Cassandra blinked. “Oh?”
It was odd, wasn’t it? That first day I’d written off Gimul as a worthless meathead, but he kept surprising me. The more I grew to understand his thinking, the more unexpectedly lovable I found the old lug.
First priority: his stepmother. Second priority: jealousy whenever he couldn’t be with his stepmother. The guy was a big, buff Mother’s Day card.
Cassandra wrapped up the tape job. I wouldn’t say it was the best one I’d ever seen, but it was enough to protect my palms and toughen my hands up, and she’d done it with love.
I didn’t know what fighting style my opponent would use, but I had found karate to be a pretty good all-purpose martial art. As long as I could avoid getting cornered in one spot and swapping blows, I bet I could do this.
“I hope you’ll do your best, Shooter.”
“Thanks, Cassandra.”
“Remember,” Tanne d’Arc said, “if you goof up and lose to my brother, I won’t be marrying you. And my brother is the strongest in all the nearby clans, so I doubt you’ll stand a chance. Tough luck, huh?”
Compared to the courageous face Cassandra had put on for me, I couldn’t tell whether Tanne d’Arc was rooting for me or just trying to brag about her brother.
But no matter who was rooting for who, no matter what the stakes were, I wanted to win. I loved martial arts, so of course I hated losing. If I could get the fight to fall into a pattern I was good at, I might just have a chance at winning. And hey, as long as I didn’t wind up with a humiliating defeat, I figured just having fun in the fight would be victory enough for me. Mostly.
Still, something felt wrong about the whole thing. For one, minotaur-style pantsless wrestling would be dangerous. If he grabbed me by the underwear and threw me, he would absolutely smush my two amigos into pink salsa. He had the look of a real ball-smasher.
“That reminds me. What do I need to do to win?”
“You win once your opponent loses the will to keep fighting.”
Meaning that even if the tide started turning against me, I could still tough it out to avoid a loss. But man, I hated getting hurt, so it would be tough to pull off. Not that I could say that out loud.
With my fists taped up, I gave the boisterous crowd outside a haughty once-over, then started murmuring to myself to gin up my courage.
I’d done all right in partner drills and sparring at the dojo, even right before I came to this fantasy world, but I hadn’t done too hot in a competition in years. It was the spectators—whenever I was being watched, I just couldn’t get my mind in that serene kung fu place. It made me nervous!
The bull-kin clan heckled me viciously. “The chieftain’s gonna wipe the floor with ya!”
But the villagers were doing the same for me.
Nishka and the others were shouting, “Go for the guts, Shooter! Smash him in the organs, my guy!”
Whereas Wak’wakgoro was giving the most ridiculous advice: “Hit him in the head! One good hit, you take the head out, and then the balls are open! Get the balls and this fight is over, ya hear?”
My old karate master from Okinawa had often told me that you could easily “encourage” an opponent to stop fighting with a strike to the liver, the carotid artery, or one good hit to the sternum. Cool to know, useless for sparring matches unless I wanted to end the fight in a courtroom.
The main thing I was good at was sneaking in punches to the sternum. A strike like that is a technique to mess up the opponent’s breathing rhythm. When fighting a human being, there was no way to “practice” hitting the carotid artery. It was far too dangerous to ever attempt.
But then, this wasn’t my homeworld. This fantasy world had healing magic that could stitch together lacerations. I knew I wouldn’t be able to fight with a true killer instinct, but I had to attack Tan-Claude Van Damme with every technique I knew short of the worst I could deal out.
“Please don’t push yourself too hard, Shooter,” said Tanne d’Arc.
“Don’t worry, I won’t. I don’t need to push myself to win.”
Alexandricia had told me that if I shamed myself by losing, my slave rights would be transferred to the bull-kin. There was no way I was going to surrender my newlywed life with Cassandra—the one tiny bit of happiness I’d found in this cruel world.
Holding that resolve in mind, I pulled my face into a more dashing expression to reassure her.
“Are you really so sure you should be with Tanne d’Arc?” Cassandra asked quietly. “Sure enough to fight her brother like this?”
“Huh? No, that’s not why I’m—”
My wife was visibly upset, glaring daggers at me. Oh. Oh no. Cassandra thought I actually wanted to do this!
“All you would have to do is lose, Shooter.”
“Now, hold on—listen to me! I’m doing this for you, Cassandra!”
“Don’t lie to me. You may as well go ahead and beat the bull-kin chieftain, if you’re so sure.” She scowled, leaned in closer to me, then…suddenly her face broke into a smile, and she gave me a big kiss on the cheek. My wife was too sweet. Even now, she believed in me. She really did have faith that I was doing this for the right reasons. And I’d win it for her. I had to.
