Chapter 4 - The Edge
The fighter hit Nora before she could bring the rifle around.
His shoulder drove into her chest and knocked them both across the gravel. Her rifle clattered several feet away, stopping dangerously close to the drop. Nora caught the edge of his vest and turned enough to keep her head from striking bare stone.
He was larger.
Stronger in the first collision.
But strength in close quarters was not only size.
It was balance.
Breathing.
Leverage.
Nora drove one forearm between them and created half a second of space. The fighter tried to pin her shoulders. She shifted her hips, trapped his wrist, and rolled toward the higher side of the ridge.
Loose rocks slid beneath them.
The drop waited only a few feet away.
The fighter forced her back toward the wall instead, gripping the front of her vest with both hands. Nora’s ribs screamed when her back struck stone.
“You picked the wrong ridge,” she growled.
His expression hardened.
He shoved again.
Then Sergeant Hale appeared on the trail with Corporal Briggs behind him.
Both men raised their rifles, then stopped.
There was no safe shot.
Nora and the fighter were too close.
“Hold fire!” Hale shouted. “She’s too close!”
The fighter glanced toward the soldiers.
That mistake gave Nora the moment she needed.
She braced one boot against the rock wall, caught his arm, pivoted beneath it, and drove him sideways into the stone.
He lost his grip.
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Nora broke free.
Then the first mortar impact shook the ridge.
