Forging the Sword (The Farsala Trilogy) (45 page)

Of course they didn’t know, as Soraya did, that Fasal had spent most of the last year teaching men to fight with swords. He might not have gained much skill on the attack, but he could clearly parry with the best of them, and his stamina had to be phenomenal.

Garren had spent the last year sitting in meetings and behind a desk.

For the first time, hope that Fasal might win surged in Soraya’s heart—and as it did, the lightning crashed. It struck in the palace gardens, just the other side of the stands, and people in the nearby sections jumped to their feet and hurried down, seeking lower seats or standing behind the guarded barrier.

Lightning blazed through Soraya’s nerves—not the fire she’d expected, but as if the burning light of the sun had been made solid.

The old terror, the desire to release the storm, to hide from the lightning, seized her—but if she let go, the rain would fall here, too, and Fasal was beginning to maneuver against his experienced opponent.

He too realized that Garren had left the circle deliberately, to gain a chance to breathe. Now Fasal danced around the Hrum officer, still defending, but keeping both of them inside the circle, giving Garren no chance to break out and gain another respite. This was trickier than parrying as Garren pushed him, and the audience cheered.

Soraya could almost hear her father’s steady voice:
Wait. Wait for it.
She wondered if Fasal could hear it too, but that hardly mattered. What mattered was the arc of her will, holding the pouring rain off the field, refusing Garren that advantage.

He was tiring now, his stride not as graceful, as cat-certain, as
before. But when he came to his decision, he showed no sign of it, suddenly leaping to a full attack, his sword surging forward again and again.

Fasal met the attack with parry after parry. His face gleamed with sweat, but it wore an odd, exalted peace, as if he too felt his commander’s presence.

This, Soraya realized, was the duel that should have been fought at the Sendar Wall—only this time Farsala would win!

Another lightning bolt was born of her triumph, and this time it crashed within the flags-and-lances ground. People fled the nearby stands, but Soraya didn’t care. The clouds pressed in on her will, trying to complete the part of their pattern that her will denied them—and Fasal was launching his attack.

He wasn’t as good a swordsman, but he was young, and Garren was visibly tiring. Now it was Garren who pulled back, parrying Fasal’s strokes. He tried to break out of the circle, but Fasal kept turning him back toward the center. Then Garren shouted something and lowered his sword.

Soraya couldn’t hear what he said, but Fasal stepped back, his blade still lifted—his gaze flying to the platform where Kavi no longer stood but crouched on his hands and knees. One of Garren’s guards had placed a foot on the rope that bound his ankles, and Soraya saw another step forward onto the rope between his wrists, pinning him down. Yet another guard drew his sword.

“No!” Soraya’s cry was lost in the great shout that rose from the stands. Lightning crashed in half a dozen places at once.

The thunder swallowed all sound, almost drowning thought as well. But in that instant, when the storm’s violence held everyone frozen, Soraya suddenly realized that Kavi didn’t deserve a traitor’s death, not from anyone. Yes, he’d betrayed the deghans, and the Hrum in turn, but he’d been true to Farsala from beginning to end. Garren was cheat—

Her gaze flew back to the governor just in time. Everyone else was watching the threatened execution, the ruse, up on the dais. Soraya thought she was the only one who saw Garren reach down, grab a handful of sand, and cast it into Fasal’s face.

Fasal had started toward the dais, shouting a protest, even as the senators and the Hrum officers surged to their feet.

He jerked back when the sand struck him, brushing frantically at his eyes, blocking wildly with his sword. It was sheer luck his blade met Garren’s.

The clash of steel drew all eyes back to the circle, and those on the dais—including, Soraya was relieved to see, the executioner—turned to watch the fight once more.

She had lost all control of the storm. Rain was falling, faster and faster, but the storm had already spent most of its strength, and the rain wasn’t thick enough to conceal the two fighters as Fasal leaped back again, still wiping furiously at his eyes.

Garren’s sword swung in, under his guard, slicing through the flesh above one knee, and Fasal cried out and fell.

Soraya watched in numb horror as Garren stepped forward and raised his sword, sweeping it down in a killing strike. But this was no subtle thrust that blurred, streaming eyes might miss. Fasal’s sword swung up to block the stroke—and Garren’s blade shattered.

