Everything in the southern side of the courtyard happened within the span of a single divided breath.
Three counts into the second exchange, Daro Kesh and Seyun were locked in a fast, high-pressure spiral four paces from the south porch steps. Daro’s first high thrust had been turned aside by the upper third of Seyun’s mountain-ash staff. The older swordsman was already transitioning into the second half of his combination. A low, scything Jade cut aimed across the gravel toward Seyun’s lead shin. He carried enough tightly packed driving force to sweep a grown man off his boots and send a sharp blast wave of displaced gravel skittering six feet toward the porch.
Because Seyun had widened his spatial awareness before the exchange began instead of staring only at Daro’s handle, he didn’t just see the wooden barrel hoop wobble over the chalk boundary line. He felt the light patter of the seven-year-old boy’s cloth shoes leaving the bottom porch step two paces behind the rolling hoop. He felt twenty-year-old Kes vault over the low porch rail in a desperate dive to grab the back of the child’s vest before the boy could run into the path of the low Jade sweep.
