Concerned, he scanned wildly. Only the brief glimpse, hardly registering, of a spot on the soft ground revealed to him the truth, and just in the nick of time. He fell aside as the elf warrior came down out of the tree—the indentation betraying the point where she’d planted her staff and used it to leap straight up to branches that should have been beyond her reach.
The warrior landed, but Barrabus kept rolling. He heard the hum of air behind him as she swept her deadly staff his way.
He came up in a pivot and launched his dagger—an awkward throw that had no real chance of getting through the defenses of a warrior as capable as she, but one that slowed her advance just enough for Barrabus to draw his sword and main-gauche.
She held her tri-staff horizontally in front of her, rotating her hands just enough to send the two-foot lengths at either end spinning vertically out to either side of her.
Barrabus couldn’t help but be drawn to the elf, the cut of her blouse and skirt, the impish smile on her delicate face, the thick braid of red and black hair running down the right side of her head and over the front of her shoulder to lead the eye enticingly to the low V of her partially untied blouse. He was as disciplined a warrior as any, but even he had to fight against the distraction, had to remind himself that even the cut of her clothes was strategic.
She circled slowly to the right, and Barrabus moved to his right as well, keeping square with her.
“I knew you were out here,” she said.
“I knew you were out here,” he replied.
“It had to come down to this, of course,” she said.
He didn’t answer—he hardly heard her. He knew he was at a disadvantage, given the unusual nature of her weapons.
Dahlia kept up her end of the conversation on her own. “It is said among my people that ‘the Gray’ is a formidable warrior.”
He didn’t answer, but she continued circling. He had tuned out her distractions—all of them.
Dahlia came forward, punching out with her right hand then her left then turning the tri-staff vertically before her, its ends spinning furiously. She let go with her left hand and let it loop completely around her right before catching it again, now reversing her right grip and pulling her right arm in while punching out again with her left, sending the left-most section sweeping out at her opponent.
He blocked with the main-gauche, trying to hook that end staff, but Dahlia was smart enough to recognize her own failed attack, and quick enough to retract the weapon. She threw her right arm straight back and let go of the shaft, launching the staff behind her, but caught it by the end piece in both hands held closely together, shifting her feet as she did, turning her hips so that she could quickly reverse the momentum with a snapping, whiplike swing. And a simple strategic call to the staff broke the middle section as well, so that as it came forward, it was four equal lengths, separated by the cords.
It rolled out before her, not quite a whip, not quite a staff, the end snap aimed perfectly for the Gray’s head.
He fell straight back, narrowly avoiding the surprising move, and the end pole cracked against a tree, releasing a lightning charge that ripped a large piece of bark from the trunk.
Barrabus could hardly believe the power generated in the whipping motion of the strange weapon, to say nothing of the added magical devastation wrought by the lightning.
He hadn’t tried any counter to the elf’s first routines, preferring to let her play them out in the hope that he would gain some insight into the angles and speed of her attacks, but suddenly, as he threw himself back in a desperate and barely-successful attempt to get out of her reach, he realized his folly.
She was too quick and too precise, and he realized he would figure out the truth of her movements right before she smashed in his skull. There was no learning curve to be found.
His backward rush ended up against a smaller tree and he rebounded off it with fury, coming forward as the elf grabbed up her staff by the central poles. He thought she’d somehow reconnect them, matching his sword and dagger with that tri-staff she wielded so adroitly.
It took him a heartbeat to realize that she did the opposite, breaking the staff into a pair of flails.
The angle of Barrabus’s intended attack, straightforward and inside the reach of the tri-staff end-poles, was all wrong!
He dived for the ground, a headlong roll, as the flails swatted in at him from left and right, and came up with a strong presentation of his right foot forward, lengthening the reach of his thrusting sword.
The elf dodged desperately, bringing one weapon in at the last instant to smack against the side of the sword as she faded back and to Barrabus’s left.
He pursued. A second stab, a third. He blocked a sweeping strike with his main-gauche and traded parries, sword and flail.
Barrabus rolled his hands in a sudden fury, circles sweeping over and in before him as he pressed forward in a rush. Instead of keeping one foot back, as was typical for his weapons, he had his feet moving side by side, his shoulders squared, daring the elf to find an opening and strike through the blur of spinning metal in front of him.
Indeed she tried, and he had to constantly change the speed of his rotations to block the myriad angles presented by the similarly spinning flails—and worse, on more than one of those blocks, the elf’s weapon presented an electric shock, some quite powerful, one nearly ripping the sword from his hand.
But he held on, and he used that unfortunate sting to make it seem as if he couldn’t, teasingly interrupting his circular flow.
On came the elf—just as Barrabus reversed his momentum and stabbed straight ahead.
He had her awkwardly dodging, and he pressed all the harder, stabbing and slashing with fury, keeping her on her heels, betting that one of his blades would find her flesh before his momentum played out and his weariness from the flurry allowed her an advantage.
Just when he thought he had her she threw herself backward in a perfect tuck and roll and retreated around the trunk of a thick oak.
Barrabus faked a move to the other side to intercept, and instead followed her directly. He smiled, thinking the Thayan had finally guessed wrong.
He didn’t catch her as he pursued her around the tree!