Princeps’ Fury

“Ahhh,” Aria said. “That’s why you chose me to be your second instead of Araris.”

“I don’t think he’d be able to help himself. He’d tear into Antillus immediately.”

“And what makes you think I won’t?” Lady Placida asked, her tone completely calm.

Isana glanced aside at the High Lady and noted that Aria wore her slender sword at her side.

“Oh, not you, too,” Isana sighed.

Lady Placida gave Isana a smile that was startlingly wolflike. “Never fear. I’ll leave his hide intact. But I’ll flay his conscience from his bones.”

Isana nodded. “If nothing else… I think it will give you a genuine chance to talk him into doing the right thing.” A motion toward the edge of the trees drew her eye. A massive shape loomed there in the shadows of early dawn-Walker, the gargant. Doroga appeared from the shadows and leaned on his long-handled cudgel, a hundred yards away. He gave her a slow, respectful nod, which Isana returned.

Aria sighed. “I can’t believe it’s come to this. I can’t believe the young man I knew would… do this. But Raucus changed, after he married Kalarus Dorotea. They could barely stand one another, but their fathers had arranged it all. It was supposed to unite the northern cities with the south, you know.” She shook her head, and said, “Here they are.”

Isana turned slowly, gravely, to face Lord Antillus.

She honestly wasn’t ready for the sight that greeted her.

Every member of the Legion and every single person who was part of the Legion’s support structure, or so it seemed, had come to the top of the Wall to watch the duel. A river of humanity stretched for a mile, perhaps more, along the dark, massive structure. When Isana had walked out in the dark before dawn, she hadn’t really been paying too much attention to what was going on around her, she supposed, and it hadn’t been light enough to see very far.

Her potentially useful death, it seemed, would have an enormous audience.

Something about that irritated her. It was one thing to give one’s life for one’s Realm-but it was quite another to be forced to do so with every soul for twenty-five miles looking on, evaluating her, and making individual judgments. She was not there to put on a crowbegotten spectacle.

Not for them, at any rate.

Antillus Raucus walked to them through the snow, stopping a few yards away. Beside him walked Aria’s son, Garius, his face grim, his armor and uniform immaculate. Isana understood Raucus’s choice of seconds at once. It was the second’s duty to intercede should anyone of the other duelist’s party attempt to interfere in the duel. Not only would Garius doubtlessly be a formidable furycrafter himself, but her own second, Aria, would be immediately disinclined to attack Raucus if it would mean that she found herself faced with her own son.

Isana tried to be charitable. The choice might have been as much diplomatic as tactical. Since Garius would be just as unwilling to initiate hostilities against his mother as she was against him, his presence might have been meant as a reassurance-even as an overture, from a certain point of view. Raucus clearly did not want this fight.

She met the gaze of the man who might be killing her in a few moments and lifted her chin slightly. He had not worn his usual heavy Legion lorica, opting instead for a coat that she thought was probably armored like her own. His boots were heavy, lined with fur against the snow and the cold. He wore a gladius at his side, rather than the longer sword she’d seen him with before.

He’s matched his weapon and armor to mine, Isana thought. So that at least he’ll be able to think to himself that he killed me fairly.

Doroga strode forward, then, cudgel swinging over his shoulder.

“I am the Master of Arms,” the barbarian said. He tapped a round case hanging by a thong from his belt. “I read up on your trial by combat law. It means I come over here and tell you all the rules, even though everyone here knows them better than I do.”

Antillus spared an irritated glance for Doroga. Isana had to suppress her smile.

“Lord Antillus, there, is the challenged. He gets to choose how the duel will be fought. He’s chosen steel and fury. Which basically means anything goes, which is how fighting ought to be done in any case.”

The young man beside Lord Antillus said, “I’m not sure it’s the prerogative of the Master of Arms to give editorial comment on the juris macto.”

“Garius,” Aria chided. The tone was exactly like that Isana had heard in her own voice, time after time, when cautioning Tavi to restrain his words. Garius subsided.

“Isana is the challenger,” Doroga continued, as if no one had said anything. “Which means she gets to choose the time and place of the duel. She has chosen here and now. Obviously. Or none of us would be standing out here in the wind.”

Antillus Raucus sighed.

“Lord Antillus,” Doroga said. “As the challenged, you have the right to let a champion stand in your place. In case you don’t want to get hurt, I guess.” Doroga’s tone was completely neutral and polite, but somehow the barbarian managed to infuse it with contempt, nonetheless. “Do you wish a champion to stand for you?”

Antillus gritted his teeth. “I do not.”

Doroga grunted. “There’s that much at least.” He looked back and forth between them. “Now I am supposed to ask you to tell me why you’re fighting. Isana.”

“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.