Somehow, even through the roar of the crowd, she heard the peddler’s shout of triumph. This was the first time a Hrum sword had broken, as so many Farsalan blades had broken at the Sendar Wall, where her father …

Garren will cheat,
Jiaan’s voice whispered in her mind.

Fasal staggered to his feet. Some fragment of Garren’s blade must have nicked him as it flew past; blood streamed from a cut on his jaw, and still more blood darkened the knee of his britches and ran down his boot. Soraya was amazed he could stand, that he could walk at all, as he limped forward.

Garren didn’t back away. He stood, head high, the image of a governor, an officer.

“He’s going to die well,” a woman murmured.

Then Garren lifted one hand and brought it slashing down, and a dozen arrows leaped from the bows of his guards and buried themselves in Fasal’s body.

Garren will cheat. Just as he cheated the last time.

The rest of the crowd screamed. Soraya stood frozen, as Fasal stumbled to his knees, then fell and died. As her father had died.

It wasn’t the Hrum who killed my father.

Some of the townsfolk ran, fleeing the stadium, fleeing the deaths. But after the first moment of shock, most of the crowd surged down from the stands, tumbling onto the field like a human avalanche. Garren had murdered their champion—they would make him pay. They rushed forward, pushing over the barriers, overwhelming the shocked Hrum guards—who in truth weren’t fighting very hard. A flight of arrows arced from the stands, riding the wind, but the storm was all but spent, and they fell short.

It wasn’t Kavi’s betrayal that killed my father.

The senators, the Hrum officers, had drawn their weapons. Some of the senators’ guards were fighting with the governor’s, trying to break into the circle where Garren stood, sword raised, beside Fasal’s body. But most of them, seeing the mob streaming toward the dais, were already forming a perimeter around the senators. Soon all of them would be swept up in that defense, and Garren would escape. Garren …

That bastard killed my father!

Soraya opened her shilshadu and launched her spirit into the storm. Most of its power was spent, its rain fallen, its twisting winds unraveled, but she found one spinning knot of energy and seized it with her mind and will. It wasn’t strong enough on its
own, so she fed it her anger, her hatred, her grief—not only for her father, but for Fasal, for all the damage this Arzhang-possessed man had done. And in the spinning vortex of her fury, lightning was born.

She felt it, distantly, streaming through the nerves of her body, but Soraya was now almost wholly the storm, and she no longer cared if it destroyed her, as long as it destroyed her enemy, as well. She hurtled power earthward, straight at the man whose actions had given so much strength to the energy that formed it. She felt it strike the earth, the blow ringing through her body. When the lightning dissipated, it took her consciousness with it.

S
ORAYA WAS LYING
on the ground, wet sand and grass under her face and hands, rain striking her body. When she opened her eyes, still not thinking, she saw nothing but a pair of muddy boots, and more boots beyond them, running.

“You all right, lass?” a man’s voice asked. A warm hand tightened on her shoulder. “I saw you go down, and that’s no good thing in a mob like this.”

Soraya lifted her head. She was no longer in the stands, but lying on the flags-and-lances field, almost halfway to the dais. She had no idea how she’d gotten there.

“I don’t … I …”

Her whole body tingled and throbbed, as if it held an echo of
the lightning. She also felt bruised, as if she’d been stepped on. She couldn’t see the dais from where she lay.

“What’s happening? Is Garren …? the governor …?”

“Oh, he’s dead.” The savage satisfaction in the man’s voice contrasted with the gentle hands that helped her sit upright. “That lightning bolt near blew him apart. Some are saying Azura himself did it, but some say it was Sorahb Storm-bringer’s last act on his way to greet the god. Either way, we’ve just seen a true miracle—not like the ones the temple used to fake. More than half the crowd took off like rabbits. Can’t say I blame them—it’s a terrifying thing, lightning. Still, that’s no excuse to be knocking a girl down and trampling on her. You want me to take you out of this, lass?”

“No,” said Soraya, pulling herself to her feet. “Get me closer.”

The man looked askance at her, but he wanted to get closer too. At first he almost had to carry her along, but by the time they reached the edge of the crowd around the dais she was walking on her own, strongly enough that he released her shoulder and made no protest when she left him and squirmed into the seething mass of bodies.

