Borin hit him with the padded staff while he was still explaining the exercise.
The blow landed across Iven’s raised forearm. Plate brace spread it through the small shield strapped there, and his boots scraped a finger’s breadth over the yard. He had not engaged flywheel reserve. There was nothing to return except his expression.
“You said begin when I was ready,” Borin said.
“I thought you’d announce it.”
“There’s the first useful result.”
Neri sat on the low wall with a bowl of hot barley balanced on her knee. She had come to collect Jem for the last drainage measurements and stayed when Borin picked up the staff. Beyond her, the newly restored cableway climbed steadily into the morning, lifting a cage of flour sacks. Tem stood at the machinery-room door watching the temperature gauge. Ordinary work had reclaimed the wheel almost indecently quickly. Yesterday’s triumph was already part of somebody else’s shift.
Iven liked that more than he had expected.
He reset his feet against the chalk marks. Plate, flywheel, piston: the combination left him without a rapid step or a line. The restriction mattered. He could receive a blow and answer it, but standing still to receive blows was not an entire fighting method.
