The mud on the inner ramp tasted of crushed river cockles and sulfur. When Cael went down, his plate harness struck the shingle with the dead, sodden crunch of an anchor dropped into a dry dock.
Jon Hale caught the knight beneath the left armpit before his skull could strike the granite sill. The sheer dead weight of forty pounds of steel and sixteen stone of limp flesh nearly wrenched Jon’s shoulder from its socket. Across Jon’s hands, the nine active rings bit deep into his flesh, while on his right wrist the twin etched bands of the Witness Vow and the Non-Execution Covenant tightened like cold wire against his straining pulse. Along his right forearm, the four somatic bands—the bone stylus, Bram’s iron brace, Tobin’s lead tube, and the bound Common Charter—hummed with the memory of the forty-eight shares held in common trust.
“Tobin!” Jon yelled into the driving rain. “Drop the spare strings! Grab the backplate bracket! Lift with your knees, lad!”
Tobin dropped through the sluice opening like a ferreting terrier, his boots skidding through the red puddle where Cael’s femoral blood had pooled between two stones. The boy hooked both hands under the heavy iron rim of the knight’s breastplate, his teeth gritted so hard that spit flecked his lips.
