Two iron patches now—shoulder and hip, both small, both hardened, both present on Mark's body without yet restricting movement significantly.
Mark created distance—the silver eyes reassessing, the pattern becoming clearer. Ragnor was using strikes as misdirection, the trailing hand exploiting whatever evasion path Mark's reflexes chose. The full-stance reading hadn't been enough to prevent the second contact because the combination's complexity had required processing more variables than the single-strike exchanges.
He needed to stop evading into Ragnor's trailing hand.
Which meant he needed to evade in directions Ragnor couldn't predict—not the directions his reflexes naturally chose based on the incoming strike's trajectory, but directions chosen specifically to avoid wherever Ragnor's other hand might be.
