by Rice, Morgan
In spite of it not being a real blade, Ceres snatched it up, testing the weight of it. Despite the pain and the humiliation, the world felt better when she had her hand wrapped around its grip. This was something she understood, and Stephania couldn’t try to take that away from her.
She would try, though, and as a burly Empire soldier came in with his own practice blade, Ceres realized that she didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to be Stephania’s plaything, dancing to her tune. She threw her weapon into the sand.
“I won’t fight just for your entertainment,” Ceres said.
“Oh, you will,” Stephania said. She gestured, and a herald blew a long note on his trumpet. “You will fight, or there will be consequences.”
What consequences could there be? Dying? Right then, Ceres would rather die than be stuck suffering every day at Stephania’s whim. She stood there as the guard approached, keeping her arms down as he thrust at her chest.
The sword slammed into her with bruising force, but Ceres made herself stand there without reacting. She wouldn’t give Stephania the satisfaction of seeing the pain as it bruised her, or watching her stagger with the force of it.
“There,” Ceres said. “I’ve lost. I won’t fight back, Stephania!”
“Really?” Stephania countered. “Not even once you know the price?”
Ceres saw her gesture, and a young man was brought forward, his hands tied. At another signal from Stephania, a guard lifted a sword, and it was obvious that this one wasn’t a training weapon.
“No,” the young man begged. “No, no, please.”
The guard thrust, striking the young man in almost exactly the spot Ceres’s opponent had struck her. The blade slid into him and out again, leaving him to collapse while Ceres watched. She winced at that; at a life snuffed out for no better reason than because of Stephania’s games.
Stephania signaled again, and more people were brought forward. Ceres thought she recognized some of the young men there, that she’d seen them before, fighting alongside the rebellion. Then she saw Sartes and she froze.
“We captured them trying to fight their way in to save you,” Stephania said. “Now, you have a chance to save them, or condemn them. I am not going to kill you, but every time one of my guards lands a blow on you, one of them will suffer. You’ll watch them die, and you’ll realize how weak you are.”
“I’ll kill you,” Ceres promised.
Stephania laughed. “It’s not me you need to kill.”
She gestured to the guard, and the man lunged at Ceres again.
Ceres barely threw herself to the side in time, coming up with the practice sword and circling. The situation wasn’t fair, of course, because Stephania would never keep things even. This was a fresh, well-rested man, while her torturers hardly ever gave Ceres time to sleep. Then there was the threat hanging over her. All this man had to fear was being hit with a practice blade, while any wound on Ceres would count for the prisoners above; for her brother.
She whirled away from an attack, parried another, and then struck down across the guard’s hand. She had to focus. She didn’t have the strength of her Ancient One blood, but she still had the skills she’d learned in the Stade, and she could still remember the lessons the Forest People had sought to teach her. She could still remember Eoin, under a waterfall, moving with such grace that it seemed like magic.
It wasn’t magic, though; it was moving as you needed to move, in harmony with the world. Ceres forced herself to relax, parrying and shifting, feeling the weight of her weapon. It didn’t have an edge, but it was still iron. It still had weight and strength. It could still kill, in the right hands.
Ceres swept a strike out of the way, then chopped down, hearing the crack as she struck the soldier’s knee. He started to collapse, and Ceres hit him across the jaw as he fell, sending him down into unconsciousness.
While Ceres tried to get air into her lungs, two more stepped into the training circle to take his place. They spread out, trying to encircle her, but Ceres darted between them.
“Are you just going to keep sending them until you run out of men?” Ceres called up to Stephania.
“Just until you learn your place,” Stephania assured her.
One of the men cut low. Ceres stepped over the stroke, hitting him in the throat with her blunted sword. Even without an edge, it was enough to collapse him, gasping for air. She spun in time to parry another attack, barely leaned back from a third, and managed to push her attacker away.
Two more joined him as Ceres snatched up a second practice sword from one of the fallen guards.
She charged. Right then, attack was the only defense she had. She ducked as she ran in, feeling a sword whistle over her head. She struck the attacker in the stomach, but that wasn’t enough to bring him down.
She parried and struck back, always moving on the edge of distance, trying to keep one of the swordsmen in between her and the others so that they couldn’t strike at her all together. In spite of her efforts, she took a blow across her forearm, and heard someone scream up above. Ceres didn’t dare to look up to see what was happening.
She lashed out at the hand of one of her attackers, hearing bones break as he dropped his sword. She spun past another strike, lashing out with her elbow to the base of an attacker’s skull even as she parried another blow.
Somewhere in it, Ceres felt herself falling into the rhythm of the fight, feeling it the way she felt the rise and fall of her own breathing. She didn’t have the speed or power that she’d possessed just a few days ago, but she could still choose the right moment to sway back from a blow, sending one man stumbling into another while she struck out to the spine with her heavy iron blade.
If this had been a fight with live blades, there would have been blood. Above, Ceres could hear some of those watching growing restless at the lack of it, but a fight didn’t need blood to be deadly. There was still the crack of breaking bone, the empty gasping of men trying to drag in air through crushed throats.
