Women Of Steel | ✔

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His sword meets mine with a force that shakes my body to the bones, I lose my grip on my horse and topple off my horse hard. Hitting my head hard against the rocky ground, I swear as stars dance in my vision. I rip away the crown of bead from my head and toss it to the ground.

Get up! Dide!

I stumble, my body shouting with pain as I rise shakily. There is no time to think of the pain pounding in my head or the blood trickling down to my forehead.

I am barely up before I see Tadenikawo leap off his horse and stand, running to me with fury in the raise of his cutlass.

His sword meets mine again, I grit my teeth as his power threatens to overcome mine. My first mistake was underestimating his prowess, what else did I expect from the son of a wicked tyrant. Gbadamosi taught his son well.

I kick up dirt in his face, a dirty trick but one that buys me time to strike feebly at his side, blood flows freely but he takes his time rubbing the dirt out of his face.

My former husband barely pays any attention to the bleeding wound at his side.

I stumble back as he raises his sword in the air to cut me into two. Sweat and blood mixes in the afternoon air and the scent makes me nauseous and I curse my pregnant body.

Keep him talking, my mind screams. I cannot die, I am not fighting for my life only, but for almost a thousand more. I mustn't fail.

"Will you not mutter your filthy words as you attempt to gut me in two?" I grit out, my head hurts from the fall and I resist a wave of dizziness, I will not win a fight this way. I try too hard to focus on the pain, let it keep me grounded.

He swings again mercilessly, this time I am too slow and his sword cuts a line into my left shoulder. I life a hand to the bleeding wound and hiss at the sharp pain. The ground around us is beginning to be dotted with blood and when I look around, my horse stands behind his, nuzzling it. The sight would have amusing, if I wasn't so angry.

"You will hear all my words when I cut your filthy head off, this day has been coming a long while." He snarls. "Say a greeting to all my dead wives in hell when you get there."

I stumble over a rock and suffer another cut to my face.

I raise my sword, sweeping below to strike him in the hip. "That was for the first time you ever laid a filthy fist on me!"

His eyes widen just enough for me to know that I've struck a weak point. But Tadenikawo is too wise to let me make the same mistake twice. He takes several steps backwards to recover briefly. I reach for one of the knives strapped to my thighs and throw one straight at his chest, he dances to the right, but not so quickly that my attack does not hit him in the shoulder.

"I will end your miserable existence," He lowers his sneer for my ears alone. "Then I'll ruin your body the way I ruined your mother before I drove a knife into her chest."

The former me would have bristled and snarled at his words about my mother, but I am now learning to put personal vendetta behind duty. It is harder said than done, I want to hurt him as bad as he has hurt me.

"The way I let my guards have their ways with your sister before I gutted her?" I taunt, immediately hating the taste of the words on my lips, hating that I have to stoop so low to rile him up. There is no time to regret them or take them back, Tadenikawo's eyes light up like a torch and roaring a vengeance to the cloudless sky, he charges for me like a man possessed.

I wait, counting my seconds as I crouch in the sand.

One,

Two,