Soldier of Dorsa by Eliza Andrews

Author:Eliza Andrews [Andrews, Eliza]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-02-25T16:00:00+00:00

34

Only reflex saved her. Joslyn threw herself backwards, rolling out of range of the blade at the last second. Another swing came from a different direction, but this time she was ready, parrying with the dagger she kept at her waist. She trapped this second sword near its hilt, and with a twisting motion, yanked it free from the hand of her attacker. As she did so, Joslyn processed several pieces of information at once:

She faced two opponents, one who had approached her from behind and one from the front.

They wore black cloaks, with black hoods that obscured their faces.

The swords they wielded were narrow longswords, yet remarkably light. Terintan swords were typically curved; Imperial fighters usually carried broad short swords. That meant Joslyn’s attackers were neither Terintan nor Imperial.

Still on the ground, but now with one of the longswords in one hand and keeping her dagger in the other, Joslyn parried fresh assaults from the hooded attackers on either side of her. The one whose sword she’d taken produced a throwing star from inside their cloak, and Joslyn barely managed to twist out of its way as it whizzed towards her. It nicked her forearm as it went past, and the tiny cut immediately began to burn.

Poison! Ku-sai’s voice warned her in the back of her mind, but she couldn’t concern herself with that right now. A blade in her chest or across her throat would kill her before poison could.

From her knees, Joslyn performed a modified version of wind through wheat, then backflipped to her feet so that she landed slightly behind the two attackers. Before they could react, she launched her dagger at the one who’d thrown the star, then thrust forward with the longsword at the other one. Both cloaked figures dodged her strikes, which Joslyn had anticipated, but at least the dagger grazed the upper arm of the one on the left.

That one gave a soft grunt but did not slow.

The attacker on the right still had possession of the long, skinny sword, and charged with a blur of slashes and thrusts so quick and so furious that Joslyn could hardly keep up. She was forced onto defense, edging backwards as she parried, jumped, dodged, and ducked. There was something familiar about the fighting style, something she’d encountered before, but much like the poison warming her left arm, the knowledge stayed on the periphery of her consciousness, an elusive fact which she didn’t currently have the capacity to examine.

But that fact jumped from the periphery to the center of Joslyn’s attention when the one whose arm she’d cut pulled something round and thin from inside the black cloak.

At first, Joslyn’s eye processed a pipe, the kind Terintan nomads smoked white cactus from when leaders of rival tribes were negotiating peace or trade rights. But no sooner did the thought occur to her that she realized it didn’t make sense. It couldn’t be a pipe. Which meant it was —

Lord M’Tongliss’s dinner. Tasia. The assassin. A blowgun.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.