Spirit of the Sword: Faith and Virtue (The First Sword Chronicles Book 2)

by Frances Smith

  "Oh, I intend to," Amy said. "But first let me have your name, son of Rosalina, son of Adamo, and I shall give you mine."

  The man hesitated. Eventually he said, "Brennus. The name my father gave me is Brennus."

  "And I am Amitiel Ameliora Doraeus ban Tiralon, daughter of Niccolo, Kn-" the word froze on Amy's tongue. No. Not today. Against this other half-naiad, this mirror to herself, she would fight as she was, not as she wished to be. "Squire to Ser Viola, daughter of Cesare, Knight of Kraken Tower." She glanced back at the others, who had come in behind her. "This is a battle between naiads, let no one else interfere."

  "We shall not, I swear it," Michael said.

  Amy nodded. Then she returned her attention to Brennus as she advanced upon him. "And now, Brennus, son of Adamo, let it begin."

  Amy charged forward, Magnus Alba shining. "Niccolo! Niccolo! Seafire and Kraken Tower!"

  Brennus screamed something in the savage tongue of the Lavissari as he rushed to meet her, raising his giant blade overhead. His positioning was crude, undisciplined. He obviously had no formal training.

  If I lose this fight, Karik will have a fit at my incompetence, Amy thought. On top of all the more serious consequences, of course.

  Of course, Magnus Alba said, a hint of mockery in its tone.

  They swung at each other. Their swords rang, Magnus Alba grating against Brennus' oversized cleaver. Amy grunted as she pushed against him. He was stronger than she was, she could feel it. She wouldn't be able to brute through this one.

  Growling, Brennus hurled his strength against her. Amy retreated, and Brennus pursued in a fury, slashing and hacking against her guard like a wild beast. Amy kept her guard up, feeling each blow send shockwaves down her arms, falling back before his onslaught.

  "Fight back!" Brennus yelled. "Or are you as much of a coward as my mother?"

  Amy turned her parry into a counterattack, hitting Brennus' sword so hard it cracked down the middle.

  "Coward?" Amy snarled. "I'll show you coward you big..." She elbowed him in the face so hard his head snapped back, and then it was her turn to press him as Magnus Alba shone in her hands and she came at him with all the strength and fury of a storm at sea, all the swiftness of a running river.

  It was not enough.

  Brennus was too fast, too strong. She could not break his guard. Every time she got close he would manage to save himself by the skin of his teeth and come back at her, forcing her on the defensive until he made a mistake she could exploit. Their swords pounded against each other over and over again until Amy's arms were starting to ache. Unfortunately, she thought she would tire of the contest of attrition before he did.

  There has to be some way to beat him, Amy thought, as he hammered against her guard like an army battering upon a gate. I have a better blade than he does, I have been better trained. All he has is his brute strength and natural talent. I- Amy grinned beneath her helmet. I reckon I've got better armour than he does, too.

  She lowered her guard as Brennus came at her. "I yield!" she cried. "I yield to the better man."

  "Too late," Brennus roared, bringing his giant sword down upon her shoulder.

  Amy shifted, the sword fell upon her paudron and shattered in two down the crack she had made earlier.

  Brennus gasped in shock as most of his blade fell to the ground. Amy sniggered, and then brought her own sword up in a swing upward into his gut. She cleaved through bronze and iron, through flesh and bone all the way up to his heart.

  Blood fell from Brennus' mouth as he began to cough. "You, you b-" he was interrupted by a coughing fit. "Lord Father will kill you. He'll kill you all."

  "Then we will meet again in Turo's Halls and you may rage at me or we may drink together as you choose," Amy said. "But until then, die well like a son of Adamo."

  Brennus stared at her, and Amy was glad she could not see the hatred she felt sure was in those eyes. "Go to the Black Abyss," he spat. And then his head lolled forward, and Amy knew that he was dead.

  Amy extracted Magnus Alba and wiped it clean as his body collapsed to the ground. "I could have been like that," she said, as Michael came to stand beside her. "If it hadn't been for you and Felix, I might have ended up just like him. So, thank you."

  Michael shook his head. "You could never have been like that man, our Amy. Never."

