excerpt

Thorn brandished a bone star in each hand, held in such a way so that one spur protruded between his middle and ring fingers, and its opposite extended along the heels and wrists of his hands. This left the cross spurs to jut from the tops and bottoms of his fists. The sight of the unknown weapons gave the advancing warrior pause, and he began to retreat slowly.

The trailing Snake warrior was only three feet away, but two logs over from them. He worried it would take him too long to reach his comrade, if he followed the tree he was on out to its end, climbed down, ran to the next, and climbed up. Instead, he leaped toward the log separating them. He planted the butt of his spear shaft onto it, and used his momentum to vault over to the log on which Thorn and the other warrior stood. He landed behind Thorn, and fought for his balance for a few seconds. Once he gained it, he leveled his spear at Thorn. Thorn now found himself between the two Snake warriors, and he turned in profile, so that he could keep an eye on each of them. The arrival of his fellow warrior buoyed the confidence of the first, and now he pressed forward. He jabbed with the spear, and Thorn pivoted on the ball of his left foot as his right leg executed a crescent kick. The deflected spear caused the warrior to spin to his right, and he almost fell. Thorn immediately planted his right foot, pivoted on it, and performed a reverse crescent kick with his left foot, thus deflecting the spear of the other warrior. The action caused that one to also spin to his right, and left him unbalanced. Thorn let his left foot continue its downward swing, and went into a free-handed cartwheel off of his right leg. Even as his left foot landed on the log, he dropped and spun to his right. His right leg lashed out in a backsweep, across the front of the ankles of the warrior whose spear he had just deflected. The Snake man pitched off the log, and dropped his spear as his arms began wheeling about in the air. He fell a distance of about a foot, and landed facefirst onto a series of thin branches that caught him. For the next minute, he tried to get up, but the small limbs began to snap and bend beneath him, and he stopped for fear of falling.

Thorn heard Tara scream his name a second time, as the remaining spearman lunged at him again. Again Thorn pivoted on his left foot, as he kicked the spear aside with his right foot, and then brought it down in the forward position. He shuffled forward with a spring, and his hands shot out in oblique horizontal arcs. The spurs of the bone stars, which protruded from between the fingers of each fist, were stabbed into the neck of the spearman. Blood spurted as Thorn yanked them out. Even as the spear fell from his lifeless hands, Thorn stepped through on his right foot with a small leap into the air, and brought his left knee up in a viciously smashing blow to the chest of the dead Snake man. The warrior flew back to one side, and off the log. His body glanced off two limbs as he plummeted a distance of four feet to splash into the stream. Thorn didn’t bother to watch him fall. He had already turned, and raced to where the other Snake man had fallen from the log. He could see his foe struggling to keep from falling through the lattice of limbs on which he lay. Thorn bounded off the log into the air, tucking his feet beneath his hips and bringing his knees together, pointed downward. He dropped quickly, and landed with both knees in a sodden thud onto the small of the Snake warrior’s back. The limbs snapped and scratched them as they fell through to splash into the stream.

Thorn was still atop the warrior, who was held under the water by his weight. He punched down, first with the left, and then with the right, into the stream. Each blow was a puncture to the base of the skull of the warrior with the spurs of the bone stars. Small tendrils of blood rose up, and drifted with the lazy current of the stream. Thorn was already up, and sloshing his way to the east bank through thigh deep water. Just as he reached the bank, he heard a third scream from Tara as it was cut off.