“One all,” she whispered huskily as her arm came to rest. “You’re very good, honey. Mebbe we could learn a lot from each other. So you want to join us.”
“If all as good, then yeah,” Jak said, his scarred face breaking into something resembling amusement for the first time in days.
The albino was accepted into the triangle, which became a circle, and after a short while juggling the blades—one of his own knives now joining the whirling blades as they crisscrossed the open space—they turned to combat training. Jak was surprised to see Tammy and Gloria begin to fight, circling each other, thrusting and parrying with their blades, with no concession. It was quite possible that the Amazons could injure or even kill each other.
Which was something he kept very much to the forefront of his mind as he stepped into the circle to contest with Jess.
“No holding back, Whitey, ’cause I won’t,” she said simply and without malice.
Jak nodded agreement, and they began to fight. Circling each other in slow, light steps, both parties drew their blades. The Emerson was smaller than the leaf-bladed knife that Jak held easily in his palm, but it had a sharp cutting edge honed onto both sides, a refinement that Jess had obviously customized since taking possession of the blade.
She feinted, and Jak moved to his left, all the while expecting her to make her next move, which was to follow the feint with a thrust to her right that should have taken the blade into the space now occupied by Jak’s ribs. But the albino had already shifted direction, and allowed the blade to pass harmlessly past his camou jacket, all the while preparing his own attack, which was to her left side, now open to attack by the movement of her body, leaving her defenseless down that side.
Or so it seemed. Jak’s blade came so close to Jess’s naked torso that it could almost have shaved the top layer of skin from between her second and third ribs. Instead, it passed her, his momentum carrying him just forward enough for her to move in close and grip his arm with her free hand.
The grip closed above the muscle and tendons just below Jak’s shoulder, Jess’s small, bony fingers gripping like iron bands and numbing any feeling or response that he could muster. Jak felt his arm go dead and the pull of her body weight as she attempted to unbalance him and take him to the earth. She expected resistance, so Jak did the opposite. He pitched himself forward, knowing that the deadened arm would be useless, and so allowing himself to roll and bring Jess across his body as her own balance was lost, and she fell onto him.
As she moved across him, Jak pushed off the ground with his thigh and dug the heel of his combat boot into the earth, the force of his wiry muscles digging a ridge from which he propelled his foot, thigh and, gaining in momentum all the while, his body, so that he swung over on top of Jess, pinning her knife hand with his left knee, and using his still functioning arm to hold her other hand down. His right leg was diagonally across her body, pinning her to the ground.
“Neat move, Whitey,” she said calmly. “How about we do that again, this time in slow-mo, and you show me just how it’s done…”
JAK BECAME a regular part of training after that, Gloria observing him with a growing interest as the albino’s character emerged fully. Jak was a good teacher, and was also keen to learn from the Amazons when they came up with techniques that he hadn’t encountered before. The time between, Gloria kept Jak more and more to her, drawing from him stories of his youth in the Louisiana swamps and of his travels across the Deathlands with Ryan Cawdor and his people. He also told her of his wife, Christina, and daughter, Jenny, and the way in which they had been chilled on his ranch while he was absent. Gloria found the albino fighter fascinating, and it occurred to Mildred that this could cause problems.