Predslava

History

Predslava was taught by the river, not by a weapon.

The boats at Zarub were not theirs. The two large ferries across the Dnipro belonged to a monastery yard, and the men who rowed them were hired hands paid for each crossing; Predslava's father spent his whole life working on boats he did not own. In the warm season there was work almost every day; in winter they mended boats, tackle and oars and helped merchants prepare their carts for the road. Her two elder brothers stayed on those same boats; the youngest went early into the town watch — the pay was less, but it came every month.

Predslava worked alongside everyone else, and she was given the jobs that demanded endurance: she could keep going for hours at work that made the others ask to be relieved. She kept her balance well, learned to handle an oar quickly, and could stand for hours in the water or on a rocking deck bringing a heavy boat in to the bank.

What her father taught her was not strength. The job was to feel where the weight would go. When to let the rope run. When to take a step aside. When not to fight the current head-on but let it turn the boat the right way itself. Predslava said later that she learned everything important about fighting on the river: force almost never arrives exactly where you expect it, and there is no need whatever to stop it with force of your own.

When she was nineteen a small band of Tati came to the crossing: they knew merchant carts were to be taken over the river that day and tried to seize the people on the bank. There was no real watch nearby. Predslava snatched up her younger brother's round shield, which he had left at home after a night on duty.

She barely knew how to use it. The first blow nearly tore it out of her hands. The second she took better. On the third she tried not to stop her opponent's weapon but to turn the shield so the blow slid off to the side — and it worked. She did not know then what exactly she had done right. She only remembered the feeling.

The attackers were eventually driven off by the men from the caravan. Predslava took a cut to the shoulder, but nobody in her family died that day. After that her younger brother began teaching her more seriously: he was a mediocre teacher and a worse fighter, but he knew men who understood more than he did.

She learned in an unusual way. The others wanted to learn to strike harder; Predslava wanted to understand how to stop a blow from landing where it was aimed. She asked how an opponent shifts his weight before a swing, which foot a man almost always steps with first, when to present the face of the shield and when the rim, how far she could move without uncovering whoever stood behind her. One of the senior watchmen told her once that she thought too much about not being hit. Predslava answered that she saw no fault in that.

She tried wearing armour and hated it almost at once. Even light gear changed what she had grown most used to: the distance she could shift her body, the ease of a short step, the sense of her own weight. Worse was something else — in armour she began allowing herself mistakes. A blow she would have tried to avoid without it suddenly seemed acceptable. A step she would once have taken immediately, she put off by a moment. Predslava understood quickly that she wanted to build her defence not around the ability to survive a blow but around the ability to keep it from landing properly. No armour ever appeared in her kit.

Instead, the shields grew larger until she settled on a heavy shield. What she pays for that is something she does not miss: from behind it, pressing back is harder. For anyone who comes into the line to win fights, that is a bad bargain. Predslava does not come to win. A large shield does not have to be hauled in front of you like a wall — it can be turned, presented edge-on, opened on one side and closed on the other in the same motion, used to make an opponent strike where the blow would achieve nothing. By degrees Predslava learned to move with it as though it were not a separate object but part of her body. She never tries to take a blow dead centre: if an opponent strikes hard, so much the better, because a hard blow is harder to stop and far easier to send past.

That is what she became genuinely good at. Predslava herself is no tougher than anyone else. Simply fewer blows reach her body. A sword slides off the shield. A spear passes half a palm to the side. An axe bites the rim instead of the shoulder. An opponent has already begun his swing and only then understands that she has shifted slightly from where she stood a moment ago. To an outsider it sometimes looks like luck. Predslava does not argue; she does not care what it is called.

The scramasax came much later. A long sword needed too much room beside a large shield, and swinging an axe made her open up too far. Predslava did not need a weapon she could win quickly with. She needed one that did not get in the way of the main work.

She does not try to end a fight quickly either. It is enough for her that the opponent stays in front of her. If he is fighting her, he is not fighting somebody else. The worst thing for Predslava is not a heavy blow but an enemy she has stopped seeing.

