Noise enclosed both of us like a box, a delirious buffeting; and yet I could see nothing but my opponent, weaving closer. I drew my sword. Skilla’s grin grew contemptuous.
He would never come close enough to give me a chance to use my weapon.
“Finish him!” Edeco’s roar came floating through the cacophony.
I could see Drilca’s breast, his high, lathered neck, and Skilla peering just beyond it down the shaft of his arrow. He was only ten paces away.
So I threw, hurling my sword with my right arm and grunting through the pain.
It whirled end over end, a steel pinwheel, and struck Drilca full in the chest, the horse buckling to its knees and tumbling forward. Skilla lurched and lost control of his arrow, which went low. Then Drilca was sprawling, his rider flying out of the saddle and over the horse’s head, my sword embedded and lost under the kicking, screaming horse.
Skilla skidded on the grass and dirt, cursing.
I ran past him, a stumbling run, and picked up the half of my broken spear that bore the head.
Skilla still had his sword, but his instinct was for archery.
His quiver was empty, but his last arrow jutted tantalizingly from the ground. He crawled for it, even as I staggered in pursuit, my spear poised to strike if I could reach him before he could retrieve the broken arrow and shoot. I was bleeding freely now, and my opponent was largely unhurt. All he had to do was wait for my collapse! Yet that wouldn’t fit his pride. Skilla’s hand closed over the arrow shaft and plucked it like a flower. He would have one last, clear shot at my chest. Lying on his back, he fitted arrow to bowstring. I braced myself to die.
But when he tried to pull the string, it flapped uselessly.
Skilla gaped. The fall had broken his bow.
I charged. Before he could reach for his sword my Roman boot was on his chest and my spear point was at his throat. The Hun started to twist and the tip began to cut. He stopped, frozen, finally knowing fear. He looked up.
I suppose I looked like a great, metal monster, chest heaving, blood droplets from my two arrow wounds spraying us both, my face still mostly lost behind my helmet but my eyes bright and lusting for revenge. Impossibly, I had bested him. The Hun closed his eyes against the end. So be it. Better to die than bear humiliation.
Now the crowd had surged forward, dramatically shrinking the battlefield to a tiny ring, its sound and excitement clamoring, the smell of the pressed bodies rankling. “Kill him, kill him!” they screamed. “Now, Roman, he deserves to die!”
I looked at Edeco. Skilla’s uncle had turned away in disgust. I looked at Attila. The Hun king grimly put his thumb down, in mocking copy of the Roman gesture he had heard of.
It would not be a combat kill anymore; it would be an execution. I didn’t care. These Huns had crucified Rusticius, enslaved Ilana, slain her father, and trapped me. Skilla had taunted me from the day we’d met. I knew this was not what the priests of Constantinople expected. The final thrust would be a relic from the old world, not this new, saved, Christian one, supposedly so close to Apocalypse. But none of this mattered in my hatred. I squeezed the shaft of my broken spear in preparation.
And then something slight and frantic hit me, butting me aside before I could thrust. I staggered, outraged, and howled with pain. Who was this interloper?
She loomed in my vision. Ilana!
“No.” She was weeping. “Don’t kill him! Not for me!”
I saw Skilla’s eyes blink open, amazed at this reprieve.
His hand closed on the hilt of his sword, still undrawn. He rolled to one side to clear it.
And then all went black. I had fainted.
P A R T T W O
I
RALLYING THE WEST
XV
I
THE WINE JAR
Iwas in a dark, hot place, and some kind of gnome or in-cubus was leaning over me, perhaps to feast on my aching flesh or carry me to some place even deeper. The roar of the Hun crowd had subsided to a hushed ringing, and Ilana had betrayed me and then disappeared in a fog. I knew I had made some great, irretrievable mistake but couldn’t remember what it was. Then the demon leaned closer . . .
“For the sake of your Savior, are you going to sleep forever? There are more important things afoot than you.”
The voice was high, caustic, and familiar. Zerco.
I blinked, white light flooding in. So did pain, fresher and more acute than I had felt in my fever dream. The hum of the crowd was merely the noise my ear made while pressed in a cup of wool blanket, and the mistake I regretted was leaving Constantinople and becoming entangled with a woman. I struggled to sit up.
“Not yet.” The dwarf pushed me down. “Wake, but lie still.” Someone placed something hot on my shoulder.
“Ahhhggg!” It stung like a viper. And I had longed for adventure!
“It will help you heal,” a female voice murmured. It was a voice I painfully recognized. “Why did you save Skilla!”
“To save us. And no man is going to die for me. That’s silly.”
“It wasn’t for you—”
“Hush! Rest.”
“What kind of a future do you think you’d have if you’d slain Edeco’s nephew?” Zerco added. “Let the girl heal you so you can save Rome.”
I waited for a wave of nausea and dizziness to pass and then tried to focus. The unbearable light faded as my eyes adjusted to fire and candle. It was actually quite dim in the room, I realized. I was in a cabin with the jester, the leather webbing of the bed creaking as I shifted on my straw mat-tress. From the smoke hole at the cabin’s peak, I glimpsed a circle of gray sky. A cloudy day, perhaps dusk. Or dawn.
“What time is it?”
“The first hour, three days after you humiliated that young rooster,” the dwarf said.
“Three days! I feel drained.”
“As you are, of blood, piss, and spit. Julia, is it ready?”
There was a third person in the room, the woman I had seen holding the dwarf on her shoulders. “Here, drink this.”
The cup was bitter.
“Don’t turn your head away—drink it! My God, what an unruly patient you are! Finish that, and then you can have some wine and water. That will taste sweeter, but this will make you well.”
Obediently, but grimacing, I drank. Three days! I remembered nothing except my own collapse. “So I am alive.”
“As is Skilla, thanks to Ilana here. He hates you more than ever, of course, especially since this beauty has been given leave to nurse you. He’s hoping she can heal you only so he can try killing you again. No man has ever prayed harder for the recovery of another! I warned him that you’ll simply outthink him again. Now he is puzzling how you did it the first time.”
Even smiling hurt. I turned to Ilana. “But you feel something for him.” It was an accusation. I’d fought for her, and she hadn’t let me finish it.
She was embarrassed. “I led him on about marriage, Jonas. I led both of you on, because women are so helpless here. I’m not proud of it. The duel made me sick. Now I’m out of Suecca’s house and soon will be out of this one, and leave you all alone.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s the other reason Skilla hates you,” Zerco said cheerfully. “When it was apparent neither of you two bucks was going to die, Attila considered like Solomon—and awarded the girl to himself.”
“Himself!”
“As slave, not concubine. He actually said you’d both fought bravely. He declared that Skilla was the true Hun but pointed out that he was now in the debt of a Roman. So both of you will now be given a chance to fight for Attila, and whoever distinguishes himself the most will eventually get the woman.” The dwarf grinned. “You have to admire his ability to motivate.”