FIC: Arms and the Man 3/6 (Giles/Buffy) R

[antennapedia.livejournal.com]

Title: Arms and the Man 3/6
Pairing: Giles/Buffy
Rating: R

Continued from part 2.


"That went better than I expected," Whiting said to Giles, quietly.

"Did it?"

"Most candidates don't last ten minutes. Sir John likes to recruit them young. Teenagers. Impressionable characters he can mold. Men of our age either have the mentality he seeks or not."

Buffy spoke up. "His opinion rules? I thought Saint George was the decider there."

"John sends him candidates with a good chance of success. Failure can crush a man's spirit."

"Or a woman's," Giles said.

Whiting waved a hand as if to say "whatever." Buffy was seriously confused by this guy. His attitude toward her was one of cool respect, like he'd prefer her to be on the other side of the world fighting vampires and not over here. She also couldn't tell if he liked Giles or not. That morning he'd seemed to be Giles's biggest ally but just now he'd played hard-ass.

"Young Ellen is here to take care of you, I see. I leave you in her capable hands."

And with that Whiting was gone, vanished back into the room they'd come from. Buffy turned to look for the person he'd mentioned. There were two teenagers standing in the hallway, dressed in some kind of dark uniform, a dark boy and a girl with red hair. The girl was built about the way the field hockey players at Sunnydale High had been. The boy next to her looked like he played football, though probably he didn't. If what she'd just learned was right, these two kids were in training to be demon-hunters, and their sport was sword-fighting. They were maybe sixteen at most, about the age she'd been when she'd started. The girl straightened up and came toward them as they approached. Giles raised an eyebrow.

"Ma'am, sir. My name is Ellen. I'm assigned to you during your stay." She ducked her head to Buffy awkwardly. The boy hovered against the wall and didn't introduce himself.

"Hi, Ellen," Buffy said. "I'm Buffy."

Ellen didn't seem to react to the perkiness. "I'll, um, I'll take you to the dormitory. We have your rooms ready for you."

Giles cleared his throat. "I'm afraid we'll need to return to town to our inn for the night."

"We've already taken care of your things, sir," Ellen said. "We packed everything."

"I see." Giles didn't sound entirely happy. Buffy tried to remember if she had left anything embarrassing in her luggage. Nothing special. Nothing valuable. Mr Pointy was in her purse, as usual.

"What about our bill?" Giles said.

"Settled, sir. We have an arrangement with that inn."

"Carry on, then." That appeared to have been what Giles was annoyed about, because he relaxed in a way Buffy couldn't, really, knowing that somebody else had packed her makeup bag for her. Ellen the page girl and that page boy over there loitering against the wall, packing her makeup. She imagined the guy with an actual pageboy haircut and had to cover her mouth to keep herself from laughing out loud.

The kid with the perfectly normal haircut vanished back into the hallway somewhere without ever having spoken. Ellen scurried off to hold open the big doors for them.

They followed Ellen across the grounds in twilight. There were several buildings separated from each other by broad green lawns, linked by a wandering gravel lane. The buildings looked like the older buildings on her college campus in some ways. No, they looked like what her campus buildings were imitating. Gorgeous and stately in the midsummer twilight, vine-covered, peaceful. Beyond them Buffy could see fields and past that, trees.

The page led them up broad shallow steps to the doorway of something she said was the knight's dormitory. Buffy was fearing a dreary college dorm like the one she'd been in the last year, cheap carpet and cheaper paint job, furniture that fell apart if you jumped on it, but this place looked more like a nice hotel, the old-fashioned kind. Inside was a staircase covered in carpet that switchbacked up to a hallway that ran the length of the house, with numbered doors along it. Somewhere in the middle Ellen stopped.

"This is Miss Summers's room. Mr Giles is next door. I'll be by in the morning with breakfast." She unlocked the door and opened it for her, then handed the key to her. She bowed and turned away. Giles shrugged at Buffy then followed.

The room they'd given her reminded her of her dorm room, sort of, only it was larger and had much better furniture. It looked more like a place where an adult lived, if that adult needed a walk-in closet with a gun rack in it. And beside the gun rack was something that looked a lot like the rack where Giles hung all the bladed weapons. Empty, unfortunately, and she had nothing to put into it. Buffy hadn't taken much with her in her bags, out of a general fear that some customs official inspecting her luggage might get the wrong idea about pointy objects.

That luggage sat unopened on the end of the bed. Buffy stared at it a second, then went to the side door. The knob turned easily under her hand. She opened it onto a little corridor with a bathroom to one side and a door at the other end. She peeked in at the bathroom: nice deep old-fashioned tub, solid medical kit under the sink. Then she went through the far door and was surprised to find a second bedroom, smaller than hers. Giles stood in the middle of it with his hands on his hips.

Buffy said, "Huh. Our rooms are joined."

Giles rolled his eyes at her. He opened his suitcase on the bed and poked at something inside. Buffy checked out the room he'd been given. His bed was a narrow iron cot tucked against the wall between her room and his. There was a writing desk underneath the two broad windows. The furniture was plain wood, obviously nice stuff but spare. The windows made it light and airy, but it was definitely second class compared to hers, like they were making a point of reminding him he was her squire. Or maybe it was just a room where he wasn't expected to spend any time.

"A servant's room?" she said.

"That's almost the flavor of it. It reminds me more of the rooms given to potential Slayers in the Council buildings."

A squire's room, then. "My room is much nicer than yours. Come see."

Her windows were doors that opened onto a little balcony covered with flowers growing from heavy red pots. And she had a double bed with high posts, very old-fashioned, not huge but plenty of room for two. She hoped that she'd be able to coax Giles into sharing it with her.

Giles opened the windows and stepped out onto the balcony. Buffy followed.

It was midsummer, near the solstice. The sky was still light off to one side, but darkening fast. Buffy breathed in deep. Warm sweet air. It smelled like freshly-mown lawns and like the river. Green, even in the dark. No eucalyptus, no dust. Rolling hills, rounded down by age, checkered by hedges. Somewhere in a field close by, someone was riding a horse. Buffy could hear the hoofbeats, the jingle of the tack, the horse wuffling. She gazed off into the dusk and tried to imagine hundreds of years of people here, training to fight demons.

