Princeps Fury

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.

And it was terrifyingly clear that she could not meet him sword to sword for long. He would slice her weapon apart like a stick of chilled butter. For that matter, she doubted that her armor would stand up to his blade any better. If she allowed Raucus to keep diving upon her, he would carve her to bits one pass at a time. She had to ground him.

With another lifted hand, the snow around her began to whirl in another vortex, rising in a blinding, stinging curtain to veil her from his sight, to make swift charges through the curtain of snow an unattractive option.

Instead, she maintained the watercrafting that kept the snow stirring around her and cooled her still-hot sword in the snow at her feet while she waited.

A moment later, a shadow broke the whirling snow, a dark shape, and Antillus Raucus appeared, frost clinging to his beard, his hair, and to the leather of his armored coat. His sword was in his hand.

On an impulse, Isana maintained the snow curtain, and waited.

“Bloody crows, Isana,” Raucus said. His voice was not loud, and was more tired than angry. “An excellent choice of a dueling ground.”

“Thank you, Your Grace,” Isana said quietly.

He shook his head. “All you’re doing is drawing things out. You’re determined, and you think quickly. But this is only going to end one way.”

“I can’t help but wonder,” Isana said quietly, “why you are so obstinate about refusing to cooperate with me.”

“I think we’ve just about talked this to death,” he said bleakly, and started forward.

Isana lifted her sword. “I’m not so sure, Raucus. Is this because of me? Or because of Gaius. I think you owe me that much of an answer.”

“Owe you? Owe you?” Raucus said, and with a flick of his hand sent a gout of flame rushing toward her.

She raised a shimmering shield of ice halfway between them, and the flame vanished into a cloud of steam.

“As you point out, I can’t really do more than draw this duel out, Your Grace. I’m well aware of that. It seems a small thing to ask of you in exchange for my life.”

Raucus gave her a hard, bitter smile, hovering just outside what Araris had taught her would be the striking range of his weapon. “Gaius would be reason enough. That treacherous snake doesn’t deserve the loyalty of the worms that will feast on his corpse.”

“As much as I would like to,” Isana replied, her tone frank, her sword at a low guard position, one that would be easiest on her arms to maintain, “I cannot say that I disagree with you, sir.”

Raucus frowned. His stance shifted subtly, as he lifted his sword to a high guard, both hands on the weapon’s handle, the blade almost directly in line with his body.

It was something of a ludicrous ready stance for such a short weapon, but all the same, it dictated that Isana had to adjust to the new potential threat. She lifted her blade to a similar stance, overhead, but with her arms slightly to one side, holding the weapon’s length across her body.

“Eastern style,” Raucus noted in a calm, professional tone. “Araris always loved bringing out that Rhodesian tripe in his high defense.”

He took a step forward, closing into range, and swept a blow down at her. Isana managed to divert it, at the cost of another long sliver of steel from her blade, but then Raucus’s shoulder and hip slammed into her as he continued forward, his entire mass impacting simultaneously along the center of her balance. Isana was flung violently back to the snow, and desperately wrought a working, flattening it to smooth ice, so that she slid several