Sixteen dismounted hired blades, led by a burly sergeant wielding a heavy two-handed felling axe, charged the narrow four-foot gap between Wagons Fourteen and Fifteen where the logging chains were anchored.
“Cut the chains!” the sergeant roared, swinging his heavy axe in a whistling overhead arc meant to split the wagon tongue.
He struck nothing made of wood.
Stepping smoothly into the gap came Sile Rook. With an ear-splitting, metal crash, Sile planted his two-inch heart-oak tall body-shield into the breach, its cold-rolled iron face meeting the axe blade dead center.
CLANG!
The blast wave of the blow shook through Sile’s broad shoulders. But the seasoned oak held without a splinter. Behind the shield, Sile’s scarred jaw tightened, his stance as unmoving as a castle gate.
Before the mercenary sergeant could recover his swing, Sile’s blackened hooked pruning blade shot forward through the shield’s sighting notch. The curved beak caught the back of the sergeant’s knee, jerking his leg out from under him with brutal clockwork leverage. The man crashed heavily onto his back.
Two veteran porters stepped up on either side of Sile, their four-foot seasoned hickory packing bats striking down like iron piston rods. In three seconds, the sergeant was disarmed, dragged behind the shield wall, and bound in lashing cord.
