“To hell with the drum!” Daro Kesh roared into the teeth of the eastern gale.
For nineteen years at the Black-Roof School, Daro Kesh had been taught that a swordsman’s highest glory was the winning stroke that broke the enemy’s center while lesser fighters held the flanks. Every tournament bout he had fought in his youth had been driven by the fear of coming in second or leaving a decisive line uncut. Yet he watched forty-five-year-old Keth Or pinned in the frozen drainage seam with a snapped three-fingered strap. Then, stubbornly telling Daro to let him die so the attack could succeed, Daro felt nothing but a fierce, brotherly rage at the old commander’s willingness to throw his own life away.
On the third breath of the four-breath window, Daro Kesh deliberately unlocked his Early Jade wrist from the inside seam of the returning plane. Releasing the eastern socket route and letting go of the central hub hall he had been holding open for Seyun.
He didn’t swing the edge of his blade at the curling white shear, because blocking a four-inch slab of doubled current that had already bypassed Keth’s guard from the side was physically impossible before the edge touched Keth’s chest. The only way to save Keth Or’s life was to move Keth’s body out of the ditch faster than the dropping plane could fall.
