When eighteen stone of peak Iron-Bone body-refiner accelerates to full sprint, it doesn’t move with the evasive grace of a duelist. It moves with the terrifying, moving inevitability of an alpine landslide.
Tie Shan covered twenty paces in four monstrous, ground-shattering strides. Each step drove his triple-soled iron-shod boots an inch deep into the frozen shale, kicking up rooster-tails of shattered rock and yellow ice that sprayed ten feet into the air behind him.
Patriarch Gui’s panic broke into frantic desperation.
“Drake-hounds, kill him!” Gui shrieked, wildly thrusting his bone staff forward. “Tear his throat out! Chew his iron bones to powder!”
The eight skeletal drake-hounds let loose a timed together, bloodcurdling howl. Straining against their star-iron harnesses, the eight-foot hunting beasts lunged forward, their serrated jaws snapping with the force of bear traps, green acid dripping from their iron-plated ribcages.
The lead hound leapt directly at Tie Shan’s chest, its front claws extended to disembowel the giant in mid-air.
Tie Shan didn’t slow his stride.
He didn’t raise his pry-bar to block.
