The Vampire & Her Witch

When Liam brought him the lance, Reynold took it smoothly, just as he’d done a thousand times before. He settled it under his arm, carefully feeling the pull of the lance on his wrist, elbow, and shoulder as he brought the weapon into position.

There was something that few people watching a pair of knights tilting at each other rarely understood. A lance was not a sword. A sword was an extension of the hand, and it went where the hand went. A lance was twelve feet of shaped ash wood with all its weight out past the grip, and the hand that gripped the lance didn’t move it so much as it permitted it to move.

Worse, every twitch a man made at the butt of the lance was multiplied out to the point. Shifting his grip or raising his arm by an inch could swing the point of the lance by as much as a foot. That meant that a shiver, a flinch, a hard breath, or a tremble in his saddle- any of it could be the difference between a clean strike and a lance skating off a rim of his opponent’s shield and levering back into his own ribs.

”Whenever you’re ready, Lord Reynold,” Thane said, in a blandly patient tone that made it clear he’d caught the younger man dawdling.

The target stood at the far end of the list with the dented shield on the long arm and the sandbag hanging from the short one. The whole thing rested on a swivel that had been recently cleaned and greased by somebody who clearly cared about their work more than Owain Lothian had ever cared for training with the target.

Reynold brought Star Chaser around, putting the horse into a steady canter as he let the world narrow. It was easier when he was wearing a helm. The padded arming cap and coif of mail dulled the sounds of the world while the narrow visor blocked out everything but the most important things directly in front of him.

But easier didn’t mean he relied on the fancy tournament armor to tilt the way his brother did. Unlike Rain, Reynold had spent much of his time with a lance on the open field, riding against the raiders from the Southern Steppe.

The focus he’d cultivated then, soft around the edges and alert to any threats while narrowing his vision to the point of his lance and the target it tracked, came to him as easily as breathing as he and Star Chaser thundered down the length of the list.

Don’t aim the lance.

That was the first thing his father had ever told him about it, back when Tybal still rode, and it was one of the few pieces of his father’s instruction that Reynold had never needed to unlearn. You do not aim a lance. You cannot. The tip drew a slow figure in the air with every stride his horse took, up as he gathered and down as he landed, and no arm alive is quick enough to correct that.

So Reynold didn’t correct it. He aimed Star Chaser at the target rather than aiming the lance, trusting his partner’s rhythm to bring horse, rider, lance and target into alignment at the moment he wanted to arrive. His job was to set the pace and the rhythm for Star Chaser, making the slightest adjustments as they charged until the tip of the lance seemed like it floated directly in line with the target half a length before impact.

-CRACK!-

The shield took it square on the chalk where Thane had marked it, and the whole arm went round hard, and the sandbag came whistling past behind his shoulder with a good foot to spare.

”Good,” Thane said, appearing beside the spinning target in the blink of an eye. He quickly wiped away the chalk mark he’d set and then marked the shield again, this time in a different spot, just to the left of center and slightly low.

”Again,” Thane said once Reynold had come around. ”I’ve moved the mark; pay attention and don’t miss.”

Reynold hit it eleven more times before anything went wrong.

Thane chalked a new spot after every pass and never once told him where it would be: low left, high right, a hand’s breadth off the center, tight against the rim where a strike had to be perfectly flat, or the point would slide. Reynold had to find it, judge it, choose his moment in the stride, deliver his blow, and get past the target before the sandbag swung around and hit him from behind.

If he and Star Chaser hesitated or slowed, the sandbag would teach Reynold a painful lesson about the importance of commitment.

On the twelfth pass, the mark was low and hard against the rim, and Reynold got there a fraction late in the stride, and the point came in a finger’s width high and skated across the target instead of striking it cleanly.

The lance kicked back, and the butt drove back under his arm, nearly knocking him from the saddle. Reynold shifted instantly, pulling Star Chaser back into a collected canter, but while he adjusted his balance in his seat, the sandbag came swinging around at an awkward angle the young lord wasn’t braced against.

It caught him across the shoulder blade with a flat, meaty thump that drove the air out of him.

”Two tails says he gets hit again before the hour’s out,” Virve said from the bench nearby.

”Silver or gold?” Liam asked, deliberately speaking loudly enough that Reynold could hear him.

”What do you take your teacher for?” Virve snorted. ”Some kind of lazy lord of sheepherders? My silver’s precious enough; don’t try to fleece me for gold you know I don’t have.”

”We can wager snips then, if the silver’s too much,” Liam said with a wide smile. ”I think Lord Reynold is going to give us plenty of chances for you to win back anything you lose.”

”Pfft,” Virve snorted. ”I’m an honest soldier, sheepherder, but I’m not destitute. Two tails of silver and I’ll take pity on my apprentice and let him wager Gaal’s pennies, even though they’re lighter by a half,” she said, placing a pair of silver coins shaped like coiled serpents’ tails on the bench between herself and Liam.

”Done,” Liam said, grinning broadly at Reynold as he placed his own coins on the bench. ”I’m counting on you, Lord Reynold! Don’t you dare make a pauper out of me. I’m counting on you!”