On the second pass across the worn flat stone slabs of the oldest yard, Daro Kesh didn’t give Seyun an easier angle. Stepping off the center line with a sharp snap of his rear boot, the swordsman drove his limited early-Bronze sword plane straight down the middle toward Seyun’s chest bone, then hooked his wrist inward at the last third of the stride. Aiming the heavy hardwood edge on a low, scything slanted that at the same time threatened to sweep Seyun’s braced left foot and shear past his hip into the water stool two paces behind him.
It was the exact three-way bind that had broken Seyun’s posture two minutes earlier, carried out half a beat faster and with the full compact thickness of Daro’s Dark Unwavering Plane riding the wooden edge.
This time, Seyun didn’t divide his mind, and he didn’t reach behind his back.
On the first tenth of a heartbeat—as Daro’s front boot hit the stone and the hardwood blade hooked low—Seyun locked his decision in place. The living duty of this exchange was twofold and indivisible. Preserve his own body strength within Mina’s explicit medical constraint on his fractured fourth toe, and deliver a credible martial answer that kept Daro’s blade out of his chest. The glazed baked-clay bowl of well water sitting on the wooden stool behind his heel was an ornament. It had zero claim on his breath.
