Helen dragged her rapier across the hound's lowered muzzle while frost from her last stroke spread beneath its nearest paw. She withdrew ten paces and watched the foreleg pick the spot her foot abandoned, as if it owned the move.
The jaws snapped shut right where her third academy step should have carried her beneath the turning head.
'Oh, wonderful, it knows that recovery now, and it reaches farther than my blade.'
She reversed her grip against the guard while all six Shards held their orbit around her wrist above blue mist. Six compressed frost charges gathered beside the blade as she drew on the crystals, their cold crawling beneath her leather.
"Liked that one?" she drawled, showing the point before turning its edge downward.
"Try finding it from the other side, you overgrown doorstop."
The hound dropped its shoulder while she watched the heel it would need for a sideways turn.
