But it was his blade that was deflected.

It flashed past my breast, and I was in--inside his weapon, which extended full length in the empty air behind me--and my blade was inside of him, and through him, heart-high, from right side of him to left side of him and outside of him beyond.
It is a strange thing to do, to spit a live man on a length of steel.

I sit here in my cell, and cease from writing a space, while I consider the matter.

And I have considered it often, that moonlight night in France of long ago, when I taught the Italian hound quick and brilliant.

It was so easy a thing, that perforation of a torso.