What else was here? She closed her eyes and drew on that Slayer within, tapped into her deeper senses, reached out into the night air. When she opened her eyes again, she found Giles watching her closely.

"Anything?"

Buffy shook her head. "No vamps for miles and miles and miles."

The sound of horse and rider grew louder. Buffy looked for it and saw the rider approaching along the lane. First she saw the white star on the horse's forehead, then she saw that the rider was a woman. And that she was carrying a long spear in her right hand, a spear with a little flag on the end. It didn't look like lances as shown in those Boy's King Arthur illustrations, but that had to be what it was. The horse was trotting and the pennon on the end fluttered as the lance rose and fell. The pair went past the balcony and the horse snorted and shied. The woman said something to it that Buffy couldn't catch. Then they were past, heading away from the cluster of buildings and toward the stubby remains of the castle.

"This is quite the place," she said.

"Mm. Living history, in some ways. But oddly modern in others."

"Oddly?"

"The Council hasn't done as well with cultural shifts."

Meaning women. Buffy leaned forward against the railing and looked down at the ground. Fifteen feet, maybe. An easy drop. And she could probably use the vines to climb to the next balcony over, not that she had any idea why she'd want to. Giles leaned his back against the railing and seemed to be studying the side of the building above them. There was a story above the one they were in, with windows in dormers jutting out from the slanting roof. Thirty knights active tops, Conway had said. Thirty pairs of rooms like hers. Though most of these rooms were empty. The knights lived elsewhere, scattered all over Europe, questing after demons where they were personally drawn to go. Knights errant.

"You know, I just thought of something. If they were in there grilling you suspiciously about your motives, why was some kid off collecting our luggage at the same time?"

"A conflict of opinion?"

"Or the boss had made up his mind."

Giles shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets. "It's you. The Slayer seems to be someone they respect."

Whiting had seemed to have a different opinion, but Buffy thought over Conway's reactions again. She said, "I do have good taste."

"You do not."

"In Watchers I do."

"Point conceded."

"So. What's the decision?"

"First, a question. Do they, er, check out?"

"To the Slayer within, you mean."

"To you."

"Yeah. They check out. Weird and baffling, but they're okay. Everything feels good. Nice, almost. Your buddy Travers always creeped me out, but these guys don't."

"He was never my buddy." Then Giles shook his head and turned away from her. His shoulders slumped. They'd talked a little bit about why Giles had gone along with the Council, why it had been so hard for him to break away from them. And why he didn't regret going rogue, once he'd gotten over the pain of separation. Buffy suspected he had never really trusted himself after the Eyghon thing had happened, had never believed himself to be one of the good guys at heart. He'd been doing penance and the Council had told him exactly how. It was only recently that he'd seemed comfortable with himself and his decisions. Was he looking for a group to join just to get somebody to second-guess himself with? These guys didn't seem like they did a lot of hand-holding. Sword-sharpening, yes, but they trusted their knights to know what they were doing.

Buffy liked that approach. She said, "Anyway, I like the perks."

"Help if we need it."

"And I'll worry less about you when you're patrolling with me."

Giles grunted. "I'll be an asset, not a liability."

"You're an asset now. Just a kinda fragile one."

Giles rolled his eyes at her but did not object. Which was smart, because the skillset was right. If he was going to patrol with her, being a knight of St George would make him more than useful. It would turn him into a second weapon, a weapon like her. Not as fast or as strong, but he would still have the years of study. The years she probably would never have.

Then she brought up the lurking objection. "The question is whether it makes us do something we don't want to."

Giles pinched the bridge of his nose and was silent. "I think not," he said at last. "The obligations laid upon me are sharper than I might have made them on my own, but they're what I would do for you anyway. Train you. Advise you. Serve you."

"Serve me. That one's not in the Council list."

"No. That's where the contrast is strongest. Service is a crucial element of this order's charter. Its conception of itself. To one's lord in the hierarchy. Or lady. For me that would be, er, you."

"But I'm not joining them. They were pretty clear on that. Unless you being one of them means I need to do something."

"No obligation is laid upon you save those you already bear."

"Okay. Most important question. What's the Watcher within say?"

He was silent again for some time. "It's different for me, but I think, I believe-- It feels right. It feels as if this is what you need."

"I want to know what you need. You're not just my sidekick."

"That's what a Watcher is, Buffy. The fellow standing behind the Slayer who keeps her alive as long as he can. Dies instead of her if necessary. The first time in my life I was a true Watcher was when I decided to fight the Master for you."

"Which there was no way you were going to do."

"The point is, the point is that I had decided to."

"It's my job to do the dying. Not anybody else's. I'm okay with dying. We all gotta go sometime."

"Not if I can help it."

He seized her and pulled her into a rough embrace. Before she could react to that he was kissing her. His eyes were closed, and he'd tangled his fingers in her hair. Buffy closed her own eyes and let him hold her. Her body was responding to him so fast that she was almost weak at the knees. She laid her hands on his chest and leaned against him. His hand slid down to her waist and pressed her close.

All she could think was, at last. At last.

Then Giles let go and stepped back.

"Forgive me," he said. Buffy's impulse was to pout and protest, but she held onto the urge and instead simply looked her question at him. "I, this is too much for me."

"Giles--"

"Good night," and he'd already fled through the door into his own room before she could say anything further.

Buffy made her way back into the room slowly. She left the balcony doors open behind her, because the night air was sweet. She read for a while in bed, chewing through the novel she'd brought for the flight. She was too restless to focus on it. Giles. God, Giles. What was she going to do about him? Right now, nothing. Nothing to do but go to bed and sleep.

---

The time change had reached the stage of screwing Buffy up entirely. She woke when the birds started their morning conversation outside her open balcony doors. She listened to them for some time while the sky lightened, then gave up and rolled out of bed. She found Giles in the bathroom already, already showered, shaving. He did not shy away from her. He met her gaze directly and colored but returned her brief hug without hesitation.

She couldn't figure out what was going on in that giant head of his. A lot, as usual, and it was a little maddening to realize that she couldn't know. Not until he told her, and that was assuming he had a clue. He might take a long time to deal with whatever he was feeling and she was losing patience. But would pushing him get her what she wanted? Pushing him right now might be stupid. Honor what her inner Slayer wanted, sure, but she didn't need to pay attention to how it told her to get it. She pondered this while showering but reached no conclusion.

