The branch above him flexed again. Zorion. A hawk’s tactic of repositioning when stalking its prey.
The third arrow came faster.
Gage picked the note Valor told him to hold, the string, the cut, the direction.
For half a second, he thought he had the trajectory. He wanted to catch one of those dang arrows instead of dodging it.
He’d heard Meridian could snatch a blade out of the air and look bored while doing it.
Gage reached, fingers opening toward the hiss. The arrow point nicked his knuckles before he yanked his hand back.
Valor’s voice was hard. “Cockiness in an assassin makes him forget he’s mortal, and the field has to remind him.”
Another arrow was fired lower, skimming through brush.
Gage tightened his hand around the pressure switch on his cane, and with a sharp, mechanical snap, it extended to a six-foot and met the arrow in the air.
The impact of steel clashing with titanium rang through the rod and up his forearm. The arrow spun away into the darkness, landing somewhere in the wet leaves.
Gage tapped the latch and collapsed the cane in controlled segments before he continued walking…listening.
Tree limbs swayed above him. Valor was moving, purposeful and strategic, like a big cat who didn’t need to rush. Zorion went in the opposite direction, never staying in one place long enough to be tracked.
The insect chorus changed, a shift so sudden it made the hairs on his forearms rise.
He slowed, ear almost to the ground.
A wolf howled long and melancholy in the distance a moment before Valor landed behind him.
He didn’t turn because he didn’t need to. Valor did as Gage expected and came at him with all his blunt, brutal force.
He raised his cane across his body and met him like a man answering the challenge. Valor’s forearm hit the cane and slid down it, testing for its weaknesses.
There were none.
Gage flipped his wrist, rolling the cane to absorb the force instead of trying to stop it.
Valor hooked his shoulder and tried to toss him, but he stepped inside and used his cane as a lever, turning his opponent’s momentum on himself.
“Not bad,” Valor said near his ear as he tried to take him off his feet.
Gage dropped his center, not fighting Valor’s strength—that was futile—and instead redirected it. He planted his cane, giving him a third point of balance, and let Valor’s strength pass through him before he answered it with a strike of his own, driving the butt end into Valor’s ribs where muscle met bone.
Valor grunted, as if surprised, and came at him again.
Gage kept his mind centered, heart steady, and pulse relaxed.
He’d trained until calm was natural.
His auditory hypersensitivity made it easy to track Valor’s intentions. Every shift in his footing, catch in his breath, and scrape of fabric, gave away his next move a fraction before it arrived.
Gage read every tale and answered it with one of his own.
Valor caught his cane mid-swing, flexed his fingers like claws, and swiped at Gage’s chest, tearing the outer layer of his clothes before vanishing back into the brush.
One moment, he was mid-spar, and the next, there was only empty space where an apex beast had been.
Gage stayed still.
