Well, in this particular fight she won't, because aiming for the face is against the rules! Tiny Asian girl weighs about half of what Iomedae does and does not have a hope of knocking her over, but will try to count on being faster and having better balance, and attempt to stay out of punching range while kicking Iomedae in allowed locations whenever she has an opening. She wouldn't try that on more experienced students, it's a great way to get flipped over onto your face when they grab your leg, unless you're fast enough to get a hit in and then out of the way. 

Marian is bigger and stronger and more practiced than her and it's not like she's strong enough to kill someone with punches. But Marian's bigger and hopefully clumsier than her so - she will kick at Marian's knees and then try to run past her and put some other sparring pair between the two of them. (She knows that once she becomes a real wizard getting out of reach for a moment will maybe be all she needs... and she should really try to learn what some of her other spells do. Probably one of them kills people or turns them into newts which is just as good, really.)

Marian is wearing shin pads - at some point you get tired of having embarrassing permanent shin bruises that are incredibly obvious every time you wear a bathing suit - and is not bothered by being kicked in the knees, but does have to brace herself to keep her balance, which slows her down enough that Alfirin can manage to get behind another pair. 

Well, if she wants to use that strategy, it's a super valid strategy but she has to do it for an entire two minutes! Marian makes sure to keep herself between Alfirin and the exit - it's weirdly common for students to, like, not notice that 'run out of the entire building' is an available strategy, but Alfirin seems like someone who might try it - and will chase her around and attempt to corner her at one end of the room. At the very least, maybe Alfirin will get tired before the two minutes are up and slow down enough that Marian can catch up to her? 

She's already tired and definitely cannot keep it up for two minutes. She can't even get in counting to five while not running, which is what she was aiming for. When it becomes obvious this strategy isn't going to work she waits for Marian to come to her and tries to slip past again and go for the door. (She didn't think that was in-bounds for the exercise until she noticed Marian trying to keep her away from it)

It doesn't work.

Then Marian - after first making sure there isn't another group right behind Alfirin - will dive in and tackle her to the ground. And then, since Alfirin has not in fact done the grappling class yet, call 'fight over!' and back off, beaming at her and offering a hand to pull her to her feet. "That was really good! Smart strategy. I think you could've gotten past me no problem if you were fresh, so - better cardio would get you there too, and you'll get that." 

Iomedae for her part is definitely getting hit more than she's landing hits but she's a paladin (or maybe it's just that she's very stubborn) and quite a bit harder to bring down than other people.

Her sparring partner is taking some hits - harder ones than she's delivering, mostly - but she's apparently at least tough enough to stay on her feet through two minutes of it. They're still both up and fighting by the time the timer goes and the other student raises her hands and backs off. 

"Good match," the girl says, and runs to grab water before the instructor assigns the next round of partners. 

Iomedae goes up against the tall skinny young man, who's not as fast as her but still manages to get in a couple of hits by dint of having much longer arms and legs than her; about forty-five seconds in, she manages to catch him off guard enough that he loses his balance and goes over hard on his rump. He doesn't seem particularly bothered about losing to a girl; he grins bashfully at her and also praises her on a good match. 

And then she's up against Marian! 

...Who has been considering her strategy for sparring with Iomedae for half the class. She mostly expects to lose - she can generally only win against people bigger than her by being more aggressive in the offense and having a higher pain tolerance, and she's fairly sure that neither applies here. Grappling and chokeholds are off the table, sigh, and even if she could get Iomedae on the ground, that's not actually a winning strategy in a fight with someone who has fifty pounds of muscle on her, and would in real life be an incredibly stupid plan. She doesn't think she's fast enough to kick Iomedae without having her foot grabbed - though she's also not that worried about being kicked, Iomedae will be terrifying once she's had more practice but she was still needing quite a lot of time to line up her stance before she could reliably aim her kicks at the right place. 

The main advantage she has is probably just better footwork and balance? Which is hilarious, Marian is objectively not good at this, but suggests some ideas. 

She doesn't go full-on Alfirin strategy, but she does make Iomedae come to her, gambling that if Iomedae is mostly focusing on aiming a strike then she won't be focusing as much on her feet. ....And Iomedae hasn't really learned any counters yet, that wasn't covered today, whereas Marian has drilled that a lot and is hoping she can manage to dodge or block some of Iomedae's hits and take the opportunity to get a hit of her own in. She's not going to win that way but she'll be pretty pleased with herself if she's still on her feet at the end. 

One important way fighting with your hands is worse than swordfighting is that when swordfighting you are generally endeavoring to be outside the reach of whoever you're trying to kill and when punching-and-kicking fighting you cannot do this. Iomedae is currently testing the theory that as long as your enemies are themselves unarmed you can solve this by simply not caring that they can reach you or that they can hurt you. She assumes that this approach can be improved on but, you know, you have to start somewhere. Like by trying to hurt your opponent as much as possible as fast as possible.

