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Maybe Mother was right, and maybe she was too old for this. She was fourteen, after all, and only two short years from being presented as a lady at court. And ladies did not get into fistfights. Or wrestling matches. Or any other violent means of settling a conflict. Luckily, she wasn't a lady yet.
So when Nathaniel and his little brother Thomas made yet another crack about her waiting for a lover at the practice yards (when she was, in reality, trying to figure out the latest striking combination that Cauthrien had taught her that morning), she finally had enough of their nonsense and was ready to lost her temper. Now, as most of her family (and Cauthrien) could attest to, Elissa in a temper was liable to cause serious damage to whatever was in her way. Fortunately, while she might be hotheaded and impulsive for the most part, she never actually lost her temper much. But enough was enough. She was sick and tired of losing her concentration because a pair of idiots wouldn't stop nattering about her hypothetical love life. Never mind the fact that she wasn't particularly attracted to males in the first place. While she might theoretically tolerate this sort of teasing from Fergus (or maybe Orianna), she wasn't going to tolerate it from a Howe.
"Or you know, Thomas," Nathaniel said, leaning against the wall with a smirk on his face, "maybe she's waiting for that lady sergeant. The one that Teyrn Loghain was sparring with yesterday. Red over there was watching her the entire time, you remember." Thomas, insipid and lackwit as ever, nodded eagerly at his older brother's statement. "She wasn't very good, was she? Teyrn Loghain took her apart like it was nothing."
Never mind that the whole point of yesterday's sparring match was to see how well Cauthrien could fight with her off hand. And she wasn't using her favorite weapon either. She'd seen Cauthrien and Teyrn Loghain go at it plenty of times, and these days, Cauthrien generally won two bouts out of three. So Nathaniel, like all Howes, was a bloody liar on top of being bloody irritating.
"Hey Red," Nathaniel called out, "why don't you find a real man for a change? Unless that lady sergant is better in bed than she is on the field."
Oh that did it. She very carefully finished the last three strikes in the drill and turned to look at the pair of snickering Howes. The icy cold gaze would have scared anyone with a sense of self preservation. Howes, for better or worse, didn't seem to have that sense. They also didn't seem to realize that a well balanced pracitice sword (particularly one weighed with lead) was a perfectly serviceable blunt weapon. How (no pun intended) unfortunate for them.
"You take that back, Howe," she spat.
"And if I don't?" Nathaniel sneered.
Neither of the boys were prepared for her charging them. She went for the weaker target first. A boot in the stomach followed by slamming the pommel into his face took Thomas down for the count. For good measure, she stomped on his groin and his elbow (she would have prefered the head or the ribs, but actually killing the idiot would be poor). Nathaniel, seeing his little brother curled up in a ball twitching feebly, had enough presence of mind to draw a dagger and attack. He was taller than her and almost certainly stronger, but she hadn't spent her mornings sparring with Cauthrien for nothing. She was quite used to dealing with an opponent who had longer reach than her, thank you very much. And besides, her sword gave her the extra reach she needed against Howe. Howe lunged at her. It might have worked had he had a rapier, but he didn't. She stepped back, blocked by smashing his hand with her sword, and then followed through with a backhanded strike to his head.
By the time someone (in this case, as usual, it was Cauthrien) noticed the ruckus she caused and came to investigate, she was casually grinding Nathaniel Howe's face into the ground and screaming at him to apologize. Which he was admittly trying to do, if she hadn't been so intent on making him eat dirt. Cauthrien wasted no time in dragging her off by the scruff of the neck. Howe picked himself up slowly, that superior smirk completely gone, mumbled something that might have been an apology, and limped away with his brother to complain to their father about her.
"What did you think you were doing?" Cauthrien glared at her.
"Uh..." All the clever responses she had prepared vanished. She squirmed. Cauthrien had her by the collar and, from past experience, wasn't going to let go until she got an explaination.
"Elissa, explain this. NOW," Cauthrien barked in a tone that brooked no arguements
"Nathaniel insulted you," she said quickly.
"And so you attacked him?" the expression on the sergeant's face shifted from annoyance to amusement.
Elissa nodded, almost contrite. Cauthrien's ability to render her speechless with one look was well known by her family, to the point where Fergus suggested that they should hire her as a precaution before any parties. (That had been voted down emphatically by her mother, but the point still stood.)
"Did it occur to you that I am perfectly capable of defending my own honor?" Cauthrien asked mildly, though her brown eyes were twinkling with supressed mirth.
She nodded again.
"You little idiot," Cauthrien chuckled and let go of her. "Thank you for your intentions, but never do that again. Now scram, before I have to tell your father."
"Yes'm," she nodded and then scrammed.
Her father did hear about it (from Arl Howe, she assumed), and she did have to apologize to the Howes later (and in public, no less). All in all, she thought it quite worth it. Nathaniel never bothered her in the yards again.