The sound that filled the burning chancel of St. Jude’s was not the clang of steel armor; it was the wet, sickening hiss of living human palm-skin and tendon searing against white-hot wrought iron, exactly like a raw beef-joint dropped onto an ungreased griddle.
Sir Cael Ardent did not let go.
With both bare hands locked around the flaming iron tie-strap of the falling purlin—the outer edge of the red-hot metal band biting straight across the ring and pinky fingers of his right sword-hand down to the bone—Cael twisted his hips on the narrow stone pedestal and heaved the two-hundred-pound blazing timber sideways away from Jon Hale’s ankles and Sister Oda’s litter.
The purlin crashed harmlessly into the empty, shattered oak choir stalls against the north wall, sending up a geyser of yellow sparks and ash. A heartbeat later, the main fourteen-inch rood-beam slipped off the broken corbel and thundered down onto the vacant altar steps where Sister Oda had lain three seconds before, cracking the six-inch limestone flags from wall to wall.
“Cael!” Jon lunged back through the swirling embers, kicking a smoldering roof-lath out of the way and catching the Returner around the waist of his blued-steel breastplate just as Cael’s knees buckled on the stone pedestal.
