Captain's Fury (70 page)

"I can imagine," Ehren said. "But if things go well, this is nothing compared to what you'll see in the streets of Alera Imperia someday."

"Oh dear," Isana said.

They took her to a small, open area directly before the wall where the duel was to take place. There was quiet talk all around her, but she paid little attention to it. She focused only upon the two men who began climbing a ladder.

The next few moments passed in eerie silence, as the taller of the two men began to limber up, stretching. The tension of the crowd rose steadily, until Isana felt sure that if she suddenly dropped unconscious, it would hold her upright where she stood.

Then her son followed Nalus out onto the wall, and faced the slender woman who had nearly killed them only hours before. There was brief talk. There was counting.

Kitai's voice rang out in sudden scorn and defiance, and the gathered crowd roared its fear and tension and expectation into the cool night air.

The two combatants came together, and Isana had never seen anything so bright and beautiful and terrifying. Tavi's weapons erupted in scarlet and azure sparks, while flashes of brilliant, bilious green showered from Navaris's blades. The light was blindingly bright, and every flash left a spot of color burned onto Isana's vision.

She had never seen anyone move so swiftly as Phrygiar Navaris, and she could hardly believe that her son could withstand such speed and fury. They fought in constant, graceful motion, dancelike and deadly, four blades spinning and whirling and thrusting, and the ring of steel on steel, with its accompanying flash of light, grew swifter and swifter.

She could only stare, terrified and fascinated, and if the steadily thickening silence from the crowd was any indication, they felt the same way.

Navaris nearly drove Tavi from the wall, and her heart caught in her throat. Then she saw him turn, somehow impossibly slipping aside from Navaris's blade, and bound through the air like a hunting cat, leaping several yards to land on the roof of another building.

Navaris followed him over, and then the pair of them were out of sight of the crowd below. Steel chimed on steel as swiftly as a drumroll, echoing strangely through the ruins. Spectral light flashed through the air, casting stillborn shadows, gone as quickly as they appeared. Stones clattered to the ground, all dull cracking sounds and heavy thumps of impact.

Isana couldn't breathe. She became vaguely aware of a sharp pain in her hands, and idly thought that her nails had begun biting into her own flesh. The crowd's growing tension and excitement felt as though it could have drawn blood as well. She stared at the roof, hoping,
willing
it to be over.

Then there was an enraged scream, a sound so raw, so full of madness and rage that she could hardly believe it had come from a human throat.

The crowd remained perfectly still, as motionless as the stones of the ruins around them, and even more silent. It was unbearable to Isana, that tension, and she found herself rocking forward and back where she stood, fighting against the tears that blurred her vision.

"Tavi," she whispered.

And then Marat war cries filled the air.

The barbarians sent up a joyous howling upon their rooftop. The wild, fierce cries of their people danced among the stones. Isana stared, stunned, her mind only sluggishly processing the meaning behind the sounds.

Alerans cried out in a great roar.
Legionares
began slamming their fists to their chests in rhythmic thunder. Somewhere in the ruins, horses screamed out shrill cries of challenge. Dogs kept by the camp followers set up a howling chorus of their own. Legion drummers pounded on their instruments in glee, and Legion trumpeters sounded their horns. The noise was so loud that a section of ruined wall not far from Isana trembled and collapsed.

A burning cyclone of elation enveloped Isana and threatened to rip the consciousness from her mind. She closed her eyes against it, and only Ehren's support kept her from falling to her knees. The fire was too hot. It had to be turned aside, channeled away from her, before she went mad. She opened her eyes and forced herself to stand straight.

The
legionares
formed up around her were next.

Chapter 58

The crowbegotten crowd kept on screaming his name, and Tavi wanted to tear his hair out in pure frustration.

Arnos was getting away.

The Senator had vanished from his spot on the wall, and Tavi spotted him heading into the crowd, lifting the hood of his practical brown cape. That explained why he'd worn the simple traveling clothes instead of the expensive robes, then.

Tavi pointed at him and shouted at his men to pursue Arnos, and the roar of the crowd grew louder. No one set off in pursuit, though, and Arnos was headed into the thickest part of the crowd.

Tavi turned to Kitai and screamed her name.

There was no way she could have heard his call, not over the furor of the crowd, but her head snapped around toward him, her features set in concern.

Tavi flashed her hand signs for
enemy
and
fleeing
and
pursue
. Then he pointed at Arnos.

Kitai's eyes widened, and she turned her head, following the line indicated by Tavi's finger. Her eyes narrowed, and she shouted into the ears of the Marat near her. The barbarians rose and began bounding from one roof and ruined wall to the next, lithe and agile as hunting cats.

One of them landed in the circle of space the detachment of the Battlecrows had cleared for his mother and shouted something to Ehren. Then he rushed into the crowd.

Tavi signaled him with
stay
and
defend
, and trusted him to work out that he was to stay with Isana.

