He got up, bruises screaming.
Mars threw away his buckler, too, in a fit of fairness that had Ban sneering.
“Was it kind or sporting, what I did to you, Mars?”
“I am not like you,” the king answered.
Ban laughed wildly, choking on it. “You could never be!” His vision swam; he staggered and barely caught himself. He’d taken a knock to the temple; he couldn’t recount when, but the throbbing, the blood sticking down his jaw, was proof.
Both men fell silent and still, but for their heaving shoulders. A crow called, laughing as only crows laugh.
“I loved you,” Mars finally said, bleakly.
“And I you,” Ban answered.
The king scoffed. Tears or sweat streaked his bare, handsome cheeks.
“It was not you that I meant…” Ban shook his head. It did not matter; Ban could not defend his heart. There was nothing to say, no value in it or truth, anyway. “Again?” he offered instead, raising his whispering sword.
It would be the end, he knew; shieldless, he did not stand a chance.
“Surrender, Ban,” Elia called from the edge of the spectator circle. “Give in. Please.”
Ban did not even glance at her; he couldn’t. He attacked once more, with a cry.
He was finished, hurt, and so there was no surprise when Mars batted him away easily. Ban kicked, grabbed at Mars’s sword arm, then spun and shoved his shoulder into the king’s back. Mars went down, caught himself and rolled, and Ban chased after, sword raised. Mars lifted his legs in order to kick Ban away with hard boot strikes. Ban dodged, and stabbed, but shifted at the last moment, penetrating mail, but only to skim Mars’s ribs.
Blood flowed, and Ban couldn’t see through his sudden wash of furious tears.
He lurched away. He should surrender. He could stop. Especially if he refused to win this fight! If Ban couldn’t bring himself to take the kill strike, he should give in.
But no. No. He was Ban the Fox, soldier, spy, and little else. He would die here, on this battlefield.
With a terrible groan, Ban attacked again. They engaged, and Mars threw Ban back, slicing his sword in a glorious arc that caught Ban’s arm.
The limb shocked into hot pain, then numbness.
Ban tried to clutch at it, but his fingers stuck too tight around his sword,melded in pain to his aching arm. The Fox swung again, but it was slow, so slow. His sword hissed furiously.
Amazement, and something like peace, blossomed in Ban’s heart when, at last, Mars’s sword found its mark.
The blade slid into Ban’s flesh over his heart and just below his left shoulder, a rod of lightning through his body. Blood burst down his chest, soaking even his back. Mars jumped forward, dropped his sword, and grabbed his Fox against him.
They fell together to their knees; Ban’s name on the king’s bloody lips.
Ban heard nothing else, only his name, again and again. He opened his mouth to say—nothing.
There was nothing.
He thought,
here I am at last.
REGAN
REGANLEAR TURNEDaway from the battle and walked north toward the White Forest.
Always, always she had been the second daughter of Lear. Gaela’s younger sister. The middle, the princess, not the heir, because her glorious older sister would rule. Regan was the pillar for Gaela’s wounded, raging heart, a web of iron roots dug deep into the earth of Innis Lear to hold Gaela high.
