The Heart of a Queen (A Historical Romance)

Chapter 26

There was only a week until his guests were to arrive and Llewellyn was busier and busier with preparations, but still he managed to find time to meet Brienna and teach her how to wield a weapon. They met in a small clearing just off the path to the village where she and Isobel had gone, which was near to the castle, but invisible to anyone who might be looking from its windows.

On their first lesson, he presented her with a dagger. It was short, light, and perilously sharp, and came housed in a delicately-wrought leather scabbard that she could wear at her waist or adjust to strap around her boot.

Unlike the parry and thrust of swordplay and the expansive movements it required, Llewellyn taught her that with the short reach of her weapon she should employ tactics that would take her attacker by surprise, hopefully giving her the advantage over someone with greater stature and strength. This meant that she had to cool her nerves, allowing her enemy to get as close as possible before pulling the dagger out of concealment and using it without hesitation to wound or kill.

To practice this, Llewellyn first showed her the places to aim for on the human body that would inflict the most damage with the least effort.

"Here," he said, pointing to a spot on his inner thigh. "If you've gotten it right, they should bleed to death within minutes."

Brienna nodded. The thought of someone bleeding by her hand made her stomach lurch, but she took care not to show her distaste to Llewellyn, who spoke to her now with the matter-of-fact respect with which he spoke to his soldiers.

"Here," he circled a spot on his side. "The kidneys. Very painful," he grinned evilly. "The heart," he continued, "obviously. Then the throat, the eye, and the hands, when they come up to defend the face." He turned his eyes to the sky for a moment. "Yes, I think that'd everything. Do you remember them all?"

She nodded again.

"Show me," he said.

With her dagger in hand, Brienna directed the point to each of the areas Llewellyn had indicated, stopping at his eye.

"That was terrifying," he said after she lowered the blade. "Which is why, for training, I'm going to give you this to use instead."

He bent and picked up a twig fallen from an alder branch, took the dagger from her and laid it some distance away on the ground, then closed her hand around the piece of wood.

"Hold it firm but loose," he said, laughing when she frowned at the contradiction. "I know, but you want to be able to stay nimble with it but without letting it get knocked from your hand. Like this—good." He stepped back and nodded his approval. Holding the twig, Brienna thought she must look completely ridiculous.

"Don't even try to make a move until you know you're going to hit your mark," he counselled, serious. "And never, ever let an enemy take your weapon so they can use it against you."

He talked her through a few different ways she could escape a hold if someone got their arms around her before she could reach her weapon. Then, they practiced.

Brienna started to look forward to these short practice sessions more than she'd ever looked forward to anything, all because they involved Llewellyn feigning stealthy attacks where he approached her and she had to wait until he was close enough that she could attempt to land a blow with the flimsy twig.

"Too soon," he coached her, when she turned on him and missed.

She quickly realized that if she kept on waiting, he would keep coming until he had his arms wrapped around her. Despite the appeal of these brief embraces, she tried her best to fend him off, the threatening thought of one day being alone in Leinster hovering over her. Still, she cherished the split seconds of closeness between them, when she could feel Llewellyn's heat pressing close, just before she remembered her task and tried to fend him off.