Ellen showed up at eight sharp and seemed surprised to find them both awake and dressed. She had a tray with plates of breakfast food for all three of them, and it was what Buffy called real food. She dumped half the yogurt over the granola and dug in. Giles fussed over the tea.

"So, Ellen, what do you do when you're not making toast?"

"Normally I'm in classes or training. We're between terms just now. Mostly I'm supposed to fag for you. Bring you breakfast. Serve at dinner. Things like that."

"Say what?"

Giles spoke up. "She means she's an errand boy. Er, girl."

"Oh. How long do you that for?"

"Just while we're in school. Some of us go to university, some don't. Once you're finished with school you become somebody's squire. Usually your sponsor's. Depends on who needs help just then."

"What do squires do?"

Ellen ticked it off on her fingers: Keep their knight's arms in good condition, swords sharp, armor clean & repaired. Fight alongside their knight, in tight spots, to provide backup. Provide medical assistance, whether that meant wrapping bandages or calling emergency services. Above all, learn from their knight how to fight. Assist in the great never-ending battle against demons and the evil they wished to bring to the world.

That was as near a description of what Watchers did as any she'd heard, minus the research and translation side. Well, and the Watcher was supposed to be a better technical fighter than she was, so he could train her. Giles still had a technique advantage, though she'd always been able to overpower it.

Ellen cleared away the breakfast dishes and vanished with them off somewhere. When she came back, she had Whiting behind her, striding in as if he owned the room. He had circles under his eyes and looked more or less like hell, but he seemed to be in a good mood.

"Ellen taking care of you? Good, good. Has she boasted of her shooting yet? She was training for the biathlon before she came to us."

"Skiing and shooting," Giles murmured to Buffy. "Olympic sport."

"I'm doing the summer biathlon now," Ellen said. She was blushing. "Running and archery."

Buffy was impressed and said so. Then she felt more than a little outclassed. She'd never been into sports before gaining her powers. Cheerleading for them, yes, but only as a way to get access to boys. That was then and this was now, she reminded herself. What mattered most was what she did with her powers now she had them, and she thought she was on the right track with that.

Whiting said, "Many of our candidates are serious sportsmen. I was recruited because of the rugby while I was at school."

"Ah," said Giles. "I can see how it would translate."

"It's why I seconded your name when it turned up in Alec's papers. You never seemed to give a damn if you broke your neck. And you had the knack of not breaking it."

Giles laughed. At that point, watching Whiting, Buffy figured it out. It wasn't Giles he objected to. It was her. Or maybe Giles's loyalty to her more specifically. The Council was going to cause problems for them and Whiting wasn't happy about that. Tough nuts to him, though, because she wasn't going back to those guys. Nor was she going to give up Giles.

Unless he wanted to give her up. That thought gave her a pang, then she remembered his ferocity on the topic last night.

Whiting said, "Ellen will be looking for a knight to squire for soon enough, won't you? About a year from now."

"I'm sure you'll find somebody, with those skills," Giles said, politely.

Whiting rubbed his nose. Buffy got the impression Giles hadn't answered properly. He said nothing about it, but merely stood and said, "Shall we tour the grounds? Do let me show us off."

Buffy snagged her sunglasses and off they went.

The morning was bright and sunny, as it had been yesterday. There were little fluffy clouds moving above them. The sky was a blue it rarely attained on the hazy Californian coastline. Picture-book once more, especially once she got a good look at the bit of castle she'd spotted last night. It wasn't much of a castle, just one round tower made of gray stone, connected to the wall that the entry gate pierced. They stood at its foot, by a little wooden door with black iron hardware. Whiting made no move to open it.

"Norman," said Whiting, and Giles grunted. "This is all that remains of a larger structure. It's maintained, mostly used to store odds and ends. Not worth touring, though you can take a look later if you like."

"Pity."

"We aren't sentimental. Nor are we a tourist attraction."

"Fair enough."

"What happened to the rest of it?" she asked.

"Civil War. The Order were Royalist."

Giles said, "The Council were Roundheads."

This seemed to amuse the two of them. Buffy could tell Giles was curious about the castle fragment, but Whiting led them away from the entry road and toward a little cluster of buildings beside an open field with soccer goals at either end.

"Athletic facilities. Rather important to us."

Whiting led them inside the nearest building, which turned out to be a gym. It made Buffy's fingers twitch with longing. It was small, but it had all the equipment a Slayer could want: gymnastics equipment, bars and rings, free weights, and a three-story climbing wall constructed like the side of a stone building. Some of the equipment looked new and some looked old, but it was all in good condition. There were a few people in the gym working out. They mostly ignored the little tour group passing through, though some of them took second looks at Giles. There was a man hanging on a bar, pulling himself up to touch chest to bar over and over. He had a big colorful plastic brace on his foot and a crutch lay on the floor beneath him, but it wasn't slowing down his pull-ups at all.

Injuries. She remembered when the vampire Sunday had broken her wrist. A day later she was punching with that hand again with no fears. It wasn't so easy for the knights.

"Only one locker room?" Buffy asked.

Whiting shrugged. "The facilities were built about fifty years ago. Only the equipment's changed in that time. Sir John rather drove his new regime through. We were to recruit women immediately, without waiting for renovations. Either the saint would accept them when they came to be knighted or he wouldn't, and that would settle the issue."

"Nobody complained, huh?"

"Once the first woman endured the vigil and was given the dub, none of us would dare complain. The saint had made his opinion clear."

"They were accepted," Buffy said.

"Yes. And we never did get round to retrofitting most things. Our knights told us they didn't give a damn. They'd rather have the climbing wall than another set of showers."

That made sense to Buffy. She'd rather have that climbing wall too. She wasn't sure Whiting felt the same way, though. There was something in his voice, some hint of dry disapproval. She'd heard Giles in that mode once or twice.

From the gym they went past the stables, though Whiting explained to them that it was mere tradition that led them to teach horsemanship in these modern days. The weapons they used against demons were antique because modern weaponry was ineffective. The transportation they used was under no such constraints. They used modern crossbows made of high-tech composites, steel-tipped modern lances with carbon fiber at the core, and swords hand-forged at the smithy there on the grounds. Buffy watched the man hammering red-hot steel, with two younger apprentices hovering, ready to hand him tools. One apprentice was a woman, college-aged maybe, and her biceps put Buffy's to shame. All three of them were grimy and sweaty and completely absorbed in their work.

