271: Silver nun?

I added a Martha anal scene in the earlier chapters. Chapter 46. You can find it on my website. It's free. One warning: my writing style is very different from my earlier days, so you might find it a little different. Let me know what you think.

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**Chapter 271**

The first cut was the only honest one in the fight.

I came off the rise while the paladin’s chin was still down and put the sword through the gap his half-armor left at the ribs. Not a killing blow. His instincts were better than I expected, and he prevented a fatal blow. The tree took the angle I wanted for the neck. Steel went in under the plate, grated on something that wasn’t bone, and he woke up making a sound that wasn’t a word.

Even gutted out of a doze, he got the blade up. The guard turned my second stroke with the kind of reflex you didn’t learn in a week of standing behind a priest. He used the trunk at his back the way a man used a wall, bled dark on the gold, and his eyes did the same count they had done in Elara’s doorway, hands, throat, the fact that I wasn’t holding a tray.

I didn’t give him the speech he wanted.

I crowded him so the long sword he’d kept across his knees in the watch couldn’t get its reach. Short measure. Bind high, scrape down the fuller, a boot into the greave he hadn’t buckled all the way. His stance broke by a half step. I took the inside of his elbow where the mail had a hole and the arm dropped an inch. An inch was enough. I put him into the bark hard enough that pieces of it came away, then cut the shoulder through the joint. Gold or not, a man with a ruined arm and a hole in his side was a man running out of answers in the dark.

He tried the old answers anyway.

Weight on the back foot. Point in line. The discipline plate was built around. I beat the point offline and stepped into the space it left, close enough that his longer blade became a bar he had to wrestle instead of a weapon he could swing. My edge found the hip strap. Leather parted. He staggered and still had the presence of mind to smash his pommel at my face. I dodged easily. His experience in attack didn’t seem on the same level as his defense. Then I was in again, hooking his knee, dumping him to a crouch.

He didn’t stay there.

He shoved off the trunk with his good shoulder and used the fire as a line I had to respect. Sparks went up between us. I circled off the heat, and he came across it anyway, gold flashing, the wounded arm tucked, the live one doing the work of two. A cut aimed at my neck. I ducked under and felt the wind of it take hair. My return stroke rang off his breastplate and left a bright scratch that didn’t matter. He kicked the fallen branch at my shin. I dodged it, moved aside, and his point chased me toward my gut. I turned sideways, and the steel kissed air instead of my ribs.

I hit him in the face with the guard.

Cartilage went. He reeled. I followed, beat his blade down, stepped on the tip when it touched dirt, and had my own point under his chin when the woods went white.

Not light.

The priest.

He was up. One eye still gummed, mouth already feeding a rite into the dark. Light hit the paladin like a thrown cloak. The hole in his side pulled shut with a wet sound I felt in my teeth. The shoulder knit. Light ran from his collar to the greave, and the man I had been about to finish stood up as if the first half minute had been a story someone else told.

Then the rest of it landed.

I felt the air change before I felt the sword. Weight. Speed. Fucking buffs. His next cut came on a line I had already beaten and almost took my ear. I gave ground. The second I blocked with my arm covered in mana, but the shock still went up my arm like I had blocked a falling beam. My feet tore leaves. A root caught my heel, and I had to roll the ankle or lose it.

He didn’t let me breathe.

Three-beat paladin work, the kind that looked the same in every hall until the buff put a fourth beat in it you weren’t ready for. Feint high. Real edge toward the knee. I sold him the knee covered in mana and took his wrist instead, steel locked, then had to break the bind because the buff made him stronger than the lock wanted to allow. His missed stroke went through a sapling, and the sapling became splinters. I moved off the line. He came with me. The camp that had been an ambush was a ring of firelight, roots, and a man who would not stay hurt.

I tried to bleed the buff off him with work.

Cut the thigh where the plate gaped when he lunged. Sparks. A graze. He didn’t slow. I took a return cut on the guard and felt two fingers go numb. Close again. Shoulder into the breastplate. The gold armor rang and didn’t give. He shoved, and I went back two steps into the cart, the wheel biting my hip, his point chasing my throat. I slapped the point wide with the forte and carved a line across his gauntlet. Blood inside the glove this time. He didn’t drop the sword.

We traded through the fire’s edge. My boot went into coals and came out smoking. His next swing took a chunk from the cart’s rail. I used the rail, vaulted the corner, and cut down at his neck from the offside. He caught it on the cross and threw me off with a shove that sent me into the priest’s cloak. I rolled, came up, and had to parry before my feet were honest. The buff was still in him. Every exchange I won on timing, I lost on force. Every exchange I won on force, he answered with a step I hadn’t given him permission to take.

The logical way through was the mouth feeding him.

I let him have a cut that opened my forearm so I could pass him, not toward the road, toward the cloak and the hand still pouring light into the golden plate. The priest saw it late. His other hand came up with something that wasn’t a blessing, a short, ugly flare meant to blind. I went through it with my eyes half shut and hit him with the pommel. Temple. Once wasn’t enough. He sagged, and the light only flickered. I hit him again, and he folded over the case. The light on the paladin held a breath, then started to thin like a fire running out of oil.

The paladin made a sound I had heard from George’s kind before. A last struggle.

He came with everything the leftover blessing had. No more pretty three-beat. Just weight and edge and the need to put me on the dirt before the light finished dying. I met it because backing up now was how you found a tree with a sword in your back. Edge to edge until my palm split on my own hilt. A bind I couldn’t win on strength, so I didn’t try. I dropped my point, let his slide, and cut the back of his knee where the mail ended. He buckled and still slashed as he dropped. The tip passed my thigh by an inch. I followed him down, put a boot on the blade he still held, and drove my sword through the same rib gap I had used at the start, deeper, and twisted until the gold armor stopped meaning anything.

He went to his knees with his mouth open.

He reached for the headless habit of a man who thought he might still stand. I didn’t wait to find out. I took the head because a paladin who had already stood up once from a hole in the side was a paladin I wasn’t leaving with a pulse.

Plate hit the dirt. The body followed. The head rolled until it found the cart wheel and stopped.

The priest was a heap on the case, breathing thinly. Still alive. That was enough. The camp smelled like iron and burnt pine. I turned toward the tent because the quiet after a killing had a shape, and this quiet had a hole in it…

And had to bring the sword up on nothing, and covered my whole body in dense mana.

The blow that landed on my guard drove me off the packed earth of the camp and into the trees. Bark bit both shoulders. My boots tore a trench in the leaves. I stopped with a trunk in my spine and blood in my mouth and looked at what had thrown me.

She had come out of the tent in silver.

Not the robe. And man was the metal stretched. The chest-piece was doing the work of two and still looked a breath from splitting, metal swollen around tits the white cloth had only argued with. The same crime at her hips. Cuisses and a fauld forged like the smith had been dared, stretched so tight across that ass that every step made the silver complain. Enough steel for two soldiers. Maybe three. She was wearing all of it and moving like it weighed nothing.

Visor up. Blade in a line that matched the armor.

She reset her stance in the ruined camp, and the woods went very quiet.

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Let me know if there are any mistakes.