The red light reached Baldwin's boot and did not stop there.
It came up around him out of the cracks, and it did not burn anything or throw light on anybody's face. It gathered, and it settled, and the man standing in the middle of it stopped looking tired.
That was all. His shoulders came back a fraction. The sword came up off the ground into a guard.
Then he moved, and the ground he crossed did not match the movement James's eyes had made of it.
Ronan got the shield across because Ronan always got the shield across, braced for a version of the impact he had already survived four times.
He went backward two meters and his damaged arm folded almost flat against his own chest, and he only stayed upright because Finn was behind him.
