When he drew near, he slowed, keeping a wary eye for Regiment scouts or native predators. The area seemed peaceful enough, but Einar did not want to take any chances. The leaves on the ground and in the trees rustled in the wind, muffling potential hints of danger. Suspicion tensed Einar’s muscles as he tried to silence his footsteps, falling with indelicate crunches on dead leaves.
He almost jumped from his skin when Duncan beckoned him with a sharp whistle. The taller man peeked into the open from a stretch of thick underbrush.
“Wrack it!” Einar exclaimed, “Be more subtle, man!” He gestured with the sword now in his hand, drawn in the heat of the moment. “I might have killed you!”
Duncan smirked. “Not likely,” he retorted in good humor. The two men embraced in a brief hug, then parted, slapping each other on the shoulder. “What could be so important as to risk this?” Duncan asked; his tone was serious now.
Einar explained quickly, detailing what he had learned about the Thuites and Derek’s plans for them. Duncan’s expression grew increasingly worried as he listened. “They think they’re going to trap Derek,” Duncan summarized, “but they have no idea what they’re really up against.”
“No kidding,” Einar replied; now that he saw it on the march every day, the size of the Regiment astounded the Alkimite. “Derek already knows their plans. He’ll counteract, and the Thuites will be wiped out.”
“I’ll warn them,” Duncan resolved, “At least they’ll get the women and children away first. With any luck, I can convince them to abandon the town and return later to rebuild.”
Einar nodded. “Good,” he affirmed, “I think the damage will be minimal if there is no resistance.” As he cast a wary look at their surroundings, he said, disquieted, “I should get back before I’m missed.”
Duncan smiled grimly and slapped him on the shoulder once more. “Be cautious,” he warned, “Derek is likely to get more dangerous as we near the Valley and his goals are within reach.”
With that, the two men parted. Einar checked over his shoulder half a dozen times to make sure that Duncan could not be seen across the field. He never spied the other Alkimite. Unless there were Regiment scouts in the area, Einar guessed that his friend would be safe.
When he returned to his camp, he found Drystan and a man he did not recognize waiting for him. The man bore the rank of captain on his broad shoulders, just below a thick mat of unruly blond hair. The man’s eyes were a sharp blue and shone with a perilous light. He was not all brawn, like the late southerners, Mort and Umbra, but was lean with practiced muscles. He said nothing as Einar approached, but Drystan snapped, “Where have you been, Outis?”
Einar frowned. “A guard at the prisoner tent came down ill,” he lied, “He looked fine to me, but he swore he needed some private time away from camp, so I stood in for him.”
Drystan sneered. “Next time, report it first,” he said, dissatisfied. Without pausing to regain any sense of composure, he gestured to his companion. “This is Captain Cassus, of Derek’s most elite troop of soldiers. He will be leading the charge into the Thuite town tomorrow; I want you and your troop alongside him.”
“Well met,” Cassus said. His voice was deep, but harsh. A scar on his neck suggested an old wound was to blame.
Einar bowed his head. “And you,” he answered swiftly. He turned to Drystan: “Of course I will obey, milord,” he responded, “We will be there.”
Drystan nodded curtly, then turned away. Cassus followed him closely. Einar wondered how many of Derek’s men the Guardian planned on turning against the warlord before their inevitable confrontation.
*
The 2040th year of the Sixth Era
The third of the month of Ennemen
Late in the first hour
The next morning, Hector was roused from sleep by the repetitive clanging of a Keldan rapping iron bars with his sword. The young Alkimite pulled himself off the musty pile of straw that served as his bed and rose to his feet. Glancing over, he saw that Brynjar was already awake.
“What’s going on?” Hector asked, hoping in vain for good news.
“Another fight,” Brynjar answered curtly. “Our turn again.”
“Again?” Hector objected. “It’s only been—” he tried to count, “uh, three days—or was it four? Anyway, it hasn’t been that long since we were last out there.”
