I gestured for my soldiers to move back. Then I tapped my forehead. The one thing the gas masks weren't good for was speaking aloud.
“Ready?” Tarsine asked.
“At your Will,” I quipped, and then flung a knife directly toward his throat.
Tarsine ducked out of its path, and I let it roar off into the darkness. I would keep that little guy out there behind him, hoping he would forget about it, to use it later.
As we clashed daggers, more of my Emerona soldiers gathered around, dropping in from the darkness above, gas masked all, like raindrops descending from the storm clouds with the dying sunlight gleaming off their armor and wet boots. They made a half circle around us, the Bordash on the other side of the circle. I could sense Vania like a pinpoint star in the center of my friendly camp. Her brunette curls whipped in the wind, and her green eyes shined behind the gas mask's goggles, a slight betrayal of tear-slicked vision betraying her fear. She gripped herself in a hug, and I wanted to be the one hugging her.
Tarsine was a moment's faster than me, whipping the pressure off his dagger and spinning around so he could thud a blow to my kidney with his fist that was the size of a battle-ax that he followed up with a quick trick of his blade, using it like a whip, so that it lashed my upper left arm and sliced it open. First blood. He really was a monster of a man, a whole head taller than me, and his shoulders broader than I thought possible, giving him the reach on me.
This would not be an easy fight. I needed to end it quickly. I knew I was more telekinetically skilled.
So, I picked him up, and I threw him.
I dashed after him, jumping on him as he swept up the salt in his fist and threw it in my face, I flashed it aside with a jerk of my fingers, and he was gone before I could land, again behind me, pummeling me in the jaw with a punch that jostled the gas mask a bit, and I cursed, nudging it back in place, but spun around to prepare my dagger to protect me, just as he came down hard with his.
He forced me down to my back, hitting me in the mouth with his fist again, crunching the gas mask plastic against my lips so that my head was knocked back and I lost my footing. He then could put his whole weight on his dagger, pinning me down, and I used my mental faculties, though lights were bursting in my brain from that punch to my mouth, to unsheathe my throwing knives, distracting him with the one I already had loose, letting it whizz around and cut quick nips from his neck, his cheek, his hands. I prepped six throwing knives behind him where he couldn’t see them, my eyes starting to see black spots from lack of air with his forearm against my throat, my brain starting to panic. My skill was memorized, holding the knives steady, ready to impale him from behind. His blade was starting to prick my throat as he forced it in tighter and tighter, and I realized with a sudden rush of fear, that he might just be stronger than me, and his eyes blazed with fury, and I put every intention, every emotion I could access, even my love, yes, love, for Vania into my Will and threw him off me, aiming for the floating knives behind his back, and they impaled him.
Then he was thrust further back, as if an explosion had burst in front of him, slamming him into a nearby Bordash speeder, forcing the six slim throwing knives practically all the way through his body, and I stood up, gasping for air with the release of his weight from my chest, and I was following up his retreat by throwing my dagger, lasering it toward him with such precision that it flew fiercely through the air and slammed into his throat just above his collarbone and impaled him to the speeder’s side panel.
I stared at Tarsine’s body as he gave his last jagged breath, blood flowing freely, spittle and bubbles frothing, my dagger so sharp that his body was slipping through it. The small knives had sunk in so far they would be difficult to retrieve. Most remarkable was how sunken in his chest was from the brutal blow of wind that came from Vania’s telekinetic driving force, that only I suspected. His chest was sunken in, concave, crushed. Everyone else would think that thrust came from me… and it could have, I think… I think I was strong enough to crush a man’s chest with my mind…
I wiped my mouth and found it was bleeding. The crowd was hushed as we watched Tarsine die. The lightning was crackling in the distance, the storm was moving on.
“I’m sorry,” Vania whispered, coming up from behind me and taking my hand. “I only meant to help with the push you had already given him.”
“Well, it looks like you hit him with a spaceship.”
The Bordash were looking at their leader, stunned as if they were waiting for him to get back up, but then Rotcher, Tarsine's second, threw down his blade and lifted his hands. The Curans swarmed, knives ready, taking POWs.
I pulled Vania in close, wincing at the pain in my arm and the way a kiss to her forehead through the thin gas mask material rattled the blows I had taken to my jaw. It is over. I won… I took a deep breath and let go of Vania. One of the Seawards came up to
