Princeps’ Fury

“The Realm is in need,” Isana said quietly, never taking her eyes from Raucus’s. “The First Lord has called the Shield Legions to battle the Vord. Lord Antillus not only refuses to heed his rightful lord’s command, but he actively tried to destroy the truce I might have wrought with the Icemen that could potentially have given him no further excuse to do continue defying the First Lord’s will. If he would avoid this duel, he must immediately mobilize his Legions and militia and march them south to defend the Realm.”

Doroga grunted. He nodded to Antillus. “Your turn.”

“My first commitment is to my people, not to Gaius Sextus or the crown he wears,” Antillus rumbled. “I have no desire to pursue this duel. But I will not abandon my responsibilities.” He gestured with one hand at the wall behind him and the people on it. “You want to know why I’m fighting? I’m fighting for them.”

“You’re both fighting for them, Raucus,” Aria said in a quiet, saddened voice. “You’re just too stiff-necked to see it.”

Doroga shook his head. “Isana. You willing to back off?”

“I am not,” Isana said. She kept her voice from shaking, just barely.

“How about you, Antillus?”

“No,” Raucus said.

Doroga opened the case and consulted a rolled piece of paper, before nodding once and saying, “You both sure?”

They both replied in the affirmative.

Doroga read the paper carefully, his lips moving, and nodded. “Right. Both of you turn and take ten paces when I count.”

“I’m sorry,” Raucus said. He turned his back on Isana.

Isana turned around without replying. Her legs were shaking as she took one step forward, and Doroga counted off the paces out loud. Then she turned to face Raucus again.

The Marat chieftain lifted his club overhead. “When I lower the club,” he said, “my part in this ritual is over. Then you two fight.”

With a deliberate, practiced motion, graceful and implacable, Antillus Raucus, the most personally dangerous man in Alera, put his hand to his sword.

Isana swallowed and mimicked him, though her own motion was jerky by comparison, and her hand shook and felt weak.

Doroga dropped his club to the ice-bound ground-

– and Antillus Raucus blurred into motion so swift that it barely seemed that his limbs moved at all. There was simply a streak of dark leather and bright steel coming toward Isana before she could draw half the length of her little sword from its sheath.

He wants it over quickly, mercifully, she thought. By then Raucus was barely a long stride away, his sword gleaming in the rising sun, and she had lifted her hand and cried out to Rill.

The snow and ice beneath Raucus’s feet shifted and rose into a long rise-an icy ramp, to be more precise. Isana let her trembling legs give out completely, and dropped to the ground, as the slippery incline turned Raucus’s own blinding speed against him. The High Lord went sailing over her head, his arms windmilling.

Isana completed drawing her sword and came back to her feet, her eyes tracking Raucus’s flight-which turned into literally that before he actually returned to earth, a windstream rising to carry him clear of the ground. He banked in a broad circle, gestured with his left hand, and a sudden sphere of fire blossomed less than a foot in front of her face.

Isana reacted without thought, gathering more snow from the ground to surge up and swamp the white-hot firecrafting. She crouched away and down, keeping the surge of snow flowing up over the fireball like a lumpy white river. Steam billowed out and would have enveloped her, in any case, had she not kept more snow flowing upward, dousing the fire, refreezing the steam, carrying it all up and away from her.

She didn’t see Raucus coming until he plunged through the column of steam and snow in a howl of wind, shards of frost and ice flying in every direction.

Hours and hours of instruction and practice with Araris had taught her reflexes a great deal more than she had realized. Her sword came up in a parry meant to deflect the tremendous force of the blow rather than opposing it outright, sure that she would not be able to match the power of the charging High Lord. The swords met. A shower of bright blue sparks flew up, and Raucus’s sword peeled a long strip of metal from one blade of her gladius as easily as a man might slice the skin from an apple. Then he was past her and gone, recovering his own balance in the air.

Isana stared at the mauled sword for a split second, the edge of the sliced area glowing red with shed heat, and knew that she had been more than merely fortunate. Raucus hadn’t been able to see her as he charged, just as she hadn’t been able to see him coming. His blow had been badly aimed-which was to say, slightly less than perfect. Her defense had happened to meet it well, but doing it once was no guarantee that she could do it again.