Giles watched and Buffy was surprised to see that he was completely fascinated. The smith lifted a spar of red-hot metal into the air. A spear? No, a sword. Buffy saw the shape of the blade, a classic straight blade.

The next workshop looked more modern and just as ancient, all at once. There were woodworking tools as well as welding tools. In it was a single man, bent over a work table. His hair was long and gray and held in a braid. He moved with a limp. He was fastening a leather facing to the frame of a kite shield. The leather had been bleached white. They stood and watched him work for some minutes without speaking. He saw them, and Buffy saw him gaze at Giles, but he didn't speak.

There were one or two other shields, of varying sizes but the same basic shape, hung on a rack near the door. Buffy leaned close to them to get a good look but didn't touch. The shape was the same as the shields that had hung in the church, as the one that had rested on Giles's cousin's coffin. They were eerie. Neither evil nor good, simply present in a space beyond the physical. Magical, then, but dormant.

Giles reached out and hovered his hand over the nearest. He felt it too, then. She caught his glance and nodded to him. What she really wanted now was a chance to tour the church where the funeral had been and take a good long look at the hanging shields. Maybe later. Whiting looked at his watch and beckoned them out. Buffy left quietly.

Next door to the smithy was the armory, where all the toys were kept. Buffy was amused to see that all four of them were excited to see all that sharp metal hanging in racks, all those wonderful ways of skewering demons ready to be used. Deadly. No Hollywood weapons, these, just clean blades, beautiful in their simplicity. Her senses gave her no eerie signals in here; they were just metal swords. Giles hovered before a particularly amazing sword, a bastard sword with a two-handed grip. It was as long as Buffy was tall. Giles would be able to wield it, though.

"You like the two-handers?" somebody said. Buffy turned. The questioner was a man in a leather apron and gloves, coming toward them from behind the racks. A pair of safety googles hung around his neck. He wore an eyepatch and there was scarring on his face below the patch. Buffy wasn't sure what from, but it looked as if it had gone deep.

He nodded to Whiting. "This the fellow?"

"Yes."

He walked around Giles, examining him closely. Giles smiled faintly at Buffy but said nothing. He had Giles stand straight and hold out his sword arm. When he saw Giles was left-handed he grunted. He didn't measure anything, but used his own body to compare to Giles's.

"I prefer a single-handed technique," Giles said, in answer to the question the man had asked earlier. He rubbed the back of his head.

"Right," the armorer said to Giles, and then he walked off. Whiting seemed to think they were done, for he led the little group out of the armory and over to what Buffy recognized as a shooting range. There was a little group of people already there. She spotted the wheelchair.

Whiting clapped a hand on Giles's shoulder. "Here's where I betray you, old boy."

Giles stopped in his tracks. "What on earth?"

"It's time. Your first trial is now. The examiner's waiting."

Buffy stood down from the alert, but she shared the grievance in Giles's voice. He said, "You might have warned me."

"If I'd told you this was on the agenda you'd have worked yourself into a fit. I remember you at university well enough."

Giles made a grumpy noise, but he said nothing. Whiting led them over to the group.

"Good morning," said Conway.

Giles returned the greeting cordially enough, but Buffy could hear the ironic undercurrent. She wondered if he'd indulge in a sarcastic outburst at Conway before they were through. She'd pay money to hear that. But he was in check for now.

Conway was dressed a little differently than he'd been last night, but he still looked one hundred percent tweedy. He was wearing a funky sweater with leather patches on the shoulders and elbows. His trousers had a crease down the front. His chair looked even higher-tech than it had in the dim light of the drawing room. That was carbon fiber she saw. He had fingerless gloves on now, too.

"Sir Ian is your examiner this morning." The man with the clipboard stepped forward. Buffy found herself checking him for signs of injury, but if he'd invalided out of combat she couldn't see it. "Has Gerald explained the testing? No? Well, not much to it. We shall see if the reality matches your reputation. No point fussing about. What's first? Pistol?"

"Longbow first," said the examiner, impatiently. He gestured at Ellen and she snapped into motion. Behind the group of men was a tarp on the ground with a pile of equipment on top of that. Ellen removed the cover from a huge bow. It was taller than Buffy by almost a foot, nearly as tall as Giles was. His face fell and he shook his head when Ellen offered the weapon to him.

"I have never held a longbow," Giles said. "I cannot pretend to draw it."

"Pity," said the examiner. He wrote something down on the clipboard.

"A specialty weapon," Conway said, calmly. "Some of us train in it for the sake of the thing itself. It has few uses in the field. What about the crossbow?"

"We use crossbows often. And swords."

"The sword-fighting we'll come to in the afternoon. Start with crossbow," Conway said, addressing the man with the clipboard and not Giles. Ellen was in motion immediately. She handed Giles a black case and a quarrel. Giles set them both on the tarp and knelt down to open the case. He took out what Buffy recognized as a tactical crossbow, and a nice one. She had some serious weapon-envy going instantly.

Giles asked, "How does the trial work?"

"Five shots with each weapon. Standard scoring."

"I'm not much of a shot with this."

"Self-deprecation has no place here." Conway, speaking sharply.

Giles straightened himself. "Right," he said. He stood and held the crossbow in firing position, unloaded. Buffy watched him fiddle with the sight until he made a satisfied sound. He cocked it by hand then took a bolt from the quarrel and loaded it.

"Take your time," the examiner said. He held a stopwatch up and pressed the button at the top.

Giles turned and lifted the crossbow to his shoulder. His thumb nudged the safety off. Buffy watched him breathe out, then the crossbow released. The shot was good but not in the center of the target. Giles paused to readjust the sight. His next shot was better. He took his time about the shots, in a way they never could when they were fighting for real. Even so, she could tell he was nervous. Ellen ran down the range, retrieved the target paper, and handed it to the examiner. He looked even more nervous after the examiner made a grumpy sound, wrote something down, and said nothing.

