Free The Orphans' Promise by Pierre Grimbert Page A

give. Having his blade in hand reminded him of the numerous combats in which he had used it. Little by little, a few ideas came to him. He settled on one and congratulated himself for choosing a lesson that would surely discourage Léti.
    He began in a serious tone, “Before anything else, you have to conquer your fear. Your fear of being wounded, of receiving blows to your face, your bones, your skin: damage that is most often irreparable. There are scratches, burns, bumps, but also deeper cuts, fractures, and tears. And there are worse wounds, you can be sure. One never leaves a combat unscathed. Never.”
    “I know. What else?”
    Léti had faced these same realities on Ji. She was still suffering from them. If the warrior was trying to impress or scare her, he had failed.
    “You don’t understand. I’m not trying to tell you that you may get hurt. I should hope you already knew that! I’m saying that if you’re afraid of that, if you fight to exhaustion to avoid a gash in your leg, you’ve already lost the battle. It’s that simple.”
    “So?”
    “So if you want to learn how to defend yourself—and I mean really defend yourself—you have to learn to keep the main goalin mind: to stay alive, and nothing else. Unless you want scars like mine, renounce this folly right now and let others worry about protecting you.”
    “Out of the question. Let’s do an exercise. You’ll see.”
    Léti caught him off guard. Grigán thought that such a tirade would have scared her, at least a little, but he was wrong. The young woman had something boiling inside her. He knew her sentiments only too well. He called it
the warrior’s rage
and knew how dangerous a feeling it was.
    Oh well, if she wanted to do an exercise, she would have one, he thought. A good lesson was precisely what they needed to set things straight.
    “All right,” he said while juggling his sword. “Attack me.”
    For the first time, Léti looked surprised. “Just like this? With what?”
    “With nothing. Me, I have the sword, and you, you have no fear.”
    The young woman felt disheartened. She had never imagined it would be like this. But that didn’t matter; if the warrior decided on an exercise, she would yield to his wishes.
    She tried to approach him from many different angles, but Grigán kept her a full blade-length away. She tried to surprise him with a rush, without any success. The warrior anticipated each one of her movements and protected himself behind his curved sword.
    Léti was forced into attempting even more reckless attacks, running at him without worrying about the sharp steel, which was after all the moral of the lesson. But Grigán would easily sidestep her attacks, hardly restraining his curses at her carelessness.
    Rey cheered her on, but there was no solution to this type of exercise. The warrior had simply wanted her to taste the bitterness of defeat, that’s all.
    Rage seized her. She had sworn to never back down. Sworn to be invulnerable.
    She faked another attempt, and was immediately foiled by the appearance of a steel point. Desperate, Léti grabbed the blade in a quick movement with her right hand.
    Grigán’s reflexes were fast enough to not pull the blade back, but Léti’s blood already stained the metal between her gashed fingers.
    The young woman reached out her free hand and slowly placed a finger on the paling warrior’s heart.
    “I won,” she proclaimed.
    Her voice trembled slightly.

     
    Corenn was hesitant to watch Léti’s lesson. She was curious—and nervous—about what was going to happen with Grigán and her niece, but at the same time didn’t want to encourage the young woman with her presence.
    In the end, Yan relieved her of the decision. All day the young man had attempted to complete the test, and, of course, had failed. When Léti, Grigán, and Rey left, he had asked the Mother if they could resume their
long conversation
. He had some more questions for her.
    Corenn happily welcomed