What-The-River-Knows
Lord Honce ducked under the low lintel as though the door itself had insulted him, and filled the small room with the smell of armor-oil and cold mountain air.
"They told me to begin with the weakest," he said, "so that my first victory of the province would be easy, and the rest would tremble." He looked at the bent old woman by her brazier and did not bother to hide his disappointment. "I expected at least a clever cripple. Stand and fight, grandmother, and I will be quick about it."
"Sit first," said Old Mei, "and have tea. No one fights well thirsty."
He laughed, but he sat, because the cushion was there and the long road was in his knees. She poured. He drank without thinking, the way powerful men accept small services, and only after the cup was empty did he notice that his thunderous mood had somehow drained out of him with the tea. He set the cup down, annoyed at himself, and stood.
"Enough. Defend yourself."
So Mei rose, and the bout that the province would tell of for a hundred years began.
Honce struck like an avalanche, all the gathered force of nine hundred victories behind his open palm — a blow that had shattered iron gates. And it met nothing. Mei was not where the blow was going. She had not dodged; dodging is still a kind of fighting, a decision made against the other. She had simply yielded the space, the way a curtain yields to wind, and his