Free Bones of the Empire by Jim Galford

mind raced through his teachers’ lessons over the years, quickly casting aside all of the ones about weapon usage, training with heavy armor, and ways to kill a foe with minimal effort. He needed something less lethal and more likely to keep him going until the child had exhausted herself and fell over.
    He narrowly avoided another spell, this one grazing his leg and numbing his knee. Swearing softly, he stumbled as he tried to regain his balance. His thoughts darted to On’esquin’s brief training sessions almost a month earlier. The man had cracked Raeln on the same knee with his spear.
    The thought of On’esquin brought Raeln’s thoughts to a conversation they had near the end of their journey together. On’esquin had been adamant that Raeln regain his calm, and that had led them toward discussing Raeln’s various teachers…and one in particular.
    The elderly teacher had been crazy and a lecherous drunk, but he had always babbled about fighting in a relaxed state, moving fluidly to avoid the attacks of others, largely to preserve his own strength until he was ready to strike. That filthy old man had a reputation for his ability to cripple even the finest warrior without much effort, and had claimed he was untouchable by the greatest of wizards. Or rather, he had made those claims when he had not been preaching about how the people of Raeln’s village should spend more time worshipping the old gods. Raeln had given that training little thought, despite On’esquin’s interest in it, but now he fought to reclaim as much as he could of the man’s teachings before the next spell went off.
    Here, conservation of movement would allow Raeln to keep going far longer, and any chance of dealing with a spellcaster that did not involve punching the girl would be worth a try. Most of the old man’s training had focused on avoiding getting speared, but he was certainly willing to try against spells. He needed to minimize his movement if he were going to keep the fight going, and doing so might stall long enough for the Turessian child to wear herself down. This would become a fight of endurance.
    The principle was simple. Be somewhere else when the spear—or spell—reached you, but not far from where you began. Minimal movement preserved one’s strength. Use the enemy’s strength against them…though against magic, things were never that simple. There was no physical weapon to react to. He had done this enough times against Liris without thinking about it that he knew it was possible. He just needed to find a way to do it in a prolonged way without fighting back.
    Raeln held his position across from the child, knowing he had to be precise with his timing or he would be doing little more than throwing the fight. He watched the ground, keeping his mind empty as he waited for the child to begin casting her next spell. Seconds later, he saw her fingers go through the motions of tying together the strands of magic she intended to use on him. The girl was patient but predictable, using the same spell repeatedly to try and bruise him into submission.
    Waiting for the telltale pressure at the back of his mind that always preceded a spell erupting near him, Raeln turned sideways, instinctually making a deflecting motion as though the spell were a physical thing, the way he had been taught to defend against a spear. He felt the spell numb the pads of his hands, but he avoided it and the spell crashed into the snow again. The next spell came at him before he had recovered from the last, forcing him to dig his toes into the snow for balance as he tried again to escape the spell. This time he felt as though a club had slammed into his arms as he narrowly avoided it, but the spell went wide again, spraying snow into the crowd. If anything, the spell had wound up farther from him than the previous one, despite less movement on his part.
    The pain in Raeln’s shoulders from barely avoiding the spells made him think. He had