duster vs rock

Without an instant’s hesitation, Ethniu spun and flung a rock at me with her good hand.
I saw it coming and felt like a moron. Ethniu had had no reason to have a conversation with Marcone. She’d known I was there all along, but she hadn’t known exactly where. So she’d been using the slight sound of my own movements to get a fix on my location. The rock was enough to give me away.
But Marcone had struck her where it hurt—in the feelings. What he’d said had been defiant enough, disrespectful enough, to send her into a rage. She could have flicked that stone at me carefully, like a dart thrower, beaned me in the head, and that would have been that. But she didn’t. She threw it hard, sidearm, like a major-league pitcher, her rage giving the motion away so that I had an instant to counter her.
I turned my shoulder into the stone and it hit me like a sledgehammer.
My coat stopped the worst of it, which meant that all I got was a broken arm. Left one, middle of my forearm. The rock shattered against me, and if the coat kept me alive, it still felt like I’d been kicked by a particularly powerful and hostile horse.
I went down with a cry.
My body felt like a car that didn’t want to start, and my limbs filled with a bone-crushing weariness. The toll the night had put on me was becoming physically unsupportable. I slammed a hand to the ground to push myself up, or tried to. The actual movements my body performed seemed a lot feebler than I had intended. But I got back up, just as the Titan slithered across the rocks to Marcone.

Battle Ground Chapter 33, page 328