  "How can you be so sure?"

  "If you had been so cruel and full of distemper, would Felix and I have wasted our time on you?"

  Amy looked at him for a moment. Then, slowly, she began to smile.

  "Come on," Amy said. "Let's keep moving."

  The party advanced. Michael led the way, with Amy a step behind. She seemed taller now, not in height perhaps but in stature. She had been growing ever since Eena, it seemed, filling out her knightly raiment and her garb of war. She was becoming, was become, in fact, a hero after the fashion of the Knights of the Covenant and the bold naiads of old who had come to the aid of Corona. His Amy was turning into a second Ameliora before his very eyes, and his only fear was that she would leave a poor fellow such as he behind.

  "Michael?" Amy asked. "What's the matter?"

  Michael realised with a start that he had been staring just too long. "Nothing," he said quickly, then turned away and continued down the dimly lit corridor. Only one sconce in every five or six bore a torch and only half the torches were lit. It seemed that, though Quirian had possessed the prudence to post a sentry down in the bowels of the palace, he had not seriously expected any assault from that direction. Or perhaps he didn't really care; it must seem to him as though Miranda's power was unassailable.

  Was it? His little sister was presently raining down destruction upon Eternal Pantheia such as had not been seen in the lifetimes of old men, devastation more properly associated with gods than mortals. What was even spirit magic, compared with such power? If she chose to, she could probably turn his bones to ash with a thought.

  She will not, even if she could. Miranda would never become such a monster.

  But I would never have thought she would condemn a whole city to destruction.

  Michael felt a hand upon his shoulder. At first he thought it was Amy, but it turned out to be Lady Silwa who had stolen up behind him while he was unawares and now gazed earnestly into his eyes. "Do not condemn Miranda too soon, she has not yet become a stranger to you, nor does she act from malice or the desire for power."

  Michael frowned slightly. "Then why? Why harm so many, why become an avatar of destruction, why take Quirian's part? Did this dead Empress mean so much to her?"

  "She has lost a friend," Silwa replied. "You know the taste of that, do you not, and how it can twist the mind and warp the soul?"

  Michael nodded, thinking of Tullia and Fiannuala, of the fey spirit and the reckless, selfish grief that had stolen over him in the wake of their loss. He lowered his voice, so no one else could hear. "Tell me true, my lady, can Miranda be saved?"

  "Well that rather depends on you, doesn't it?" Silwa replied. "But, if you doubt it, if you ready yourself to fail, then you will. After your battle with the Voice of Corona, when you were recovering from your injuries, you asked Gideon to trust you, did you not?"

  "I did, ma'am," Michael said.

  "And he did trust you," Silwa continued. "With all that was most precious to him in the world. Now trust yourself. Believe that you can save the Empire without harming Miranda, believe that you can conquer without harming Felix, and you will find a way."

  "I pray to God and the Empress that you are correct, ma'am."

  "Of course I am," Silwa said. "I am a god myself, after all."

  They ascended up from the dark underbelly of the palace and into its sunlit uplands, to where the corridors were clad in marble, decorated with friezes of victories, the walls adorned in topaz and turquoise and painted in purple. To where the floors were decorated with mosaics of lovers, monsters, warriors and princes.

  To where, they soon found, the corridors were choked w
ith so much death and bloodshed that battlefields would blush to be associated with it, the corpses of the fallen pressed so thick together that carrion might eat their fill and still not pick it clean, the blood present in such gallons the floor could not be seen beneath it. Michael could hear Vergillia moaning wordlessly behind him as they all stood, still and silent, and beheld the charnel house before them.

  Most of the dead were guardsmen, or at least so it seemed from their uniforms, what could be seen of them at any rate. The Household troops who were charged with guarding the princes and princesses, the Palace Guard, the Foot Guards and Devoted, other cohorts which Gideon might have recognised but Michael could not. Some of the dead were not soldiers, they wore the simpler garb of slaves or servants, some of them seemed to have died still carrying trays of food or bundles of laundry, scrolls and tablets recording the latest tax revenues or military expenses, the latest list of soldiers dead in the service of the Empire. Little had they guessed that soon a list would be needed to bear their names in turn. Among the dead lay broken spears and shattered shields, fragments of mail rings floated upon the surface of the blood. A few, a very few, of the casualties were armoured but not as guards, instead they wore leather cuirasses in dark tones, their clothes likewise black or close to it. Quirian's own followers, Michael thought, they had the same look of those he had seen at Eena. But there were so few of them, compared to the slaughter they had wreaked.

