Keth Or had struck at Seyun three minutes earlier. Then, the commander had tuned his opening blow to herd a lighter Early Bronze body toward the central chalk circle alive.
The stroke he brought down upon Daro Kesh now held zero restraint.
Keth Or no longer cared about taking the former schoolmaster alive for the Oran judge’s docket. He intended to crush Daro Kesh through the black slate flat stone slabs on the first two beats and step over his broken frame to seize the boys behind the screen.
WHOOOM-KRAK!
With a sound like a stone bridge arch collapsing into a gorge, the four-inch-wide curved steel blade of Keth Or’s seven-foot glaive snapped downward through the violet-lit air of the western lane.
Ahead of the steel edge, the Early Jade spatial squeezing squeezed the air between the four-foot granite dressing-screen and the outer lip of the white chalk circle into a solid, gray-white anvil.
Five days ago at White Heron Hall—before his clash with White Heron Hall and the snow-bridge ascent had broken Daro’s single-track sword habits—Daro Kesh had known only one way to answer a heavier realm’s strike.
Back then, Daro’s Bronze training had been a single, dark, unmoving wall. He would plant both boots flat on the stone, pour every ounce of his Bronze weight into a single level guard plane, and try to endure the hammer blow through sheer stubborn mass.
