Len didn’t try to block the strike.
Against an ordinary highway cutpurse or an aggressive stable hand, an ash pole tipped with cast bronze could shatter a wrist or crack an exposed collarbone with a single short-handled thrust. But against an enemy running under the infallible spatial recovery of Surefoot, swinging a forty-inch staff was an invitation to slaughter. The copy would catch the wood on the meat of its forearm, roll with the dynamic shock, and use the turning force to wrench Len’s right shoulder out of its socket before he could reset his stance.
Ivara Quill had spent two hours that morning driving that exact principle into his skull with the blunt handle of her tin shears. When a land-mapper meets a stronger load, he doesn’t brace against the thrust. He measures the pivot point.
The double launched itself through the gloom. Then, its boots clearing the moldering straw, Len took a single, calculated step backward with his left foot.
The movement sent a sharp, sickening jolt through his stitched forearm. His shoulder muscles tightened to stabilize the arm against his ribs. The zinc carbolic spirit-extract soaked into the linen wrap burned against his torn flesh like hot grease. The eight horsehair stitches pulled wildly against the skin over his forearm bone. But his heel didn’t land on the spongy, rotting oak floorboards. His boot struck the heavy, half-round iron rim of an old drainage check collar. A raised stone well-head, twenty-four inches across, that had once served…
