“That is the Torian way,” the warlord replied as if it were a real answer.
“So you give me your word of honor that you would notmurderme without a trial, the way you murdered the Sacrati captain?” Theos stopped speaking, then shook his head. “But what use isyourword of honor?”
“Arrest him,” the warlord hissed toward his men, and a few of them stepped gingerly forward.
Theos stepped forward as well, and the men froze again. Twelve men. Finnvid knew the reputation of the Sacrati, but he also knew these were well-trained Torians. Twelve-to-one odds were too much, even for Theos. And the men must know this too. Still, they didn’t attack.
Theos watched them for a moment, then nodded, and half turned. He still had his eye on them, but he was facing his audience as well. “The warlord has murdered the Sacrati captain,” he said, loudly enough to be heard throughout the square. “You all know this. There was no trial because the warlord had no evidence. Is this the man who should be leading us?”
“We are under attack from within,” the warlord bellowed. “In times of war, soldiers follow the orders of their commander! We don’t havetimefor trials, and we can’t expose state secrets in the name ofevidence!”
Theos didn’t even look at the warlord. He told the crowd, “You know he’s lying. You know he’s a murderer. And not just the captain. Twelve Sacrati left Windthorn to escort the Elkati home; only two returned. You know this. He’s come up with lies to explain what happened, but you know they aren’t true. You’ve spoken to the others who were there, your fellow Torian soldiers, and they’ve either told you the truth or they’ve dropped their eyes in shame. They stood by while their fellow Torians werebutchered, and they did it because they werefollowing orders.”
The warlord strode forward then, shoving one of his soldiers toward Theos, then turning and yanking the arm of another. “Arrest him, or kill him—I don’t care!”
It was too late, surely. Theos had spoken, and the men had heard him, and Finnvid had seen the words hit home. Theydidknow. But now that the warlord’s men were moving again, reluctantly circling around Theos, preparing to attack, the men in the audience didn’t do anything. They stared, waiting.
Not bloodthirsty and waiting for a show, Finnvid didn’t think. There was no excitement on their faces, just doubt. The reeve had been right; they wanted to be led, and they hadn’t been given an order.
Finnvid was tempted to shout out his own command, but he knew he couldn’t. He wasn’t even a Torian; they wouldn’t obey him, and his attempt would make Theos look weak. Still, he wouldn’t stand by and watch Theos die, so he climbed up on the stage, his sword feeling awkward and too heavy in his trembling hands.
The fighting started when he was at the top of the short flight of stairs. He couldn’t say how he knew, exactly: his view was blocked by the men in front of him. There was just a sort of collective gasp that told him one or more of the men had rushed in to attack. There was a buttress on the side and back of the stage, and Finnvid jumped onto it, thinking he could run along the top of it and attack from above, but when he looked over at Theos, he froze, and just stared.
Two attackers were already down. Theos was fighting the rest of them, his back against the buttress on the far side of the stage, and he was—he was fearsome, and beautiful. There wasn’t room for all the men to attack at once, so only three of them were doing battle, slashing and hacking and being met each time with Theos’s quick blade or with a simple absence where his body had been a perfect target a moment before. He was Sacrati, the perfect warrior. He darted forward, fast and light, and one of the men tumbled to the ground, clutching his suddenly red gut.
There was a pause, not even time for a full breath, but it was all Theos needed. “Enough!” he bellowed, and he raised his sword and pointed it toward the nearest men. “Enough. Drop your weapons,now!”
They stopped. Finnvid was close enough to hear Theos when he lowered his voice and said, “Isthishow you want to die?”
They remained still for just another moment, and then one of them looked at the man next to him. “This is better than hanging, and that’s what we’ll get if he wins. Kill him.”
As the men surged forward again, Finnvid surged too. A scream ripped from his throat, a strange, wild sound that seemed likely to curdle his own blood, if no one else’s.
Some of the men attacking Theos spun to face Finnvid, and Theos took advantage of the distraction, his sword sharp and deadly. And then, finally, the men in the square were moving. They charged, an avalanche of warriors, rolling and tumbling up and over the stage, wrapping around the attackers, sweeping them away from Theos, away from Finnvid, and burying them under a drift of bodies. It was as if Finnvid’s clumsy attack had assured them that this wasn’t a private fight.
It all happened so quickly that Finnvid almost forgot his one real job. But as he tried to orient himself, tried to find Theos in the crowd to be sure he was still alive, he saw a familiar face fighting through the chaos. “Stop him! The warlord! Stop him!”
Finnvid leaped after the man, pushing through the men who were too intent on reaching the fighters to pay attention to someone trying to get away. “The warlord,” Finnvid yelled into the face of a startled Torian. “Grab him!”
The Torian turned, recognized the warlord, and reached for him. And the warlord whirled, dagger out and slashing, catching the Torian across the biceps and then rebalancing, spinning again, facing Finnvid—and Finnvid put all his weight into a blow. Theos had spent months teaching him how to fight, and it might not have been enough, but it was something. Finnvid could throw a good punch. His fist landed square on the warlord’s nose, squishing it in, driving the man’s whole body back into the Torian behind him. “Grab him,” Finnvid shouted again. “Watch for the dagger.”
Things went more smoothly this time. The warlord was still reeling from Finnvid’s punch as two Torians flipped him to the ground and pinned him. One of them pulled the dagger out of the man’s hand and looked up at Finnvid questioningly. Finnvid wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say.
But then Theos was there. “Don’t kill him. Tie him—we need to question him and have a trial. That’s the right way to do things.”
The crouching man nodded.
Finnvid stared at Theos. “They’re following your lead.”
Apparently inspired by the realization, Theos jumped up onto the balustrade, waving his arms and yelling to catch the attention of the men swarming all over the stage. “No killing!” He frowned down at the bodies his own sword had produced, then shrugged. “As little killing as possible! We want them alive to answer questions, and we need to have trials.”
“That takes too long,” an anonymous voice objected.
Theos grinned in the approximate direction of the speaker. “We still have a couple months of winter—you have something better to do with your time? Training and fucking fill some of the hours, but we can fit in a few trials too, can’t we?” Then his face darkened. “Besides—they’re part of it. Sacrati have been murdered. If these men are part of the warlord’s plot, they don’t deserve clean deaths in battle.”
It took a while for the chaos to fade. Theos stayed by Finnvid’s side through it all. They didn’t exchange words, but Theos wasthere. He sent men to ensure that Andros was freed, then some to find Zenain wherever he was, others to secure the warlord’s office and personal space in case there was evidence that needed to be preserved, and another group to start cleaning up the bodies and cleaning the blood off the stage. The rest of the men stood around, waiting for more action, until Theos started waving them out of the square.
“The women have put up with enough of our nonsense,” he yelled. “If we ever want to be invited back again, we need to leave when the party’s over. And I think we all want to be invited back, don’t we?”
