crumbling masonry.
“Greetings,’ she whispered as one figure separated from the rest and whipped out
a short, batonlike sword from a sheath she wore slung like a bow across her
back. Cythen was glad of the sword beneath her palms and of the sturdy boots
that let her spring to her feet while the advancing woman drew a second sword
like the first. She remembered all Lythande had been able to tell her about the
Harka Bey: they were women, mercenaries, assassins, magicians, and utterly
ruthless.
Cythen backed away, masking her apprehension as the woman spun the pair of
blades around her with a blinding, deadly speed. By now, five months after the
landing, almost everyone had heard of the dazzling swordwork of the Beysib
aristocracy, but few had seen even practice bouts with wooden swords and none
had seen such lethal artistry as advanced towards Cythen.
She assumed the static en garde of a Rankan officer – who until the Beysib had
been the best swordsmen in the land – and fought the mesmerizing power of the
spinning steel. The almost invisible sphere the Beysib woman constructed with
the whirling blades was both offence and defence. Cythen saw herself sliced down
like wheat before a peasant’s scythe – and cut down in the next few heartbeats.
She was going to die. . .
There was serenity in that realization. The nausea dropped away, and the terror.
She still couldn’t see the individual blades as they twirled, but they seemed
somehow slower. And no one, unless the Harka Bey were demons as well, could
twirl the steel forever. And wasn’t her own blade demon-forged, shedding green