Driven by the combined driving force of its own sky-high return and the upward bending off Seyun’s ash staff in the southwestern trench, the pale blade whistled up the western granite face at double its last speed. Up on the high western lip. There, the first pale blade was already pressing Hall Mistress Soran along a narrow, frost-glazed shelf of grey stone, the sudden arrival of the deflected second blade created a scissor-shear aimed straight at the deaf spear mistress’s front knee and collar.
Hall Mistress Soran had founded White Heron Hall forty years before on the principle that a spear was an honest stick of iron and wood that never lied about weight. She couldn’t hear the scream of the rising blade behind her deaf ears, nor could she hear Seyun’s or Daro’s shouts from the lower trenches. But she saw the sudden twin glare reflected in the ice crystals coating the rock wall in front of her face. She felt the sharp double-pulse through the soles of her boots.
With zero room on the eighteen-inch granite ledge to retreat without stepping off into the western gorge, Soran dropped her balance point into the deep, rooted Heron-in-Winter horse stance. She didn’t try to flick both blades aside with fancy tip-work that would have failed against the doubled current. Instead, she gripped her plain, hand-wrapped iron spear with both hands set wide along the shaft and barred the scissor-intersection horizontally across her chest.
