What sets your hero or heroine apart from the ordinary? Share an excerpt in the comments! Here’s an excerpt from To Mend a Proper Lady, which is due to be published the month after next. My hero is admiring the skill of his beloved and her best friend.
“Join me,” Ruth suggested. “A little sword work will soon loosen your muscles.”
Val hoped he was successful in hiding the anguish twisting his gut, but he didn’t attempt to speak; just held up the arm that ended at the wrist.
“That?” Ruth waved away his maiming as if it was a trivial detail. “You can hold a sword in the other hand, can you not?”
Nettled, he followed her into the room. She had had it cleared of furniture, apart from a table against one wall. On it, a number of edged weapons lay—foils, sabres, swords both curiously curved and straight, and daggers of various lengths.
Val was torn between admiration for their quality and nausea at the thought of displaying his incompetence. “I have never fought with my left hand,” he commented.
Ruth was picking weapons up and then putting them down again. “We are not going to fight.” She handed him a large sword. “Here, this looks to be about your size. The weapons act as a weight to force your muscles to work harder. And, of course, the practice steps I use are useful in an actual fight, training the body to particular movements. Like the exercises that we teach our horses. They ensure the fitness of the horse and rider, but also can be used in battle.”
Bemused, Val took the sabre and performed a couple of practice swipes. It felt heavy and ungainly, and he missed his former skill with a deep ache.
Zyba entered the room. Dressed like her friend, she held one of the curving swords in one hand and a long dagger in the other. A slight widening of the eyes was her only reaction to Val’s presence. She inclined her head in a graceful greeting. “Princess, Lord Ashbury.”
“Val is joining us today, Zyba. Val, why not stand in front of me so you can copy what I do.”
Val was slow, that first day. The two women took him through a series of movements of body and sword that left his muscles trembling, and then suggested he rest. He watched, awed, as they moved into a sequence as fluid as a dance, one facing the other, on opposite sides of the room as they continued to honour the quarantine.
They started slow, but the graceful movements of feet and arms sped up gradually, until they were moving with blinding speed, each swing of a weapon enough to eviscerate anyone unfortunate enough to be in reach.
They took it in turns to call out, at frequent intervals, a single word he didn’t know, but whose meaning he guessed at something like ‘swap’ or ‘change’. “Caly,” the one whose turn it was would shout, tossing both sword and dagger in the air and snatching them back again, but with the opposite hands. The game seemed to be for the other dancer—for it was a dance, though without music, fluid and beautiful—to react so quickly that the two sets of weapons rose and fell in unison.
Val could not tell whether his deepest yearning was for the skill they showed, the hand whose loss had robbed him of his own skill, or Ruth, whose movements mesmerised him. Sore though he would be once his muscles caught up with the strain he’d put them under, he would be here tomorrow, too, if they allowed him. Even if his reasons for that were as confused as his desires.
This. Book. Is. Amazing.
Glowing with pleasure. Folks, Caroline read the beta version of the book. I hope to have it published in March.
Very nice, the unexpected shattering stereotypes will help with their differing backgrounds. That competence seems strange for the location or era, often enough. Setting it up so the readers feel the competence is earned and not coming from nowhere (like Mary Sues or Reys) is so very important. You need either evidence of past training montages like here, or see the learning fumbles like karate kid. Many of my tales, the learning started over a decade before the present skill maturity, though one tale had the sweat and embarrassment during the learning.
(In sci fi and fantasy settings, there’s not necessarily gender expectations for using a blaster or lightsaber so weapon skill isn’t as notable and I don’t have any short excerpts like this as it took the course of a dozen chapters to gain basic competence as a major plot point)
And enabling better self defense secretly is never bad. it’s always fun to write BAMF scenes when an opponent expected cowering victim and gets tiger… as long as it is payoff for the learning stages.
Absolutely, Marie. I realised when I chose this excerpt that I missed a trick when I didn’t have her and Val make use of these exercises in combat at the end, when she and Val’s daughter are kidnapped, Val shows up just after she escapes, and there is a fight.
But it is still in beta. I can fix.
Writing combat can be hard, good luck with that. I usually stall even when I like the drama and angst around combat.
I know. That’s why I took the lazy way out and had my heroine watch from the sidelines. But unlikely, I think.