Spirit of the Sword: Pride and Fury (The First Sword Chronicles Book 1)
Page 64
“If it is the price of victory then I will bear a little humiliation,” Tullia said. “Though I confess that flight sits ill with me, my priority must be to find His Highness.”
“Once Quirian’s dead we can find him at our leisure,” Fiannuala said.
“Our first task must be to reunite with our companions,” Michael said. “We will not seek battle, but nor will we avoid it if the conditions favour us. I understand the demands of a warrior’s pride and a warrior’s code, highness, but we would be fools to seek an unequal contest when we can wait and confront our foe together.”
“All right,” Fiannuala muttered. “But it isn’t very gallant, is it?”
“We are not, when all is said and done, warriors answerable only to a code of our device,” Tullia said. “We are soldiers, and though our pride may be precious to us all it cannot be so precious as a victory.”
Fiannuala nodded in agreement despite a somewhat clenched jaw.
“Then let us go,” Michael said. “With good fortune, as we have found each other so will our dear friends too have come together in shared strength. Were it not the case that there are enemies about I would have you, Filia Tullia, loose lightning into the sky to let them known of our position.”
“Sorcery would be better for that,” Fiannuala said. “If I fire off an Ultimate Spear straight up they’ll see it all over the city.”
“In view of our circumstances, that is probably an argument for not doing it,” Tullia said. “Which way do we go?”
“It would be strange if, having scattered us, the magic of this place deposited us all towards the same eastern corner of the city. Therefore we should head west, and if we can gain a high landmark see if we can spy the others from there.” He gestured with his sword towards a half-ruined temple, topped with a golden statue of a winged warrior. “That is the temple of Cupas, if mine eyes deceive me not. The blade is not there, it has been hidden in Silwa’s temple, but that high tower will give us good vantage point.”
“Do we risk leaving the sword where it lies until we have found the others?” Tullia asked.
“I think so,” Michael said. “If Quirian obtains it first, then we will cut him off before he can escape and lay him low, the seven of us. Now, we should be off.”
“And may the gods speed our feet,” Tullia murmured.
They moved through streets empty and abandoned; the houses dark and shrouded, their open doors like mouths opening to tempt the unwary and devour them.
“You know what the worst thing about this is?” Fiannuala asked. “There’s no wood around here, I can’t use my magic at all.”
“You really believe that is the worst part of our situation?” Tullia asked sceptically.
“Well, it’s all right for you, isn’t it, you can create lightning out of nothing,” Fiannuala replied.
“I meant that the worst part of our predicament must surely be our absence of information about the others,” Tullia said.
Fiannuala grinned. “Don’t worry, so long as Jason finds Amy he’ll be fine.”
“You are not worried about Amy in the least?” Michael said.
Fiannuala shook her head. “No, Amy will be fine. She and I made a promise, and so I know nothing will happen to her until we’ve achieved immortality together.”
Michael laughed. “You lighten my spirits, highness. I thank Turo that our paths have crossed and now entwined.”
“Quiet,” Tullia hissed. “I think I hear someone coming.”
They stopped in their tracks, and took cover amongst the fallen masonry on the edge of a large square with a fountain in the centre. The fountain pool was as large as the bathhouse back in Lover’s Rock, the white stone only slightly stained and overgrown, and topped with a large bronze statue of a man who, for want of any other information, Michael guessed to be Cassander, the man who had founded Aureliana and led the Aurelians out of persecution. He had a noble brow and a kindly face; Michael wondered if he could have conceived that his effort to save the Aurelian blood would one day doom it to destruction.
He searched among the shadowy houses for movement. Clouds were gathering overhead, making it harder to see much where the houses blocked out the light. He could see something though, and that something eventually resolved into a band of a dozen men and women, armed and armoured, moving warily in a loose formation, being directed by a man in a silver mask who stood in the very centre of their gathering.
“No sign of anyone,” a man near the front of the formation said. “Where is everybody?”
“Our priority is to find Lord Father,” the man in the mask said, his voice deep and echoing. “Once we have done that, we can focus on re-uniting the Lost.”
“If Lord Father’s still alive,” the first man muttered.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked a woman.
“Well, someone killed Hippolytus and Ariadne, didn’t they?”
“Lord Father isn’t Hippolytus or Ariadne, he’s alive. There isn’t a man alive who could kill Lord Father.”
“Unless whatever else is out here isn’t a man.”
“That’s enough, Dymas,” said the man in the mask. “Until we know for certain that Lord Father is dead we will proceed on the assumption that he is alive.”
“Okay,” Dymas said. “Where do we go from here?”
The man in the mask said nothing, standing stock still for a moment, apparently lost in thought.
Michael scowled as he took in that some of the company before them were women. “I do not like killing women. It is profoundly unchivalrous.”
“What would you call letting them kill you?” Fiannuala asked. “They chose to be warriors, they’ve taken their chances. Everything else is up to the gods.”
Michael still frowned, but found that he could demur. He did not believe it was the place of women to hazard themselves upon the perils of the battlefield, but since they had hazarded themselves he could hardly spare their lives and in so doing risk the ruin of Lord Gideon’s cause. And he had not raised his voice in loud objection to the admittance to the company of Fiannuala or Amy, or even Tullia who, unlike Fiannuala or Amy, was fully human and thus not exempted from consideration by her race. If he would partake of such allies, why not such enemies too?