  "Gods sleeping in the deep," Jason murmured. "This...not even Davidheyr was such a charnel house."

  "You've probably seen battles before but this is a rout," Ascanius said. "These people were on the run, that's the only time you see slaughter like this."

  "Perhaps Lysimachus was right," Julian murmured. "Perhaps this is all our divine punishment for what the Empire did in Oretar."

  "Don't talk like that," Ascanius said harshly. "What we did in Oretar was wrong, gods know, but that's not why this happened. No god has visited this trouble on us."

  No, Michael thought. My sister has. This had to have been the work of Miranda's golems, there was no way Quirian's mortal servants could have done so much damage for so little loss.

  "We must keep moving," Michael said firmly. "The living cannot wait for us to properly respect the dead."

  They moved on, trying not to tread on the dead overmuch, and picking their way between the bodies through the palace corridors. Jason took the lead, having grown up in these corridors however much he had detested them.

  "I knew these people," Jason murmured. "Some of them I liked; most of them I detested. But none of them deserved this fate."

  "I agree, Your Highness, but if a man's fate was within his own choosing then to call it fate would be a nonsense," Michael said.

  Jason was quiet for a moment, the only sound being the squelching of their footsteps through the blood. At last he said, "Your sister has a lot to answer for."

  "And she will answer to God when her time comes," Michael replied.

  Jason snorted. "And what of the laws of men?"

  "Indeed, Your Highness, what of them?" Michael replied. "You have told me with your own tongue how you would choose a world devoid of laws, how you fled to a haven from the law reliant upon the decency of men for its survival."

  "All right then, not the law," Jason said. "What of men's justice?"

  "What of men's mercy?"

  "Where was the mercy shown to these people?" Jason asked.

  "Nowhere, Your Highness," Michael conceded. "But that is more reason to show the difference in our spirit, not less. It is for the immortal powers of heaven, being without sin, to judge the guilty and punish the sinful. It is for men, being sinners all, to forgive the sins of others that we may be forgiven in our turn."

  "Some things cannot, should not be forgiven," Jason muttered.

  Michael changed the subject. "Where are we going, Your Highness?"

  "The Hall of Graces," His Highness replied. "It celebrates the women who illuminated the early history of the Empire with their virtues. The Empress' Quarter of the palace is not far beyond, where the Empress and any princesses are chambered. If Princess Romana is not dead or Quirian's prisoner then she might have retreated there. It is the most logical place to start looking."

  The dead were a little more sparse in this part of the palace, but it still felt like a place choked with death. And then, as they passed by, one of the dead men opened his eyes slowly and moaned in pain.

  Jason gasped, and drew his wand as he pushed past Michael to reach the man's side. "Don't move. Stay where you are, I'm going to help you."

  "I think he's a bit past helping," Ascanius said. "Wounds like that; he's a dead man for sure. It's a wonder he's hanging on as it is."

  "Don't say that," Jason said.

  "A slit throat would be kinder than anything you could do for him," Ascanius said.

  Privately, Michael found himself half agreeing with Ascanius. The man, wearing the uniform of the Household Foot, was sitting against the wall, blood trickling from a large and nasty looking wound to his gut. More than that, his legs had been crushed, turned to paste by some force greater than a smith's hammer. They were bleeding too, as though his legs were like an overfull skin of water which, squeezed too hard in one place, burst in another. That he still drew breath was a miracle, but surely he would not do so much longer.

  "Don't worry, I'm going to patch you up," Jason said, and he began to whisper a spell before the guardsman placed his hands upon the wand and gently pushed it away.

  "That's kind of you, but I'm soldier enough to know a mortal wound when I feel it." His face was neither old nor young, dark hair peeked out from beneath his helmet, and grey eyes swept over the whole party, coming to rest on Amy. "You, you're the one who broke in, aren't you?"

