Her jaw clenched around mounting nerves.
Zala wasn’t the best head-to-head swordswoman. She was effective, but a true master of the blade would scoff at her form. Her swings were too wide, cutting from shoulder rather than from elbow, and her thrusts were stiff, struck from a rigid hammer’s grip. Jelani had told her about proper blade grips for certain strikes and thrusts, but she had never taken his advice to heart.
“What’s it matter how I hold the damn thing as long as my aim is true? A cut is a cut,” Zala had said to Jelani time and time again. He would always just shake his head and laugh that laugh that could light up any room.
Zala had her own form of fighting—she knew how to cheat too. She targeted throats and groins, or gouged eyes when she could. Dirty, but effective. During her sessions with Jelani, she often used these “unorthodox” techniques. Instead of chiding her as she’d thought she would have been, Jelani tapered her training to adopt this new “style.”
“Most of your opponents gonna be bigger than you, man or woman. Your best friend gotta be distraction and—”
“A bit of scrappiness?”
Jelani had chuckled. “And a bit of scrappiness, yes.”
Suddenly, a sharp pain bit into Zala’s shoulder: a red line etched into her skin. Blood ran down her bicep in a stream, but her instincts saved her from the fatal follow-through—just barely.
Both spearmen of the trio were boxing her in, giving her no respite as they forced her to the ship’s starboard edge. As she swung at their jabbing spear tips, she grunted, desperate to bat them away. A quartet of her fellow crew mates noted her peril and ran to engage the spearmen, which left Zala alone with the single swordsman.
Her cheeks flushed with a tense heat. Her mind often wandered beyond the moment, despite Jelani’s constant reminders to keep her mind focused on the task at hand, lest she find herself run through with steel.
He’d told her the best way to defeat another swordsman was to identify his tells. She squinted, neck tense—though she knew it should’ve been loose—as she looked for an angle. Once she managed to catch the swordsman’s rhythm, she could guess his attacks.
There!
The soldier kept dropping his arm before striking, and he seemed to tap his foot before every lunge.
She let the man swing his sword over his shoulder in an arc, and then parried his blade when it fell. Zala tried to gain control and slip through the soldier’s guard, but he was too fast, always resetting before she could mount a proper counterattack. She grunted in frustration, spurring a second sequence.
She tagged the soldier once across his exposed hand, employing what she called the “touch and rip” approach. It took far less energy than a quick stab or a heavy cleave, but it only left her opponents with mild cuts—more annoying than lethal. They soon added up, though, and little injuries could quickly grow cumbersome in a life-and-death duel. Once she saw her opponents begin to falter was when Zala pressed her final assault.
Though her method was effective against most merchants and the light armor of novice mercenaries, it was almost entirely useless against the Vaaji soldier’s padded leather.
Each time she found an arm or a leg to drag against, her blade split nothing, scuffing the soldier’s leather at best. Worse, each strike taxed her smaller arms, her poor technique not helping in the least.
The soldier spun his sword beneath her guard, the sharp edge of his blade finding the underside of her wrist. He swiped the blade back, letting the edge sear through Zala’s skin like a deft-handed butcher against a pig’s throat. She dropped her sword and winced, biting the inside of her cheek so she wouldn’t cry out in pain.
Great. Now the dikala’s using my own moves against me.
Before the soldier could bring down his sword in another overhand swing, Zala took a step back to evade the strike. She ducked low to swipe up a loose piece of wood and threw it at the soldier’s face. Her throw did no real damage—it wasn’t meant to—but it gave her the split-second distraction she needed. The soldier hesitated, and before he could recenter, Zala seized him by his wrists.
She couldn’t hold the soldier; he was too strong for that. Instead, she dug her nails into his wrist, fighting the pain in her own as blood poured down onto the deck. She dove in with her teeth for good measure, biting at his bare skin. Two knees to the groin later and the soldier dropped his sword with a guttural cry.