The abandoned grain barn at Milepost 418 smelled of dry oat chaff, rusted scythe blades, and horse stalls that had been empty for forty years.
Outside, the wind coming off the northern wash whistled through the gaps in the grey cedar planking. Inside, Ren Vale stood in the center of the threshing floor, his feet planted shoulder-width apart in the chaff, his arms raised in the low guard of a High court defensive scribe.
Across from him, four paces away, Chrono-Scribe Ren held three lead line-weight-bobs suspended from six-inch copper wires between his fingers.
“Again,” the Scribe commanded.
He flicked his wrist. The first lead weight shot forward, humming through the dusty air toward Ren’s left collar bone at twenty paces a second.
A day ago, Ren would have dropped his balance point, pivoted on the ball of his nineteen-year-old right foot. Then he let the projectile pass harmlessly through the empty air where his shoulder had been. It was the gut, agile evasion he had sharpened dodging Guard truncheons in the damp alleyways of Low-Khorat.
He tried it now.
His right knee buckled. The knee tendon didn’t snap, but it caught with a sharp, grinding friction that felt like coarse sand ground between two slate pavers. The split-second delay ruined his pivot. Instead of a clean slip, his shoulder lurched awkwardly three inches to the left.
