Spirit of the Sword: Pride and Fury (The First Sword Chronicles Book 1) (80 page)

“What was that?” Fiannuala asked.

“A flowery compliment, highness,” Michael said. “And a salute to the better warrior.”

Fiannuala shook her head. “I’m just having a good day. Dala must be smiling on me for some reason. You’re not holding back, are you?”

“Indeed not, highness, but you and Tullia outstrip me at every twist and turn,” Michael replied. “You have won the favour of the gods indeed, while they have made my steps leaden.”

“And yet tomorrow you will shame us both again, no doubt,” Tullia said. “Such is the fickle nature of the world. Yet I will hold my own with you, even so.”

Michael smiled. “I have no doubt.”

Tullia nodded. “Michael…I have decided that when this struggle is concluded I will seek release from the Corps of Mages, and from my bond of guard and serve His Highness. I will be answerable only to myself.”

“Congratulations, Filia,” Michael said. “And what will you answer yourself?”

Tullia looked into his eyes. “You mean to fight for the Empire when all this is over, don’t you? At the side of Gideon Commenae?”

Michael smiled as he felt hope blossom within him. “I do.”

“Then I will fight with you, until my death or till the ending of all things,” Tullia said. “For I declare I have learned to love the singing of the sword, and could no more stitch seams or wash dresses.” She chuckled. “His highness feared your influence, and it seems he was correct: you have made a warrior of me, complete with warrior’s pride.”

“It’s liberating, isn’t it?” Fiannuala asked with a laugh.

Tullia smiled slightly even as her ears burned. “I fear it is.”

Michael’s ears pricked up. A single pair of footsteps he could hear upon the ruined streets, moving in their direction.

“Hark,” he said. “Another foeman this way comes.”

They took cover, and Michael peered around the corner of a half-demolished house to see the tallest man he had ever seen advancing briskly but calmly towards him. He was at least a foot taller than Gideon, with broad shoulders and a fine head of dark hair swept back to expose his forehead to the world. He wore a cuirass of shining white, the leather corseted with linen and trimmed with gold. His vambraces and greaves were glittering bronze and he bore two swords slung across his back. He bore himself with that rare confidence that Michael associated with Gideon: a man certain of himself and of his powers, assured of his position in the world, fearless of any attempt to deny or to degrade him.

He looked straight at Michael.

“Hiding is rather rude, you know,” he said, his tone clipped and commanding. “Not to mention the cowardice inherent in such skulking about.”

Michael pulled his head back. "We should get out of here," he hissed.

"Why?" Fiannuala asked. "He's all alone."

"I think that that is Quirian," Michael replied. "I fear to face him with a divided company. I...I fear him straight, I tell you that now."

"He's just a man," Fiannuala said.

"I am less sure of that."

"Come on, don't lose your nerve now!" Fiannuala said. "We've come this far, haven't we? We've overcome our enemies the three of us, together. We've beaten his lackeys and now we'll beat him too: together. You with me, Tullia?"

Tullia nodded. "Let us finish this."

Fiannuala grinned enthusiastically. "Come on, let's show him what we've got."

Michael drew his swords. "If you will do the honours, highness."

Fiannuala led them out of cover, marching out to confront Quirian in the middle of the road, with Michael in the centre and Fiannuala and Tullia upon his flanks. Fiannuala held her bow ready, an arrow on the string. Lightning flickered up and down Tullia's knife and short sword. Michael's blades glinted in what little light passed through the overcast sky.

"You are Quirian, yes?" Michael asked.

Quirian smiled as he drew his own two swords. "I am. And you...brown eyes, a Coronim complexion...you are Michael Callistus, are you not?"

"Michael Sebastian Callistus, if you please," Michael replied.

"Of course, of course," Quirian said lightly. "I know your sister very well."

"I am aware of that," Michael said. "Hence the cause of our quarrel. But I have been remiss: allow me to present my two companions, Filia Tullia Athenaeum and Princess Fiannuala of the forest realm of Eena."