In this case they will both get to hit each other kind of a lot, since "simply not caring that they can reach you or that they can hurt you" is ALSO Marian's strategy, and now that they are apparently both picking this strategy, Marian is feeling COMPETITIVE.

Iomedae can hit harder than Marian can - honestly, Iomedae can hit harder than pretty much anyone in the class including the instructor. She's getting slightly fewer hits in than Marian, though; Marian isn't any faster, overall, but has more thoroughly trained instincts for the footwork involved when fighting means repeatedly getting in and out of reach quickly, and is better at countering, and is overall putting somewhat more effort into not getting hit or at least taking a more glancing hit that won't knock her over, even when this means she herself can't hit Iomedae as hard. 

It's hard for either of them to seriously injure each other while staying within the rules, given the torso padding and the fact that head, face, and neck strikes are off-limits, but they can definitely give each other a lot of bruises; Marian is ending up trying to block a lot of hits and her forearms and arms and elbows are not padded, which she has regrets about.

They're both fit enough to not really slow down within a two-minute period. Whether Marian can stay on her feet will mostly depend on whether she fails to dodge or block any strikes hard enough to make her lose her balance; she's not going to call to stop early just because she's in a ridiculous amount of pain. 

They are on the same page about that. It might be mildly alarming to everyone else in the vicinity but Iomedae is used to sparring with a priest on hand. She does get frustrated, about a minute and a half in, about the fact that nothing they're doing is actually debilitating, because in real life you actually cannot survive a minute and a half of failing to take your opponent down, but she is aware that it is her first day of trying to learn this skillset and she's not going to try any elaborate solutions to this problem. 

They'll both be on their feet after two minutes.

"Grow strong serve God!" she says cheerfully and breathlessly once they're stopped.

- and then remembers Marian is probably too educated to know about gods. Oh well.

(Techniques that would be debilitating without protective padding - and some very carefully taught modifications that shouldn't change the reflexes being trained too much - are for the advanced class sparring. Even Marian isn't really at that level, despite the instructor's deal where she can attend those classes if it's her only availability.

The instructor is definitely keeping a close eye on them, though more to make sure they're not so caught up in trying to win that they fail to notice another pair in the way and hurt someone that way. He is, overall, approving. There's a kind of trying-to-win that's incredibly hard to teach, no matter how many techniques you drill, and so it's always very satisfying when a student comes in with the right mindset on day one.) 

Marian knows lots of things about lots of gods (though, admittedly, not about Aroden specifically, this was not a topic covered in 12th grade World Religion in Canada.) She is, in fact, an atheist, though it's not as far as she can tell true that most nurses are atheists. 

It's kind of impossible to be bothered. She beams at Iomedae. "That - was incredible -" Her heart rate is at least 190 and her legs feel shaky with exhaustion and her forearms are mostly numb but are going to hurt a ton in a minute. She's in the best mood she's been in all day. 

...She's going to lose her next bout with Tall Skinny guy, despite the fact that she can usually beat him, because she is at this point simply too tired to get out of his way. Still. Worth it. Hopefully Iomedae is too distracted fighting her next partner to notice and judge her.

Iomedae's next partner will be Alfirin! (Yes, the instructor is aware this is not a fair fight. That's part of the point.) 

Iomedae is exhausted and in a great mood and beams at Alfirin. "- you don't want me to be gentle," she says in Taldane. It'd be a question except she's pretty sure of the answer.

"I don't want you to be gentle." She's going to be sore and achy and probably bruised all over already, a few more won't matter.

...She is more tired than Iomedae and will not be able to run away here. She doesn't see anything even remotely resembling a winning strategy. She'll try to get in close where Iomedae is only stronger and tougher and not also longer limbed, then...elbow her in the gut or tangle up her legs or something.

Iomedae had a hard time getting her brothers to actually try to hurt her, even once she'd secured her father's permission to practice swordfighting alongside them. This was very silly. She was going to be a holy warrior, and being better with a sword would make her safer. She is absolutely not going to make the same silly mistake with Alfirin even though she has started to feel protective of her in a little-sister kind of way. 

- she is absolutely going to do that, apparently, for at least a few seconds, because somehow knowing it's silly is not causing her to not do it? And then Alfirin elbows her quite hard in the gut and that fixes it, mostly, and she will stop being silly and try using her dramatically superior strength to knock Alfirin over.

She tries to trip Iomedae so that they both fall over, which is slightly more like winning than most of her options.

This works and Iomedae crashes down on top of her and remembers just in time that they are supposed to stop trying to hurt each other once they're on the ground. (Sparring at home was 'to surrender' and it is mentally hard to stop at neither of surrender nor incapacitation.)

She sits up, grinning.

She takes a few moments to get her wind back and then pries herself off the ground, more dazed than grinning.

"Are you all right?"

"I will be alright? I just need breath."

Alfirin should not be injured and if she is it shouldn't be Iomedae's fault  Iomedae had no trouble identifying the flaws in this logic when it was directed at her. It is not kindness to keep people safe in your shadow and thereby deny them the safety that can only be attained by being ready to take on the entire rest of the universe.