The wind howled in pitiful sighs, and the world narrowed until it was nothing but a blur of iron and meat.
Mers did not know how long he had been standing there, his arm a leaden weight that swung and swung with the same grace of a butcher that was drunk.
The faces surrounding him shifted a dozen times, some lost to the red-slicked stones, others simply unable to keep pace with the knight's desperate rhythm.
He was a silver ghost in a burning house, his blade rising and falling until the hilt was sticky with a warmth that was not his own.
