Telemachus gave a nod.
Felix straightened, rolling his shoulders back like a soldier preparing for battle. “I have an idea. But I’ll need a pig heart.”
XVI
1 DECEMBER, AD 403
Sweat stung her eyes. Adel tried to blink it clear and watch Tilla’s feet at the same time. Tilla’s toes tensed, signaling a feint. Adel parried the strike and shot past her, spinning and throwing her scutum up to block the next swing. The vibrations from the blow didn’t jar her injury like they used to. She was healing. The relief was as short-lived as the split-second pause before Tilla swung again. Adel blocked it, a shout barely registering over the clatter of wooden blades.
“Cease!Cease!”
They broke apart. Breathing hard, Adel rubbed the back of her sword hand across her cheek and turned to face Ignacio, awaiting what was surely criticism. Instead, he jerked a hand toward the battered pole at the edge of the arena.
“Endurance training for the rest of the afternoon. We’ve got to build your strength back up. Two strikes against thepalus, then raise the scutum over your head. Go.”
She obeyed, trotting to the pole and beginning the pattern Ignacio had ordered. A strike on the right. Backhanded swing on the left. Duck and raise the shield.
Again.
Strike. Strike. Raise.
Strike. Strike. Raise.
She timed her breath, letting her limbs take over the rhythm. Beside her, Ilona struggled to keep the pattern on her own palus. A bandage still wrapped her head from the blow she’d suffered at the Dacian School. Her skin looked nearly gray against her shorn hair, her breath coming in odd huffs.
“Are you all right?” Adel grunted.
Ilona’s eyes slid toward her, and somehow through her, as if she couldn’t quite focus.
“Ilona?”
The woman squeezed her eyes shut and dropped forward against the palus, catching herself on one shoulder. Adel dropped her gladius and bolted to grab her.
“Ignacio!”
The magister was there in seconds, as if he’d noticed Ilona’s decline as quickly as Adel had.
“Help me get her to the medicus.”
Adel shrugged out of her scutum and wrapped her arm around Ilona’s back. Together they shuffled her toward the operating clinic.
“My head...” Ilona gasped. “Like someone... stabbing it.”
“We’ll have you to the medicus in a moment. Keep going.”
Ilona vomited twice before they’d reached the door. Ignacio elbowed it open. “Medicus? This one’s in a bad way.”
Felix was there almost instantly, wiping Ilona’s chin with a rag, clearing a space on the operating table for her to lie down.
“I told you it was too soon to have her training.”
“We can’t waste a day with the Victory Games coming,” Ignacio argued. “She was fine this morning.”
Ilona clutched Adel’s hand in a death grip as Felix drilled Ignacio for details he didn’t know the answer to.
“She looked gray,” Adel volunteered. Felix offered a grateful smile she should not have felt in her chest. “And she fell forward. Her eyes... It was as if she could not see me anymore.”
“Thank you.” He snagged a lamp with a brass mirror to direct the beam of light and gently cupped Ilona’s chin in one hand. “What hurts?” He leaned close, staring into her eyes and flashing the beam of light into them and away.
