‘Damn, Falcio,’ Quil said, thrusting her longsword into the belly of the man I was fighting. ‘Where are you getting these new Greatcoats from?’
I didn’t answer; I was too busy working through how long we had left, because however much the Avareans loved their song, ‘Seven for a Thousand’ was almost certainly bullshit. Seven fighters, no matter how skilled, cannot long withstand a thousand enemies. Fortunately, we only needed to survive long enough to make one thing happen – and it finally did. Morn, seeing his own warriors and the horde above beginning to look upon him with doubt, was forced to join the fight.
Come and get me, you bastard.
*
He came at me with that great long glaive of his, the sixteen-inch curved blade at the end of the seven-foot-long spear slicing the air on an angle as it came for my neck. I pushed off on my back leg into a diagonal lunge, ducking under his blade and thrusting my rapier for his belly, but I came up short. That damned glaive gave him too much reach.
‘You stupid shit,’ he spat, smoothly bringing his weapon back up only to bring it crashing down on me as if it were a hammer and I a nail. ‘You think this changes anything?’
‘Actually,’ I replied, jumping to my right and letting the blade of his weapon slam into the ground next to me, ‘I think it might just change everything.’
I tried to step on the shaft – a reflex from fighting too many men with spears – but Morn spun it in his grip, turning the sharp-bladed end up and pulling hard towards himself. I lifted my foot but still felt the edge cut into the sole of my boot. The sting hurt like seven hells – its only virtue was that it meant the cut had been too shallow to reach the tendons. The only problem was now I was limping.
‘Falcio!’ I heard Darriana call out.
‘Stick to the plan,’ I shouted back.
‘The plan?’ Morn asked. ‘The plan? Is that what you call this suicide?’
He started to press me back and the others made way for him even as they continued to hold off the rest of our attackers. Morn was deadly fast with his glaive, using the long weapon to slice through the air, forcing me to back away, only to suddenly drive straight for me, leaving me no choice but to push off my injured foot and dive to the right. Soon he’d left the narrow confines of the imaginary cliff walls we’d all so politely pretended existed, but I refused to do the same, staying on my own small patch. I could see some of his own men were gaping at him, horrified that the song they so glorified was being dishonoured in this way.
‘We could have worked together, Falcio!’ he bellowed at me. ‘We could have ushered in a new era.’
‘I hardly think Tyanny is new, Morn,’ I said, stumbling back to stay out of the way of his weapon, ‘but I hardly think tyranny is all that new.’
He screamed something incoherent at me, swinging his glaive in ever-wilder arcs. A glaive is a versatile weapon, and it can even be graceful, wielded by a master like Morn, but it isn’t light, and for all his outrage, Morn was beginning to slow. Though the pain in my foot and a dozen other small wounds I’d not even noticed before were wearing me down, I’d been conserving my strength. I needed only one opening; one small gap in Morn’s defences and I would ignore the creeping agony in my foot and execute one long lunge too fast for him to evade. I thought I had it, too. For just a second, as he brought his glaive up for a downward strike, I truly believed I’d found that opening – then I saw Morn’s smile and remembered: he’s a better actor than I am.
Somehow, as he’d been forcing me away from the others and I’d been moving in ever-so-slight increments to angle him where I wanted him, we had both achieved our aims. The problem was, Morn had cheated: suddenly two of his men were on either side of me, breaking the unspoken rules their fellow warriors had followed. They grabbed my arms and twisted hard, forcing me to drop both my rapiers.
‘How in the name of every Saint have you stayed alive this long?’ Morn asked.
‘Well, it’s a little complicated,’ I replied, ‘but if you want, I’d be happy to explain it to you.’
‘What I want,’ Morn began, signalling to his men, who grabbed onto me tighter and began to slowly force me to the ground, ‘is for you to finally do what the world has been waiting for all these years, Falcio. I want you to kneel.’
It’s actually not as easy as you might think to force a man down to his knees, but Morn’s warriors were brutally strong and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to hold out for long. ‘Why, Morn,’ I said, ‘didn’t you know? If you wanted me to kneel, all you had to do was ask.’
And with that, I dropped down to my knees and my two captors, unprepared for the sudden lack of resistance, came with me. Morn blinked furiously as the sun behind me went straight into his eyes, preventing him from seeing Darriana – who for once had followed my orders – had waited until that exact moment to run straight for us, leaping first onto my back and using me to propel herself high up into the air. Morn tried to get his weapon up to block her, but with the sun in his eyes and her having the advantage of being far above him, he couldn’t reach her in time. Darriana’s arm extended, joining the narrow blade of her sword to form a perfect line, and for just an instant it was like staring at a painter’s masterpiece, an image so perfect it could only exist in the mind of an artist. Darriana was, in that moment, what swordsmiths dreamed of when they forged their weapons: the flawless union of body and blade.
She winked at me.
The tip of her sword drove into Morn’s chest, but not into his heart – this, too, had been part of my orders, although I hadn’t been at all sure if she would follow that one. Instead of dying instantly, Morn took the blade just a fraction below his left lung.
A better man would have been grateful.
He shouted something in Avarean, and I didn’t need a translator to tell me he was commanding his men to kill us. I shook off the two men who’d been holding me – they were now blessedly distracted by the blade in Morn’s chest – and threw myself into a roll, coming up to retrieve my rapiers so I could fight for what little time was left.
I saw Valiana stumble as the strength and ferocity the Adoracia fidelis had lent her finally gave out. Quentis was down, and Quilatta – who’d only met him days before – fought with all her ruthless determination to protect him from an enemy’s spear. Darriana abandoned her blade to run for Brasti, whose bow had splintered under the blow of an Avarean sword. I felt Ethalia’s hand brush mine one last time as she raised her sticks to guard my flank. Kest caught my eye, and nodded once as if to say goodbye before racing to try to shield the others for as long as he could.