Ellen brought over the next weapon and handed it to Giles. Buffy recognized this one: it was an air rifle, the same model Giles owned. Buffy had learned to shoot with that rifle, with Giles leaning over her adjusting her stance. Once she'd learned how it worked it was easy. The Slayer hand-eye coordination was a scary thing. Giles was good at this, she knew, and she watched him group five darts around and inside the heart of the demon-shaped target, no fuss no muss. He was calmer now than he'd been during the crossbow test.

For the next test Ellen handed out goggles and earmuffs. Real bullets this time, then, and here came the rifle. She didn't know enough about guns to identify it, but it had some serious sights and a bolt action. The barrel was longer than anything she'd ever shot. And apparently you were supposed to shoot it while lying flat on the ground, for that was where Giles set it up.

Giles's body language was confident for the first time that day. He removed the bullets from the magazine and examined them, ignoring the examiner's assurance that all was in good condition. Then he took his time about zeroing the sights. He shot left-handed, or left-eyed as he had once explained it to her. He tweaked the sights again and made his second shot. The target was far enough away on this one that she couldn't see how well he'd done until Ellen came running back with the paper in hand. Then she could see that he'd grouped all his shots around the red heart. She could see his expression as he broke the rifle down afterwards. He was pleased with himself.

"Have you competed in this sport?" the examiner asked. The target was in his hands.

"Yes," Giles said, but he didn't offer any details.

He did nearly as well with the handgun test that followed.

Conway and the examiner were conversing about something. Giles was watching them and she could see the nerves starting to creep out again. She went and stood next to him and nudged him with her shoulder.

"Hey. Nice shootin', Tex."

"What?"

"It's just a thing we say."

"I'll have words with Gerald when I see him next. Infernal bastard, springing this on me."

"You did okay."

"Haven't shot a sniper rifle in years."

"Hey, Giles. You did okay."

Giles made a grumpy sound and Buffy was about to argue with him, but Conway was on his way over to them. As usual, he skipped all the polite preliminaries.

"The rifle work was exceptional. Did the Council train you?"

"I did some shooting as a boy, but yes."

"What other training did you receive from them?"

"I trust you are not interested in the esoteric topics, or the purely academic ones? Hand-to-hand combat, something like mixed martial arts. Knife fighting. The use of a number of simple tools in assassination. What you might call spycraft."

"Was this training unusual?"

He cast a glance sideways at Buffy and said, "To some extent, yes. The basics are taught to all Watcher candidates. I was on the wetworks team for several years and received training specific to my role."

"Wetworks," Conway said. "You were an assassin."

"Briefly."

That was news to Buffy. Giles offered no further details and Conway didn't seem to want to pump him, which surprised her. She would be pumping him if she could. She would be pumping him later, no doubt about that.

Conway had already dropped the topic, it seemed. He was saying, "It is traditional for our squires to participate in tournaments. They spar with each other, with their equals. Our knights do so as well. One of our knights has requested that you participate in this tradition."

"Ah. I should be delighted." Giles sounded wary, not delighted, but Buffy couldn't blame him. This was just more of Conway putting him on the spot, no warning, boom, perform. "Is this a group tournament, or?"

"It is a personal challenge to single combat. Five minute rounds until one of you is no longer able to continue. There are usually stakes to be won, but not in this case."

"Why not?"

"You won't win," Conway said.

Giles's head shot up and he stared at Conway. It was just short of an outright glare. Why have him fight? Buffy wanted to ask, but then she knew the answer. To see how he fought. To see what he did when he couldn't win. To see how much he wanted it. "Perhaps I will surprise you," he said.

Conway merely smiled. "Eric Twombly has asked for the honor of combat with you. Eric won the prize at last year's games."

Eric. Buffy remembered that name from last night. And yes, it was Mr Braveheart, the man with the hair. Buffy needed to write a Homeric epithet for that guy and his hair. Homer would have dug him, would have written all about his epic battle with a myriad Trojans. Buffy sort of dug him, or at least what she had been able to see of his delts and lats under his coat. He was, however, the guy who'd objected to Giles's language skills, and that made him officially unsexy. Because brains were sexy, as were any skills Giles employed in her defense and preparation. But unsexy didn't matter and neither did that Homeric hair. What mattered were the muscles. Even if he weren't supernaturally juiced, he'd have been capable of dismantling Giles twice before breakfast. She wondered how many demons he'd killed. Probably more than Riley and his entire squad had ever dreamed of.

Not as many as she had.

She glanced at Giles and saw him straighten up and stick out his chin. Uh oh.

Conway said, blandly, "You may request another opponent if you wish. We could consider it, though it would be a bit out of the ordinary."

"I wouldn't dream of asking for special treatment," Giles said. His chin was still stuck out in a way that Buffy knew meant he wouldn't be giving in until knocked out, and maybe not even then.

"Excellent," Conway said, and he sounded pleased. Buffy gave him a sharp look. "Three o'clock in the sparring pit. Your page will give you what you need."

He turned and spun himself off without another word. Buffy glared at the vanishing backs of his retinue but contained her urge to say bad things to them. She didn't want to bring Giles down. Now that he didn't have to put on a brave face for the onlookers, the chin came in and his shoulders slumped. He was looking a little nervy. Buffy was sympathetic. Pre-battle jitters were a thing she knew.

---

Shortly after two, Buffy and her page rousted Giles out and led him to the sparring pit. "Pit" was the right word for it, Buffy decided as she looked down into it. It was a ten-foot deep hole in the ground, maybe fifty feet in diameter. Old-fashioned wooden bleachers loomed around it on three sides. It wasn't a crude hole, though. The walls were padded with something plastic and tough that had been patched more than once with black tape. The floor was plain dirt, though, nothing fancy there. Good footing, she decided. The only way you'd get hurt in here was from being smacked by your opponent. There were two padded wooden doors on opposite sides of the pit. Each doorway opened onto a short narrow passage leading to a arming room that looked like a tiny gym locker room more than anything else. Unlike any gym she'd been in, though, its walls were stone and the windows were mere slits at ground level. She saw that the light fixtures were powered by cables run along the walls held in place with metal brackets. This place was old, maybe nearly as old as the castle fragment. No wonder it felt primitive. It was.