Ehren nodded and signed back
understood
, which happened to be a motion very like a Legion salute, and stepped closer to Isana, who looked distracted and preoccupied. Little wonder. Even up on the roof, the storm of emotion in the crowd below was grating against Tavi's senses. His mother must have been half-unconscious from it.

Tavi turned and looked at the wall, where Araris waited. He'd never actually made a leap of that distance before tonight, and his ability to jump so far had been strictly theoretical until he'd actually done it. He wondered if he'd be able to do it without a murderous maniac at his back to encourage him.

No help for it. He'd never get through the still-roaring crowd on the ground.

So he focused on his intentions, drew strength from the stone beneath him, speed from the night breeze, and hurtled back across the same space to the battlements.

He'd leapt too hard, and he slammed into a massive stone merlon before he could stop himself. His armor soaked up much of the impact, and he pushed away from the stone as Araris came to his side.

Araris broke into a run, moving down the battlements, and Tavi followed him, peering down at the crowd, until he saw the brown-cloaked hooded figure roughly pushing his way through them, heading for the far side of the ruined city.

Then Arnos stopped in his tracks and began backpedaling. Tavi looked past him, and saw a pair of Marat crouched on a wall ahead of Arnos, their dyed manes blowing in the wind.

"Here!" Tavi said. He turned to another ladder mounted on the wall, took a few rungs normally, then clamped his boots to the outside of the ladder and slid rapidly down it, until he hit the ground. He turned and hadn't gone two steps before Araris hit the ground behind him. The
singulare
sprinted past Tavi, drew his sword, and ran forward, striking at the stones of the ground as he went. Each strike sent out a shower of sparks, a flash of light, and Araris bellowed, "Make way!" as he went.

The crowd parted before him.

Tavi moved forward, taking his cue from the Marat, who had formed a slowly tightening ring around Arnos in a classic hunting technique. None of them, he noted, were actually attempting to apprehend the Senator. The Marat had a strong sense of the appropriate. Arnos was Tavi's enemy, foremost. Barring any practical considerations that might alter the situation, they would leave it to Tavi to deal with him.

Tavi caught up with Arnos as the panting Senator shoved through a group of camp followers, knocking an old peddler over, and seized a woman by the arms. He shook her, snarling something at her Tavi could not make out over the noise.

"Guntus Arnos!" Tavi bellowed.

Arnos's head snapped around. He bared his teeth, his eyes desperate, and hauled the woman around, putting her body between his own and Tavi's, holding her by the hair. He drew a dagger in his other hand and held it to the woman's throat.

"This wasn't the plan!" Arnos shouted.

Araris took a few steps to the left, and Tavi to the right. Tavi had drawn his sword again at some point. He realized, with a little shock of recognition, that the woman was the First Spear's companion. The noise of the
legionares
and civilians around them became confused and began to dwindle.

"Madness!" Arnos cried, shaking the woman's head through his grip on her hair. "Madness! You can't let this go on! You can—"

Suddenly both Arnos and the woman jerked, and the steel head of a Canim balest bolt erupted from her chest.

The woman's face went white, and her eyes rolled back in her head. Her knees gave way, and she melted slowly to the ground, her arms spread to her sides, her open mouth to the sky.

Arnos stood in place behind her, and the dagger fell from his fingers. He looked down at the blood flooding from the hole in his chest, where the bolt that had spitted them both emerged. He screamed, a sound full of protest and terror. It was a breathless scream, one with no strength, and his hands scrabbled at his chest, as if he thought he could brush the wound away if only he acted quickly enough.

Tavi walked over to him, Araris at his back.

Arnos was letting out desperate little grunting coughs, and blood bubbled from his lips as he did. His hands kept moving, but his fingers seemed to have gone limp, and he was only slapping uselessly at his lifeblood as it spilled from the massive wound the Canim projectile had left in his chest.

Tavi flashed signals to the Marat.
Archer. That way. Find
.

Tavi slapped Arnos's hands away with one motion and dealt him a contemptuous blow to the face with the back of his hand with the next. Arnos fell to the ground and landed on his side, shaking his head. He tried to speak, but blood strangled whatever he'd been going to say.

"For the woman. Not for you." Tavi squatted next to Arnos, and said, "I'm doing you a kindness you probably don't deserve, Senator. This is a better death than the Canim would give you."

Arnos's head jerked, and his eyes went out of focus. He made a few thrashing movements, his expression twisting, knotting, becoming absolutely agonized. Tavi didn't want to feel the man's terror and pain and confusion, but he still did. Logically, his actions had merited far more than what he had received—but he was still human, still Tavi's countryman, and someone who, in a perfect world, Tavi would have protected from his own ambition.

"Not good," Araris said. He'd torn off his cape, folded it into a pad, and had it pressed hard against her back. "Pulse is thready. I think she's got a hole in her lung, and she might be bleeding into it. We don't dare move her, and—" Araris froze for a second, then leaned forward, his nostrils flared.

"What is it?"

"I think… I think this bolt was poisoned."