Perhaps once, Ceres would have tried to hold back, but now she couldn’t afford to. It wasn’t just her own life on the line here, and in any case, she wasn’t sure that she had the strength to do it. All she could do was flow from moment to moment, striking out without hesitation or regret whenever the moment presented itself.
She struck at joints, at bones, at the throat or the skull. She wielded her practice swords as a pair of iron clubs, there to crush and smash rather than slice or pierce. She swayed aside from a thrust, bringing a weapon down onto her enemy’s elbow, then lunged in to thrust her other “sword” deep into the soft flesh of a guard’s stomach. As he doubled up, she hit him behind the ear, sending him down into unconsciousness.
Ceres stood there, looking around for fresh opponents, but it seemed that those guards who weren’t on the sand groaning in pain were lying there in deathly stillness. Ceres took her practice swords and plunged them into the sand, hoping that she would look stronger than she felt right then.
The truth was that she felt exhausted, as if a strong breeze might blow her over. She couldn’t afford to let that show, though. She knew she had to look as though she could keep fighting all day, because otherwise Stephania would keep sending men against her.
Ceres forced herself to stare up in defiance, instead.
“Is that it?” she demanded. “Are we done? I’m sick of playing your games, Stephania. If you want to punish me for some crime only you can see, then do it, but leave the others out of this.”
“You brought them into it,” Stephania countered. “Would they be here if it weren’t for you? All these people, and you can’t save them. You’ll never be enough to save them.”
That hurt more than anything the others had done to her. Stephania had a knack for finding the things that poked at Ceres’s heart more than anything else. She seemed to understand what would hurt most, and never hesitate to push further.
“And you still haven’t learned your lesson,” Stephania sai
d. “You are not some leader. You are nothing. Allow me to demonstrate.”
She clapped her hands again, and guards pushed three more figures into the ring. Three men, all with the muscles built through long training, all armed with weapons that they had long practice with. One held a sword and shield, one a trident, one a short spear. Ceres recognized the combatlords. She’d trained alongside them.
“I know I told you that we killed the combatlords,” Stephania said. “But we managed to save these ones just for you. It will be just like old times, watching you fight them to the death.”
Horns blew, and the three combatlords spread out around Ceres.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Sartes stood by the side of the training pit, struggling against the bonds that held him in place even though it made no difference. He couldn’t just stand there. He couldn’t do nothing while they were trying to break his sister like this.
Yet there was nothing he could do. They’d tied him to a post there, ropes around his wrists, his ankles, his throat, so that he couldn’t move as much as a hand’s width without the ropes tightening to half choke him. They’d put him where Ceres would be able to see him and know that she couldn’t save him, but they’d been crueler than that.
They’d put him where he had to watch his fellow conscripts as they suffered. Already he’d seen Justino stabbed through the heart, had watched them hack a hand from Ullo, leaving him screaming and bleeding slowly to death. He’d heard the braying of the nobles and the guards there as they did it, laughing as if it were all some game.
What they were doing to Leyana was worse. Sartes watched her as they made her crawl through the crowd, a pitcher of wine in her hands. As the only woman with them when they’d been captured, they hadn’t tied her with the others. Instead, they were treating her like the lowest of slaves. Nobles and soldiers barked commands at her. Men reached out to grab at her, making Sartes want to throw himself from the pole that held him to cut them down.
Even as he watched, a nobleman seized her by the waist, lifting Leyana up to set her on his lap. One arm held her tightly in place as she poured wine into his goblet, and when she squirmed to get away, he slapped her, hard enough that Sartes heard the crack of it. She tumbled to the floor and resumed her rounds of the others.
Sartes had no doubts about what would happen to her when they were done in the pits. Some nobleman would claim her as his own, dragging her to his bed the way they’d always done with peasants and slaves, probably beating her if she resisted. All Sartes could do was watch, and as he watched, he knew Stephania had arranged this. Only she could manage to be so cruel.
Leyana’s route was taking her close to him now. Sartes tried to catch her eye to offer whatever silent support he could. Rather than pain or humiliation on her face, though, he was surprised to see a look of determination, even triumph.
She pressed close to him, and in an instant, Sartes felt something pressed into his hand. A knife.
“The noble should have been more concerned with where my hands were wandering than his,” she whispered.
Sartes started to saw at the ropes.
Fear filled him as he worked at them. Leyana was still serving, still being grabbed and groped and pushed. What if something happened to her before he could finish? What if someone spotted what she’d done?
Sartes felt his hands come free, and that didn’t matter anymore. As quick as thinking it, he reached up to cut the rope at his neck, then bent to get the one that held his ankles. He didn’t hesitate, but instead rushed forward to where Leyana stood and grabbed her arm.
“Run!” he yelled.
The noble who was currently grabbing at her tried to hold on. Sartes stabbed him, feeling the dagger sink home, then ran. He pulled Leyana with him, sheer speed carrying him past the guards at the door. Cries behind him told him that there would quickly be pursuit.
He wished that there was time to cut the others free. To help Ceres. Instead, there was only enough time to run blindly with Leyana, picking directions almost at random through the nearly empty castle.
