Chương 2

Lodin's stance was narrow, feet close together, hands near the chin. His weight sat forward on the balls of his feet, a posture which favored movement over stability. Oren Shen reached him first. The hatchet man came in low and fast, and lightning sizzled along the steel of their blades as he swept them inward to carve an X across Lodin's chest.

Lodin took a smooth backward step and the hatchets whipped through empty space where his chest had been, blue-white lightning sparking as the blades crossed each other's paths. A shadow fell across his shoulders as Wen Heung dropped from above, dao overhead in a two-handed grip, the blade a white arc against the sky. The swordsman meant to split him vertically from crown to groin. Lodin stepped right and the dao cracked the cobblestone. The blade rebounded, and Wen Heung's arms shuddered from the impact.

Traces of lightning hung in Lodin's vision, and ozone stung his nostrils. At that moment both men were a little past their center, still recovering. It would have been a good time to strike. But Lodin let them rebalance. He wasn't in any special hurry this morning. He'd just spent months at sea, it was nice to simply have his feet on solid ground again. And the people of Dragon's Rest were very welcoming thus far. Oren Shen snorted like a bull and charged.

His arms pumped in a pattern of slashes burned deep into muscle memory, left diagonal, right diagonal, figure eight, overhead, underhand. Lightning sparked and spat with each swing. The hatchets became a blur of soulsteel and blue-white fire, a storm of sharp edges that took up all the space between them. Lodin slipped left, slipped right. He ducked an overhead and leaned back from a vertical stroke that would have split his jaw.

His feet shuffled on the cobblestones, his hands stayed near his chin, and there was a gamely smile on his face. The blades of Oren Shen's hatchets passed close enough for him to feel the heat of the lightning on his skin. Wen Heung circled wide to the right, and Lodin tracked him at the edge of his vision. The swordsman held his dao at shoulder height, blade angled for a cut to the neck.

He moved with patience and silence, feet soft on the stone, and waited for the moment when his comrade's hatchets forced Lodin into a position he could not slip away from. A plain but effective tactic; Oren Shen played the bullish aggressor, while Wen Heung hung back, let the other man take up all the space, like a headsman awaiting his due. With the way they wordlessly fell into these roles, Lodin supposed they had used this tactic before.

Oren Shen's left hatchet swept toward Lodin, a horizontal arc from left to right. The right hatchet followed the same path, half a beat behind. Lightning crackled along both blades. The hatchet man's body continued the rotation; his weight shifted to his right foot, and his left leg came up and around in a wheel kick aimed at Lodin's jaw. The whole three-hit combination took less than a second. Lodin slipped left and the first hatchet passed his ear. He slipped back and the second hatchet passed his chin.

Lightning scorched the air, he felt its heat on his face as it flashed by. The heel came around, and Lodin caught Oren's ankle and felt the weight of the kick shudder through his arms. He pivoted, borrowed Oren's momentum, and sent the hatchet man hurtling toward Wen Heung. Wen Heung leapt aside and Oren Shen twisted in the air, corrected his posture, and landed on his feet. His boots scraped across the cobblestones and he skidded to a stop, lips peeled back in a snarl. Heung's eyes narrowed.

His gaze seemed to fix on something beyond Lodin's face, somewhere past his shoulder. Checking his registry badge. The swordsman's bloodied face twisted into a sneer.

"Qi Condensation," he spat.

"First stage. You hide your true cultivation."

"How would I fool the Jianghu Registry?" Lodin asked.

"The ways of liars and cheats do not interest me," Wen Heung raised his dao and pointed the blade at Lodin's chest.

"No Qi Condensation cultivator moves like that."

"I dunno, maybe there's something special about me." Oren Shen charged and Wen Heung came a half-step behind him, their paths aimed to cross at Lodin's position. Their blades swept wide arcs through the air, twin wheels of death, edges angled at the space where Lodin stood. They went back and forth between high and low; Oren swept at the legs while Wen cut at the neck, then reversed, hatchets at the head, dao at the ribs. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. Lodin stepped left.

The hatchets passed through empty space. He stepped left again, angled this time, and the dao cut air where his shoulder had been. The constant sideward movement forced both men to turn, adjust, give chase. He stayed in motion with lateral steps, always off the line of their attacks, never backward. He moved no more than he had to. The dao passed an inch from his nose. A hatchet blade grazed the fabric of his shirt. He ducked a high slash and stepped over a low sweep.

The ground slid beneath his feet while Oren and Wen spun and cut, spun and cut.

"Coward!" Oren Shen spat the word between swings.

"Fight back, you yellow-haired bastard!" Lodin's left hook caught Oren square on the jaw. Bone cracked against his knuckles. Teeth flew in a spray of blood and spit, and Oren Shen's head whipped to the side. His legs buckled. He stumbled two steps and dropped to one knee, one hand pressed to his bloody mouth.

"Careful what you wish for," Lodin said. Wen Heung stepped between Lodin and his fallen comrade, raised his dao and the blade began to hum. Air qi gathered around the steel, visible as a shimmer, a distortion that bent the light. He swept the blade in a downward arc and a crescent of compressed wind shrieked toward Lodin's chest. Lodin threw himself backward.