“We’re a popular team,” Brynjar said, his tone betraying his anger at their predicament. Hector was beginning to understand Brynjar’s behavior; he suspected that the warrior wanted to break his chains, burst free from the cell, and slaughter the Keldans for this ignominy. “They like the idea of their own people killing the trespassing foreigners.”
Hector sighed. “I wonder who it will be this time,” he commented with a heavy dose of apathy in his voice. The identities of their opponents were only epithets and generalizations; he had killed two men now, and he had no idea what their names had been. In quiet moments, when Brynjar was asleep, Hector allowed himself to weep. Brynjar would have admonished him for such weakness, but the boy had felt a roiling pit in his stomach constantly after that first battle. It was a gift of the gods that he did not retch everything he ate, but the emotional toll was almost unbearable.
But every time he felt overwhelmed, when the world seemed to crush him under its weight, he remembered Bronwyn, and he remembered her trust in him. It was enough to keep him going—barely.
“On your feet!” a guard commanded. It was the same Keldan that had taken the two of them to the arena for the last two fights. Hector had heard him called Folguen. He was not the harshest of the Keldans they had encountered; Hector wondered if the dark-haired man regretted his lot in life. The Keldans had shown no more courtesy to their own than to their guests; surely, Hector thought, some of them must be disappointed in their chieftain.
“I said, get up!” Folguen snapped at them. Hector watched Brynjar out of the corner of his eye; the Drengar had been sorely wounded over the past weeks, but he hid it beneath his pride. Slowly, the older warrior rose to his feet, forcing his sprained knee to open in spite of the pain that Hector saw flit across his face.
At the same speed, Hector stood in his own cell. Folguen was neither amused nor impressed. The Keldan jerked his head toward the ramp up to the arena. After a few days in the dank cells, the Keldans had begun to forgo a group of armed guards for the two foreigners. Folguen, though, still rested his hand meaningfully on his sword hilt as he walked his prisoners to the ramp.
This time, they were the first to arrive. Herded up to the entry gate, Hector and Brynjar were pressed close to the metal and held there by additional guards. This position provided Hector with more of the announcer’s spiel than he had heard before.
“Welcome to the Grand Arena!” the announcer began, “Your great host, Lord Eitromal, bids you his salutations as he presents to you this latest combat for your pleasure! Two teams will engage in battle until only one remains alive. Make sure to keep back from the arena wall—you never know what may happen!”
Hector wondered if that kind of warning was heeded by an audience that cheered the deaths of guests and suppliants. But perhaps that was the point; the Keldans were often careful to phrase their statements so that blame could be laid on another. Hector and Brynjar were not “guests,” they were “trespassers.” The announcer pretended his jeering enticements were actually warnings. Hector realized that, on some level, the Keldans still feared the gods, but instead of that fear inspiring moral action, it inspired only an outward façade free of criminal implication. The Keldans were certain that the gods examined only the exterior of a man. As a result, all they needed to justify their crimes was to dress them up as piety.
“In the far field, a pair you know too well!” the announcer continued, “They have won many victories, but perhaps tonight they will fall! Travelers, vagabonds, and trespassers, they are! They seek to destroy our way of life! They are... the villains from the west!”
Hector
felt a spear-haft slap against his shoulder blades. He pushed against the gate. It gave under the pressure. He and Brynjar hurried out, circling the field to reach its eastern end amid a chorus of boos. The morning sun peeked out through the trees beyond that wall. Hector saw five weapons stashed in the center of the ring, but resisted the urge to take one before the beginning of the match. Keldan archers waited eagerly atop the western edifice, quick to dispatch anyone at a nod from the gallery.
Now that they had a few moments to look, Hector examined the people in the gallery. As he had seen before, there were many men there, but women and children, too. Lord Eitromal sat in a splendiferous throne, excessively gaudy and all too self-absorbed. A troop of guards flanked him, surrounding him as if protecting him from the people more than the gladiators. After seeing Eitromal’s treatment of his own people, Hector wondered if perhaps his impression of the guards was actual fact.