The weapon racks weren't primitive, though. They were modern and they held a completely modern selection of sparring weapons. Buffy made a beeline for the nearest. Lances, swords, bo staves, polearms. The full array of demon-fighting weaponry in neutered form for practice, just like Giles had at home. She lifted out the plastic and foam broadsword and ran her hands all over it. She wondered where they'd bought this, or if they had them made. It was nicer than the ones Giles had, though the edges of the blade were battered from heavy use. It weighed maybe three pounds. Buffy knew from experience that getting hit by it would hurt. Weight didn't matter as much as how hard and fast your opponent could swing it. This one had nice pop and the right amount of flex. It also made a hugely satisfying smack when she hit the bench with it.

"That's the weapon for the match today," Ellen told her. She took the sword from her and laid it out on the bench. She turned to Giles and said, "Sir, you need to change into your sparring clothing now."

"I'm afraid I didn't pack any."

Ellen rubbed at her hair until it stood on end, which was endearing for Buffy. "There'll be something in the laundry." She turned and ran out.

Buffy went back to examining the gear. There was shelves with martial arts sparring armor in various sizes. Giles had first worn things like this before when doing weapons training with her back in the library days. She'd thought it was dorky at the time and had generally tried to knock him out when he'd worn it, as pure punishment for being a geek instead of fighting au naturel the way she did. Now that they sparred more seriously together, she sometimes wore padding herself. She was a little smarter than she'd been then, and besides, Giles hit her for real now. This stuff was better-made than the gear she and Giles used: lighter weight, stiffer, bad-ass looking. She began sorting through it, pulling out pieces that would fit Giles.

The kid came back, breathing hard, carrying an armful of clothing and a high-tech-looking cup. Giles turned it over in his hands, then looked at the two women and blushed. He opened a locker door and stood behind it to change. Buffy considerately turned her back on him to give him his privacy and coincidentally hide her grin. He'd kissed her last night, but he was still embarrassed about guy things in front of her.

Giles cleared his throat. Buffy turned to see him in baggy gray gym shorts and a plain white t-shirt. The shirt was tight on him in a way that none of his own clothes ever were. He tugged at the collar and rolled his shoulders. Buffy leaned back against the lockers and admired him silently. Nice pecs, nice flat stomach. His calves were nothing to write home about, but his quads more than made up for them. They had the right amount of fuzz on them for a guy, in Buffy's opinion. She was so over men with shaved chests and pits.

The page unceremoniously pushed him to sit on the bench and commenced strapping him into his armor. She insisted on putting the full kit on him, head to toe, with Buffy's complete agreement.

Giles squatted a couple of times, then tried a few side kicks. He made a grumpy sound. A tradeoff, armor for mobility. Buffy herself always made the tradeoff the other way, but then, she had Slayer healing to offset the risks. Here, Giles might break some bones, or he might get himself bruised up, and there was no point doing that for what was essentially a training exercise.

"Time?" he asked.

Ellen glanced at her watch. "You have about ten minutes."

She handed him the sparring sword. Giles stood and began running through a familiar series of stretches and warm-up movements, with sword in hand. They were exactly what he'd made Buffy do when he'd begun to teach her sword-fighting. She knew his fighting style well: it was idiosyncratic, a mix of eastern martial arts techniques with European long sword schools. He would be difficult to predict, at least. She watched him move and tried to turn the same critical eye on him that he used on her. Where were his flaws? It was strange to think about it from this perspective.

When Giles came to a halt, he was breathing freely and sweating a little under his arms. Properly warmed up, then, according to his own principles.

Buffy stood up. "You're ready. Let's go get him."

Giles nodded and took a couple of steps toward the entrance to the fighting pit. Then he turned back to her. "Do you, ah, might I ask for a favor? Your token, to wear while I fight."

"A token?"

"A ribbon, or some bit of jewelry. It's traditional," he said, in response to her puzzled look.

Buffy wasn't wearing much jewelry, just some silver rings and the usual stuff in her ears, which wouldn't work. No, wait, her cross would be perfect. She unclasped it and Giles bent forward so she could reach up around his neck to put it on. She tucked it inside his shirt, where it wouldn't get in his way. He looked pleased and reached up to touch it. She had an urge to grab his shirt and pull him down and kiss him right then, but it was the wrong time. The page was watching and she didn't want to distract Giles from what he had to do.

"Fight club time," she said.

Ellen led them along the passage to the pit. She opened the door but did not head through. Buffy saw people in the bleachers, more than she might have expected. Maybe twenty, thirty people, more than had been at the funeral. She looked for the wheelchair and the white hair but didn't spot it. Then she saw what Giles was looking at: Twombly, standing in the doorway opposite, also armed and ready. He seemed almost larger than the door, with shoulders wide enough to brush both sides.

Buffy said, "What do you think?"

"A decade younger, half a foot taller, and supernaturally augmented? Going to feel a bit like fighting you. Only perhaps he paid attention in his training, unlike some Slayers I could name."

"Hey!" Buffy said, but it was only in automatic response to the tease. She was mostly busy checking the straps on his armor. There was exactly zero chance that guy didn't pay attention. She could see the way he stood at the opposite side of the fighting pit. "My advice to you? Cheat."

"This is chivalric combat, not a street brawl."

"I don't think demons give a damn about chivalry," Buffy said. "Don't screw around. Just take him out the way you would a vamp. The way you tell me to." She met his gaze and he nodded. Message understood. Buffy closed the half-door between the tunnel and pit and hopped up on top of it to watch. She gave Ellen a hand and hauled her up beside her. Showtime.

Giles walked to the center of the pit where his opponent and a referee waited for him. They shook hands like modern men. The referee backed them up about ten paces, then stood with a brass bell in his upraised hand. He rang the bell, ran out of the ring, and it was on.

The MMA fights Buffy had watched on TV had always turned into grapple-fests. This didn't, probably because the fighters had swords that they knew how to use. And neither one of them was the cautious type, it seemed. They clashed immediately, rebounded, and came together again. The other guy, Twombly, liked to hold his weapon with both hands. Giles, she knew, preferred a single-handed technique with another weapon in his right hand. A dagger, or a stake. He had no second weapon for this fight, though, so he used both hands. Probably he had to if he wanted to hold onto his weapon against Twombly's ferocious battering. She thought at first Giles was being stupid, but then she saw his approach. He couldn't hope to outlast a supernaturally-zipped-up fighter, so he was trying to bait him into a mistake early, when he still had the strength to capitalize.

