The courtyard of St. Jude at the Old Bridge was paved with cold, green-mossed limestone slabs that sloped gently toward the churning river.
A light, freezing drizzle had begun to fall, misting across the iron railings and turning the river stones slick as grease. Outside the heavy wrought-iron perimeter gate, Captain Dain had deployed twenty Charter watchmen in a tight semicircle. Their six-foot ash bows were half-drawn, heavy bodkin points nocked and leveled through the iron pickets, the grey goose-feather fletchings quivering against their leather bracers.
Inside the warded courtyard, the heavy gate had been barred from within with a four-foot iron pry-bar jammed through the locking dogs.
In the center of the flagstones stood Sir Cael Ardent.
The hero had discarded his gilded scabbard and his white silk mantle; they lay in a sodden heap in the mud beside the limestone font. He wore only his chainmail hauberk over a sweat-soaked linen tunic, unbelted, his golden hair matted against his skull with rain. His broadsword, naked and five feet long, rested flat across his left forearm, its double-edged steel gleaming with cold menace.
Through the unbuttoned collar of his tunic, the flattened gold ring of the Returner seal was glowing with a terrifying, cherry-red incandescence. The heat radiating from his collarbone was intense enough to turn the falling raindrops into tiny, hissing wisps of steam before they touched his neck.
