Heirs of the Blade_ Shadows of the Apt_ Book Seven - Adiran Tchaikovsky [256]
She slapped him with her off-hand. She had no needles or spines of Art there, but it was a move both unbecoming and unheralded, and she felt the inside of her fingers connect with his chin, hooking his head aside. She used this tenuous purchase to swing her back foot round and retreat, then kick off and move forward again, even as he started to close once more.
She should have had him then. Her technique had been faultless: not a spare twitch or quiver to warn him that he would be driving himself on to her blade. His body was abruptly sideways, though, feet skipping him aside so that the slender lance of her rapier scoured a gouge in the grey leather of his jacket but drew no blood, and then he drove his clawed gauntlet down at her like a scythe-blade.
The first jolt passed through her, though in that moment she could not have recognized what it was. She pressed forward, ducking almost under his armpit, feeling the descending blade rake through her flurrying hair as she put on a rush of speed, clearing ten, twelve paces before she turned with sword outstretched and ready for him. She found him standing, as before, without having deigned to follow her. His expression was patiently encouraging, maddening because there was a meaning there that she could not quite grasp.
Her heart and innards felt taut and out of balance. He had bloodied her twice, and he was improvising. She had the measure of him, yet had barely touched him.
Some small, clear voice in the back of her mind explained it to her patiently: This is fear.
He approached again, his steps confident but without arrogance, a man who has seen the history of his duel written out like a play, and intends to perform his role without melodrama.
She seized the initiative, a three-step lunge from a standing start before he had even neared her, her sword lashing down on him, demanding an answering parry as he tried to catch her blade in the crook of his. Instead she drew her weapon back, whipped it at his face so he swayed aside, then was already drawing it back across her to pierce between his right-side ribs. His blade shadowed hers, his parry waiting for the strike to land as if it were a fly. Instead she wrenched her lunge up and stabbed straight at his face again, a strike meant to take him through the eye, but dropping for his throat even as he brought his blade up, hoping to slip under his guard.
Something rang across her skull, scattering her vision with sparks and lights, and she felt a solid impact on her sword-guard, a complaint of steel, and a pain in her side that seemed to spring from nowhere. For a second she could not see, but instinct brought her blade about to fend his off even as she stumbled back, and he let her go again, a second break, providing punctuation in the meticulous rhythm of the duel in his head, that he was carefully teaching to her.
That was what his expression meant, she realized miserably. It was the look of a hard teacher whose student is proving capable, if not exemplary.
He had punched her with his gauntlet even as he had the blade hinged down to catch her blow. Somehow she had warded off his first riposte, but the next had gashed her just above the waist. There was a trickle of blood down the side of her face where he had broken the skin.
The cold, ill feeling within her had crystallized. I am not as good as he is. The gap between them was certainly smaller than should be expected, given the difference in their years, but Isendter had been a master since before she was born.
He was stepping forward again, ready with his next lesson, and she felt a tremble inside. Save me – he’s going to kill me. She had never acknowledged such before. When she had fought Tisamon, so long ago, she had been too young and foolish to quite understand what losing a duel meant. Since then, she had fought many times, but no single opponent