Garren’s guards had seized Kavi. He was no longer on the platform but down in the circle, pinned once more on his hands and knees. He was talking to the guards around him, intense, persuasive. But they were looking at the mob that surrounded them, surrounded both the circle and the platform where the Hrum officers stood with swords drawn to protect the senate committee.

Not that swords would do much good against the bows that were now visible scattered throughout the crowd. The lightning strike had thinned the mob considerably, and the people who remained were the ones who meant to fight. All of Jiaan’s archers were now within range. If the Hrum made one wrong move, Fasal’s death would be avenged in the blood of every Hrum present today. But that thought, which once would have pleased her, only made Soraya shudder. She wiggled between two stocky men and caught a glimpse of Garren’s charred, ruptured body.
Revenge enough.

Her searching gaze found Jiaans hard, white face, and she understood why he’d withheld the order to fire. But what now? The attitude of the Hrum guards and officers made it clear that if Hrum blood washed away Sorahb’s, plenty of Farsalan blood would join it—but the crowd, equally clearly, wanted revenge on everyone involved in Garren’s treachery.

One of Garren’s guardsmen looked at the mob’s determined faces and reached the same conclusion she had. “The governor’s last orders!” he cried defiantly. The words would have been meaningless if he hadn’t stepped toward Kavi and drawn his sword.

Kavi stopped arguing and struggled to pull the ropes that held him from under the boots of the Hrum guards, but he wasn’t going to succeed, and everyone could see it. The guard’s sword rose above Kavi’s bare neck. The unarmed crowd surged forward and then back, driven off by Hrum swords. If Kavi fell, they would
probably overwhelm the guard. But Kavi would be dead, others would die too, and Soraya didn’t want more blood, not today. But she had used up all her will and all her weapons—she felt a flash of pure despair.

“Stop!” The voice ringing over the field spoke Faran with an accent, just as it spoke Hrum, but it was a voice trained to command armies in the deafening chaos of battle, and for a moment everyone stopped.

That was all Substrategus Barmael needed to jump from the dais and push his way into the circle, over to Kavi—where he grabbed the would-be executioner’s wrist and took the sword away from him. “Just stop, everyone, and let us think for a moment.”

Kavis whole body sagged with relief, almost falling to the ground. The crowd eased back, but only a bit. Barmael turned, not to them, but to the dais, to the senators who perched there.

“This is futile and you know it,” he said. “We cannot win.”

“Almost a centri of Hrum soldiers against a mob? I beg to differ, sir,” said one of the senators.

The mob growled. It should have sounded silly, but it made the hair on the back of Soraya’s neck stir.

“If you think that,” said Barmael, “it proves you’ve never fought them. But even if we win this fight, in this field, right now, what after that? For we have already lost the war.”

Half a dozen Hrum voices cried out in protest, but Barmael
ignored them. “Yes, the strategus defeated this land’s army—although one city still holds against him, and I don’t think it will fall within the month we have left. But even if Mazad does fall, I ask again, what after that? Strategus Garren has ruled so wrongly that half this land seethes with rebellion. And the rest will join them once this day’s tale is told! How many troops will it take to subdue Farsala now?”

Silence fell as the crowd awaited the committee’s answer. The senators said nothing. The soft creak of pulled bows relaxing lent emphasis to Barmael’s next words.

“We probably couldn’t win free of this field with our lives, but even if we could, there is no point in it.”

“No mob dictates to the Iron Empire!” said one senator. But several faces on the platform had become thoughtful, and Soraya remembered that the committee had its own agenda.

“This isn’t a mob,” said Barmael. “This is the Farsalan army. The new Farsalan army that’s been fighting us, and mostly winning, since the battle at the Sendar Wall. We will not subdue this land in a month—I don’t care how many troops we bring in. It would take years to conquer Farsala, and by the time we finished … even if we won, our victory would cost far more than we’d gain.”

The Hrum’s own law, that conquest must take place within one year, was designed to prevent just that kind of war. The senators were silent.

“Farsala has won this war,” Barmael told them flatly. “It’s not a
matter of us granting their independence—they’ve
taken
it. We can acknowledge that truth and survive this day. Or we can die, knowing that whoever follows us will be forced to acknowledge it in the future.”