One Good Knight by Mercedes Lackey

Author:Mercedes Lackey
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf

The Princess and her rescuer were staring at a dragon scale in the middle of the road.

“It can’t be the same one?” she asked doubtfully. “Can it?”

He got down off his horse and walked all around it, carefully not touching it, then drew his sword and, with the tip, turned it over. “It’s the same,” he said with some satisfaction. “There’s a chip here, and a crack running from it that passes across these growth bars—” he used the sword-tip as a pointer “—that I made note of. So, we have a benefactor who is marking our way for us, or a villain who is leading us into a trap.”

She blinked. “How can you be so calm about this?” she asked, finally.

“Is it going to make any difference either way if I’m prepared for both possibilities?” he countered. “No. If it is a benefactor who intends to lead us to the beast so that we can dispatch it, I’ll be prepared for a cautious approach. If it is a trap, I will be prepared for ambush once we are into territory where so large a beast can ambush us.” He looked around at the dense trees and foliage. “This is not the place. So for now we can simply be ready for more ordinary perils.”

“As ordinary as they get in Wyrding Lands,” she muttered. He must have heard it, though, because he smiled.

“Believe me, I have often been in places with a high population of creatures that weren’t human. They’re either evil, or they’re not. If they’re not, they either dislike or avoid humans, or like them. It’s just a matter of watching for signs and being ready to act on what you learn.” He mounted his horse and touched it with his heels. It moved off, Andromeda’s mule following. “Really, this is just another aspect of learning to fight. You have to be prepared for every move that your adversary could make, and have a counter ready in advance for it. A fight is not like—like a dance. A dance follows a pattern. A fight creates a pattern that you can see only after it is over. In a fight, or in planning strategy in advance, it doesn’t help to get agitated. You have to be calm enough to anticipate most moves, and you have to be trained enough to be able to make counters without having to think about them first.”

That just made her dizzy to think about, and certainly didn’t match what she had always thought warriors did. They just hit things, and tried not to get hit. Oh, there was training involved, of course, but it had all seemed quite random to her.

Then again, she had never actually watched training in progress. All of that was kept quite out of the way of a Princess, even one known to escape from her confinement from time to time.

Actually—she’d never seen a real fight until she saw the Champion fighting the dragon.

“How long does it take to learn

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