On the first pass down the pillar lane, Seyun’s opening reception against Ilyra’s shortened spear was textbook Early Bronze. When her marsh-iron spearhead darted in from the left to check his forward stride at the second flat stone slab, Seyun’s Answering Edge met the iron collar with a crisp, angled slide. He used the hard rebound of her shaft to pivot his Returning Step six inches to the right while keeping his ash staff tip aimed straight at Vaska’s empty stone stand.
Half a heartbeat later, before his right boot had even settled on the third stone, Kes flicked his wrist. Then it sent the twelve-foot braided hemp cord whistling horizontally across the lane into the middle of Seyun’s staff.
Because Seyun’s forearms and Early Bronze channels were still braced from the clean, rigid rebound of Ilyra’s iron spear, he instinctively held his Answering Edge stiff along the ash wood and waited half a beat for the hemp cord to pull taut against his stave. Expecting a solid impact point off which he could slide a second time.
Across the three late-morning passes between Ilyra’s shortened spear and Kes’s braided hemp cord, the flaw in Seyun’s Early Bronze habit exposed itself in his forearms before his boots even reached the middle pillar. On Pass One, Ilyra’s marsh-iron spearhead checked his ash staff from the left with a sharp, ringing clack. Seyun’s Answering Edge met the rigid metal cleanly. It slid thirty degrees off the iron collar while keeping his body…
