White Hawk and Sable Swan: A Martial Romance of the Far Future - Part III

This is the third part of an ongoing serial, written in honor of the Swords of St. Valentine initiative. Here are Parts One and Two. Updates every day.

The ring rose up to meet Li Wei like an old friend. It wasn’t, not by any stretch. It was just another facade, thrown up by the organizers of the tournament. Just another of the fakes in this abandoned building.

The Trial of Fists and Wills. Despite its ghetto pretensions, it was hardly a patchwork event. There was serious money behind all of this. His synthsuit alone cost millions of netaels. His sponsors were legion. From what he heard, there were 8-2 odds on his being victorious, and some of the wealthiest names in Neo-Quming had skin in this fight.

Not that they would never admit it, of course. He didn’t even know who he was sponsored by. In this age of augmented reality, where almost everything could be reduced to a number or a mote of light, obfuscation seemed no more than the crux of honesty. They didn’t pry into his life. Why did he need to know anything about them?

At least they were paying him.

The crowd parted for him, screaming his ring-name. He waved, scowl hidden beneath the golden visor of his holo-helmet.

“White Hawk!” screamed a middle-aged woman.

The simulspace pylons were like focusing mirrors. The real projectors were all around the building, lining and limning its inner corners. It was why they saw his synthsuit as armor, even on the way up.

“Have my babies, White Hawk!”

He bit back a bitter laugh.

I just had twelve of this city’s finest courtesans last night, you dried-out whore. And I didn’t even like them.

Step by step, holding his regal bearing, Li Wei ascended to the ring border. The simulspace pylons flickered, casting their screens straight out, and at the point where their projections crossed and met, evening turned at once to day. Instead of a canvas ring in an abandoned warehouse, the battlefield was an elegant marble courtyard, graced with stone lions. A pink butterfly worked its way across the top of the bushes, and in the distance a lone swallow sang.

He stepped through into unreality, aware that his audience was watching his every move, whether here or on holos all across the city. The air changed.

The Red Arhat sat before him, staff across his knees. The sunlight fell softly over the folds of his red-orange robes, as if caressing a forgetful lover.

“You have come at last, White Hawk.”

Inside his helmet, Li Wei called up the internal feed and cut his meatspace audio relay. Simulspace noise only. The crowd vanished.

“Save it,” he said. “You’re in this for the money, just like I am. We’re not fated rivals or bitter enemies or any of that wuxia novel rubbish. We’re just two people who happen to be good enough at what we do to get paid for it.”

The Red Arhat stood. There was nothing on his mask even capable of emoting, but Li Wei had the feeling that there was an easy smile on his face.

“Such a worldly attitude, White Hawk. Your pride will be your undoing.”

Li Wei called his straight jian into existence. The long, slender blade was as white as a sunbeam, with a gilt tassel on its pommel and traces of silver on its simple round guard. He ran his gloved fingers across the blade, shifting his legs slightly apart in a high standing stance.

“Last time I checked,” he said, “words don’t cut.”

“Neither does your sword,” said the Red Arhat, knowingly. “At least, not truly. Shall we, then? I wish to test the might of your White-Winged Fist.”

“Yeah, and I bet you really are from Shaolin, too,” said Li Wei, rolling his eyes. “Whatever. Let’s give those idiots a show they won’t forget.”

They cupped their right fists in their left palms and bowed to each other, the pictures of martial gentility.

#####

He was almost impossible to describe, the White Hawk. She’d seen recordings, of course, but he was completely different in person.

For starters, Xu Hai was still trying to work out just what he had on.

He was all white, white with hints of gold, the gold only accentuating his jarring choice of costume. He had a strange winged helm on his head, its eight-pronged visor sealed with opaque gold, so that no-one could see his face. His armor was barely armor. It was more of a mailed mantle over linen, with sleek ridged gauntlets and slender sabatons his only real protection. What with his jian, he looked like a cross between a Kuomintang officer and a medieval knight.

But it wasn’t just that. There was something so inexcusable, so stupid in person that she just had to laugh out loud. It came out as a rather crass snicker.

A long cape with tasseled epaulets hung from his shoulders.

What in the world was he doing with a cape? Simulated, to be sure, but did he want the Red Arhat to have even more of a grip on him? Was he that confident in his White-Winged Fist?

She’d read up on the Red Arhat, too. A practitioner of shaolinquan, the official profile went, although from where and which temple in particular, no-one actually knew. She could barely tell herself from the recordings - after all, the Shaolin Monasteries had been gone for a hundred years, destroyed in the Second Cultural Revolution. But his previous string of victories showed that he was more than a match for the White Hawk.

Correction, Xu Hai. That he should probably, barring any mishaps, be something of a match for the White Hawk.

The two combatants saluted each other, then bowed, hands in fists. She couldn’t hear what the White Hawk was saying. Transmission issues?

The warehouse was as quiet as a morgue. Drops of tension filled the air like blood in oil. Xu Hai glanced at her wiry neighbor, saw her slender fingers bunched in exquisite pain.

The Red Arhat swept his staff up and around, then slid into a low crouching stance. The White Hawk raised his jian and resumed his high standing stance.

A roar shook the warehouse. They were moving.