When they both had their armor in place and the face shields of their helmets lowered, they took up opposing positions in the middle of the gymnasium floor. Falk nodded at her, and Solveig returned the gesture.
“Sensei, begin scoring,” he told the gymnasium’s AI. “First to three strikes, lethal strike ends the fight.”
“First to three strikes wins, lethal strike wins instantly,” the AI confirmed. “You may begin.”
Falk launched into his first attack as soon as the buzzer sounded. He struck from the low guard position, the same left-right, right-left combination he had used at the end of his kata. Solveig parried both in quick succession, her blade so fast that it was merely a blur in the air between them, and the sound of steel clashing on steel rang through the gymnasium. He finished with the centerline strike, and she sidestepped it, then lashed out with her sword and lanced the tip of her blade along the side of Falk’s right arm. Without the armor, she would have sliced him open from wrist to elbow, but the armor merely marked the hit visually. An angry-looking pulsating red line appeared in the spot where the tip of her sword had touched the white fabric of the armor.
“Point,” the AI said. “Nonlethal strike. Miss Solveig leads, one to nothing.”
They returned to their guard positions. Falk changed his grip and shifted into a high guard, the sword curving down in front of him, shielding his other arm.
“I almost forgot how quick you are,” he said. Solveig thought she could detect admiration in his voice.
“I’m just glad I used the right end,” she replied.
She feigned a swipe at the arm she had just struck, and he pulled back and deflected like she knew he would. She let him tap her blade downward, then used the momentum for a straight thrust at his chest. He spun away, but only barely, the tip of her sword missing his armor by the barest fraction of a millimeter. The shifting of his hands on the hilt of his sword alerted her to his next strike, a horizontal sweep at shoulder height. She ducked underneath the slicing blade, then rolled backward and came back up in a guard position. He pressed the attack, this time less predictably than his preferred kata combination, and his blade tagged her on the thigh on the finishing downstroke.
“Point. Nonlethal strike. The score is one to one.”
“Now we’d both be bleeding all over the floor,” Falk said with a satisfied smile. Solveig looked at the spot where his blade would have cut deeply into her thigh. The armor’s AI dutifully marked the potential wound in bright red that started pulsating like a heartbeat. In a real fight, she’d be hobbled now, but if her hit on his arm had been real, he’d have no use of his main sword arm. The fight would be a stalemate, with his offense and her mobility both neutralized, neither being able to strike the other decisively. They would have wounded each other grievously with no outcome, no clear victory to claim for their sacrifice, both worse off than before.
Solveig knew that she’d be able to wear him down now, that the fire of his competitive spirit was only truly coming alive with the first point he had scored. He would get confident, and that would make him overly rash and hasty. But she also knew that if she beat him by points, he’d insist on a rematch until she conceded one, and if she beat him with a lethal strike, he’d be in a dark mood for the rest of the week. So when he crossed steel with her again on the next exchange, she invited a diagonal strike by lowering her stance into an imperfect guard just a little. He took the opening and let her goad him into committing to the strike. When it came, she tried to block it with her own blade, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to arrest his momentum. His blade crashed into hers, driving it against the side of her neck and shoulder, and he used his energy advantage to slide his sword down the edge of her blade until it made contact with her neck. The buzzer sounded.
“Lethal strike. The fight ends. Master Ragnar wins.”
They both looked at each other, panting with the exertion of their exchange, even though the whole fight had taken less than a minute. Then Falk flashed his toothy grin and sheathed his sword.
“Not bad at all, for someone who’s out of practice. I would have bet money that you wouldn’t score at all. Come on, let’s get cleaned up and meet in the kitchen for breakfast. I have something to ask of you.”
Falk was sitting at the kitchen table already when she got there twenty minutes later. He was wearing an all-black outfit, a flattering buttonless tunic with a high collar and sleeves that ended just below the elbows. There was a news stream playing on a screen projection, and when he saw her walking through the entry archway, he waved at the screen to turn off the sound.
“I’m trying some of your tea,” he said and lifted his mug to show her. “Hope you
