Pusktakawan and Vevie travelled for several days, sometimes stopping to stay a night with a lone family that had left their tribes to go hunting. Some days, they saw nobody else out in the wilderness, only having each other for company. They ran out of things to talk about and began to get used to each other's company, seldom even having to talk, as the other understood the silent gestures.
Pustakawan noticed every morning that his pack was a little lighter, while Vevie's filled up. He didn't say much, except to invite her to spar with him in order to keep in practice. He hadn't expected her to surprise him over and over. Even with her injuries, he started to notice that she had the edge in speed and strength on him. Feeling that he would fall behind if he didn't start to step up his own game, he began getting up earlier or staying up later to practice in the semi dark. His pride in his ability wouldn't allow him slack and over time, their evening sparring sessions became quite competitive.
"You gave yourself a handicap yesterday," Vevie hefted the knife in her hand. "Today it should be my turn. I'm all healed up now, so you need not be so easy on me."
"Since when have I been going easy on you?" Pustakawan twitched his nose and pulled out his spare knife. "We'll make things fair today."
"Knife fighting it is," Vevie twirled her knife and grinned, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
"When we get the chance," Pustakawan said, "we should take on an odd job or two. Earn some money and buy you a good sword. You're more of a sword fighter, right?"
"Yes," Vevie eyed Pustakawan while he circled with her on the patch of dirt they had chosen to be their training ground this evening, "but I was trained in multiple weapons. The sword might be my preference, but I'm not bad with a polearm or mace."
"Not to mention knife and bow," Pustakawan nodded, glancing over at where they had dropped their bags by the fire where their dinner was cooking. Vevie took this opportunity to attack and their knives clashed once, twice, thrice. Pustakawan attempted to hook her dancing feet to trip her up, but was nearly done in himself when she turned his own momentum against him. He only just fended off her next jabbing attack by dropping and rolling, coming straight back onto his feet to deal with her next attack.
"Sloppy," Vevie said.
"No need for you to mention it," Pustakawan snorted. "I haven't practiced like this for years."
"Aren't you Librarians supposed to be elites?" Vevie teased.
"Shut up," Pustakawan snapped. "I'm just not at the top of my game after all the travelling I've been doing."
"You'd think all the travel and exposure to different fighting styles would have blown any rust off you better than it has," Vevie laughed, poking at all the holes in his defences. "No wonder you're out here travelling rather than staying at the Great Purplestickeron where you won't hear the jeering."
"Perpustakaan," Pustakawan corrected, changing his stance. "You've grown a bit of rust yourself," Pustakawan switched from defence to offence and started poking holes in Vevie's defences, managing to break through a few time by taking advantage of his greater muscle power. While he wasn't as fast and wasn't as consistent as the warrior princess, and while even his general strength seemed to be even with her, he had greater explosive power, while she had better endurance.
"Now, that's more like it," Vevie cheered, lowering her stance and driving harder, turning the intensity up. "Don't hold back anymore. It's demeaning. I'm as good as any man. Especially a self-declared elitist fighter."
"I never said I was an elite fighter," Pustakawan panted, feeling the force of Vevie's strikes jarring his hands.
"Your title does," Vevie sliced upward and slipped away from Pustakawan's blade to jab back down, only for his blade to meet hers.
"Fine," Pustakawan huffed, trying to leverage the knife out of Vevie's hand with his next parry only to discover she'd been waiting for him and only just managed to keep a hold of his knife by dropping it down into his other hand. He shook his right hand out. "What sort of blade do you think you want?"
"If we can, I'd like to get a Tillian Wave Blue or even a Purple Star," Vevie said, while jumping back and then leaping forward to meet Pustakawan's next attack, only to slip to one side at the next moment.
"You have good, but expensive taste," Pustakawan managed to skip aside at the last moment, narrowly missing being kicked in the backside.
"Barring those, I'd rather make my own," Vevie shook her head at the missed chance and slid under Pustakawan's uppercut to throw him.
"You in a smithy?" Putakawan rolled from the throw and avoided her downward slashing and striking attacks by rolling in different directions, before he managed to trap one of her legs with his, using some wrestling skill to bring her down.
"All blade users in Velor start learning their skills from the smiths."
"I see," Pustakawan said, clashing blades with Vevie and trying to use his larger size to leverage Vevie down. "I forgot about that."
"How could you forget?" Vevie asked and broke contact only to hammer an elbow into his back. "You're one of the famous Librarians. You aren't supposed to forget anything."
"Haven't you noticed that I'm an oddity in that aspect yet?" Pustakawan grunted, returning the bruise by using a fancy move to distract her, before he managed to flip the knife out of her hand. He mistimed and missed catching the blade. "What else are all the books we write for then, if not for recording things so our brains have more space to gain new information?"
Both looked at where the blade fell and their eyes met for a moment. Pustakawan threw his blade aside when Vevie charged at him and went to full hand and foot combat. From then on, they had no more breath to talk until they smelt their dinner starting to burn.
"Stop. Dinner's burning," Pustakawan held a hand up, flipping Vevie over his hip, only for her to pull him down with her fall and then throw him over herself, but planting her feet in his lower abdomen. "Aargh," Pustakawan held his sensitive spot between his legs.
"I win," Vevie grinned at him, fluidly rolling back onto her feet and going over to check their meal, while he rolled around in pain.
"Dirty," Pustakawan said through gritted teeth. "That's dirty fighting."
"There's no such thing as dirty fighting in a battle," Vevie scoffed. "Either you live or you die. You take every advantage offered you."
"I didn't offer."
"Nope. I took advantage of you," Vevie laughed, pulling the pot off the fire, using a bundled rag.
"What if I can't have children in the future?" Pustakawan curled into a ball.
"Who would ever want to have children with you?"
"You're so harsh," Pustakawan cried.
"I didn't hit you hard enough to squash your balls, so you'll be right."
"Right," Pustakawan snorted in between breaths. "That's what you think. Do you know how much it hurts?"
"Probably about as much as having a man in metal armour kick me in my lady parts with his pointy steel capped toes while his friends held me down?"
"All right," Pustakawan grimaced. "I'll concede. You likely do understand my pain. Your father allows that sort of activity in the army?"
"No, but the son of one of the ministers that does not like him took a chance while the army was out fighting raiders," Vevie scooped out bowls of stew and scraped the blackened tubers out of the coals with a stick.
"What did you do to him later?"
"I didn't do anything. Another general saw what happened and made him a eunuch. He was serving in the castle as a nightsoil man before my idiot brother offended Engar."