Jabberwock Jack by Dennis Liggio Page B

Szandor, elbowing me in the ribs, which unfortunately was right where I had been bruised. "There's nothing wrong with asking for money. It's even noble or some shit!"
    "I don't think he went that far," I said.
    "Hey, if it's not dishonoring, then it's pretty goddamn noble to me," replied my brother.
    "What do you think of them?" said Jericho to Fala.
    She moved to us, not quite in a straight line, but as if she were swept in a circular path. She walked around us, then in between us, prompting Szandor to move over. She stood up on the tips of her toes to look me in the eye. She even sniffed the air around us, prompting Szandor to jokingly apologize for not using the fancy stuff when he showered in the morning. She waved a feather in front of us both, then swung a crystal on a necklace like a pendulum. Then she danced away from us, back toward Jericho. We were being awkwardly judged... or at the New Age strip club, one of the two.
    "Well?" he said.
    "They are both troubled warriors, but warriors they are," she said.
    "Will they benefit us?" said Jericho.
    "His smell is already upon them," she said. "Like you, they are in his orbit. Yours is far more ascendant, but his gravity pulls them too."
    Jericho grunted and then had something resembling a smile. "That's high praise, but ultimately I decide if you are warriors." He walked over to the practice area and picked up a staff. He twirled it in front of him like a baton, then twisted it under his arm in a stance I had last seen in a Hong Kong wushu film. "Now, come at me."
    "What?" said Szandor.
    "Grab some weapons and come at me," said Jericho. "I want to test your skills."
    "Now?" I said. Jericho hadn't even taken off his coat.
    "Yes, now," responded Jericho. "Unless you are cowards."
    "Which one of us first then?" said Szandor.
    "Both of you," said Jericho. He walked to the other side of the practice area and got into his stance again. "Now come try and beat me."
    Szandor and I looked at each other and shrugged. He took off his jacket and flexed. He was still wearing the Black Flag shirt from the night before. I walked over to the weapon crates, seeing if they had something suitable for us. I grabbed two bokkens and was surprised they were even in the armory. A bokken is a hard wooden practice sword from Japan. It doesn't have an edge for cutting like a true katana, but it has a similar shape. The wood is very dense. While it's called a "practice" sword because it can't cut, you could still seriously harm and possibly kill someone with them. It would just be blunt force trauma.
    I tossed a bokken over to my brother, who caught it with ease. He swung it around in his hand, testing the balance.
    "Not bad," he said. "I can work with this."
    I thought the bokken was a perfect weapon for both of us. For me, it was very similar to my dearly departed katana. For Szandor, it was a blunt weapon that wasn't too long. As we approached Jericho, we brandished the wooden swords in different ways. Szandor held his similar to a lead pipe or tire iron. I used a stance I cribbed from a Kurosawa film.
    We both kept our distance, trying to examine Jericho's movements. As he moved, so did we, keeping our distance, sometimes moving left or right, looking for an opening. Now you might think from this that we had some great kungfu master who educated us or that we had real combat training. The truth is, like I've said before, we're self taught. That's why Szandor is an expert at hitting things with blunt objects. That's why the only moves I have are copied from movies or learned while slicing through monsters. I always pay attention to the things great masters say during movie training montages, the finer points of fighting that cinema badasses mention about how to fight. I've tried to make that work in real life, with varying amounts of success. Some of the movie stuff is essentially bullshit. So I know a few things but am hardly traditionally skilled. Essentially my brother and I are both two self