∴ A Noble Encounter ∴
Your fingers sting with cold, despite thick leather gloves. You clamp your hands under your arms and kick at the snow-covered ground. You have no idea how many hours have passed, how many must still pass until daylight trickles through the dense tangle of branches, and you are relieved of your vigil.
Quite what this tradition is supposed to achieve, you don’t know. Surely a fight would be the better proof of your readiness. To first blood, blindfolded, four against one, you don’t care – anything would be better than the bone-deep cold and profound boredom of waiting unarmed under ice-encased boughs for some kind of sacred sign.
Just as you’re practicing the divine vision you’ll relate when they come for you, you catch sight of something you hadn’t seen before. There, in a strain of moonlight, a hoofprint marring even snow. And another. The marks look fresh, but how could they be? You have been here since nightfall.
Heart quickening, you decide to follow the prints. They could be part of your test, you think. You hope. Wishing more than ever for your training blade, you plunge into dense woodland, scanning the ground for signs. Branches snatch at your hair, the hood of your cloak, but you press on as if possessed.
Whether minutes or hours pass, you cannot say, but at last thick forest gives way to another snowlit glade, glittering with nearing dawn. The tracks you’ve been following loop around the flat, broad stone at the centre of the glade before seemingly disappearing.
But you are not looking at the tracks any more. Your eyes have been arrested by the sword that rests on the stone table: long, lined, a vision in dark, faceted steel and deep blue leather. You fall to your knees as sunlight floods the glade. You are ready.
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