The crowd roared at the sheer recklessness. Aeddan steered so that we would pass within arm’s length of Nyx’s chariot on our right. I shifted over and braced myself, drawing a sword with one hand and gripping the chariot rail with the other for balance.
Nyx’s whip cracked, and I ducked instinctively. I wasn’t quite fast enough, but neither was she. The wasp-kiss of the whip left a crimson welt on my upper arm. At the same time, I struck at Nyx’s shoulder with my blade and drew blood. Our chariots were so close that the wheel hubs screeched as they scraped against each other. Then we were past, thundering toward a group of fighters who scattered out of our careening path. I glanced back to see that Nyx was already driving into a hard pivot. Her mouth was open wide, and she was screaming curses. She was the best charioteer the Ludus Achillea had, the best I’d ever seen.
And she was on us again in a flash.
Thrashing her horses mercilessly, Nyx caught up with us and rammed her chariot against ours, almost knocking me off the deck. With only one hand on the reins, she slashed at me with a gladius drawn from a sheath at her belt, and I slashed back. There was no finesse to our mad duel, no technique. It was all down to whoever landed the first lucky blow.
The crowd gasped and shrieked in salacious horror.
The chariot wheel hubs sparked, grating against each other. The horses screamed and fought the traces. In the distance, near the end of the arena, where the chariot track curved and doubled back, I saw Elka’s familiar blonde braids—and the sunlight glinting off the head of her oath-gift spear.
“Aeddan!” I shouted. “Drive straight! Straight!”
“There’s a wall straight ahead!” he shouted back. He tried to haul the horses to the left but Nyx headed us off. She was hemming us in with her chariot, trying to drive us in the direction of the wall—exactly where I’d just told him to go. Because, yes, there was a wall, and if we hit it, we’d crash and very likely die. But between us and the wall, there was Elka—and her spear.
“Do it!” I shouted again. “Hold . . . hold . . . now! Veer sharp!”
Aeddan fought with the reins, sawing the bits into the horses’ mouths as we hurtled toward the arena wall. I heard Aeddan cursing loudly with the effort. And then, suddenly, the beasts gave in, leaning into the turn so sharply that our chariot went up on one wheel and almost flipped onto its side.
For a moment, we were free and clear of Nyx’s wheel hub.
“Elka!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “Pick a number!”
She grinned madly and shouted back, “Thirteen!”
Then she drew her spear back, sighted, and threw . . .
The gleaming slender missile shot toward us and passed through the spokes of Nyx’s chariot wheel just as if Elka were in the ludus yard with her rotating practice target. The spear spun up against the chariot undercarriage, jamming the wheel. The chariot shot upward, arcing through air like it had been unleashed from a legion catapult.
I owe Elka a new spear, I thought.
Nyx screamed, arms and legs flailing frantically as she sailed up and over her horses’ heads. Her chariot burst into kindling, needle-sharp splinters of wood flying everywhere, and the horses, suddenly free of their traces, bolted wildly in opposite directions. I ducked my head as Nyx landed with bone-crunching impact on her shoulder in the sand and collapsed like a child’s cloth doll.
Aeddan eased the horses away from the swiftly nearing wall, back onto the straightaway portion of the track. We swept past the ranks of the Achillea gladiatrices, where Elka stood watching us with her mouth agape and Ajani stood behind a picket line of flaming arrows ready to be nocked. Aeddan pulled back on the reins, but I slapped his shoulder.
I wasn’t finished yet.
“No!” I shouted. “Make them run faster!”
He shot me a look but let the reins slide out through his hands.
“Ajani!” I shouted, waving my arm in the direction of where the grotesque, wicker effigies—the supposed dark, barbaric gods of Britannia—stood leering at the far end of the arena. “Pick me a target!” I shouted. “Light it up and show us the way!”
With a wild grin, Ajani plucked one of the flaming missiles from the burning pitch trench in front of her. She drew, sighted, and loosed. And again. And again.
In rapid succession, flaming arrows arced over the heads of our galloping chariot horses, illuminating a path like a trail of shooting stars toward the center effigy.
“Faster!” I called.
Aeddan gave the horses their head, and they were running full-out, necks stretched long and ears flat. Before Aeddan realized what I was doing and could reach out to stop me, I’d slipped past him and swung my legs over the low front barrier of the chariot car. Then I climbed out onto the draft pole that ran between the two horses and attached to their yolks. A fleeting image of Sorcha, balanced and flying, arms outstretched, danced across my mind. I banished it before I could imagine her falling. Before the wheels of the chariot ran right over her—
“Fallon!” Aeddan screamed at me. “What are you doing?”