“Today, they face enemies no man has ever faced before, and lived to tell the tale! Fresh from their arrival within our borders, they are dauntless warriors from the frigid north. Stronger than oxen and tougher than the winter itself, they outnumber our villains more than two-to-one! Will they be victorious, or will they, too, fall prey to these blackguards? I give you... the rapscallions from the north!”
Five men burst out of the gate like bats at dusk. They spread across the sandy field, their superior numbers allowing them to force Hector and Brynjar into a weaker defensive posture. They were brawny men, scarred and hoary from their life in the unfeeling northlands. Three of them had unruly blond hair topping their haggard faces, which were covered with unkempt beards. The fourth had a shock of burnt orange locks hanging past his shoulders, and the last was bald except for a long, gray braid hanging from the base of his skull. Fear crept into Hector’s heart as he watched the foe deploy across the arena, ready to surround and conquer.
“Backs together,” Brynjar said, drawing him back to courage, “once we have our weapons. Don’t let them flank you.”
Hector nodded as he watched the three northmen closest to him, one of the blonds, the redhead, and baldy. Brynjar had warned him not to let his gaze drift from his enemy; the purpose of his eyes in battle was to see what his opponent planned to do before he did it. “What if one of us falls?” he asked the older warrior.
“Then we die as men, in service of the gods,” Brynjar replied, “They can ask no more of a man than that.”
Now Hector did let his eyes drift to look at Brynjar. There was an edge in the man’s voice, something Hector had heard before, but had never identified. He was beginning to think that Brynjar wished for death, that he pursued it like a hunter pursues a wild boar. Hector had never thought that Brynjar might take the coward’s escape, but when Aneirin had sent him east, the man had been robbed of his opportunity for vengeance against Derek. Without that purpose driving him, Hector worried that Brynjar had no reason to live any longer.
“Begin!”
The announcer’s shout echoed across the sands, knocking Hector back into the present. He snapped his gaze up and, abreast with his friend, charged toward the center of the arena and the pile of weapons. Ahead of him, he saw the blond and redheaded northmen doing the same; baldy, on his right, dismissed the weapons and passed around behind them, ready to attack as soon as their backs were turned.
Hector and Brynjar reached the weapons ahead of the northmen. All five were swords, dropped carelessly on the ground by the Keldans. Hector grabbed the one nearest him; Brynjar took a pair, leaving only two for their five enemies. Instead of retreating from the center of the field, though, Hector and Brynjar stood over it. With their backs to each other, they faced the five unarmed northmen, who now surrounded them on all sides.
Hector stamped his foot down on the blade of one of the swords; he heard Brynjar do the same. The northmen would have to dislodge them entirely to obtain a weapon, and they would have to pass by at least one blade to do it.
But the northmen were wary, methodical. They revolved around the pair of warriors, looking for blind spots and weak defenses. One would feint on Hector’s left, then another on his right, trying to draw him out.
“Don’t attack just anything,” Brynjar warned, “Wait for them to come to you.”
Hector nodded, though Brynjar could not see it. He tried in vain to keep his eyes on the three men that could attack him at any time, but they were spread too far. The blond northman on his left was now behind him; he would have to let Brynjar worry about that one.
The stalemate carried on this way for three more minutes, with the northmen circling and their opponents waiting. As the jeering crowd began to quiet, Lord Eitromal had watched in boredom for long enough. He gestured to an aide, who ran into the view of one of the archers atop the crumbling edifice. A wave of the hand was all it took; the rest had been planned. Eitromal had made it clear which men were supposed to walk out of the arena alive.
The archer notched an arrow to his bowstring and drew back the bow. “You have ten seconds to fight!” the announcer called out, “You have been warned!” Another bit of divine appeasement, Hector noted ruefully.
The crowd was appeased, too. They began to count down, eager to see something happen in this battle. Hector swallowed hard as he kept his eyes on the northmen; they might take advantage of this distraction and attack at any time. Hector knew that he could not afford to break the tight formation he and Brynjar had developed; the slightest falter would allow the northmen to pounce.
