Caged Warrior

turn deadly earnest in a matter of seconds. Urman held two sickles, without a shield. If he got the timing right, the Tigony trickster could use those sickles as electrical conductors.

“I’ll stand in front of you,” Leto said. “We’ll leave as much slack as possible, to let me move. Weil is the least predictable when she rages, but we’ve trained against her. Urman is the one most likely to fry our brains. Watch my back and make sure you fry them first.”

“How do I do that without taking you out, too?”

The bell rang to signal the start of the match.

“Figuring that out is your job.”

Within seconds, Weil was on them. Pendray warriors had the gift of a rage so intense that it eventually earned its own name: berserker. The Nordic and Celtic peoples worshiped that power. Leto thought it the least graceful method of attack. Not that it mattered when Weil charged in. She spun in what looked like wild circles. In truth, they were perfectly timed and with a precise line of attack. She never faltered or tripped, and her lance didn’t dip as she became a living blender.

Leto countered her with his mace and shield. He snatched out a hand. Grabbed the end of her lance. Pain shot up his arm, from wrist to shoulder. That stopped her momentum. He caught her by the neck and tossed her against the far Cage wires.

The crowd’s appreciation added to the adrenaline of a match coming into its own.

The collars reactivated, which reduced them back to hand-fighting. Weil had recovered, but her lance was in two pieces. She improvised with the skill of a long-trained warrior.

Urman whirled his sickles and edged toward Nynn. She countered as well as she could with the high angle of her shield. The ferocity of her defense made up for any lack of technique. Even Urman seemed taken aback. He retreated a pace, then renewed his scissoring assault. Sweat made her blond hair spiky and her cheeks damp. A look of wild excitement blazed from the palest eyes he’d ever seen, as if she were lit from inside with a new color of fire.

The collars flipped off and on and off again. And the chain binding him to Nynn didn’t give Leto the rhythm he liked to find during a match. But there came moments, gorgeous moments, when he knew victory was in hand.

“Get behind me!” he shouted at Nynn.

She obeyed. Instantly. Leto smiled tightly.

“No more hand-fighting for you. Keep out of the way of the mace. Keep your shield up. And dredge up some Dragon-damned fireworks.”

With his gift returned to him, Leto concentrated on keeping the two opponents at bay. Not defeating them. Simply keeping them away from Nynn. The chain was deadweight on the end of his leg. He’d once thought Nynn would be that sort of hindrance. Now he was relying on her to conjure more power than anyone in that arena had ever seen.

A burst of lightning shot from Urman’s sickles. Leto took the bolt with his shield. Electricity shuddered up his left arm.

“Leto?”

“Numb. Can’t move it.”

Urman attacked again but Leto was able to avoid it. He was born to Clan Garnis. He was a man fast enough to dodge lightning.

Weil shrieked—that wailing sonic attack. Her voice alone was enough to pierce Leto’s sensitive hearing. She’d burst his eardrums before the match was over. He braced for the strike of her lance, but the clay floor was giving way. His boots slipped. He took hit after hit, where the violence shook from his shield into his numb, paralyzed arm. Only the ball joint of his shoulder directed the shield now. Graceless. No precision. Still he held the position, ready to stay there all night in order to fend off Weil.

Heat gathered at his back. At first he thought it was another burst of Urman’s lightning, come to separate more of his nerves from his brain. But Urman was lying on the clay floor. Nynn’s sword was embedded in his thigh. When in the Dragon’s name had that happened?

That heat increased. Popping showers of sparks shimmering around. A waterfall of light.

Nynn.

“Get down!” she shouted.

Leto’s knee hit the Cage floor. He pulled the shield over his neck and head. Pure instinct. The concussive blast propelled his face into the clay. A scream ripped through the noise of the crowd. He groaned in pain at that unearthly sound—the sound of Nynn ripping the roof off the Cage. The crowd shrieked its awed panic. Even among that chaos, Leto was disgusted by their hypocrisy.

You wanted to see us fight. This is how we fight.

Lights on the octagonal posts burst. Only the crackling sizzle of Nynn’s gift lit the arena.

When Leto lifted his head, he grinned. Flat-out grinned. Urman was still on his back. Smoke trailed up from his thigh, where Nynn’s firestorm had touched the man’s sword. May the nastiest Tigony win. Urman hadn’t stood a chance. Weil was shivering against a Cage post. She held stumps that had once been the pieces of her lance. Her eyes were wide disks. Had her chest been still, instead of furiously pumping, Leto would’ve assumed her a corpse.

Leto turned to congratulate his partner, only to find her equally felled. Nynn lay sprawled on the clay. Her shield was a burnt-out hollow.

The chain still connected their ankles.

He dropped his weapons, knelt, and looped the slack chain around his forearm, which was slowly regaining sensation. He grabbed Nynn beneath her arms. Dragged her upright. Shook her until she gasped. Her eyes had lost their silver shine, yet that strange, colorful glow was still there. Quieter. Maybe even spent. It was still breathtaking.

“Can’t.” She coughed and nearly fell. “Can’t walk.”

“Yes, you can,” he said, fierce and low. “I’m not carrying you, neophyte. You have to stand on your own to accept this applause.”

In truth, it was the loudest applause Leto had ever heard.

TWENTY

Nynn could only hold on.

Leto held her hand aloft. The crowd bellowed its approval, in shades and waves of noise she couldn’t process.

She held on to his sweaty, tense shoulders as the official unlocked the manacles binding their ankles.

And barely, just barely, she held on to her sanity.

Her only focus was that she had survived. More than that, she had devastated their opponents. The Pendray named Weil limped out of the Cage, while the Townsend man—some Tigony whose name bounced through her head and slipped free—was carted away by what looked to be medics. Nynn’s sword was on the ground where his body had been.

“Stay with me,” Leto growled. “You pass out and I’ll find some new pieces of your soul to steal. You stand here and behave like a Dragon-damned champion.”

He’d hit that particular timbre, even among the crazy cheers—the tone of voice that she recognized as hypnotic but was powerless to resist. She nodded. With his hand at her back, she was able to refashion the numb lumps at the bottoms of her legs into feet. Feet in boots. Boots on scuffed floor. Leto still scowled down at her. How could a victor appear so dissatisfied and angry? Well, in her case, how could a victor feel ready to vomit and lie down on the clay?

That wasn’t Leto, and that wasn’t her.

She grasped his hand and lifted her chin. “I told you. Astonishing.”

His lips quirked. “So I’m to trust your word now, neophyte?”

She hadn’t wanted to let go of his bare shoulder, so she didn’t. This was not a gesture of necessity, but one