Chapter 47 The Last Thing You Feed

The buttress split.

Lark rolled away before its upper half hit the ground. The hammerhide followed the movement with its one uncovered eye.

The trouser leg swung toward the exit rail.

“No!” Jin shouted.

He ran across the beast's view, waving both empty hands.

The head turned.

Dessa came up beside him with her cleaver burning white along the edge. She held it low, close enough to threaten the dark fold beneath the jaw.

The mouth opened toward them.

Jin and Dessa jumped into the empty first pit.

The exhalation went over their heads.

A post on the far side of the pit shattered. Splinters flew across the far wall.

The fabric snapped straight.

Then sagged.

“Now!” Kessa called.

The netman threw.

His net spread across the covered head and one foreleg. Pale light ran through the cords as he hauled them tight around a surviving gatepost.

The hammerhide lunged.

The post bent. Fibers snapped.

He had bought them seconds.

Lark went in at the free foreleg with his steel blade.

“Hold, don't hit!” Jin shouted.

The clubman dropped to a knee and seized the net's trailing line with both hands. Kessa caught it beside him, her heels digging into the dirt.

They couldn't stop the whole creature.

They could keep the head turned while Lark cut into the soft hinge behind its knee.

The foreleg folded.

The head struck dirt instead of stone.

Dessa drove her cleaver into the exposed fold beneath the shoulder. Heat rolled over Jin as he climbed out of the first pit beside the low block.

His mark.

Five strides along the wall's base. The broken corner ahead. The cloth-covered eye above it.

Jin looked at the landing.

Solid.

He looked at the head.

Too far right.

“Lark. Bring it toward the corner.”

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The swordsman glanced back.

Saw the space.

He moved in front of the visible eye, close enough for the claw to scrape his coat, then backed toward the broken wall.

The hammerhide turned after him.

Kessa let the net slide a hand's breadth. The clubman followed her lead. The trapped head came around without getting room for another full swing.

Jin activated.

His feet carried him along the five strides he'd walked.

At the broken corner, the arrival held him beneath the beast's blind side.

He drove the bent knife into the slack throat sac.

The point went in.

The creature jerked.

He put his other hand over the hilt and pulled downward, opening the soft wall before it could swell around the blade.

The knife snapped.

For one stunned instant he held only the handle.

The point stayed buried in the wound.

The hammerhide slammed its shell against the fallen stone.

Red flashed beneath Jin's hands.

Blood blew out through the cut.

The open mouth gave a broken, strangled cough.

No blast crossed the ring.

Jin dropped the hilt, caught the torn edges of the sac and dragged them apart.

His feet had stopped bracing. He bent with the creature's weight, kept his knees under him and pulled with his whole back.

The net broke.

Kessa fell against the clubman. The netman struck the post shoulder-first.

The hammerhide's head swung toward Jin.

Lark met it from the other side.

His blade cut into the wound Jin was holding open.

Dessa tore her cleaver free, stepped beneath the falling shoulder and struck beside him.

Hot blood washed over all three.

The front of the creature hit the dirt.

One rear foot scraped a trench through the pit.

Then stopped.

Jin kept his hands where they were until the body dissolved between them.

Iron fell out of the light.

His broken blade. The surviving hooks of the net. Dessa's cleaver.

And his trousers.

They landed over his head.

Jin lifted the cloth off his face.

Eleven.

He read the line again.

He laughed once. Loudly. Kessa looked over, then started laughing too without asking why. He wanted to stay there for another second, standing on his own legs with the impossible number in front of him.

Then he spent the fifty-five: twenty-two Strength, twenty Agility, thirteen Endurance.

Heat rushed through his body so hard that he had to plant both hands on his knees.

When he stood, the torn net under his trainer came up with him. He shook it free without feeling its weight.

Above the broken wall, people were shouting.

Someone had found the little girl a red ribbon. She waved it in both hands.

Jory sat beside the girl's mother, holding a cloth to his forehead.

Dessa went to him.

Kessa knelt beside Jin and picked up his knife's broken hilt. He found the blade in the dirt and set it beside her hand.

“Still want a spoon?” she asked.

He started laughing.

It hurt. He laughed anyway.

A final window opened.

Jin stopped laughing.

He looked at Lark.

Then at the two ways around the fallen buttress.

Lark's eyes narrowed.

“What?”

Jin held out one hand.

“Can I borrow your wooden sword again?”