Alone in the center of the eastern returning trough at the end of the third breath, with his boots driven deep into the frosted gravel from the recoil of hurling Keth Or to safety, Daro Kesh whipped his thirty-inch fire-rib short sword back around to meet the closing jaws of the rejoined returning plane.
There was no time to retreat behind the stone support prop, and no second sword beside him to share the four-inch-thick slab of blue-white current. Both the inside seam he had just released and the curling outside wing that had aimed for Keth’s chest slammed together into a single, double-weight level shear that struck Daro’s hasty low guard from knees to waist.
Daro met the impact with the full, unbending roar of his Black-Roof School Early Jade breath, angling the thirty-inch fire-rib blade across his right hip in the Iron Roof edges block. For half a heartbeat, thirty inches of dense, hand-hammered valley steel held the entire eastern return of the northern sky-slit at bay in a blinding eruption of white and crimson sparks.
Then the sheer packed phase-thickness of the rejoined plane bit into the forward belly of the blade.
KRAK—PING!
Three thumbnail-sized half-moons of dark steel snapped clean out of the forward cutting edge of Daro’s short sword like chips flying from a cold chisel under a steam hammer. That left three deep, jagged notches along the belly of the fire-rib iron. Even chipped in three places, the thick spine of the blade didn’t…
