“We need to take risks!” Timothy said. “How else are a thousand of us going to fight tens of thousands of enemies? Or more?”
Bannon didn’t have an answer for that, so instead, he just fought harder.
A man’s voice spoke out from the arched entry at the edge of the arena. “I brought two more for you to train.”
Genda whistled again, and the fighting stuttered to a halt. The grunts, clangs, and clatters faded into heaving breaths, coughs, and groans of pain.
Lord Oron nudged two young men ahead of him. “My son Brock and his friend Jed will do their duty to fight for Ildakar. Lady Olgya and I have encouraged them to volunteer for the upcoming offensive.”
Bannon wiped sweat from his face as he stared at the once-haughty young men. He wondered if his harsh words in the skinning house had had any effect on them. They wore colorful silk jerkins sashed at the waist, Brock dressed in crimson, Jed in forest green. Both wore black pantaloons and polished boots, and each carried a gleaming sword, fresh from the city armory. Clearly, the weapons had never been used in battle or even practice.
As the trainees looked at them, a few snickered or muttered. Jed and Brock stumbled forward, uncertain. Brock turned back to his father. “But we’re gifted. We should be testing our skills in magic. Train us!”
“You could have been doing that all these years,” Oron said, “but it’s also good to learn how to fight for yourselves.” With a brusque gesture, he forced them to join the other sweaty trainees.
Lila came forward. “Those two should strip down if they intend to fight. This isn’t a pleasure party or a banquet, and we wouldn’t want to stain those fine silks.”
Oron made no move to join the two newcomers on the training field. “These new silks might protect them. Jed’s mother says the fabric may be impervious to blows.” He frowned at the boys, showing his impatience. “Jed and Brock are pleased to test the garments against your weapons.”
The two young men fidgeted nervously.
Bannon nudged Timothy, and he and the young yaxen herder went to meet the pair. “We’ll train with Jed and Brock, and we’ll go easy on them for now.”
The two young nobles responded with arrogance, as if Bannon and the young scamp were far beneath them.
“Oh, show them no mercy,” Oron said with an iron smile. “General Utros certainly won’t.” The lord tossed his yellow braid behind him as he stalked out of the arena.
Bannon and Timothy faced the newcomers, who drew their pristine swords. Genda let out her shrill whistle again, and the fighting commenced.
When Bannon met the nervous gaze of Jed and Brock, he remembered how he’d berated them for what they had done to him, but he doubted his words had changed their attitude. Brock and Jed certainly hadn’t apologized to him.
“We’re all on the same side now, Bannon Farmer,” Jed said grudgingly, “for Ildakar.”
Brock added, “If we defeat General Utros, then you and your friends can leave. It can’t be too soon for me.”
“I would like nothing more than that,” Bannon said. He was genuinely tired of this legendary city.
“Enough talk!” Timothy ran forward, swinging his sword and startling Brock, who reeled back. He tried to bring up his own blade in defense, but the scamp was too wild. Timothy’s sword struck Brock on the left biceps, and Bannon feared he would cleave the young noble’s arm right off with the first blow, but the silk fabric held like tough, fine chain mail. Even so, the hard blow elicited a scream from Brock, who staggered away clutching his bruised arm. Timothy drove in for the kill, looking as if he meant it.
Jed ran to defend his friend, intercepting the yaxen herder. Bannon and the scamp fought together, testing the two nobles as they regained their footing and helped each other.
“This isn’t how I wanted to fight,” Jed whined.
“I’ve seen you fight,” Bannon said bitterly. “You went out to smash the faces of statue soldiers who couldn’t even move.”
Still wincing, barely able to bend his bruised arm, Brock said, “We damaged hundreds of them, and that’s hundreds more enemy soldiers than you fought, Bannon Farmer.”
“We should have destroyed thousands more,” Jed said.
“I’ll grant you that, but now you have to stand against soldiers who can actually fight back.”
CHAPTER 30
Slogging through the muck, her skin covered with insect bites and slime, Adessa used her dagger to hack at a thorn vine that hung in her path. The plant’s tendrils recoiled when her blade severed them, leaking greenish sap, like blood. These mindless hazards kept her from her real prey, Wizard Commander Maxim.
One of the thorn vines actively slashed at her like a whip. The sharp spines glistened with diamondlike drops of venom. One of the thorns caught Adessa on the arm, slicing across her skin, and she whirled and slashed once, twice, severing the tentacle from its base and letting the twitching tendril fall into the muddy swamp beside her.
She looked at the scratch and saw that her skin was already inflamed. Without hesitation, she used the dagger to slice her own arm, turning the scratch into a profusely bleeding cut. She squeezed and milked it to make the flowing blood flush out the poison. She sheathed the dagger and now used her sword to chop away the rest of the attacking vines, then pressed forward, following Maxim’s faint trail.
She had confronted him only once, that night at his camp when he’d distracted her with magic and left her to fight a pair of swamp dragons. While Maxim vanished into the wilderness, she battled the large lizards for half an hour before finally dispatching them. She hadn’t found him again since.
Now Adessa’s work would be more difficult, because he knew that Thora had sent her on this mission to kill him, and he knew how deadly the morazeth were, especially her.
As she searched for his trail, she pondered what her sisters were doing back in Ildakar. She assumed they had quelled the unrest and saved the sovrena. Adessa had faith in them, and she would worry about her own task. When she brought back the wizard commander’s head, she would once again concern herself with Ildakar.
Alert for more attacking vines, she picked her way through the swamp, studying broken twigs, crushed grasses, old footprints in the soft muck. She knew Maxim was a day or more ahead of her. Fortunately for Adessa, even though he was a powerful wizard, the man was not particularly good at covering his tracks.
She continued, cautious in the hazy light that penetrated the leaves overhead. She didn’t want her scorn for Maxim to let her make mistakes. Yesterday, she had gotten off on a wrong trail and followed what turned out to be a young black bear, which had bolted into the underbrush. She realized that Maxim had gone a different direction entirely. Several wasted hours later, she finally found where she’d gone astray. Now she was after him again. She moved along, eyes to the ground, scanning around her for spiderwebs, attacking vines, or swamp dragons lying in wait.
Back in the city, Maxim had been an aloof man. Despite his rank, he treated Ildakar with disrespect, and now Adessa knew that Maxim was Mirrormask, a traitor who had fomented the rebellion among the slaves, causing untold harm to the city. Even without the sovrena’s orders, Adessa was convinced that the wizard commander had to die for his crimes.
She was devoted to Ildakar and always had been. Adessa had been born centuries after the shroud of eternity was put in place, and she had grown up hearing legends of outside enemies, but never seeing any threat beyond the unrest within Ildakar itself.
As a girl, Adessa had shown great physical prowess in rough-and-tumble games that nobles watched for amusement. She had been recruited by three morazeth who came to her parents’ home one day and paid them gold from the Ildakaran treasury. More importantly, they convinced Adessa’s mother and father, and the girl herself, that joining them was the greatest honor their beloved city could bestow. Agreeing wholeheartedly, Adessa promised to become the best morazeth Ildakar had known, but her father had chastised her for bragging. “You don’t have to be the best. Being a morazeth is enough.”