His palms hit the cobblestones and his legs whipped over his head, a heartbeat before the vacuum blade ripped through the space where his torso occupied an instant ago. Wen Heung stood his ground. His dao carved arc after arc, and each swing launched another blade of compressed wind. The crescents came fast, one after another, as the cultivator became a turret shooting curved hyphens of screaming razor-sharp air. Lodin sprang backward again, hands to stone, legs overhead.

The vacuum blades passed beneath him, above him, close enough to clip at his clothes. The crescents that missed him shrieked past and struck the market stalls behind. Wooden carts and stands exploded into splinters, canvas canopies tore open, a pottery display burst apart in a spray of shards. A rack of dried fish split down the middle and scattered across the stones. Oren Shen exploded through the wreckage of a market stall, splinters and shards of pottery scattered in his wake.

His eyes blazed blue-white, and arcs of lightning jumped between his hatchets. Blood ran from his shattered mouth and stained his teeth red. His shoulders hunched forward, his head low, and the pain in his jaw had twisted the expression on his face into something feral. He came at Lodin in a blur.

The same pattern as before, left diagonal, right diagonal, figure eight, overhead, underhand, but faster now, and with new wrinkles: a spinning backhand, a rising cut that reversed into a downward chop, combinations that flowed one into the next without pause. The lightning arcing between his weapons left scorched trails in the air. Behind him, Wen Heung's dao sang like a banshee.

Vacuum blades shrieked across the cobblestones, cut off the angles of retreat Lodin had used before, kept him in close against Oren's storm of steel. He had to move with Oren's assault, but not so far as to be caught by a vacuum slash. His eyes tracked Shen's hatchets, and every shimmer of air that preceded one of Heung's vacuum blades. A fraction too slow and the lightning would find him, too far and the wind would cut him down. They had a nice little trap going.

Oren's left hatchet whistled past Lodin's adam's apple as he leaned back from it. The right hatchet came low, aimed at his hip, and he twisted his torso to let it slide past. Lightning seared his vest, left a scorch mark on the fabric. Lodin dropped into a crouch as a crescent of compressed air shrieked over his head from behind, and Oren Shen was on him before he could rise. The hatchet man brought both blades down in a double chop aimed at the crown of Lodin's skull.

Lodin threw himself sideways, twisted into a roll across the cobblestones. Another vacuum blade was already screaming toward him. Wen Heung had read the dodge, timed the slash to catch Lodin mid-roll. Lodin planted his palms and sprang. His body uncoiled, flipped backward, and the crescent of compressed air passed beneath him, close enough to shear off a centimeter of his hair in the back. And then Wen Heung's dao fell silent. The shimmer around the blade faded.

Evidently the swordsman had burned through his body's store of qi, at least for now. Which meant it was time for him to rejoin the melee. Now it was three blades in close, hatchets and dao, and they had learned. When Lodin stepped left, Wen was there to cut him off. When he stepped right, Oren's hatchets blocked the angle. They worked him backward, step by step, and the wall of the city loomed behind him. Market stalls shattered in their wake. A table of spices exploded into clouds of red and gold.

A rack of hanging meats tumbled and scattered across the stones. A fortune-teller's booth collapsed into kindling as Lodin slipped a blow that shattered it into toothpicks. Behind him, the city wall drew closer. Lodin's space to maneuver shrank. Oren Shen's eyes had gone wild. Blood and spittle flew from his ruined mouth with every swing. His face was purple, veins bulging at his temples.

"When I'm finished with you," he snarled, "they'll be cleaning you off the cobblestones with buckets of seawater." Oren's left hatchet came up in an uppercut slash from the left. Wen's dao swept down from the right, a vertical chop aimed at the shoulder. The two arcs closed like the jaws of a trap, and the only escape was straight back. Lodin's shoulders and back bumped the wall. Oren Shen's eyes went wide. Wen Heung gave him a cruel smile. They had him cornered, pinned, with nowhere left to run.

Wen Heung's dao arced toward his face, a shimmer of air qi wrapped around the steel. Oren Shen's hatchets chopped at his midsection, lightning crackling along the blades. If their paired attack succeeded, Lodin would be chopped into three clean pieces. There was a look of exultation on both their faces, as if this were their finest victory, the single most excellent strike they had ever executed together and they knew it. Both blows landed. The dao traced a line across his face, right jaw to left eyebrow.

The hatchets struck flush across his stomach, steel and lightning and all the force two Foundation Building cultivators could muster. The impacts thudded against his flesh, solid as a slap, and their lightning qi tingled where it spread across his skin. The dao left a thin red line, no deeper than a scratch. The hatchets tore his shirt but the flesh beneath showed only faint marks, pale lines that welled with the barest hint of blood. Wen Heung stared. Oren Shen's mouth hung open. Lodin grinned at them.

"I was wondering how long it would take you two to land something good," he said. Then he moved. One instant he stood before them, and the next instant he was gone.