SECONDS
“The leading cause of death among beavers is falling trees.”
– The Farmer’s Almanac
Jarrod rolled into the courtyard of the head of his order atop Lilith, his commuter vehicle. She was a big northern racking horse, black and powerful and thick-necked, with wisps at her hooves and a rolling gait that felt like wheels underneath him. His warhorse, Perseus, a Percheron-sized roan half again the mass, was a truck with bad shocks by comparison.
He was dressed for a day in the rain. His jacket was a custom job, a knee-length burgundy coat of soft, oil-impregnated leather that buttoned double-breasted on the sword side—for him, the left—with an integrated spaulder and vambrace of heavy, boiled leather. It was functional, flexible, protective, beautifully engraved, and rakish as hell c