The crowd reached one. The archer did not wait for zero. He loosed his arrow. It whistled through the air, faster than the eye could follow, and struck home. The arrowhead pierced Brynjar’s thigh, just above the knee, and proceeded out the other side. Arrowhead and fletching protruded from both sides of his leg.
No matter how stalwart a warrior Brynjar was, the pain was sudden and excruciating. He yelled in agony and lost his footing.
The northmen reacted immediately. Two blonds charged Brynjar. The third blond had traded places with baldy, so he faced Hector directly, while redhead was on his left and baldy was on his right. The three adversaries exploited Hector’s momentary preoccupation by rushing him at the same time. His sword flicked out and slew the blond, puncturing the man’s chest near his heart. Then a fist collided with Hector’s right cheek, throwing him off-balance. He stumbled into redhead’s waiting arms. He was heaved bodily from the ground and thrown off the weapon pile.
Hector landed heavily. His breath was knocked out of him. Gasping, he clambered to his feet and rejoined the mêlée. His sword transfixed redhead’s hindquarters as he bent to retrieve a blade for himself. The northman screeched and stood up straight as a rod. Withdrawing his sword, Hector cut him down in a spray of gore.
Brynjar was on his back, fending off his attackers with both swords—but he could not cover his legs. One of his foes stamped down on Brynjar’s injured thigh, eliciting another roar of pain. Brynjar’s grimace forced his eyes shut for a moment, giving the other assailant an opening.
Hector knew he had to intervene. Ignoring baldy, who was now armed, he launched himself sword-point first at the man about to gut his friend. The villain never saw it coming; impaled by the blade, he died with a gurgle.
Perhaps fortunately, the body fell across Brynjar, shielding him from the other blond’s blows. That man, seeing an opportunity to retrieve a weapon, abandoned his attack and circled the fracas, looking for the last sword.
Baldy was not about to wait quietly. Charging in with a roar, his sword hilt came down hard on Hector’s skull. An explosion of light and shadow permeated the boy’s vision as he stumbled away from the fight. He tripped and fell flat on his face, dropping his sword in the process.
Sand filled his nose as he panted for breath, its grit burning into his eyes and mouth. He barely heard baldy’s shout as he flailed about for his weapon, but intuition’s warning told him to move, and he obeyed. Rolling to one side, he felt the northman crush the ground he had covered a moment before. Wipi
ng the grains from his eyes, he saw through a blur that baldy’s sword had been embedded deep in the sand.
It would only take a moment to extract, but it was a moment Hector needed. Scrambling across the sand, his hand found his weapon, and he rolled onto his back. Baldy was charging again, with his sword raised high for a killing stroke. Hector brought his legs up and caught the northman in the stomach.
Baldy wheezed and turned, rolling off Hector’s kick to his right. He tried to swing at Hector anyway, but his sword only struck dirt. In an instant, Hector was on his feet. He batted away baldy’s sword, on which his grip had weakened. Another second later, and the northman was dead.
Turning back, Hector looked for his last foe, but the blond was already dead. Brynjar, still trapped under a corpse, had thrown one of his swords while the northman searched for a weapon, spearing him through the ribs. As he tried to breathe through the thick collection of sand on his face, Hector realized that they had won.
As Folguen came to escort them back to their cell, Hector met Lord Eitromal’s gaze. The spindly politician was furious. Hector could believe that; the whelp that had been added to the arena as a millstone had become a warrior in his own right. Hector smiled proudly at the scowling deceiver as he was prodded back into imprisonment.
*
The 2040th year of the Sixth Era
The third of the month of Ennemen
Halfway through the seventh hour
That afternoon, Derek and the Chimaera Regiment attacked the Thuite town. To the seditionists’ disappointment, the Thuites had not abandoned the town, but stood ready to defend her walls. Einar, Fintan, and Azos wore their leather raiments; each had a gladius strapped to his hip.
Fintan did not hide his anger from his friends. He could not bear to kill someone defending their home from Derek’s rampaging horde, and he flatly refused to do it.
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