The Shadowbearer (An Aegis of the Gods Book)

Chapter 15

Eyes shifting from side to side, Stefan studied the seven men who circled him in the training room. Nine months had gone by since he returned to Benez. Every day since that fateful night, he practiced the sword and spent time with his children. Sweat beaded his forehead, but he resisted the temptation to wipe it away. Instead, he kept his focus trained on Knight Carim and his friends. Shirtless, Stefan pivoted from foot to foot, ears straining for the telltale scuff of a boot, the kiss of a breeze where there should be none, the reflection in an opponent’s eye, or the twitch of an eyelid. Any such move would reveal a threat.

A scuff. Stefan spun, bringing his sword up to parry the attack from his left. His foot snaked out to the trip the man. As the attacker fell, the Knight Commander followed through, the hilt of his sword connecting with a jaw and driving his attacker into the ground.

The faint whistle of a blade slicing air. With a slight shift of his head, Stefan dodged the blow. The attacker’s arm flew by him. He gripped it and yanked. Already off–balance, the second man’s body shot forward as Stefan twisted and brought his knee up into his assailant’s unprotected stomach. The man crumpled with a grunt.

Two down.

Frustrated glares met Stefan’s smile. He waggled his weapon at Carim. A good taunt often drove youngsters to attack callously. Not Carim though. The youth had learned his lesson the hard way.

Marveling at his seemingly endless energy, Stefan allowed his chest to heave as if he’d exhausted himself in the brief exchange. The first session when he’d used his sword, he thought it was his imagination that he was faster, stronger, lighter on his feet. Now, he knew it did have such an effect brandishing the divya. Out of curiosity, he allowed Kasimir to wield it a few times. His friend said he felt nothing unusual.

Carim’s eyes flickered. Motion from behind reflected in the silversteel surface of the Stefan’s blade. They were attacking as one.

Immediately, he drifted into the Shunyata—the deep place inside the mind Matii used when they touched Mater or when they fought—for stability and control. Whereas, when he first received his divya, he thought it felt as if he and the sword were one, when inside the Shunyata, they became one. The weapon was an extension of his will.

He spun, caught the attack of the man from behind on his blade, and turned it aside. Without trying to counter, he ducked Carim’s stroke and rolled. The move brought him in close to the next attacker, and Stefan kicked out, forcing him to leap away.

Back now to a wall, Stefan struck a pose in one of the Stances based on the formlessness of the Flows of Mater. Within the Shunyata he no longer needed to wait for them to attack. The initiative was his. He discerned their patterns, their intentions, as clear as a cloudless sky at noon. They were his partners at a ball, their movements a simple two step dance, an obvious synchronization. His was a glide into a saltation of Styles and Stances to music only he could hear.

Stefan charged.

Into their midst he flew. His sword flashed up, down, left, right, and diagonal in Aeoli’s Hand, The God’s Way, imitating the thirty–two directions of the wind. Like the god of air, he was a storm of movement, unending, unrelenting.

A thud of the flat of his blade to the back of a head. The quick lick of a slice against flesh. A groan, a moan, an anguished cry. The breeze of a blow missing him by a hair. Parrying a cut, the impact more like a feathery touch than steel on steel. The clink of metal and the imperceptible squeal of edge striking edge. Foot lashing out to a groin, spin, then drop. The Knight Commander flipped up from his back as the next attack missed him. The series was surreal, a dream. His sword clashed with the last man standing in a steel on steel embrace.