DRAGON'S BLOOD (by Terri Branson) excerpt...

PROLOGUE
Evannen Province on the planet Eshkara of the Mekara Solar System

BLOOD pounded in his ears.
     Pine needles crunched beneath his boots, as Raza raced toward a cacophony of weapon’s fire mingled with shouts and screams. He scrambled onto a fallen log with a diameter nearly his own height of six and a half feet. The knobby, rubbery soles of his boots dug into loose bark, as his bare hands scraped through limbs and debris to pull him to a standing position on the great bluewood log.
     He yanked the Sooran Guard hood from his head and flung it off into the dimming forest. Bending into a crouch, he shook back shoulder length hair and willed his heart rate back to its normal strong and slow pace.
     The last burnished slivers of daylight faded second by second into cool purplish beams.
     A snap sounded behind him on the right.
     With his left hand, he slipped a knife from his waistband and waited. Raza’s eyes adjusted to the fleeting twilight and his senses reached out in all directions.
     Another snap echoed from the left behind him. Then two snaps ahead of him. Still he waited, perched on the six-foot high log, making himself an easy target.
     In his mind’s eye, he saw five human forms making their way toward him. Heard the pounding of their hearts and quick breaths. Smelled the tang of their sweat. Felt the wakes of their spiritual energy, as they moved through the forest.
     Then he felt one running toward him from behind.
     Springing from his crouch, he spun backward off the log. His left boot caught the attacker under the jaw and rounded across, breaking the neck. His right forearm deflected the hand of another, barely missing the serrated blade of a dagger. Pine needles spewed upward like a geyser, as his right foot connected with the ground. The crystalline dagger in his left hand sliced through one man’s throat. He kicked out with his right foot, launching a third man several feet into the air. Hitting a broad tree back first, the attacker’s spine snapped with a satisfying crunch before he thudded dead to the ground.
     Raza shifted his weight and reversed motion. Meeting one assassin in mid-stride coming over the gigantic log at him, he caught the man’s left wrist at the same time he buried the already blood-slick crystalline knife in a taut waist. Falling backward, he put both feet in the man’s stomach and retrieved the crystal dagger. Without any loss of momentum, he tossed the wounded man over his head.
     Rolling to his feet, Raza shunted to one side just as the blade end of a staff stabbed down from the top of the log. He grabbed the staff pole with his right hand and pulled. Cursing, the fifth attacker slipped off the log and landed in a cushion of pine needles.
     Raza twirled the staff once and then buried the blade in the middle of the man’s chest, stopping only when he felt the tip lodge in the packed earth.
     A woman’s scream pierced the air, followed by a soft splash.
     “No,” Raza muttered.
     With the bloody crystal knife gripped so tightly in his left hand that the fingers started to go numb, he bounded over the enormous log and tore his way through the dark thicket....