In the other party, a corps of muscular soldiers stood circled around their chieftain. They looked incredibly pumped. And naturally, even though she had been beside me only a minute ago, I saw Tanne d’Arc over with them. Whose side was she on?
She’d put on a show of telling me, oh, it’ll be soooo tough to face my brother, just prove to me that you won’t lose, and idiot me had wondered if she actually hoped I would become her husband. But then again, maybe it was okay for her feelings about the duel to be complicated. She probably couldn’t imagine her brother ever losing in a fight and didn’t want to root for him to lose, either.
At that very moment she was telling her brother, “I know you’ll beat him!” I smiled to myself, wondering where that girl would swing in the end.
“Hrmph. Have you ever seen me lose a bullfight before?”
“You’re the strongest minotaur there is, Tan-Claude. Everybody knows it.”
“Yeah, chief. She’s right.”
“No way are you gonna lose to some barbarian fighter,” they cried in a chorus.
Tan-Claude’s body was absolutely sculpted. Those muscles came from hard work in martial arts, whether he got it all practicing bullfighting or some other form. The minotaurs might have a more civilized lifestyle than these humans ever imagined, but they were still locked in an overarching feudal system. They needed a strong leader more than anything else. And Tan-Claude was ripped. Definitely in my Top Three Asskickers, after Nishka the Scalesplitter and the hella hunky Camulla.
However, strength was one thing, and technique—martial arts itself—was something else. The martial arts of my world had been catalyzed by the spread of international exchange, which had allowed techniques to refine and grow. Tan-Claude almost certainly knew how to handle himself in a fight, but my style had been cross-pollinated by an entire world of kung fu champions.
That was how I would win.
“You ready, kid?” the bull-kin chieftan snorted.
“Ha! You think I’m a kid? I’ll have you know I’m thirty-two years old.”
“What?! Hrmph, that’s ridiculous. What kind of mind game is that, eh?”
“Believe what you want, Tan-Claude Van Damme. I’m an old-ass millennial and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
I grinned at him and—whether he fully understood or not—a shiver ran over Tan-Claude’s body. He snorted harshly.
We took up position at a slight distance from each other, then the bull-kin soldier I had first chatted with walked up to us.
“The rules of bullfighting are simple,” said Tancelot. “The duel will continue until one of you no longer has the will to fight.”
“Understood.”
“Got it.”
“No blinding, no hits to the jewels, and nothing that causes permanent damage.”
“I understand.”
“Hrmph. When death comes knocking for someone, anything could kill them. Why bother with all these fiddly rules? Aren’t rules meant to be…” and Tan-Claude locked eyes with me, “broken?”
“I promise you, the only thing you’re going to break is your dignity.”
We approached each other, eyes still locked. We were both naked from the waist up, wearing only underwear. I had my thong, and Tan-Claude wore a rope-belted loincloth. Nothing remotely like this ever happened in a karate match, but it was pretty common in pro wrestling and other martial arts events.
When two bare-chested men got close to each other, it always made me incredibly—uh, flustered. I mean, it was a fine sport, but! Every time the bull-kin chief got so near his hrmphing breath blew over my skin, I felt goosebumps prickle my arms. He was about half a head taller than me—well over six feet. Huge. And his snorting breaths were so aggressive. They were as fierce as a tempest crashing over a mountain peak.
We both drew back, once again about six feet from each other. It was a frustrating distance. Just far enough that even if we took turns lunging forward, neither of us would quite be able to land a hit on the other.
I slid into my fighting stance. It’s called a “southpaw stance” in karate and other martial arts with standing throws. Bullfighting wasn’t a battle to the death, after all, so I figured a one-on-one martial arts style would work. I’m right-handed, but I had a reason for adopting this left-handed position.
Back when I did kenpo, my instructor explained that by rotating my hips, opening up my chest, jumping forward, and grabbing, I could make a move with a longer reach than I would ever achieve in an orthodox attack. Once my punch broke through my opponent’s guard, I could extend my upper body and hit ’em in the face with one fluid motion. The opponent would be distracted holding their guard and—for just a second—they’d be totally flat-footed.
If you can launch a punch at someone’s face just by reaching a little farther, it gives them a scare. And when you manage to conceal your techniques and secret moves from a strong opponent enough to scare them, they will lose.
You learn these kinds of things after your own fair share of humiliations at regional competitions.
But most of all, you learn never to let a fight go on for very long.
At last, Tancelot gave the signal: “Square up and…fight!”