"Eena," Quirian murmured, smiling greedily. "I must confess I will enjoy this. As for the other, do as you wish. But you, Michael, should leave this place. I have promised your sister not to harm you unless you attack me first; you would be unwise to provoke me."

"I mean to do far more than merely provoke you," Michael shouted. "I, with my bold and true companions here, will see you fall this day and free my sister from your chains. For God, Miranda and for the Divine Empire! We who are about to die commend our souls to God and praise the Empress!"

Fiannuala loosed arrows more swiftly than Michael's eyes could follow, and as they flew straight and true towards Quirian the forest princess dropped her bow and took up her spear as the three companions charged with a great shout.

Quirian turned in place, his swords weaving in a silver arc, and Fiannuala's arrows fell to the ground, all severed neatly in twin by the strokes of his blades.

The three charged, shrieking. Quirian stood ready to receive them, making no moves or motions of his own. He was as still as a legionary battle line, braced to take the impact of the barbarian charge.

As one, with sword and spear and knife and lightning, they fell upon their  enemy like a great wind. Michael struck him head on, his spatha leading with a thrust and the Eena blade following with a slashing stroke. Tullia darted around the left-hand side, her open palm spitting magic out as she threw her knife and drew the Aurelian short sword the dryads had given her. Fiannuala took the right, her spear jabbing out in furious thrusts for Quirian's open flank.

They were like the wave, they beat upon him in the wrath and the fury, their cries of anger struck the skies, they howled like the raging wind. They were swift as fire, as fierce as lions, as strong as falling rocks and as inexorable as the tide.

They were not enough.

Quirian stood secure in the centre of the storm, barely moving to combat his three opponents. He seemed bored by the three of them. He hardly had to move his swords at all to deflect their blows, and not a single sword stroke scratched him, had he yawned it would hardly have added to the picture of insouciant indifference that he displayed as he casually parried or deftly evaded, often with no more than a single movement of his feet, every attack that was sent against him.

"Are you toying with us?" Fiannuala demanded.

"Perhaps, my dear," Quirian replied, his voice soft. "But only very slightly on purpose. You simply do not require any great exertion on my part."

Fiannuala snarled, baring her teeth. "Damn you, take this seriously!"

Quirian smiled. "As you wish."

Fiannuala thrust her spear at him with an angry cry, but at the same time she seemed to fumble her steps in this dance of theirs; or perhaps they had always been fumbling but had not before suffered the consequence. Whatever the reason, suddenly Quirian was behind her, Fiannuala was over-exposed in her lunge, and Michael and Tullia were completely out of position to help her.

Quirian's sword swept down.

Fiannuala howled in pain as the downward stroke opened up her side, cleaving her ribs and letting the amber blood burst out from the jagged rent in her green skin. She staggered, one arm dropping to her side as she reeled from the stroke and from the pain. Her golden eyes turned to Quirian, wide with incredulous amazement, tears springing from the pain.

"Fiannuala!" Michael yelled, hurling himself at Quirian, who parried his strokes languidly with one hand. With the other, he threw his sword up into the air like a baton, where it twirled lazily in the air before it began to fall.

Quirian raised his hand, palm out, to point at Fiannuala, who was retreating from him too slowly, one arm pressed against her side to staunch the bleeding.

An inferno of flame leapt from Quirian's hand, white hot and roaring. For a moment Fiannuala was framed by the flames, frozen in place as the fire raced towards her. Then the white-hot flames struck, and Fiannuala was born upwards and backwards, screaming in agony as her limbs contorted this way and that, as her wild and waving hair burned, as she was thrown into a house so hard the wall shattered beneath the impact.

Then the screaming stopped, the flames died down, and there was nought but silence.

Princess Fiannuala.
Michael's hands were trembling, his stomach was ice. It could not be. A member of their gallant company, his friend, his comrade, could not have fallen. Princess Fiannuala, so brave, so strong, she could not have died, ignominiously, without having so much as scratched her foe. This was a dream, a cruel nightmare escaped from the spirit plane, sprung from the gate of horn and ivory to torment his waking hours. The alternative...Fiannuala could not be dead.

