Kaidren’s team races forward. Our team is still. We raise our hands, focusing magic on our opponents’ tshira weapons.
My target is at the end of the row of soldiers. His sword has a wooden hilt wrapped in leather and a blade of sharpened tshira. Magic rushes from my outstretched hand. At my command, his blade liquefies. It drips to the ground in black rivulets, settling against the stark white snow like tar.
I smirk. On to the next.
I channel magic into a second soldier’s weapon—a tshira-hilted dagger in a holster around his hip.
My entire body jolts, from my toes to my rattling teeth, and the dagger remains whole.
I mutter a curse under my breath. The soldier used his own magic to hold the tshira in shape. He must’ve seen the melting weapons around him and reacted accordingly.
The soldier next to me wears a chain of woven leather around his neck twisted with strands of ivy. He touches the sliver of skin between his glove and sleeve to the ivy, siphoning his source and pushing it toward another soldier on Kaidren’s team.
The dark blade of their tshira battle-ax puddles to the ground.
The first wave of our attack is over. I count six disarmed soldiers. In a matter of seconds, we’ve rendered more than half the opposing team all but defenseless.
Because of me.
I feel a swell of pride. It’s just for a flicker, but in that moment, it’s deep enough to bury my dread.
Luc motions our team into action. The six soldiers designated to rush the front lines swoop, spreading out across the width of the arena, forming a human wall.
Kaidren’s team is ducked around him—he must be hastily doling out new instructions, since half his team have lost their weapons.
Dhavik and I, the two soldiers assigned to flank Luc’s side, press in closer. Dhavik grips a sword, while I have a knife tucked into a pocket on my thigh. In my short time with Flynn, I learned basic self-defense, not swordplay, so I selected a weapon I might actually be able to use.
Kaidren’s group disbands. I take a quick survey of theirrevised strategy. It appears Kaidren gave up his own sword to one of his disarmed soldiers. Like Luc’s team, Kaidren’s soldiers form a wall. Unlike us, there are eight of them. With an extra team member, he still has three soldiers who remain by his side, guarding him more closely.
Six of Luc’s soldiers clash against eight of Kaidren’s in the center of the arena.
The crowd roars at the first clang of weapons slamming into each other.
It takes only seconds for one of Luc’s soldiers—a short man called Pol—to drive a sword into the stomach of one of Kaidren’s unarmed soldiers.
I don’t know him, but my throat tightens as he tumbles over.
The wound in his gut is deep, spilling blood over the snow. No one pauses. Not even his own team.
Pol steps casually over the body and begins hacking at a second decurio like it’s nothing.
The fallen soldier is still alive, but fading quickly. He’ll be dead soon without medical attention, but he just lies on the ground, ignored by the war around him.
I have to look away. No one is going to save him, and I don’t want to watch him slowly die.
Pol clashes with another soldier. There’s a brutality to his movements that’s unsettling. He’s battling another member of the decurio of hisownarmy, yet he fights with the same ruthless intensity I’d expect from someone attacking an enemy.
Flynn was surprised how viciously I fought him. He’d noted how rare it is to see in untrained soldiers. I wonder if the decurio are instructed to be violent, with no regard for their opponent. If cruelty against their own is encouraged, even in training.
With a screech, Pol uses his blade to sweep his opponent’s legs out from under him. He falls to the ground, and Pol raiseshis sword. All he has to do is swing down, and his opponent is dead.
Luc takes a small step forward, as though to call out to him—to tell Pol there’s no need to kill.
I catch his arm and shake my head, as subtly as I can.
Pol plunges the blade through the other soldier’s chest, killing him instantly.
Within the first three minutes, Luc has all ten members of his team still standing. Kaidren has lost two.
