Six Celestial Swords Read Free Page B

updraft of magical force and lifted several feet off the ground. The rogue cried out as the ground abandoned him, grunting when it returned more quickly than he’d been raised from it as Xu Liang’s spell-casting hand lowered. Xu Liang heard his victim hit with a thud that at least took the air out of his lungs if it didn’t break anything. He opened his eyes to see the man slowly rising, coughing as he tried to recapture his breath.
    Xu Liang couldn’t help but to smile just a little. “You are beginning to intrigue me. I am rapidly losing interest in defeating you at all. Perhaps we can cross words instead?”
    “No words can save you, sorcerer,” the rogue growled. He took a step forward, cutting the air between them with his blade. “Now, fight me!”
    “You will fight me!” someone else decreed. Less than a second after the words were issued, the young bodyguard dashed past Xu Liang, toward the rogue.
    In the suddenness of the moment, Xu Liang recalled the youth’s name, and called out to him. “Guang Ci!”
    The guard did not listen. With the cruel smile of a wolf, his opponent waited for him, and swung. Red clashed against the evening sky as the young man was flung aside.
    Xu Liang replied to this offense without warning. He performed the wind thrust spell again, but rather than using it to jolt the man as he had before, he channeled much more strength into it—the same strength he might have exerted physically in weapons’ combat—drawn from the mind and spirit rather than muscle. Disks of soft, colorful light surrounded Xu Liang, seeming to radiate from him and then fall away as the powerful magic stored within him began to show itself. The wind responded at once, found its aim, and sent the rogue skidding and somersaulting over the grassy earth. Xu Liang expected the man was dead when he finally came to a stop out of view in the distant grayness of evening, but he did not bother to investigate.
    Xu Liang’s immediate concerns were for his fallen guard. He did not go to him, but closed his eyes and found the man’s heartbeat. He followed its rhythm through the wounded guard’s blood, to every pulse point and knew that death would not be the outcome. The rogue’s blade had cut under his armor, but not in a vital area. More than anything it was the shock of the blow keeping the young guard down. Like Xu Liang, he was now also impressed with the man’s strength.
    Gai Ping approached and knelt down just behind Xu Liang. “Nine of them fell to our blades, my lord. The last one fled.”
    “Who do you suppose they were?” Xu Liang wondered aloud, recovering quickly from his exertion, and from the brief rise of panic and anger that had inspired it.
    The elder bodyguard gave an easy reply. “They were foolish men, bandits who made the mistake of underestimating you, my lord.”
    Xu Liang refrained from smiling. He asked, “Are there many bandits known to this region? One would think that the villagers would complain. A small community such as this could ill afford to be frequently, or even infrequently, troubled by such destructive men.”
    “Perhaps that was the reason they came,” the older guard suggested. “Because the village would be unclaimed and unsuspecting.”
    “Perhaps,” Xu Liang allowed, but he would not satisfy himself with so simple an explanation. The bandits’ leader knew him. At least, he knew who to expect—who he was waiting for, at the behest of an unknown enemy.
    “My lord,” someone else said, speaking in a low, strained voice. It was not strained as a result of weakness or injury, so much as with shame.
    Xu Liang looked down at Guang Ci kneeling before him and realized with a glance toward the river that the young guard had lifted himself and walked without assistance from the place where he had been violently flung. Xu Liang would have sent another man to aid him. The guard’s injury may not have been mortal, but surely the attack had taken something from him.