Thief of Time - Auditor fight

And then the Auditors were circling and moving in. Of course they would all attack at once. No one would want to be first.

Three made a grab at Lobsang.

He'd enjoyed the fighting, back in the training dojos. Of course, everyone was padded, and no one was actually trying to kill you, and that helped. But Lobsang had done well because he was good at slicing.

He could always find that extra edge. And if you had that edge, you didn't need quite so much skill.

There was no edge here. There was no time to slice.

He adopted a mixture of sna-fu and okidoki and anything that worked, because you were dead if you treated a real fight like the dojo. The grey men were no contest, in any case. They just attempted to grab and hug. A granny would have been able to fend them off.

He sent two reeling and turned to the third, which was trying to grab him around the neck. He broke the hold, spun around ready to chop, and hesitated.

'Oh, good grief!' said a voice.

Susan's blade whirled past Lobsang's face.

The head in front of him was parted from its former body in a shower not of blood but of coloured, floating dust. The body evaporated, became very briefly a grey-robed shape in the air, and vanished. Lobsang heard a couple of thumps behind him, and then Susan grabbed his shoulder.

'You're not supposed to hesitate, you know!' she said.

'But it was a woman!'

'It was not! But it was the last one. Now let's go, before the rest get here.' She nodded at a second group of Auditors that were watching them very carefully from the end of the hall.

'They weren't much of a contest anyway,' said Lobsang, getting his breath.

'What are those doing?'

'Learning. Can you fight better than that?'

'Of course!'

'Good, because next time they'll be as good as you just were. Where to now?’

***

The Thief of Time - p271-272