Читать книгу Red Sister онлайн | страница 73

‘Enough.’ Another of those claps that hurt the ears. ‘Nona, our ring-fighter from the Caltess …’ The novices laughed at the joke. ‘It’s your turn. Ghena? Are you ready?’

Nona turned to face Ghena and found her already in the fighting stance, eyes narrow with concentration, no smile, no snarl. The girl was perhaps an inch taller than her, making them the two smallest in the class. Her dark limbs were nearly as lean as Nona’s, every part of them muscle and bone.

The common sense behind the blade-stance was obvious: it presented a smaller area for attack while keeping a wide, stable base. Nona stood as she always stood though. She would learn and use the blade methods but it felt foolish to ape the stance immediately and face her first fight in a position she wasn’t used to.

‘Ready?’ Ghena asked. She hadn’t taken the advantage of surprise like Jula had, but looking at her Nona knew pride lay behind the restraint, not kindness. Ghena wanted to own her victory whole.

Nona gave a slight nod and Ghena snapped a punch at her, a straight jab, not Arabella’s clumsy swing announced by her whole body before she even started. This came sudden and direct. Nona blocked the fist with both hands, palms crossed before her face. The smack of flesh on flesh echoed in the space of the hall and the impact hurt far more than Nona had imagined.

She lowered her hands to see a look of surprise on Ghena’s face.

‘You’re fast.’ Ghena tilted her neck left, then right, stretching.

Without warning the novice launched a flurry of punches, advancing a step with each, a furious attack with no quarter granted. Nona let the world slow around her, the split seconds crystallizing into that clarity she had always been able to call upon. She stepped back, swaying out of the path of one punch, knocking the next aside so it passed within a hair’s breadth of her cheek. Ghena was quick. Very quick. Hunska-fast. Nona pushed aside another punch, another, sidestepped a third. Ghena’s mask cracked and her fury showed. Anger made her blows more wild but only seemed to increase her speed. Nona found herself having to work harder, saving herself only by the narrowest of margins. She gritted her teeth and dug deeper into the moment until her brain buzzed inside her skull like a trapped bee and even Ghena’s whip-crack blows became lazy things that she could step around.