It was a good idea, but it wasn't working. When Twombly made mistakes-- and he did, falling for feints more than once-- he compensated with shocking strength. He beat Giles down to his knees and swung the sword back for a blow that make Buffy suck in her breath with fear. But Giles had already rolled aside, and the sword connected with the dirt instead of flesh. He rolled again and when he came up his sword was in his hands again.

Buffy gripped the top of the door so hard it splintered in her hands. He had to get inside the guy's guard. That was the only thing that would work. Time slowed down for her and she saw the combat as it would be if she were fighting: trajectories, possibilities, freeze-frames. The Slayer spirit told her to jump in there and dismantle him, protect her Watcher. But it was not her show. It was Giles's turn to shine.

Time sped up again. Giles's sword fell to the sand behind him.

That was the moment he started fighting for real, she decided afterward, because the next thing he did was smash his head into Twombly's face. The guy staggered backwards. Giles scooped up his sword. Twombly was on him again, relentless, tireless, swinging with a two-handed blow that would take a man's head off. Giles ducked and then he kicked: a vicious side kick, perfectly executed. His foot struck home in Twombly's gut. He closed in, punched with the sword hilt, then followed it up with a forearm blow to the face that sent blood spurting. Score one for the good guy.

A bell rang somewhere and Twombly froze. Giles took an uncertain step forward, then the men's pages were in the pit, pulling them to the sides and off their feet. Buffy leapt down to the dirt and to Giles's side.

"Fabulous fighter," Giles said. He was breathing hard. He flexed his sword hand and rubbed at his forearm. Ellen stuck a water bottle nozzle into his mouth and squirted water into it. Buffy took the water bottle away from the kid. She gave Giles another mouthful, which he swished around and spat onto the ground.

Ellen toweled sweat off Giles's neck and face. Buffy wasn't sure what to do. Rub his shoulders? Pep-talk him?

"Hold out another five minutes," she said. "Survival."

"Easier said than done."

So much for pep. She fell back to the shoulder-rub plan. Sixty seconds of rest wasn't nearly enough time. Mouthguard back in, sword back into his hand, up on his feet again, and Ellen was vanishing into the tunnel with the stool and the water bottle. Buffy followed reluctantly, to join her perched atop the little wooden door.

It didn't take long. They fenced with less of the brutality of the first round but it was clear that Twombly had the advantage and was merely playing cautious. He was giving Giles no more opportunities to kick, no more opportunities to head-smash. Then Giles parried and his wrist twisted a little too far, the point of his blade swinging wildly to the side. He slid-step backwards and tried to wrestle the point back into line, but so slow. Buffy sucked air and tensed before the blow. Twombly's edge slashed against the unprotected forearm and raked up against Giles's thumb. His blade fell to the dirt. Giles ducked to recover it but Twombly was there, kicking his feet out from under him. Giles was down, Twombly was straddling his chest, kneeling on his elbows. Giles had no leverage to move his arms. Twombly reversed his sword, point down over Giles's throat. Buffy wanted to leap down, knock that demonic giant away. She leaned forward. Giles raised two fingers.

"Surrender," Ellen said, next to her on the wall.

Twombly sprang to his feet. He bent over Giles and clasped his arm. He pulled Giles to his feet again. The two stood for a moment there, gripping each other's arms, heads bent together. Then Giles stepped back and bowed. The victor saluted him with sword touched to forehead, then walked over to the bleachers where Conway and the others sat. He saluted them.

Buffy missed whatever happened after that because she was sprinting across the dirt to Giles. He was swaying on his feet. She went to his side but carefully did not touch him or offer him any support. They made their way together to his side of the pit, where Ellen was waiting. The page took the sword from him and only then Giles staggered. Buffy caught his arm and steadied him. He leaned back against the wall of the fighting pit, head tipped back. His chest was heaving. Still in serious oxygen deficit, she guessed. She brushed the kid away and undid the strap on his headgear herself.

"Went all out," he said.

"Yeah."

"Had my arse whipped anyway."

"Happens."

"Felt like fighting you. Not, not as fast. Strong. God."

Buffy unbuckled his armguards and threw them aside. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Ellen scrambling to collect the gear. Giles shrugged out of the chest protector and handed it to her. His arms were slick with sweat. Blood was spattered all down his t-shirt. Damn.

"His blood or yours?"

"Sorry?" Giles swiped at his nose and looked at his fingers. "Ah. Mine, apparently."

His nose was bleeding. And there was a weal across his upper arm, right about where his elbow guards would have ended. It was wet with blood. "Your arm," she said.

"Really?"

Giles looked down at his arm in surprise. Couldn't tell what was hurting and what wasn't, she guessed. She'd been like that after particularly nasty fights sometimes. Adrenaline, Giles would explain, usually while shoving her down so he could bandage her up. She shoved him down to the ground-- sauce for the gander-- and beckoned the page back.

"First aid kit."

Ellen took one look at the blood and ran out. She returned very shortly with a guy in a white jacket with a case under his arm. Giles sighed at him.

"It's only a scratch."

"I'll be the judge of that."

But Giles held his arm out to the medic to be swabbed clean obediently enough. His breathing had gone back to normal already. He really was fitter than Buffy had realized. She always beat him up so easily in training that it was hard sometimes for her to think of him as in shape or strong. But she had to think about normal human levels of ability here.

The medic taped some gauze into place. He was done and packing up already. Buffy went to check his work, because she wasn't trusting anybody else with her guy. Giles nudged her aside, however, and struggled to his feet. Buffy was about to complain and shove him back down again, but then she saw that Conway was approaching down the narrow hallway. Not just Conway, but his whole entourage, including the guy with the clipboard. He had the thing tucked under his arm for once, no pencil in evidence, though he had the same cool detached look of indifference he'd maintained all day. Buffy stepped to the side to watch. It was, as before, Giles's show.

As usual, Conway wasted no time on courtesies. He said, without preamble, "I congratulate you, Mr Giles. You acquitted yourself well."

Giles inclined his head. "Thank you."

"You have the physical skills we require. We had some worries on this point, as you know, since not all of the Council-trained candidates we've seen have been so well-prepared."

Buffy glanced over at Giles after that bombshell, but he wasn't looking her way. His attention was completely on Conway.

"I trust your injury is minor."

