Two of the men were vertical much before she was. She heard the noise herself just as they were yelling to raise the rest of the group. Adrianna didn’t have armor, weapons, anything with which to fight. Once she came to and the adrenaline began to kick in, the line of horses were already visible.
‘Armor...’ her first thought was for protection in the impending melee, but there wasn’t time. She scrambled on all fours to her belongings laying nearby. The thundering hooves drowned the shouting of her allies. The belt with her knives somehow got haphazardly thrown around her waist before she took hold of her real weapon and ripped the leather scabbard off in the nick of time.
She got her feet under her for all of two seconds before what was left of the cavalry charge came galloping past her and she was forced to the ground again, dodging serrated steel flying at her. Most of the riders had broken formation or been dismounted already. Gwynne had acquired infinite aggression somewhere and was already taking the fight to one of the flanks. Two of the men were engaging with the dismounted soldiers. The other flanking group was advancing on them from the treeline, weapons drawn. That would have to be her fight, but ten on one unless she got backup would be a hell of a fight.
“Keep your guard up this time. Don’t rush into attacking; wait for your opponent to make a mistake.”
Adi nodded and put up her jo staff. “Okay, go!”
Ear ringing cracks split the air with each strike, master and pupil methodically testing each other’s defense. A firm blow took the girl’s balance from her. The instructor jabbing behind her knee to quickly break her stance, but she rolled it off and caught herself with a free hand. “Don’t be afraid of the strike when blocking. Stand firm or else you may has well have taken the hit.”
“Okay okay... keep going.”
Her instructor obliged and gave a top-down swing on her head. She caught the strike just barely missing her fingers against her own weapon and forced it to the side. She saw the opening on his lower body and took a moment to double-check she had his staff pinned. Then she swung up towards the gap, but it was too late and he sidestepped her attack leaving her lunging forward. A gentle tap was planted on her backside, driving her to the ground with her own momentum. “You had a free strike on my gut. Why didn’t you take it immediately?”
“I di- I- ... ugh.” she grumbled and threw down her staff.
There she sat in the dirt, arms folded and looking quite cross as her lesson for the day came to an end. “You second-guessed your pin; it was already perfect. Trust your reflexes Adi; you’re better than you let yourself think.”
“Admit it, you went easy on me ...” she scoffed.
“You are only twelve, I kinda have to,” he quipped, “I want you to remember this: No hesitation. Don’t ever hold back on an opponent, because he will not hold back on you.”
One of the soldiers she stood opposite apparently fancied himself as a master of her own choice of weapon, twirling a bladed staff arrogantly on approach while his cohorts held a line behind him.
‘Oh .... bring it,’ she snarked in her head. She was once considered superior with staffs during her training. This would be her match to dictate. He wrongfully decided to lead with a thrust straight at her head. She leaned right and dug into his staff, blade first, throwing it off left. She went to swing the bladeless bottom half into his head but that was met with a quick block.
Her use of a blunt strike had broken his stance briefly, clearly an unexpected tactic. She smirked slightly having caught that lapse, and then threw another thrust herself, leading straight into a top-down blunt swing. The guardsman threw his own staff up over his head with both arms fully extended to stop her, but that was never her real move. She pulled the strike, tapping softly and immediately reversing her entire action, catching the underside of his weapon with her own and ripping it from his hands. She juggled the loose weapon to the ground a safe distance from the soldier, shifted her grip around, and gave a hard swing towards her target, blade first.
The guardsman scrambled to hold onto his staff as it was lofted away from him, his fixation shifting up just for a second ... in time for razor-sharpened steel to meet flesh. Adi felt almost no resistance in her weapon, promptly scanning the environment for other combatants that she would soon be facing, meanwhile shortening up her grip on the now crimson-stained blade. She turned back to the still-standing figure of her foe for a split second, as is severed head tumbled pathetically from his bloodstained shoulders.
‘Holy shit, that was ... humans are fragile ...’ she stuttered for a moment ... and then caught a sword closing on her face from the right in her peripheral. In an instant she was in a duel once again, and a second later that duel was turning into a three on one.
