Chapter 6

The sound is worse than I expect, a wet crack that carries across the whole silent clearing, and he goes down hard, one knee buckling under him before he catches himself on the bloodied grass. For a moment nobody breathes. Even the fires seem to hold still.

Fabrice's hand comes up to his jaw, already swelling, already sitting at an angle jaws are not supposed to sit at. He does not make a sound, though I can see what it costs him not to. Around us, forty warriors who knelt to me an hour ago now stare at the ground,…