Everything happened in the space of the second exchange.
The brown mule’s right rear hoof kicked the loose wedge stone out from under the lip of the shelf. Then, the animal’s hindquarters dropped four inches toward the gorge. Mer, feeling the halter rope jerk wildly in his fist as the barley sacks lurched backward, lunged half a step uphill to keep the mule’s nose pointed toward the solid trailhead neck.
At the same time, thirty feet overhead, the pale blade pivoted off Daro Kesh’s short sword and drove its second dropping pressure wave straight down the face of the cliff, shearing a fresh curtain of dark, razor-edged shale slabs toward both the slipping hindquarters of the mule and Mer’s exposed head.
Seyun pivoted on his right heel between Bel Sar and the mule’s flank to carry his responsive defense into the second exchange.
Halfway through the turn, two things caught him at once.
First, in his chest, the rapid back-to-back shift from the heavy limestone bending of the first exchange to the low-and-high split of the second exchange hit the clockwork ceiling of his two-circuit endurance. Where his third return channel beneath the chest bone had once bridged his left and right spirit veins during nonstop high-load reversals, the five-day-old pale reconciliation scar pulled tight against his ribs, delaying the return of his breath by half a beat.
