Girl Rides the Wind Read Online Free PDF Page B

shrines. I guess he’s a member of one of those families.”
    “He doesn’t strike me as the priestly type,” Oleschenko said.
    “And did I hear you say you won’t compete today, Sensei ?” Durant said, before catching himself. “I mean, LT.”
    “Of course, she’s not competing,” Oleschenko said. “Why the hell would she?”
    “Whatever you say, sir,” Durant said, with a glance at Emily, who said nothing.
    “What would be the point anyway?” Oleschenko continued. “It’s not like she can win, and she could get hurt, which wouldn’t be good for unit cohesion. The men trust her to fly the choppers, and I don’t want to mess that up.”
    “Yes, sir,” Tenno said. “Never seek a fight, that’s a lesson I learned the hard way.”
    Oleschenko eyed her, no doubt puzzling over what she’d said, which she knew wasn’t exactly consonant with the sentiments he’d just expressed.
    “Look, Tenno, I know the sergeant thinks you’re tough, but you don’t belong in this donnybrook.”
    “Absolutely, sir. But I hope you realize this won’t be like your usual Marine mud-brawl. That’s not how the Jietai thinks about morale. It’s more likely to be some sort of single-elimination, one-on-one tournament.”
    “Are you saying you want to fight?”
    “No, sir. I prefer watching from the sidelines.”
    “All due respect, sir,” Durant began, and then paused to consider his words. “It’s just, Tenno’s no ordinary lady-Marine.” Emily glowered at him and gave a slight shake of the head, but he’d gone too far down this line of thought to stop now. “I mean, if you’d seen her at Quantico…”
    “Yeah, yeah,” Oleschenko cut him off. “I know all about Quantico, and the way I heard it, she was lucky not to get killed. You had no business competing with the men,” he said directly to Emily. “Other people could have been hurt. Whose brilliant idea was that, anyway?”
    “Don’t worry, sir. I’ve learned my lesson.”
    She glanced at Durant as she said this, hoping he’d let the matter drop, even if it meant swallowing the captain’s preposterous notion that she’d endangered Marines by competing. Someone had been hurt at that tournament all right, namely Jiao Long, the assassin who’d snuck a knife into the ring and tried to stab her through the eye with it. She’d stripped his life away with his own weapon, the whole scene soaked in a spray of blood from a severed artery in his neck, as a hundred stunned Marines watched from the side. She’d learned the hard way not to seek a fight, at least partly because you can’t control how others will interpret the results.
    In the event, Emily turned out to be correct about the tournament, much to the consternation of the Marines, who would have preferred to fight en masse , rather than be exposed to the hazards and potential embarrassments of single combat. That was how they thought about camaraderie and unit cohesion… not to mention that, given the fact they were generally larger than their Japanese counterparts, they’d probably have fared better in a brawl, if only by dint of sheer mass and muscle. But the isolated and formalized structure of a tournament served Kano’s men better, and though a few of the Americans did well enough, like Lance Corporal Antonio Colón, who won several matches in a row, mostly they lost to smaller and more skillful opponents.
    In each case, the winner of a match held the ring, and the next challenger chose the weapons, if any. After LCpl Colón lost to First Private Uchida in a grappling match, finally forced to tap out of a chokehold, Durant got his chance, winning four matches in a row, twice in karate-style fighting, twice with a bo staff. When Ishikawa entered the ring, Emily heard the tail-end of Tsukino’s instructions.
    “He’ll drop his guard if you make him block after a kick-combination.”
    He was right, of course—she’d seen the truth of it before, and even tried to break Durant of the