So she stands still less often than it seems. A step aside, two forward, a quick shift to the other edge of the fight — Predslava keeps rebuilding the fight so that the danger ends up in front of the shield again. Where a heavier fighter would have to choose between cover and movement, she simply changes position.

Predslava is at her best not where there is nowhere to fall back to, but where a few steps can cover the approach that matters: by a gate, between buildings, at the edge of a line, beside a comrade someone is trying to get round. Two enemies in front of her she can still hold. One behind her back is more dangerous than both.

Some years after the attack on the crossing Predslava went into the town watch: she stood at the gates, escorted toll collections, went with small parties along the river, and several times took part in running down Tati.

It was in the watch that she first lost someone she considered her responsibility. A small party was chasing two runaways through abandoned steadings near the bank. Predslava left a young watchman to cover a narrow passage between two buildings and went forward with the others. She was certain he was safe there. When they came back the lad was dead: a third attacker nobody had noticed had come in from the yard behind.

Predslava turned that situation over in her head many times. She should have stayed with him. She should have checked the yard. She should have put two men there. She should have stood in the passage herself. Every time she found a new answer, and none of them changed anything.

Since then she cannot bear a situation in which she cannot see the whole fight. In a fight Predslava is constantly looking back: it matters to her to know both who is standing behind her and who could get there. The heavy shield works wonderfully against the one she can see. The one who has got round her has almost nothing left between himself and Predslava.

Because of this she rarely ties herself to one spot on the field. If the edge of the line has sagged, she shifts there. If the opponent starts working round her, she turns the fight to follow him. If a comrade has been left open, she tries to stand so that the threat comes from the front again. For Predslava, protecting someone does not mean standing motionless in front of him but being between him and the danger in time.

At the same time she does not let herself chase every threat either. Go after one opponent and you can open the way to another. So her fight almost always comes down to one and the same choice: which threat she must block now, and which will have to be left to somebody else.

She took up throwing axes because of the men who try to draw her out of a good position. An enemy falls back a few paces, leaves an inviting approach behind him, and waits for her to follow. Predslava has learned to recognise that invitation. Now she can answer with a throw while staying by the passage or at the edge of the line. Putting her shield aside for a moment comes easier than trusting somebody else with the place she has taken it upon herself to guard.

She stayed in the watch some years more, and in time moved to caravan guarding and short contracts along the Dnipro: the pay was better and the work was the same — to stand between danger and the people who had paid for it.

Liubava put that contradiction most exactly, in the few fights they stood in the same line. Liubava needs room: one more step, one more position, one more chance to see what happens. Predslava needs room for a different reason — to cover the approach that is about to become dangerous in time. One looks for the chance not to be where she is expected. The other, for the chance to be exactly there in time. They never convinced each other, but Predslava remembers Liubava's line: if there is genuinely nowhere to fall back to, somebody made a mistake earlier. She cannot agree with it. She cannot forget it either.

She and Ratybor have the same fault from opposite sides. Both take on responsibility nobody gave them. The difference is that he looks for an order to lean on while doing it, and Predslava looks for nobody's — which is exactly why there is nobody she can blame for a single one of her mistakes.

Away from battle she is patient and sparing with words. She is good with her hands and knows ropes, knots and boats; if camp stands near water she is almost always the first to check the bank. She likes order but not tidiness for its own sake: things may be old, scratched and ugly, so long as they work. This goes double for the shield — Predslava can go hours without noticing a hole in her sleeve, but a damaged shield strap she fixes at once. She treats people just as practically, and values the ones who do what they said they would far above any title.

That tendency to take on other people's burdens defines her. If somebody near her is wounded, Predslava begins almost automatically to think what she could have done differently. If a plan has failed, she looks for her own mistake first and someone else's second. It makes her reliable. It also wears her out.

She knows her defence has a very simple limit. The shield may not be in time. The step may be late. The opponent may turn out to be faster. And then there is no layer of iron between his weapon and her body to forgive the mistake. That is why Predslava almost never lets herself relax in a fight.

To other people her great shield looks like protection. To her it looks like responsibility. Predslava understands perfectly that a shield cannot cover everyone. She still behaves as though one day she will learn how.