The Rose of the World by Jude Fisher

her too fast for caution, his cutlass raised for a barbarous downward chop. She felt the air part beside her ear and darted backwards. A quick glance ascertained her surroundings and she leapt behind a big timber support. A bare second later, Bastido’s weapon splintered the pillar, sending frayed chunks of oak spinning out into the dark air of the hold. Katla appeared around the other side of the post and jabbed her sword at his waist. But the captain was fast and well trained; the cutlass came down on her blade with a great clang, the force of his blow setting her arm-bones ajangle and sending tremors down into her fingers.
    Katla ducked and weaved. She was a head taller than her opponent; lighter and quicker, too, but he was built like a prize bull, bursting with year upon year of hard-trained muscle. She parried another bone-shocker from him, then spun away on her toes and swept her own blade around low. Bastido took a step back, but it was not quite far enough. The edge of Katla’s purloined weapon sheared across the big muscle of his thigh, making her opponent roar with surprise and pain.
Damn
, Katla thought;
another inch and I’d have had his leg off.
This judgement brought suddenly to mind a conversation with Tor Leeson about the good edge on one of her swords—
    Take a man’s leg off nicely, I’d say
. . .
    That womanising bruiser, she thought fondly, though she had never been very fond of him in her life. He had had no gentle way with either swords or words; but he had died trying to save her from the burning. An Istrian blade in the back, they’d said. Fury filled her anew. Istrians were her enemies: and this man who faced her now more than any. He had murdered her friends and kin, burned her own grandmother in her family home. A nicked leg was barely a down-payment on the blood-debt he owed her.
    Snarling like a mad dog, Katla ran at him, arms locked, sword extended. Galo Bastido threw his blade up to ward her off, but he had underestimated her pace and determination. The cutlass sheared off the Istrian sword with a shower of fiery sparks which lit the faces of both combatants for a few brief seconds. Then the cutlass described an elegant arc, gleaming silver like a leaping salmon, and spun uselessly out of the raider’s hands.
    Something moved in her peripheral vision but Katla forced herself to ignore it and concentrate on her opponent. As Bastido staggered backwards, she went after him, sword raised to deliver a killing stroke.
    The next thing she knew she was falling backwards and her arms felt as though they were being dragged out of their sockets. She stumbled, lost her footing, went down hard onto the deck, catching a cross-timber painfully in the small of her back. Something – somebody – had hold of her sword. She jerked her head sideways and saw that the thongs of a many-tongued whip had knotted themselves inextricably around the blade. She hauled fiercely, shearing through two of the thongs, but the man on the other end of it – Baranguet, of course – was not letting go.
    ‘Hell’s teeth,’ Katla groaned. She looked back. The raiders’ captain was coming at her now, empty-handed but furious, his face a gory mask. She could see the whites all around his eyes. He was definitely going to kill her if she stayed where she was. She went momentarily limp; and as she had hoped, Baranguet yanked hard on the whip. As he did so, she released the sword and flipped herself to her feet. She heard the whipman go down with a curse; heard the sword skitter across the deck. Then she ran at Bastido.
    Her lowered head took him hard under the ribs in a time-honoured Eyran wrestling gambit. She heard the wind rush out of his lungs. A moment later, she was astraddle him, her knees pinning his shoulders to the floor. She had outpointed Simi’s brother, Gill Fallson, with a manoeuvre very similar to this, and he was built like a bull, as was this man. It was all in the speed; she could hardly match him for