Cael lunged with the desperate, unhinged ferocity of a wolf trapped in an iron pit.
He did not challenge Jon Hale. He did not issue a knightly demand or offer terms of surrender under martial statute. He dropped his left shoulder, drove his iron-plated boots against the soot-dusted flagstones, and charged straight at the vestry archway where Sister Oda stood with her ancient sheepskin scroll.
His heavy broadsword cleaved through the smoky air in a savage, two-handed horizontal sweep, the silver-inlaid steel shrieking as it aimed to take the nun’s head from her shoulders and silence the forbidden hymn forever.
“Oda, back!” Jon shouted, throwing himself forward across the chancel steps.
The nun did not scream. Her instincts, honed by years of surviving border raids during the wars of her youth, took over before the edge of the steel could connect. She dropped her weight backward, her heels catching the rough hem of her dark wool habit as she fell into the shadowed recess of the vestry doorway.
The broadsword missed her chin by less than three inches, the draft of its passage whipping the starched linen of her wimple.
The heavy steel edge slammed violently into the partition wall beside the door frame—a four-inch partition of lath, horsehair plaster, and seasoned pine studs that separated the public sanctuary from the small sacristy behind the high altar.
