From Resurrection: The Heresy of a Jesuit:<\/p>\n
“Crack.
\nA muffled report echoed around the market.
\nWas that…a gunshot? No, surely not.
\nDee urgently looked up and down the square.
\nThere! What’s that?
\nA puff of smoke was already dissipating from near the rooftop statue that held the musket.
\nThe statue stood! It shouldered the weapon, then scrambled up the steep roof and slid down the other side, before repeating the pattern on the next house’s roof, passing the little ship statue as it went. Three houses away, another figure emerged from the shadows of a chimney pot and limped away slowly.<\/p>\n
The musketeer quickly gained on the shadow and soon Dee heard the frantic clash of steel on steel and could just make out the flash of the blades in the moonlight as the men duelled on the roof. Leaving a few coins at his table, Dee ran across the plaza, but before he even reached halfway, he heard a ragged cry. He looked up in time to see the pursuer fall backwards off the roof, disappearing from view. He cheered silently, though he had no reason to prefer one fighter to the other, except perhaps an inclination to support the underdog, in this case the man who had been fired upon.<\/p>\n
Still peering up into the gloom, he gasped in alarm as the victor doubled over and collapsed, sliding down the valley between two roofs, then hurtling off the eaves, heading for the cobbles of the square.
\nFortunately, a large awning was stretched over the ground floor entrance to the building and the man hit it plumb in the middle, bounced a little, then came to rest.
\nDee let out the breath that he hadn’t realised he had been holding.
\nToo early.
\nA loud ripping sound was followed by a sickening thud as the dark shape fell the last ten feet to the ground, just visible beneath the tattered remains of the canopy.<\/p>\n
Dee redoubled his speed and raced towards the body, but stopped after a dozen strides.
\nOne part of him wanted to sprint away and avoid commitment, like he had for so many years. The other part of him felt morally obliged to help, because there just wasn’t anyone else available.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From Resurrection: The Heresy of a Jesuit: “Crack. A muffled report echoed around the market. Was that…a gunshot? No, surely not. Dee urgently looked up and down the square. There! What’s that? A puff of smoke was already dissipating from near the rooftop statue that held the musket. The statue stood! It shouldered the weapon, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1832,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-predestination"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jadownes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jadownes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jadownes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jadownes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jadownes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jadownes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jadownes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jadownes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jadownes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jadownes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}