A hot, bright line of pain flashed down the outside of Seyun’s right leg as Vaska Ren’s blade cleared the cut, spraying a dark arc of blood across the raked gray granite stones.
The impact of the early Bronze stroke shoved Seyun’s right hip three inches sideways, threatening to fold his ankle over the compacted ridge of gravel. For half a heartbeat, the courtyard walls tilted against the gray sky.
Then the heel of Seyun’s right boot held its purchase like an iron peg driven into mortar. It he had stamped straight through the loose pebbles onto the solid dressed limestone flat stone slab underneath before the steel arrived. He brought his sound left foot up cleanly beside the gravel ridge, locked his core into Ash Reed’s second foundation pillar stance, and stood fully upright as Vaska’s blade came to rest at the end of its follow-through.
Warm blood soaked rapidly through the torn wool of Seyun’s right trouser leg. It ran in a dark stripe down the outside of his boot heel onto the gray stones. His breath came in ragged, steaming white plumes in the freezing mountain dusk. His bandaged hands trembled where he braced them lightly against his upper thighs.
