shape blurred in the night, blade shifting fluidly. He beat through the guard of a stocky man and sliced open his throat, moving onto the next before they had time to react.
The leader cursed in a harsh tongue Aldrich couldn’t understand. He gathered they realized what they faced now.
“’Ware the human,” the leader shouted to his brethren, “he’s Touched!”
Spinning first to the left then right, Aldrich cut one arm to the bone, then drove his sword through another’s guard into his chest, yanking it out before three more closed in. As he’d planned, the width of the bridge restricted his opponents to coming at him no more than three at a time.
Stupid. No time for thrusts. Keep cutting. Blade moving in a blur, he held the three men off for a moment, searching for weaknesses in their style. There.
Aldrich stepped in to meet the closest man. Sparks flew as swords clashed. His opponent stepped back, as if to withdraw, then sprang in with his sword. Aldrich twisted, avoiding the blade. He expanded forward, flowing like water, and his attack sliced the side of his opponent. A heartbeat later, two more were down from wounds, dead or dying. Aldrich cut left and right without giving the denser men a chance to take the initiative, trying to drive them together where they hampered each other. A sharp pain and spurt of warm wetness warned him of a cut along the ribs.
They are good, but my spirit is stronger. Don’t give them room to move.
He danced forward boldly, fluidly, adopting the lower left attitude as the next denser man attacked. Blade swooping up to clash against another sword, he parried to the right. His return stroke from above buried itself deep between a shoulder and the neck, his opponent dropping lifeless onto the bridge.
A blade sliced deeply into Aldrich’s thigh. He gasped at the burning pain. Pressing closer, the denser men rushed in to attack. Despite his greater strength and speed, he clutched at several wounds as their blades passed through his guard. He struck out vainly before his whirling sword cut across a face. Abandoning defense, Aldrich threw himself at them. Moving in all-out attack, he split an arm open, wrist to elbow, then drove his sword tip through the jaw of another into his brain.
A thrust from the side plunged deep into his stomach. Weakness rose in him.
Aldrich slumped to one knee, sword dropping from fingers numb with pain and blood loss. Every breath hurt. He felt like red hot pokers were inside his wounds. He placed a hand on the ground to steady himself, then looked into the eyes of their approaching leader.
Forgive me, I have failed you both.
Steel flashed, and his body collapsed onto the cold stones, head hacked from his shoulders.
Prodding the corpse with his toe, Savine surveyed the carnage that had been wrought in the time it had taken them to overwhelm the lone man. Eight of his brethren dead or wounded.
“Touched by the ancestors. What ill luck.”
He would have to explain this mess to his unforgiving masters. The man had obviously been a blade master or he could not have taken three or four of them, touched or not. His masters would not be pleased at such a loss, the cost of which would be extracted from them one way or another. His remaining followers gathered around him, standing next to the corpse steaming in the cool night air. He reached for the sword, but his hand stopped short and he hissed, feeling the virulence of the force in it and recognizing some of the runes. It seemed some of these primitives remembered crafting, as they called it here, however imperfectly. He slid his boot under the blade and lifted his foot. The sword sailed over the side of the bridge into the water with a splash, sinking without a trace.
“Come. We still have to catch the woman and child.”
Two denser men loped away while the rest helped the wounded to bandage their cuts, and threw the dead and dying over the side into the cold water below.
Sensing the life force leave the man it had been told to observe, the paper dragonfly’s rudimentary intelligence determined it was time to report back to its creator. It bunched its folded paper legs and launched itself into the air. Circling the bridge once to gather information through its crafted eyes, it took in the crimson auras of the denser men then flew towards the forest, passing the two