Jon saw the trajectory in the spray before the iron arrived.
Time did not stop—the Crown Furnace was miles away beneath the roots of the hill, dormant in its stone chamber—yet the reflexes forged across nine violent deaths made every fraction of a second stretch into agony. Jon’s hand lunged forward, his fingers clawing for the hem of Tobin’s brown courier coat, his knuckles grazing the rough wool of the boy’s sleeve.
He was two inches short.
Tobin had already thrown his weight forward into his second stride, his boots finding purchase on the wet greenheart planks as he hauled the unconscious town watchman toward the safety of the stone revetment. The boy’s face was bright with exertion, teeth bared against the cold river wind, his gaze locked entirely on the sheltering granite buttress ten feet ahead.
Then the iron arrived.
It did not sound like the clash of weapons on a battlefield. It was a dull, dense, hollow impact—the wet thwack of a butcher’s cleaver driving deep into a side of fresh beef, accompanied by the dry, unmistakable snap of living bone splintering under brutal pressure.
The quarrel was three feet of hardened black ash tipped with a square-cut steel bodkin point, launched from a double-bowed cranequin ballista at point-blank range. It struck Tobin from the right flank, just beneath the twelfth rib, punching through his stiffened leather riding coat, his wool tunic, and his linen undershirt as though they were damp paper. The iron head drove through intercostal…
