Rydan’s POVI turned from the window and moved toward the gate.The man from the street was faster than the distance between us should have allowed. He was on me before I had cleared the path, his weight hitting me from behind with the full momentum of something that had been built for exactly this kind of impact, and the ground came up again for the second time in ten minutes and my face reacquainted itself with the pavement at close range.His grip was around both my arms this time, pinning them, and the axe was somewhere I couldn’t see it, which was the part that required immediate attention.I worked against the hold.Not with panic, not with the blind thrashing of someone overwhelmed. With the methodical, incremental pressure of someone who understood leverage and had three centuries of understanding where to apply it. I found the angle where his grip was weakest and I drove into it and the hold broke in stages, first one arm and then the other, and I was upright before he had co
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