The four of us smash together, turning into a clumsy mash of cracking whips and clattering blades. Scrambling and twisting and bending. Our razors faster than our own eyes can track. Aja swipes diagonally at my legs as I go for hers; Ragnar and Cassius aim for each other’s necks in quick no-look thrusts. Identical strategies, all. It’s so awkward we all almost kill one another in the first half second. Yet each gambit misses by a hair.
We separate. Stumbling backward. Humorless smiles on our faces—a bizarre kinship as we remember we all speak the same martial language. All that hateful breed of human Dancer told me about before I was Carved, the ones Lorn lived among and despised all the while.
I shatter the weird peace first. Lashing forward in a tight series of thrusts at Cassius’s right side, peeling him away from Aja so Ragnar can take her down singly. Behind Cassius, Mustang stirs from among the rubble. Rushing across the snow, huge Obsidian bow in hand. Still fifty meters away. I sweep my razor whip twice at Cassius’s legs, retracting it into a blade as he swings diagonally at my head. The blow rattles my arm as I catch it halfway along the razor’s curve. He’s stronger than I am. Faster than he was the last time we fought. And he’s practiced now against the curved blade. Training with Aja, no doubt. He forces me back. I stumble, fall, between his legs I see the Fury and the Stained tearing into each other. She stabs him through his left thigh.
Another arrow whispers through the air. It slams into Cassius’s back. His scarabSkin holds. Off balance, he swings again in a tight set of eight moves. I throw myself backward just as the razor hisses through the air where my head had been. I sprawl on the snow, centimeters from the edge of a huge crevasse. Scrambling up as Cassius rushes me. I block another downward swing, teetering on the edge. I fall backward and push off the edge as hard as I can so I land and clear the other side, using my agility to avoid his onslaught. Behind him, Aja spins under Ragnar’s blade, slicing at his hamstrings. She’s peeling him apart.
Cassius pursues me, hurdling the crevasse and swinging down at me. I block the blade. It would have opened me from shoulder to opposite hip. I throw a rock at his face. Gain my feet. He slams his blade down again in a feint, pivots his wrist, and swings to carve off my knees. I stumble to the side, barely dodging. He converts his razor to a whip, cracks it at my legs, and rips them out from under me. I fall. He kicks me in the chest. Wind gushes out of me. He stands on my wrist, pinning my razor down, and is about to plunge his razor into my heart, his face a mask of determination.
“No,” he says. “You would…”
The bowstring snaps. He jerks his razor up to deflect the arrow. Misses, slower than Aja. The serrated iron tip punches through the front of his throat and out the back of his neck, the feather fletching scratching the underside of his dimpled chin. There’s no spray of blood. Just a meaty, wet gurgle. He flops back. Hitting the ground hard. Gagging. Hacking hideously. His feet kick as he clutches the arrow. Hissing for breath, eyes inches from my own. Mustang rushes to me. I scramble to my feet, away from Cassius, and grab my razor from the snow, pointing it at his thrashing body.
“I’m prime,” I say, tearing my eyes from my old friend as blood pools beneath him and he fights for his life. “Help Ragnar.”
Over Cassius’s body, we see the Stained and Aja whirling at each other on the edge of a crevasse. Blood paints the snow around them. All of it coming from Ragnar. But still he presses the woman knight back, a furious song cascading out of his throat. Beating her down. Overwhelming her with his two hundred and fifty kilograms of mass. Sparks flare from their blades. She caves before him now, unable to match the anger of the banished prince of the Spires. Heels skidding on the snow. Arm shuddering. Bending back away from Ragnar. Bending like a willow. His song roars louder. “No,” I murmur. “Shoot her,” I tell Mustang.
“They’re too close….”
“I don’t care!”
