It’s fucking freezing, but they’ll see it as a weakness if I don’t remove my own fur, so I carefully slip off my coat before repositioning my sword at my back.
I take a breath.
Exhale it.
As the moment extends, a sapphire haze builds around the warriors standing between me and the rest of the village. They’re all calling on their deep light.
If any of them can take me down, they will be revered.
As far as they know, I’m here to kill them, too.
Draw blood, I tell myself.Don’t kill.
Cut, don’t maim.
Dominate, don’t destroy.
I take a careful step forward. Then another, keeping my eye on all the men—including the ones who remained on the wall—as I continue forward, conscious of the arrows that could fly my way any second now.
I count my footsteps, all thirty of them, before I reach the gates, and then I count my heartbeats, taking a long, deep breath.
An arrow slices through the silence. My reflexes fire, and my fist wraps around it.
Plucking it from the air, I break it in half one-handed.
Snap!
The inertia breaks.
Chapter 30
In the first two heartbeats, I dodge a man’s fist, break the next warrior’s wrist, swipe the legs out from under another man, and dodge three separate arrows.
In the next ten heartbeats, I crack ribs, disarm four men, and punch another two so hard that they fly back into the wall.
After that, I lose count of my heartbeats.
My fists and feet fly, blood splatters, bones break.
If I were aiming to kill, the bodies would be piling up around me, but I’ve made it ten paces along the line, and I’m surrounded by a chorus of groans that tells me they’re all very much alive. Their reflexes simply aren’t supernatural like mine.
It’s hardly a fair fight, but they chose it.
Despite the haze of sapphire light in the air, none of them has chosen to burn out their deep light, and I’m grateful because if any of them makes that choice, my chances of any kind of deal with them will be over.
As for the man at the end of the line, I’m not so sure. As I fight my way toward him, sending men flying and others straight into the ground, I catch glimpses of him rolling his shoulders, his dagger cutting the air in a rhythmic sway that tells me he intends to use it to full effect.
I’m not about to give him the chance.
I charge forward, feinting toward his left before switching to his right at the last moment, such a rapid change that he doesn’t have a chance of following it, even with the force of his deep light, which bursts around him.
My left hand closes around his wrist, wrenching his arm outward and pushing his hand backward in a near-bone-breaking move that forces him to let go of the dagger. At the same time, my right fist collides with his exposed ribs, hard enough to make thempopand triggering him to bend reflexively. It’s a tribute to his strength that he barely flinches, but it’s enough for me to get past him and spin back.
Within seconds, I’ve kicked the back of his right leg, forced him to his knees, and wrapped my arm around his neck.
It’s the same maneuver I used to subdue Thaden Kane when he first arrived in the wasteland.
I’m crushing his windpipe, and he’s struggling to breathe, but I only have heartbeats before he fights back.
