Now as you probably suspected, the following four battles were over in a matter of seconds.

One after another the men tried their hand at challenging Julia, but none of them came even close to their leader.

When all of the battles were done, and all of the men lay sprawled out on the ground, some even lightly snoring, Julia and I stood in silence again.

"So, what do you think?" I asked.

Julia was quiet for a few moments, looking around at the men on the ground.

"They’re not bad," she answered with a small nod.

Now some of you might be thinking: ’Not bad!?’.

But you should know, if Julia says someone was ’not bad’ in a battle, it tends to mean that they were actually already on a pretty high level.

Honestly if I had to fight the leader of these men... I would struggle quite a bit.

"I told you some deserters would work perfectly." I said.

Okay so maybe it’s not the best choice to tell your wife ’I told you so’, but come on it’s not like I had any experience with women before Julia.

Which you definitely couldn’t always tell, I mean I always tended to be perfectly capable of saying the right thing.

But this time I might have slightly put my foot in my mouth.

She glared at me as if she wished that it was me who had fought with her, and not all of these men.

A shiver ran up my spine at that look.

"Sorry, sorry," I said, holding up my hands in surrender. "I just mean now you don’t have to go out looking for members to train."

"Hmpf."

Julia didn’t look away from me for a moment.

"I think while we wait for our first members to wake up would be a perfect time to continue your training." Julia said, which honestly made the slight tremble running down my spine a little more pronounced.

"Do we really need to?" I asked, putting on a brave face. "Aren’t you tired from the intense battles you just had?"

"Maybe we should wait until tomorrow morning." I said.

Seriously, I was just praying she would say yes so we could wait until she had calmed down just a little bit.

But apparently my luck wasn’t that good.

I had known it wouldn’t work, I mean she had been the one to suggest training, but it was worth a shot.

She didn’t even answer any of my questions, she simply walked a bit away from the unconscious men and turned back to me, gesturing for me to come at her.

With a deep sigh I tried one last time.

"It’s getting pretty dark—"

"Just shut up and start the fight!" Julia interrupted.

I decided to do exactly that, I knew that if I kept trying to worm my way out of this I was just going to piss her off more.

And that would not end well for me.

At least at her current level of anger, which honestly is more like slight irritation, she would just leave me with some bruises.

I approached her cautiously, slowly circling her, trying to find some openings I could exploit.

Openings I had been trying to find for weeks, without any success.

Finally I decided to just get this over with.

I started off with some attempted body blows, a few jabs, even an attempted leg sweep.

I say attempted, because not one of those hits landed.

She leaned out of the way of each and every one of the jabs, and simply jumped over the leg sweep.

Not a single blow had landed.

"You’re still thinking too much." She said as she leaned out of the path of yet another jab.

"Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?" I asked as I threw another punch, which met nothing but air.

"Fighting isn’t some sort of strategic competition," She said as she leaned out of the way of another punch. "You have to trust your instincts."

She stepped into my next punch, leaned out of its path, and landed three body blows in quick succession.

The blows were so fast that it felt like she had landed only one massive hit.

I retreated back a few steps, completely winded.

"You see, you react. That’s fighting. That’s battle." She said as she charged toward me again.

She launched a barrage of attacks at me, body hits, jabs at the head, leg sweeps, all coming fast and precise.

All I could do was block those I could, and suffer through those I couldn’t.

Julia just kept attacking, and I just kept blocking and evading.

Eventually I found some sort of rhythm.

It’s hard to describe what it felt like.

Have you ever done one thing for so long that your mind kind of starts to wander while you do it, and yet your body just keeps going with the task?

If you have, well that’s about what happened to me at that moment.

I still dodged and blocked hits left right and centre, but my mind was almost completely empty.

I just saw a hit coming, and my body would automatically try to get out of the way.

Eventually it came to a point where my body wouldn’t just try to get out of the way, but would even counter.

And that’s when it happened.

After weeks of trying.

Weeks of suffering.

A hit landed.

A body blow.

The moment the hit landed, and Julia stepped back a few feet my mind snapped back into place.

"I’m sorry, honey!" I immediately said. "Are you okay?"

My parents had raised me to never raise my hands to a woman.

For weeks I had tried to land a hit on her, but I don’t think I had ever truly tried.

Or maybe I had tried, but I had always intended to pull the punch at the last moment.

But at that moment I hadn’t pulled my punch at all, instead it had been a body blow at full force.

That blow had completely winded Julia, but she didn’t take her eyes off me for a second.

I was riddled with guilt.

I even imagined her looking at me with disgust.

I retreated back a few steps.

I couldn’t meet her eyes, looking at everything but her.

"Daniel?" I could hear her say my name, but I couldn’t find the strength to look at her.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to take it if she looked at me with cold disgust.

I just kept retreating from her, keeping my eyes to the ground.

Finally my back hit a tree.

It literally felt like I was between a rock and a hard place at that moment.

I was just about to go around it and flee from that spot when two small hands grabbed me.

"Hey, hey ,hey." Julia said as she tilted my head to look down at her.

Her beautiful blue eyes were looking up at me with worry.

"What’s wrong?" she asked.

"I hit you." I said.

"Yes you did, that’s a good thing."

"No it’s not, my responsibility is to protect you, not to hurt you." I answered.

Julia seemed confused by this.

"Protect me? Hurt me?"

"A man’s responsibility is to protect women, to protect those weaker than himself, never to hurt them." I answered almost robotically.

Those words had been repeated to me so many times by my father that they had basically become a part of me.

"Do you think I’m weaker than you?" Julia asked with a slight smile.

I shook my head as an answer.

"But that doesn’t matter, I hurt you. I raised my hands against a woman... against the woman I love." I finished with a whisper.

Julia pulled me into a tight hug.

"You didn’t hurt me, I’m fine." She said softly.

I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her into me as tightly as I could, almost like I feared she would disappear if I didn’t.

"I see that I made the right decision in following you." A voice said from a few feet away.