Читать книгу Sinbad: Rogue of Mars - John Garavaglia - Страница 36

a burst of confidence he felt he could hold his own against the marauder now.

As Sinbad watched, Kasson pulled out a huge burnish iron sword with a flourish. He gave it a nonchalant spin, letting it catch the light. Then he touched the tip to the floor in front of him.

A challenge.

“Are you ready to die, outlander?” Kasson called out to him. His voice was low and sibilant, like the purr of a leopard, and yet it seemed to fill the entire arena, echoing off the walls and raising strange harmonics in the air.

Sinbad glanced at his opponent. “If Allah wills.”

Kasson smiled. “I’ll tell him you’re on your way.”

Sinbad’s breathing was steady and his gaze was clear.

A muscle twitched in Kasson’s leg as a bruised tendon complained. Sinbad saw the marauder’s attention waiver for a split second.

He attacked.

Sinbad felt the movement of Kasson’s sword before his eye had even registered that it had begun to move. Sinbad deflected the blisteringly fast swing with a powerful upward strike that made the muscles in his arms quiver. The two swords met in the middle in a blinding shower of sparks.

The battle was joined.

Grunting with effort, Sinbad twisted his sword away from Kasson’s with a squeal of metal on metal. The joints in his wrist and elbow stinging from the aftereffects of the mammoth blow sweeping around, he advanced to Kasson, his eyes glinting with anticipation.

Sinbad parried a second deadly blow, then another, and another, his sword moving faster and faster, until it was clanging and singing like a blacksmith’s hammer on sheet metal. Sinbad’s body became a blur of kinetic motion, as he cut, slashed and stabbed at the prison’s toughest inmate, driving him back. Kasson was fast, but Sinbad had fought his ilk before. His mind hummed as he parried Kasson’s fast

SINBAD: ROGUE OF MARS

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