Amara looked behind her to find Bernard sitting where she had left him, his eyes open but not focused, his chest heaving with labored breaths. She went to his side and took her canteen from her belt, pressing it against his hands. “Here, Bernard. Drink.”
He obeyed, numbly, and she remained beside him, turning to watch the fight. The legionares were having a hard time of it. Even as she watched, a giant of a swordsman, Aldrick ex Gladius, closed in on the shieldwall, swept one blade aside, danced past another, and killed a man in the center of the line with a sweeping cut that sheered through his helmet and skull, dropping him to the ground on immediately senseless legs. Without pausing, he engaged the two men on either side of the first. One of the men moved quickly and got away with no more than a crippling thrust to his biceps. The other lifted his shield too high in a parry, and Aldrick spun, sweeping his leg off at the knee. The man screamed and toppled, and the mercenaries surged forward hard against the shields.
Pirellus appeared among the Legion ranks, his black blade flickering. One of the Knights Aeris, his dive too low, clutched at his belly with a sudden scream, and tumbled to the courtyard. One of the mercenaries on the ground, wielding a forty-pound maul in one hand as though it weighed no more than a willow switch, swung his huge weapon at Pirellus. The Knight commander slipped to one side with a deceptively lazy motion, and his return blow struck off the man’s hand at the wrist. The maul fell heavily to the ground. A third mercenary darted his blade at Pirellus, only to be parried and almost casually disarmed, the sword tumbling end over end to rattle against the wall of the stable not far from Amara.
“Fall back to the gate!” came Aldrick’s bellow. “Fall back!” The mercenaries retreated, quickly, dragging their wounded with them, but a similar shout from Pirellus caused the Legion troops to halt their advance as well. Neither Aldrick nor Pirellus retreated, leaving the two men standing a pair of long steps apart.
Pirellus extended his blade toward Aldrick and then swept it up before his face in a gliding salute, which Aldrick mirrored. Then the two men dropped into a relaxed on guard position.
“Aldrick ex Gladius,” Pirellus said. “I’ve heard about you. The Crown has a pretty bounty on your head.”
“I’ll be sure to check the wanted posters next time I go through a town,” Aldrick responded. “Do you want to settle this, or do you need me to go through another few dozen of your legionares?”
“My name is Pirellus of the Black Blade,” Pirellus said. “And I’m the man who will end your career.”
Aldrick shrugged. “Never heard of you, kid. You’re not Araris.”
Pirellus scowled and moved, a sudden liquid blur of muscle and steel. Aldrick parried the Parcian’s first thrust in a sudden shower of silver sparks, countered with one of his own that proved to be a feint, and whirled in circle, blade lashing out. Pirellus ducked under it, though the blow struck sparks from his helmet and clove away part of its crest, to lie glowing and smoldering on the straw-strewn ground.
The two men faced one another again, and Pirellus smiled. “Fast for an old man,” he said. “But you missed.”
Aldrick said nothing. A heartbeat later, a slow trickle of blood dribbled down from beneath the rim of Pirellus’s helmet, and toward his eye.
The swordsman must have driven the helmet’s rim into the cut Pirellus had taken earlier, Amara reasoned, opening it again.
Now Aldrick smiled. Pirellus’s face had gone sallow beneath his brown skin. He lifted his lips at Aldrick and came forward, sword lashing out in swift blows, high, low, high again, Aldrick parried him in showers of silver sparks. The swordsman shifted onto the offensive himself, blade sweeping in short, hard cuts at the smaller warrior. Pirellus’s black blade intercepted each blow, sparks of a purple so dark as to hardly be visible exploding at each point of impact. The blows drove the Parcian back a number of steps, and Aldrick pressed forward ruthlessly.
As Amara watched, Pirellus almost took down the swordsman. He slipped beneath a cut, slammed the swordsman’s arm aside with his open hand, and drove his blade at Aldrick’s belly. Aldrick twisted aside, and the Parcian’s blade struck more dark sparks from Aldrick’s armor, cutting through it like paper. The thrust missed, though it drew blood in a long scarlet line across Aldrick’s belly. Aldrick recovered, parrying another thrust, and another, while Pirellus followed him up with determined strokes.
The swordsman seemed, to Amara, to be waiting for something. It became apparent what, in the next few seconds. Blood, running over Pirellus’s eye, forced him to blink it closed, and he snapped his head to one side in an effort to clear it.
In that moment, the swordsman moved. Aldrick slipped inside the Parcian’s slow thrust and lashed out with his foot in a short, hard kick, a simple stomp, as though he’d been driving a spade into the earth. But it wasn’t a spade his boot hit. It was Pirellus’s already wounded knee. The bones broke with a clean, sharp crack, and Aldrick drove his shoulder into Pirellus’s, throwing him to one side.
The Knight Commander’s face showed nothing but determination, but as he stumbled, he put weight on his knee, and it simply could not support his body any longer. He crumpled to the ground, turning for another cut at Aldrick as the swordsman stepped toward him.
Aldrick parried the blow aside with casual power, more indigo sparks erupting.
Then, with a step to one side and a swift cut, he took Pirellus’s head from his shoulders.
Blood spurted in an arch as the Knight Commander’s body fell to the stones of the courtyard. His head rolled to a stop several yards away. His body lay twitching, his sword arm, even in death, slashing left and right.
Amara stared at the fallen Knight in horror, as her instincts screamed at her, forced her to remember that Fidelias was still on the move and had not been stopped. She rose, uncertain what she could do to stop what was happening in the courtyard. Aldrick turned on a heel and, without even pausing, began to stalk, alone, toward the legionares guarding the gates.
Before he could reach them, the wood of the barricade groaned, let out a tortured scream, and began to warp and writhe. Splinters and shards of wood exploded out, sending legionares reeling back from them in stunned horror. Then the wood itself began to writhe and move, the legs of tables twisting and clutching, planks shattering, the wagon letting out a tortured scream and then collapsing upon itself.
The Marat, on the other side, began to shove hard against the barricade, and without the hastily constructed stability of the various pieces, the barricade itself began to wobble and crumble in.