"Er, yes."

They both looked down at the arm with the gauze taped to it. Below the tape was the black of the Eyghon tattoo, stark against his pale skin. Conway rolled himself closer to look.

"That tattoo is interesting. Does it hold any meaning to you?"

"At one time it did."

Conway continued staring at him without saying anything. Giles looked down at his arm and brushed his fingers over it. The back of Buffy's neck itched, where she'd had a copy of the tattoo, thank you Ethan Rayne. It had stopped bugging her Slayer senses when the demon had died, and that had been about when Giles had started wearing short-sleeved shirts every now and then. During heat waves, anyway.

"The symbology is odd."

"Etruscan. It, uh, it was the ritual mark of a demon. Eyghon the Sleeper. Used in--"

"I know what it would be used in. You did not choose to inform us of this. Why not?"

"The demon is dead. Any past affiliation would... not signify."

"We might, however, wish to know that our newest candidate is the sort of man who would choose to mark himself as a demon's vessel."

Conway leveled a glare at Giles that was megawatt intensity, the sort of glare Giles used to aim at her when she was slacking off. Now was the time to say something in his own defense. But Giles said nothing. Buffy opened her mouth to say it herself: he'd just been a kid when he'd done it, but then she shut it. It was his business, not hers.

Then Giles said, quietly, "You are quite right. I ought to have told you."

"Yes." The glare subsided, but Conway's next words weren't any kinder. "There is some argument about whether we understand your character well enough to take you into our order. Ordinarily we'd have watched your development for a period of years in our school. I had been arguing in your favor. Now, however--"

Giles said nothing. He stood very still and his face was carefully blank. Buffy knew that look.

"You'll spend tomorrow squiring properly for your Slayer. You may rest in your room until then." Conway looked at her for a moment, and Buffy wondered how much he knew about their sleeping arrangements. "The refectory is open for dinner any time between five and eight."

It was a dismissal. He spun his chair around deftly and was off, with his little flotilla of knightly ducklings trailing along afterward. Buffy suspected he got a charge out of making them having to run to keep up with him. It almost made her like him. She turned to find Giles staring off where Conway had gone, hand absently rubbing his ribs under the blood-spattered t-shirt. He'd taken a good whack on them, one that would probably leave bruises even through padding.

The page had finished getting Giles's armor off while they'd been talking. She ducked her head to the pair of them then scurried off toward the gym.

"Well," Buffy said.

Giles massaged his shoulder and smiled at her faintly. "Well," he said. His voice told her everything she needed to know about his mood. She decided to keep him distracted for a while, so he wouldn't sink into his one of his guilt-fits. She'd had enough of broody men in her life.

"Come on. Let's get you showered and then scarf some early dinner."

The refectory reminded her of her college cafeteria, except nicer and more breakable. Like a restaurant buffet, with a half dozen teenagers dancing around instead of a waitstaff. The food was plain but healthy. Lots of fresh vegetables and protein, exactly what Giles had always been after her to eat. Buffy was hungrier than she'd thought. They loaded up their trays and carried them over to a free table in the corner. They'd come at a busy time, it seemed, for the room was nearly full.

There weren't a lot of women in the room, and they were younger than the men, mostly. The generational thing Conway had mentioned was in evidence, she guessed. The women must be more recent recruits. They had the same hard-body look as the guys. There was something about the way they sat in their chairs, every one of them. Upright, alert, poised. Buffy would not have wanted to be the demon who picked a fight with them. She said as much to Giles.

"They all remind me of you, a little," Giles said. "The Watchers were always more bookish. And a little more cloak and dagger."

"Yeah, these guys don't have a wetworks team. I bet they have a dueling club, though." Giles gave her a wan smile, but she pressed on. "Is that why Carbuncle there is nervous about you? Because you did that for them?"

"I rather suspect it's mostly the, ah. The demon." Giles's hand strayed to the inside of his elbow.

Buffy shook her head. They'd been nervous about him before that. And something about Conway's total lack of surprise made her suspect he already knew everything about Giles, and therefore about his little nervous breakdown. No use talking about it with Giles, though. He had a guilt complex a mile wide about that incident.

She thought about wetworks teams and Giles with a sniper rifle. Killing people. She'd been in the Slaying business long enough to know that there were human beings who preyed on other humans just as viciously as vampires did. It wasn't her business to take them out but she might, some day, if the circumstances were right. If she could think of no other way. Just as she'd been willing to kill Angel, who'd had a soul, for the rest of the human race. The Slayer spirit would let her do that.

Though if the Council had been running Giles and giving him targets, there was no guarantee he'd killed only bad guys. That was a creepy thought.

Just then a pair of women came up to their table, trays in hand, and asked if they minded being joined. Buffy grinned and shoved out a chair with a toe for them. They wanted to meet the Slayer and her Watcher, and grill the guy who was maybe going to be one of them. They were friendly and more than happy to talk shop about demon-killing.

This was the first time Buffy had met other women who could talk about crossbows with her. Other than Faith, and she'd never hit it off with Faith. Partly her fault, partly Faith's fault, partly just the phase she'd been in. Right now she was in an Initiative-backlash phase. No more bands of testosterone-soaked brothers who didn't get that women could do this stuff too.

Speaking of testosterone, here came the victor of the day, Mr Braveheart Twombly and his mane. Buffy couldn't help but track him as he came across the room, and one of the other women was doing the same. She wondered if Twombly was dating or if he was into women or not. He beelined toward them and folded himself into another chair at the table, right next to Giles. To her surprise, Giles seemed happy to see the guy. They shook hands and immediately started talking to each other in low voices. Buffy couldn't hear and didn't really want to eavesdrop. She shrugged and went back to discussing the problem of finding weaponry made for short people with the woman next to her.

Some time later Giles touched her arm. "I'm off with Twombly here for a talk."

"See you in the rooms later?"

"Feeling tired, so I shouldn't be long."

Buffy watched the pair of them head toward the refectory door together. Giles was a tall guy and he looked slight next to that giant. Buffy turned back to her table. Somebody was pulling the cork from a bottle of wine. Buffy had a glass happily. The Knights of St George were okay and she could sense that deep in her bones. The Slayer spirit was at rest for the moment. She settled in to talk shop with the first peers she'd ever met.


Continued in part 4.