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danger of catching a stray swordstroke stepped back out of the way.
Fern didn't move.
"Fern, get back, you'll be hurt!" Antonia shrieked. Then she snapped, "And no, I don't see any beauty in
a sword. It's but a weapon. If you're a man you use it to kill someone for some foolish reason or another,
or to show off, and if you're a woman you use it because you have to, to defend yourself. Now Fern,
please, get back!"
But Fern hadn't stepped back. She'd stood there, swaying to some unheard rhythm of which only she
and the swordsmen were aware. It wasn't until Fern suddenly realized that she had become as much a
part of the show as the fighters that she had reacted to Antonia's entreaties by looking around.
Not only had the crowd been watching to see if Fern would move out of harm's way, but the two
soldiers had begun playing their act to this tall, budding young woman who gazed at them so intensely.
When Fern had blushed and finally stepped back the two men had abruptly stopped their sparring and
sheathed their swords. Then, each draping an arm over the other's shoulders, they had turned towards
her, chuckling.
"Fern," Antonia had whispered desperately, tugging at her friend's arm, "they're coming over here. Let's
hurry away!"
Fern had hesitated, torn between a desire to learn more about these men's sword skills and the wish to
avoid any further embarrassment for both herself and her friend. The decision was out of her hands,
though, for when she had glanced over her shoulder she saw that the crowd had not yet dispersed
enough for them to make a quick getaway.
"Shhh," Fern had hissed. "We'll have to make the best of it. Anyway, they're not bad looking better
than the boys our age you go on about."
"Hallo there, girls," one of the approaching men had called out. "'Tisn't polite to stare, you know."
"Pardon us, sir," Fern had replied, essaying a quick curtsey. "I was, perhaps, too fascinated with your
skill with a blade to remember my manners."
The man who had spoken had grinned at her. "Well, in that case, we'll forgive you. My name's Ridley,
and this sorry gent is Willem," he had said, indicating his comrade. "We're just passing through on our
way home from Lord Balarin's war, but we'd be pleased if we might share your company for a bit."
"Sir!" Fern had drawn herself up to her full height and, with much more confidence than she felt in the
situation, had replied firmly, "You are strangers to us and we're far too young to consort with men your
age!"
"Our age!" Ridley had laughed. "Such fossils are we, eh, Willem? All right, then. But I saw how you
watched us earlier would you have a lesson in the sword, perhaps?"
Fern had caught her breath. She knew she should be wary should just go home, should keep safe. But
to learn the art of the blade! To feel for herself the flow and power of sword and body working together
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that she had so admired earlier! Fern had not been able to bring herself to pass up such a chance.
That first lesson, there in the street, with a bemused Willem and a horrified Antonia looking on, had
merely whet her appetite. As an older and wiser Fern looked back now on the more private lessons that
had followed, oh, so long ago, it was all too obvious just how right she had been to be wary. The
soldier's motive for the offer had hardly been altruistic.
"Sly bastard," Fern mused to her horse. "He just wanted to teach me the use of his own 'little sword.'
And what better excuse to wrap his arms around me than to guide my hands on a blade?" She shook her
fist at the empty woods around her, "But, by the gods, I took to both skills like a fish to water, didn't I?
Ha! There's a flow and beauty in each of them, eh?" Fern allowed herself a tight-lipped smile at the
thought.
The mastery of the sword had started as simply a personal challenge, she remembered. Her smile
widened then vanished. "I should have made disembowelling that soldier a 'personal challenge,' " she
told her mount, "to use me so and then go on his merry way!"
She hadn't, though. That wouldn't have been ladylike, and back then she had cared, at least a little,
about what the neighbors thought of her behavior. She'd kept her sexual escapades to herself, and as for
her fascination with the sword& ? Again her thoughts went back.
"Honestly, Antonia, how many times have I told you I have no desire to make trouble or spill anyone's
blood?" They were out in back of the barn where Antonia, sick of Fern's fruitless efforts to turn her into a
half-decent sparring partner, had thrown down her wooden practice sword in disgust and launched into
another lecture about how Fern was going to be sorry about all this nonsense.
"I do it for the love of it," Fern insisted. "It's not as if I want to make a career out of swordfighting and
run off to be a soldier! It's just a frivolous hobby I indulge in after all my chores are done. I want to marry
someone nice, settle down, have children, just as you do. You know that."
"I still don't understand," Antonia sighed as she bent to pick up the discarded sword, "why you think all
this dangerous, sweaty work is something to do for fun. But if I'm going to be your best friend I guess I'd
better help, and try to protect you from yourself!"
"Think of it as exercise, and a way to work off foul tempers." Fern smiled. "Now again, like this& "
At the time, it had indeed been marriage and children Fern had wanted for a career. "I hadn't the
backbone to be a professional fighter back then anyway," she explained to her ever-silent mount. "If I
had, I'd have never let myself be bullied into marriage by that morose cobbler!"
The stallions only response to Ferns words was to twitch his ear, dislodging a fly.
She had never really loved Durgan, although she had convinced herself that she did; she wasn't sure
she'd evenlikedhim very much. He had been insistent, though, and her parents had thought it was a
decent match. She had finally given in and married him.
At the wedding Durgan and his friends were all drunk, shouting at one another about nothing and
virtually ignoring her. She still remembered sitting there in her best gown, wondering what she had gotten
herself into. She had looked across the room and noticed the village smith, a young man named Jacob
who was the only sober male in the place, staring at her. She had forced herself to smile brightly at him
when what she had really wanted to do was to stand up and call the whole thing off.
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Jacob had walked out a moment later, apparently as disgusted by Durgan and his friends as Fern had
been. She really wished that she, too, had walked out. But defying her family, telling Durgan to go to hell,
finding herself work she hadn't been capable ofanyof that back then. And she had been downright
embarrassed about her love of swordsmanship. She had gone on practicing in secret with a few trusted
friends she had found who could wield a sword better than dear, now-married Antonia; she had never
mentioned it to her husband, and had only practiced when he worked elsewhere.
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