Never had so absurd a thing happened to me.

He was wide open, and I could have run him through forthright.

But, as I said, I was in amaze, and the next I knew was the pang of the entering steel as this clumsy provincial ran me through and charged forward, bull- like, till his hilt bruised my side and I was borne backward.
As I fell I could see the concern on the faces of Lanfranc and Bohemond and the glut of satisfaction in the face of de Villehardouin as he pressed me.
I was falling, but I never reached the grass.

Came a blurr of flashing lights, a thunder in my ears, a darkness, a glimmering of dim light slowly dawning, a wrenching, racking pain beyond all describing, and then I heard the voice of one who said: "I can't feel anything." I knew the voice.

It was Warden Atherton's.