He looked to his right at Tullia, who waited behind a different cover to that which shaded Michael and Fiannuala. She had a knife in her hand, poised to strike. Michael nodded. Tullia nodded back.
Fiannuala surreptitiously fitted an arrow to her bowstring. “Give the word,” she whispered.
The masked leader of the enemy band turned his head this way and that. “We will head south,” he declared. “If we reach the walls and find nothing, we will split up into smaller groups and use magic to-“
“Now,” Michael hissed.
Fiannuala rose up from cover and loosed the arrow from her bow. The shaft flew straight and true, impaling one of Quirian's women and punching her backwards off her feet.
Michael leapt over the wall, his blades sliding from their sheaths as he hurled himself, screaming, upon the foe. By his side he could hear Tullia's magic crackling with power as she let it loose upon the warriors of the Lost. Michael slew the one called Dymas as he tried to retreat and draw his sword. A crackling of magic and a cry cut-off told him that Tullia had likewise sent a foeman down to the black abyss.
Fiannuala fired another arrow, and another of the Lost fell.
"Fall back," their captain cried, drawing his sword from behind his back. "Fall back, all of you. I will hold the rear!"
"Highness, don't let them escape," Michael called.
"Got it," Fiannuala shouted, and instantly she began loosing her deadly shafts at those members of the Lost closest to escaping from Michael and Tullia.
The masked captain growled, bringing his arm - it looked very stiff, as though he could not bend his elbow - up to point with all five fingers at Fiannuala. "In the name of Stratos, beloved little brother, and Thanates the sister whom he loved, pro
tect my comrades from this enemy, with thirteen magical arrows!"
Fiannuala yelped as she leapt to escape the blast as the wall behind which she had been shooting exploded in a shower of magic and masonry.
'Swounds, 'tis a magic wand, Michael realised. No arm at all, but a sorcerers device.
Tullia ran for the captain, but Michael reached him first, the leaf blade of Eena clashing with the captain's sword with a ringing sound.
"Filia, hold a moment," Michael asked, for he was a brave man, this masked opponent, to advance towards danger when all his fellows were fleeing from it, and that should be respected more than by combining against him two against one.
"You will give his men time to escape?" Tullia asked.
"If I must, for honour's sake," Michael replied. "You do not object to facing me in clean combat, do you sir?"
"Go to the abyss," the captain spat, pushing Michael backwards and lunging at him with his sword.
Their blades rang as they sparred back and forth across the fountain square. He was good, this captain of Quirian's; he was controlled, never letting his anger, fear or desperation deform his elegant and controlled forms, his perfect posture, his flawless stance. Gideon would have been delighted had Michael been able to achieve such precision, free from all the showiness of the arena and the vain, crowd-pleasing flourishes with which Michael adorned his show of force. Where Michael fought to entertain - to entertain God, to entertain the audience, to entertain his brave companions - his opponent fought simply to win, and never seemed to despair of winning and give in to mistakes.
"You are a cold soldier, sir," Michael said, after the third time that they had done their dance across the square. "It does you credit."
His enemy did not reply, simply coming at him again with that same passionless coldness, intensified by the expressionless mask that hid his face.
Yet he could not win. He might drive Michael back upon occasion, he might assay a nearly flawless guard, but because he had no passion he had no fire, and because he had no fire he had neither fury nor virtue with which to match the spirit that animated Michael and drove him on. His technique was perfect in the same way that a man who has memorised a piece of music may play it flawlessly upon a pipe, but ask him to extemporise and he will be lost at sea; just so Quirian's captain, though he had learnt all his techniques perfectly, was lost when Michael began to break from the techniques he had been taught, to allow his passion and imagination to run riot, to fight as wildly as he had in the arena or on the streets of home, to wield his blades half like a barbarian. Had his foe been stronger or faster, or even a more natural swordsman, Michael's acts would have been the undoing of him. But Michael had the measure of his enemy: his speed, his strength, his coldness, and with greater speed and greater strength and greater understanding of what it was to be a warrior and hazard all he drove back his enemy and, with his two swords, beat down the captain's one in a furious flurry of strokes that swept the blade from his enemy's hands and sent it clattering to the ground.
"Cold, but if you will forgive me I think you must be a better sorcerer than a sword," Michael said, and with a stroke from the Eena blade he cut half the straps holding the arm-shaped wand free, so that it flopped uselessly on the stump of the foeman's arm.
The captain was retreating like his men now, but Michael was a lion on the high plains, inexorable in the pursuit of his quarry. He slashed across the captain's chest, severing his leather cuirass and knocking him to the ground with a bleeding cut, but one that would not threaten his life.
Not that his life would last much longer as Michael raised his spatha for a killing stroke.
"Mithrok, doughty-hearted lord of the earth, raised up a barrier unbreachable and defend my comrade and my captain!"