They sprinted, and when Sartes heard footsteps behind them, he sprinted faster.
“In here,” Leyana said, pointing to a side room.
Sartes went with her, but he knew as soon as he did it that it was a mistake. The room seemed to be a storeroom, but it was almost empty, with nowhere to hide. Even as Sartes thought it, two guards followed them into the room, with swords drawn.
If Leyana hadn’t been there, he might have hesitated. Instead, Sartes flung himself forward, striking at the first with the knife again and again. He shoved his opponent at the second, but that just meant they went down together, each with a hand locked on the wrist of the other’s weapon arm. The guard rolled on top, his greater strength forcing his blade towards Sartes’s throat.
The tip of a sword appeared from his chest as Leyana stabbed him with the first guard’s sword. He seemed to freeze in place, staring down at it, then toppled sideways, away from Sartes.
Sartes stood, taking his sword.
“Are there more?” Leyana asked.
Sartes looked out of the doorway, and saw that the corridor was empty. “It seems clear for now, but we need to keep going.”
“We’re going to run?” Leyana asked. She sounded disappointed. “We’re going to leave the others behind?”
Sartes shook his head. He could never just abandon his sister like that, or the other conscripts.
“We’ll help, but we need assistance to do it. I need to find my father.”
***
They walked the walls, ducking down every time they thought they saw a guard. Below, Sartes could see the city, spread out in its districts and its warrens of streets. He could see the soldiers swarming through it too, the flames there and the long chains of slaves that they were taking with them as they went from house to house. The sheer rapaciousness of it was enough to make him feel as though he wanted to run away and never look back.
He didn’t, though. He kept looking. His father and the others with him had been near the castle, trying to hold the city. He just had to hope that was still the case. While he scanned the streets below, Sartes ran along to a spot where a coil of rope sat by a catapult, obviously intended to be a replacement part. If there had been anyone to man the device, it might have been difficult to take, but it seemed that those within were trusting in the strength of their walls for now.
“There!” Leyana said, pointing. “That’s him, isn’t it?”
Sartes looked down to a spot where small figures were fighting. He saw a burly form striking left and right with a hammer, and knew that Leyana was right. It was close enough to the walls that Sartes decided to risk calling out.
“Father!” he yelled. He started to wave. “Father!”
“Careful,” Leyana said. “You’ll attract the guards.”
That was the danger. Even though there were far fewer people than there had been in the castle, there were still some guards out there. Sartes could keep waving, though, and soon, the small figure of his father turned to look at him. Sartes saw him and a couple of other figures break away from the skirmish, running for the castle walls.
While his father ran closer, Sartes looked for a place to anchor the rope he held. He ended up tying it around the unused catapult’s frame, hoping that the great weight of it would be enough.
He dropped the rope over the wall and waited. There was so much that could go wrong now. What if someone saw them? What if his father fell?
“It will be all right,” Leyana assured him, but right then, all Sartes could feel was the tension running through the moment.
He saw his father pulling himself over the wall and reached down to pull him up. Two smiths followed, strong men, but obviously ones who had been in a lot of fights today. One had bruises all over his face. The other had a bloody bandage wrapped around his shoulder.
His father pulled him into a tight embrace. “Sartes, you’re alive! When you didn’t come back, I w
as so worried. What happened?”
Sartes didn’t know how to put it. “We were ambushed. Ceres… they’re making her fight in a pit. I couldn’t get her out alone.”
“I have no doubt you did everything you could,” his father said.
Sartes wished that he could be so sure. Maybe he could have stayed and fought. Maybe he could have been more careful in the tunnels.
“And you’re free,” his father said. Sartes saw him swallow. “That’s good. There isn’t much time. They’re in the city now.”
Sartes nodded. He could see the invaders from the wall. They formed a ring he couldn’t see a way through; a noose tightening on the castle.
“We can’t run yet,” Sartes said. “We still need to get Ceres out.”
His father looked at him. “You have an idea, don’t you?”
Sartes nodded. He’d been thinking about this since they captured him. They’d blocked off so many of the ways out, but what was blocked could be unblocked, couldn’t it?
“We find one of the entrances they think are secure, and we open it,” Sartes said. “They won’t have people on it, because they don’t have enough to watch them all. We couldn’t force our way in from outside, but now that we’re inside… we can let the rebellion in.”
It was a simple plan, but it felt like a good one. Stephania had only taken the castle because she’d been able to shut the rebels out. If they could provide a way back in…
Sartes saw his father shake his head.
“It’s too late for that,” he said. “An hour ago, two hours, and it might have been possible. Now… there isn’t enough of the rebellion left here, Sartes. We tried to hold back the invaders, and they just washed over us.”
For a moment, Sartes stood there, feeling broken. It had seemed so simple. Now, there was nothing. He looked out at the dark line of Felldust’s army. He knew his father was right. That would be here soon. Even if they could somehow take the castle, how long could they hold? If they tried to sneak out, they would be caught, because it was obvious they were being thorough in sacking the city. If they tried to fight, they would just be overwhelmed.
