Sarah had chosen a naginata, a Japanese polearm whose steel blade had been blunted and wrapped with leather strips coated in phosphoroil. The wooden gladius Max was using was considerably shorter. With Sarah’s catlike quickness and balance, it was challenging to get within ten feet of her. Whenever he darted in to attack, he found Sarah’s blade waiting—poised and ready in her skilled hands.
But Max was skilled, too, and experience had taught him patience.
“Are you giving your best?” Sarah panted, laboring to ward off another attack. Despite her conditioning, she was growing fatigued. At last Max saw an opening. Feinting a lunge to the left, he spun around on his heel and rapped her sharply across the knuckles with the gladius. Hissing with pain, Sarah dropped the weapon. Snatching it out of the air, Max swept her legs out from beneath her. With a thud, Sarah fell onto her back, the gladius poised at her throat.
Breathing heavily, she glowered at him. “So you’ve just been playing with me.”
“Not at all,” said Max, helping her up. “You’re just tired. Your initial attack was excellent—legitimately superb—but you expended almost all of your energy. An experienced opponent will play possum and let you wear yourself out. Focus on your breathing, Sarah. Don’t think of me as an adversary; think of me as a puzzle. Find the patterns and solve the puzzle. If you haven’t spent all your energy, you’ll be able to capitalize when opportunities arise. Your problem isn’t your skill or strength; you have both in spades. Your problem is pacing.…”
“Go on,” said Sarah, catching a towel tossed by one of the Second Years. “You were going to say something else.”
“Well, it’s more than pacing,” Max finally conceded. “You’re afraid to actually hit me.”
Sarah laughed and tossed the towel at him. “Of course I am! Who wants to ruin that face?”
“I’m serious,” Max replied. “You have all the skill in the world, but you strike at your target when you should be striking through it. You’re holding back because you’re afraid you’ll hurt someone. That’s a habit that will get you killed. In the Kingdoms, they play for keeps.”
“That’s what I keep telling her,” Rolf called out, sounding superior.
“Hmm,” said Sarah, pivoting on her heel. “Seems like someone’s forgetting that I’ve beaten him the last five matches. And since when have you been in the Kingdoms?”
Rolf reddened but cracked a reluctant smile as the Second Years began to needle him. But another voice broke in, rough and raw. Max turned to see the tough-looking youth from before. He and his friends had gathered around one end of the pit and were looking down at them.
“I been in the Kingdoms,” he said, a grim smile on his face as he leaned on a battered broadsword. “Ain’t no ‘tap-tap-I-scored-a-point’ nonsense there. You’d be in a vye’s belly, sweets. Now get outta my pit.”
He spat, the gob landing inches from Sarah’s boot.
Max walked across the pit.
“Careful, Ajax,” warned one of the boy’s companions. “He’s in the Red Branch.”
“Red Branch?” the spitter scoffed. “I hear two of them’s gone missing. Nothing so special about them—not even this one. Shoot, I just watched ’im fight. He’s good, but rumor’s always better than the real thing, isn’t it? Umbra’d have his teeth for a necklace. And if he don’t get outta my pit, she will.”
As Ajax said this, a dark figure stepped to the edge of the pit and looked down at Max. Umbra wore leather armor sewn together from mismatched pieces she’d evidently scavenged or stolen. She clutched an infantry spear whose nicked, oiled blade gleamed razor-sharp in the firelight. Thick, wild tangles of black hair hung about her head, shadowing her features until she brushed it aside to reveal the tanned skin and chiseled features of an Inuit girl. Umbra was no older than Max. Her black eyes stared at him, hard as iron.
Max met and held her gaze before flicking his attention back to Ajax.
“No one’s taking my teeth,” he said quietly. “And you’ve got ten seconds to tell me what the problem is before I take yours.”
Tension saturated the air, that almost tangible, sickly calm that often preceded a fight. Rolf hurried around the pit toward Ajax and the other refugees.
“Everyone relax,” he pleaded. “This is stupid—we’re all on the same side!”
“Sure we are,” Ajax jeered. “That’s why you’re wearing new boots but I can almost see my toes. Shut your mouth before you get the beating of your life. Think your little pupils will look up to you then, Blondie?”
Rolf stopped in midstride and looked imploringly at Max and Sarah.
“I’m still waiting,” said Max calmly.
Ajax glared at him. “Two years ago, a brayma took the last of my sisters,” he said. “Thought it was all over, but then someone told me ’bout this place. So I cut loose and clawed my way here—eight thousand miles through two kingdoms. And what’s my welcome? I get to sleep in a tent and gobble down slop while you feast like lords in your marble Manse. Shoot, I can handle that. But what I can’t goddamn stomach is the idea that I gotta step aside for a bunch of bookworm sissies whenever they decide to go slumming. I’ll be dead and buried ’fore I let that happen. We ain’t just dregs and driftwood.”
Ajax’s expression was defiant. By the time he’d finished, he was breathing hard, exhaling frosty gusts that scattered on the breeze. Max smiled.
“Sarah … meet your new training partner.”
“What?” she exclaimed. “I don’t need him!”
“He is exactly what you need,” Max said, climbing out of the sparring pit. Walking around the pit’s perimeter, he approached the refugees. When Umbra stepped in front of Ajax, Max stopped and held up his hands.
“What you say is fair,” he acknowledged. “It’s not right that you’re living this way and have to step aside for us whenever we please. Rowan can do better and will. Its students have a lot to learn from you, Ajax. If I can get you better food and equipment, will you and your friends help train our students?”
The boy blinked. Anger gave way to confused surprise. Ajax glanced at his comrades, who offered noncommittal shrugs.
“Sure,” he grunted, turning back to Max. “I guess we could do that. Once you make good.”
“I’ll make good—you have my word. I’m Max McDaniels.”
Ajax’s dour, battle-scarred face broke out in a rogue’s grin.
“Hell,” he laughed, “we know who you are. Looks like you’re off the hook, Umbra.”
With an almost imperceptible nod, Umbra stood aside. The conflict averted, Max called over Sarah, Rolf, and the Second Years while Ajax introduced him to the rest of his motley troop. However, even as Sarah and the others came up behind him, Max sensed that something was amiss with Umbra. The girl had never relaxed her grip on her spear; her dark, inscrutable eyes remained fixed on him with unsettling intensity. She reminded Max of a viper, coiled and lethal. He casually shifted his hand to the pommel of the gae bolga. Behind him, Rolf laughed.
“Everyone friends now?” he inquired, clasping Max’s shoulder.
In a blur, Umbra struck.
Her spear caught Rolf squarely in the throat, its impact so sudden and savage that he barely gasped. Max knew his friend was dead even before he staggered back and collapsed into his students. The Second Years didn’t even seem to realize what had happened until they saw the blood. Then they screamed.
Max had already drawn his sword. The gae bolga hummed greedily, its blade vibrating like a tuning fork, tasting the air for the first time since Walpurgisnacht. Umbra retreated a step, but her fierce eyes never left Max.
“He meant you harm.”
She spoke these words with such calm conviction that Max held his attack. The girl was either utterly insane or … Backing slowly beyond the lethal reach of her spear, he glanced down at Rolf. The boy’s eyes were already blank; his lips were parted on the verge of a scream that had never come. His entire throat was an open wound that gleamed wet and black in the moonlight.