Michael stumbled backwards as the earth shook, his eyes widening in amazement as the ground cracked before him and burst upwards in a great wall, twenty feet high, crossing the entire length of the square and the streets beyond. It split the fountain in two, it tore the houses apart, it separated Michael completely from his enemy.
It also left the sorcerer who had cast the spell trapped on the wrong side of the wall with Michael, Tullia and Fiannuala.
"Tyro," he shouted. "Get the captain out of here!"
"Right," a woman replied. "Antilochus...gods embrace you."
The sorcerer, Antilochus, smiled as he straightened his dark red cloak. "So long as Lord Father smiles I'll not complain. And you were right: he is a better sorcerer than a swordsman. Sadly, swordsmen are more valued the world over, even in the house of our Lord Father."
Michael picked himself up off the ground. "You are a brave man, to trap yourself with no hope of retreat."
"It was the only way I could be sure of separating the two of you," Antilochus said. "He is the best of us, and Metella would kill me if I let him die."
"And what now?" Michael asked.
Antilochus sighed. "Now I sell my life as dear as-" He was cut off by Tullia's hand bursting through his chest, wreathed in lightning, lifting him up off the ground as he choked and kicked and gasped his last.
Michael frowned. "A little unnecessary, Filia," he murmured as Tullia discarded the body.
"Your honour has already cost us a great victory," Tullia replied with a touch of sharpness. "We had no more time to waste. We should go south, around the wall and try and cut off their retreat."
"I thought you wanted to find Jason," Fiannuala said.
Tullia glowered at her, but there was a glint of something else in those blue eyes as well, some fire that Michael had not seen before. "Let us say that this brief fight has warmed my ardour for a little more."
Fiannuala cackled. "So you have some spirit after all? Who knew?"
"I am a daughter of Beltor as you are, and a handmaid of Silwa as much as any woman who ever took up arms," Tullia said. "If I grow excited by the thrill of battle, is that so evil or so unexpected?"
"Neither, I hope, provided it does not run away with all three of us, in absence of His Highness' good sense and my good lord's firm guidance," Michael said. "Come, let us do as you suggest; we'll wet our blades to cool our burning blood, then find our comrades and regale them with our triumphs newly won."
And so they followed the earthen barrier, raised by the fallen Antilochus, their swift-running footsteps echoing through the streets as they hunted their enemies, enemies who were doubtless fleeing as fast as their feet could carry them.
But those they sought were not the only foes abroad in Aureliana. Others they encountered, stray members of the Lost cut off from home and comrades by the magic of this city, and all those that they found they slew. Sometimes Michael did the deed, striking down warriors with his keen blades, but more often the glory went to Tullia or Fiannuala. Filia Tullia was a very goddess of war, lightning blazing in her palms, knives glinting in her hands. She moved so swift, struck with such precision, that Michael felt at times that the was watching bright-eyed Silwa in the midst of all her glory, dealing out death to all who dared oppose her. Warriors, mages, sorcerers, even demons fell before her magic and her knives, her short swords that cast long shadows on the ground. Tullia danced through the ranks of the enemy like a deadly wind, and not a single tree was sturdy enough to withstand her gale.
Nor was Princess Fiannuala far behind her in valour or skill at arms. Her bow sang, and every line was a dirge of mourning for a fallen foe. Others fell to her sharp shining spear as it struck out right and left. The warcry was loud on Fiannuala’s lips as she fought without fear, her golden hair flowing behind her as she hurled herself again and again into the press of combat.
Michael found himself rather redundant in the face of these two raging heroes and their terrible swift arms, and yet he felt no envy at the sight of them striding on before him and lending great lustre to their names. Rather he felt a smile spreading across his face as he beheld these paragons, these heroes of an elder age, do and be what he had played at and pretended to for so many years.
“What was that?” Fiannuala asked.
“A flowery compliment, highness,” Michael said. “And a salute to the better warrior.”
Fiannuala shook her head. “I’m just having a good day. Dala must be smiling on me for some reason. You’re not holding back, are you?”
“Indeed not, highness, but you and Tullia outstrip me at every twist and turn,” Michael replied. “You have won the favour of the gods indeed, while they have made my steps leaden.”
“And yet tomorrow you will shame us both again, no doubt,” Tullia said. “Such is the fickle nature of the world. Yet I will hold my own with you, even so.”
Michael smiled. “I have no doubt.”
Tullia nodded. “Michael…I have decided that when this struggle is concluded I will seek release from the Corps of Mages, and from my bond of guard and serve His Highness. I will be answerable only to myself.”
“Congratulations, Filia,” Michael said. “And what will you answer yourself?”
Tullia looked into his eyes. “You mean to fight for the Empire when all this is over, don’t you? At the side of Gideon Commenae?”
Michael smiled as he felt hope blossom within him. “I do.”
“Then I will fight with you, until my death or till the ending of all things,” Tullia said. “For I declare I have learned to love the singing of the sword, and could no more stitch seams or wash dresses.” She chuckled. “His highness feared your influence, and it seems he was correct: you have made a warrior of me, complete with warrior’s pride.”
“It’s liberating, isn’t it?” Fiannuala asked with a laugh.
Tullia smiled slightly even as her ears burned. “I fear it is.”