What is he, this Quirian? Is he even a man, or is he a demi-god in human form? What foolishness drove us to engage him in battle?

What have I done?

Quirian caught his sword as it fell. "When I was a boy, after the Empire destroyed my home and slaughtered my people, I fled to the dryads of Eena for shelter. But they refused me. They were not willing to risk angering the Empire for my sake, although the Aurelians had always been good neighbours to them, and had protected them for many years. I must confess...I rather enjoyed that small vengeance."

Tullia was the first to resume the battle, snarling with ferocity while she sprang at Quirian like an ambhian tiger. The Aurelian blade glinted silver in her hand, and lightning magic rippled up and down it, snapping like a pack of angry dogs as she weaved her blade in delicate arcs, dancing all around Quirian like a whirlpool or tornado, moving so fast and in so many directions that Michael found his own route of attack near impeded by her constant shifting progress. Nevertheless he launched himself forward, beating his blades upon Quirian’s guard, determined to answer blood with blood.

“Are you still so very vain as to believe that the two of you can best me? That you can even try my skill?” Quirian demanded. “I am Quirian, Prince of Aureliana, the last enemy of the Empire in all Pelarius. I have the strength of armies and the speed of eagles, and what have you to match against it? A few paltry years in the arena? Some mage training?”

“We have a will to win,” Tullia snapped, though her breathing was growing heavy as her swift-footed exertions began to tell. Michael’s arms were beginning to feel heavy; if they did not find a way to break his guard down soon the fight would be lost and they would be helpless and exhausted before him, and yet when Michael beat upon Quirian’s guard he felt like a babe trying to break down the wall of a house.

Quirian chuckled as he glanced at her contemptuously. But when his eyes fell upon her sword, the short sword with which she had so ineffectually been trying to strike him down, his eyes widened with something between shock and fury. He stumbled for a moment, and it was only his inhumanly swift reflexes that prevented Tullia from cutting him.

“An Aurelian blade?” he whispered, rounding on her with the full force of his assault, paying Michael the heed of a gnat as he halted Tullia’s progress and drove her stumbling backwards. “You dare? A blade of my own city, of my own people, and you use it against me with such brazen ignorance? How dare you?” There was no playfulness left in his voice, no insouciance left in his manner, nothing but implacable fury in his bearing as he drove Tullia before him like cattle, sweeping blade and knife out of her hands and bringing one of his shining swords down upon her.

Michael pushed her aside, throwing himself athwart Quirian’s stroke, both swords raised in his hands to intercept.

Quirian’s blow beat both his blades aside with contemptuous ease, slicing through Michael’s collar and opening up his chest. Michael cried aloud in pain as his blood burst outwards like a river when the dam breaks, and as his chest and stomach felt as though a hundred thousand needles were striking him over and over again. He had been wounded before, and as Michael toppled backwards with his head spinning and a feeling of detached lightness overcame him, he found himself remembering some of the worst of his injuries: the time when a lion had gnawed upon his face, the spear through the lung. Both times Miranda had saved his life and, in the former case, restored his mean, ill-tempered looks. But now Miranda was far away, in the hands of the man who struck this dolorous blow, so there would be neither salvation nor respite from the constant throbbing pain, throbbing like drums, pulsating up and down while never letting the pain cease.

Then he hit the ground with a hard thud, and the light-headedness vanished as his back began to ache in minor counterpoint to the major pain that was his chest.

How long had it taken him to fall? Not so long as it had seemed, judging by how little Quirian had moved. But then, he could simply have been moving so fast that he appeared to be standing still.

“Michael!” Tullia cried in alarm. Her voice sounded, quiet, muffled to him.

Quirian drove at her again, his twin swords flying. Tullia retreated before him like a mouse before a cat, escaping by a hair’s breadth from a succession of killing strokes, the margin of her survival growing thinner every time. On the fifth stroke, she was a fraction too slow and Quirian opened up a vicious gash upon her forehead. Tullia moaned as blood cascaded down her face, covering her eyes, blinding her. Desperately, she wiped at her face and eyes with one hand-