“Is it … or has it just begun?”
“You saw me. I failed.”
Ulmek gave him a wry smirk. “Secretly finding and taking any of the treasures, while commendable, is only a part of it. More importantly, striving until the coming of the dawn, even in the face of certain defeat, is the only action required to succeed. In that, you have won your sword and dagger, and a place amongst my Brothers.”
Leitos felt off balance. He had been sure Ulmek meant to provoke him by waiting for him on Zera’s grave, but instead the man was blathering about the test. More, he had just told him he had passed, and was now a Brother of the Crimson Shield.
Ulmek fixed him with a hard gaze. “You see, it is vital that our brethren fight until the end, even when death is certain. How would you chose, little brother, if faced with the choice between life and death?”
Leitos spoke the only truth he knew. “I have given myself to defeating the Faceless One-even if that means my death.”
“Indeed?” Ulmek said. “I am most curious to learn the truth of your conviction … with a final test.”
Before Leitos could respond, Ulmek’s staff cracked against his ribs and knocked him to the ground. Fighting for breath, Leitos rolled to his feet. Staff flashing, Ulmek battered his shoulder, and then his opposite knee. Leitos hobbled clear, searching for a weapon-a rock, a stick, anything-but the only weapon available was in Ulmek’s hands.
“You had better fight,” Ulmek advised. “Our order can ill-afford sniveling weaklings to fill its ranks.”
Leitos tried to work the feeling back into his bruised limbs. Does he mean to kill me? The thought seemed absurd, but another look at Ulmek’s face told him otherwise. The man’s animosity was evident in his scowl and the hard, merciless set of his mouth.
With no great effort, Leitos mirrored that expression. Grow strong and cruel. Those words echoed in his mind, words spoken by his father, advice given as a means to survive a vicious world.
Ulmek attacked again, holding nothing back, and Leitos ducked under the whistling staff. “Come on, boy, prove your worth, or be cast down.”
Leitos dredged his soul and found a lifetime of buried fury. Once touched, that wrath scorched away any fright or doubt. His menacing smile gave Ulmek pause. “If you want to fight to the death,” he said, “so be it.”
“ ‘Death?’ ” Ulmek repeated. As he considered that, his eyes narrowed, and then he lunged, aiming his strike at Leitos’s neck.
Leitos twitched out of reach, then swiftly crowded the larger warrior. Backpedaling, Ulmek reversed his strike. Leitos caught the shaft against his palms, spun in a tight half-circle, and slammed an elbow against Ulmek’s temple.
Eyelids fluttering, Ulmek staggered away, dragging the staff behind him. Leitos brought his foot down, splitting the seasoned shaft, and hastily caught up the staff’s broken end. He whirled it in a defensive blur.
“Ba’Sel and Sumahn claimed you showed promise,” Ulmek grated. “All the Brothers have said the same.”
When Ulmek came again, Leitos defended himself. Wood cracked against wood. The jarring blows stung Leitos’s hands, sank an ache deep into his shoulders, drove him back a step at a time. Where Leitos faltered, Ulmek advanced, sure of foot, confident, deadly.
Leitos feinted a strike at the warrior’s head, then dropped below Ulmek’s guard, and struck him across one knee with all his strength. As Ulmek danced back, Leitos somersaulted over the ground, coming up slightly behind his foe. He rammed the point of his elbow into the back of the man’s unhurt knee, then pivoted, one leg extended, and swept Ulmek off his feet.
Leitos scrambled up and away, gathering himself to finish the contest, but Ulmek was already on his feet again.
“You’ll have to do better than that, boy,” the warrior taunted. “Or, perhaps, you would rather me leave you to weep over your dead mistress? Who can say concerning changelings, but it could be that her breasts are yet plump with a weanling’s milk? Your love for her is sickening, not worthy of our order. You are weak, boy, pathetic….”
As Ulmek continued to berate him, Leitos’s anger became uncontrollable, scorching away carefully constructed barriers against memories he would rather leave buried. He saw again Zera’s radiant emerald eyes before him, burning with the fiery light that he had stolen when he plunged his dagger into her heart, an accident born of a fear for everything the Faceless One touched. Even as she died in his arms, Zera had pleaded for Leitos to speak his love for her.
Her blood spreading over his hands burned as hotly in memory as it had on that terrible night. Ulmek had made him remember those things, and he hated the man for it.
“There we are,” Ulmek said softly. “Come for me, boy!”
Silent and grim, Leitos charged. When Ulmek stumbled on a jutting stone he should have seen, Leitos stabbed the splintered end of his staff at Ulmek’s neck. The warrior blocked the blow without effort, one moment fighting to regain his footing, the next poised and sure. A trap!
Before Leitos could catch his balance, Ulmek thrust his heel behind Leitos’s and struck him on the point of the chin, his fist falling like a slab of granite. Leitos slammed against the ground, numb all over.
Ulmek knelt at Leitos’s side. “I know Ba’Sel warned you about letting anger take your heart-he taught me the same, many years gone. I’ve never believed it, and still do not. The trick, boy, is to master that fire, use it to your advantage. Your failure to do so has cost you a victory. When you feel you are ready to try-”
Ulmek looked up sharply. “Do you hear that?”
Leitos, only now catching his breath, sat up and cocked his head. Beneath the hooting song of the island and the breeze whispering through leaves, he heard a rhythmic thrumming.
“Drums,” he said, doubting his ears. “It sounds like drums.”
Just then, a closer sound of breaking limbs came to them. Both leaped up, brandishing their broken staffs.
Ba’Sel burst out of the trees a hundred paces away, his faded robes flapping.
“We must return to the sanctuary,” he panted. Sweat sheened his dark skin, and his eyes were wild with a fear that no leader of warriors should reveal.
Leitos had never seen him like this, and it left him unsettled.
Ulmek caught Ba’Sel’s shoulder before he could bolt back the way he had come. “What is wrong?”’
“Sea-wolves,” Ba’Sel blurted, jabbing a finger to the west.
Ulmek and Leitos spun. Far out to sea, seemingly ushered up from the south by massing storm clouds, a pair of sleek ships propelled by dozens of sweeping oars and square sails plowed the sea toward Witch’s Mole. The drumming had grown louder. Less than half a turn of the glass remained before they would make landfall.
“Why has no one sounded the alarm?” Ulmek demanded.
Ba’Sel looked more flustered than ever. “We were preparing to raise our newest Brother. There was a feast that needed making, the honing and oiling of his sword and dagger-”
“I know about the ceremony,” Ulmek said. “None of that matters now, save that Leitos will need his robes and weapons. I trust you have given orders to destroy these scum?”
“Gods good and wise,” Ba’Sel breathed, “are you mad? We cannot fight them. I have cautioned the men that we must avoid confrontation. Even now, they are preparing to return to our longboats, so that we can escape. We make for Geldain. Perhaps it is safe to return to our last sanctuary or, maybe, we can vanish into the Fire Mountains.”
Leitos glanced at the closing vessels. Their drums had grown louder still, and their rams carved furrows through the turquoise waters.
“When will you tire of running and hiding?” Ulmek asked.
“We must preserve our order,” Ba’Sel said. “Lest you forget, we are not an army, but a meager company whose survival demands that we strike from the shadows.”