  Amy nodded. "And now I'm back again, for Princess Romana. Is she alive?"

  "She was the last time I saw her," the soldier said. "That was a while ago though."

  Ascanius pushed Jason out of the way and knelt down in front of the dying man. "What's your name, soldier? What company? Emperor's? Princess Romana's?"

  "Neither," he gasped. "Optio Lucius Albinus, Second Company, First Cohort. Prince Antiochus' guard. You...you've served, haven't you? I can see it in your eyes."

  "Sergeant Ascanius Posci Castra, Seventh Legion," Ascanius said. "Optio, eh? A cut above. What happened here, soldier? What's going on?"

  "You're asking me? I just follow my orders," Lucius said. "These orders though...captain said His Highness was going to be Emperor by sunset. He said that everyone who stood in his way would be gone. He said the other guard cohorts were all with him. I was just glad I wasn't one of those picked to help do the deed. The Emperor, the Empress, Lady Romana...”

  "He was going to kill them all," Michael said harshly. "You knew and you did nothing."

  "My job's to guard the prince, I don't have to like what he does, I don't even have to like him," Lucius snapped. "All I know is that something went wrong. The Princess escaped. Then I heard the screaming. Terrible screams. Then these statues, these stone giants appeared, killing everyone. We couldn't touch them. Anyone who surrendered they just killed. And men with them, that bastard Lord Quirian's men. It was one of them who did this to me, before one of those statues stepped on my legs. The lieutenant, he was still yelling that we were the prince's men when one of them ripped his head off and popped it like a grape. I saw men run, heard more screaming, shouting, then I must have passed out; that's all I know."

  "That's plenty," Ascanius said softly. "You did well, soldier."

  Lucius nodded. "Get it over with."

  Ascanius drew his sword, and placed it against the guardsman's chest. "Straight for the heart."

  "I appreciate it."

  Ascanius threw his weight upon the blade and it descended into Lucius' chest. He gasped, coughed, and then breathed no more.

  "The prince was an idiot," Ascanius said. "He got what he deserved, if you ask me. If roasting him was all that Filia M
iranda did she'd hear no complaints from me about it."

  "Very convenient for the princess," Amy observed. "Murdering, treacherous piece of slime he may be, but him being alive would complicate the succession for her."

  "Let us press on," Michael said. "We can do no more good here."

  As they moved off, Michael asked, "Lady Silwa, how many men does Quirian have in his service?"

  "Near two hundred," Silwa said. "Not counting their recent losses."

  "Two hundred men, Ubis and Elyo would you believe it?" Ascanius asked. "The Empire brought to its knees by two hundred men."

  "Not all dangers come from armies," Silwa said. "Some come from whispers in susceptible ears."

  "My question was more driven by the absence of any enemies," Michael said. "We have met only one of Quirian's men so far. Why has he not attempted to guard the palace, does he fear no attack?"

  "Why should it matter to him if you occupy the outer reaches of the palace, he has no use for it," Silwa replied. "I think that once you get close to Miranda you will see that he has kept his strength about her. But, on the other hand, I think you will also find that not all of Quirian's faithful little children are as enthusiastic for the destruction of the Empire as he is. Most of them are, after all, native to this land; they have no cause to hate it as he does."

  "Have they any cause to love it?" Amy asked.

  "Not particularly, but that is not a reason to stand by and watch a city burn," Silwa replied. "I have hope that some, perhaps most, will turn away from such. They are not wicked men, those I came to know in Quirian's house. They are no different from any others you might pass upon the street."

  "They're children," Julian said. "I can't remember a single one of them old enough to grow a beard if he wanted to. Not to mention the girls."

  At last they came to the Hall of Graces, the heavy doors decorated with reliefs of two beautiful women facing outwards, looking towards whoever might approach them.

  Michael raised one hand to halt everyone, and spoke in a hushed whisper. "Quirian may not value possession of the palace, but he will not want Princess Romana to threaten Miranda with a counterattack. Therefore, if Her Highness is in the Empress' Quarter it is very likely that there is some force of the Lost nearby to contain her followers. Make ready."