Shadow Heart (55 page)

You’ve lost this one,
he heard a voice say in his head...not his own, but his father’s.
It was inevitable you would meet your match. You can’t win them all, son.

“Yes I can,” he whispered. He just had to figure out how.

Whispers began to ring out behind him as his men grew uncomfortable. They had never gone this long without an order from him. Shifting boots warned that some were even ready to flee.

“Grand Admiral Blaine.” The voice startled him, mechanical and inhuman. Movement on the Persian line made his muscles tense, but it was only one man who stepped forward. Derek couldn’t be sure, but he thought it was the same black-clad warrior who had stopped him from shooting Grace Sawyer. Something about the way he carried himself seemed familiar, making Derek wonder if he was also the leader Gentry had marked in that recording.

Derek stepped forward, “You know who I am, I see. I would ask you to show me the same courtesy, but I prefer to find out after you are dead.”

“I’m sure,” the warrior said. “But you will not have that chance, not today. You will withdraw your men from this field of battle. Go back to Alexandria and lick your wounds.” To accentuate his threat, the warrior activated a Spectral Gladius at his side. In response, the rest of the Persian force did the same. The battlefield was once again filled with the song of a Spectral army, only now this one was arrayed against him. He had never fully appreciated the fear that a normal armed force must have felt when faced with a Spectral army. The presence of Spectral Scimitars, as well as Gladii, only made that fear more potent.

But Derek did not have time for fear. How was it that their Spectral weapons worked, while those of both Silent Thunder and the Spectorium did not? Yet another technological advancement? That noise that had destroyed the Halo...he expected a lesser version had done in his Spectral Gladius just a few moments before. It had sounded like an EMP, but that wasn’t possible. The casing of a Spectral Gladius was designed to withstand EMPs.

“This is your last chance, Blaine,” the warrior said. “Order your men to withdraw, or we will stain the ground red with Spectorium blood.”

His mind raced. He had only seconds to figure out how to fight this enemy.
Hit an enemy where he believes he is strongest
, had always been his mantra. The Persians were strongest in their armor, so that was no good. But then, something clicked.
Hit them where they are strongest
... Everyone knew the place of the World System’s greatest strength. It was the foundation behind everything: all their weapons, their infrastructure, their travel. And without it a Spectral Gladius would die and a Halo would crash.

Solithium power.

He grinned, “Respectfully, I must decline your offer. I would offer to let
you
withdraw, but unfortunately for you that’s just not my style.” He unclipped a spare Solithium vial from his belt.

Gentry grabbed his shoulder and whispered vehemently, “Grand Admiral, if you do this it will be a slaughter. We
must
withdraw.”

“Spectorium!” Derek roared in response. “Reload your swords!”

He pressed the button on the base of
Exusia
that released the Solithium chamber and let the useless vial fall to the ground. Then he pushed the new vial into the hilt until it clicked into place. There was never a sound more glorious than that of his Gladius returning to life in his hands, the white light playing across the rubble at his feet.

But he did not have long to rejoice. The enemy force, seeing that he had discovered how to reactivate his blade, launched their charge. Hoping that the men behind him had caught on to his discovery, Derek lifted
Exusia
into the air and commanded his army to do likewise. The thunder of boots behind him was some reassurance, though he knew this would not be anything like the battle with Silent Thunder. That had been a dance. This would be a full-on brawl: ugly, chaotic...brute force against brute force.

The two armies met with a sickening crunch, and men immediately started to die. Spectral Scimitars were slower than a Gladius, he found, but their reach was longer and the blade wider for better defense. He disarmed his first enemy soldier and swung at the man’s chest.
Exusia
ricocheted off the black armor, and Derek nearly dropped it from shock.

Power enough to stop bullets, he understood, but a Spectral Gladius? He had grown so used to it being an all-powerful weapon, he had never even considered the possibility it might not pierce their armor. The warrior took advantage of his shock and punched him in the mouth. Derek recoiled, the force of the blow sending him to his knees. He wiped his mouth, now slick with blood, and raised his eyes just before his opponent’s boot collided with his chin. His head snapped back, and for a moment it seemed the kick had launched him into the air. He landed hard on his back, the wind knocked out of him.

His mind grew foggy as his body tried to send him into unconsciousness, but he summoned what rage he could and shook it off. He had only just regained vision when a flash of white light descended straight toward his face. He twisted his wrist and blocked the Gladius, which his opponent had evidently had time to retrieve, with his own. Then he kicked the warrior behind the knee, forcing him down to the ground.

Derek leapt back to his feet and, ignoring the dizziness, swung hard at the warrior’s neck. Normally it would have lopped the man’s head off, but instead his blade met a wall just an inch from the man’s neck. He didn’t pause this time, but swung again at the man’s back. Still no success. It was like steel upon steel.

The warrior attempted to rise, but Derek rammed him with his shoulder and pushed him completely off-balance. Then, abandoning his Gladius altogether, he lunged at the man, grabbed hold of his helmet, and twisted. The man’s neck snapped and his body fell lifeless to the ground. “Block that,” he whispered, and picked up his Gladius in preparation for the next attacker.

A gold-armored Persian stepped over the body of the Specter he had just slaughtered, smiling as he came, and gave Derek a mock salute with his scimitar. Derek smiled back confidently, despite confidence being the last thing he felt. He couldn’t possibly snap the necks of every warrior on the plain. There had to be some other way.

The Persian came at him, scimitar whirling, and Derek took a defensive stance. He needed time to think, to figure out how he might get around the seemingly invulnerable shield surrounding the Persian’s body. But the Persian didn’t leave him much time for tactical considerations. Skill was not even the proper word for how he handled the scimitar. Derek didn’t even have a word in his vocabulary for the artistic finesse with which the Persian fought. The scimitar was not just an extension of his arm, but of his body, as much a shield as a weapon, an incredible tornado of parries and blows.

No one who came late to the blade could fight like that. This man had likely been trained from the day he could first hold a scimitar.

Think
, Derek urged as he barely dodged the edge of that sinister blade.
It is too late to withdraw now.
He didn’t have to listen to the cries or count the bodies on the ground to know that most were of the Spectorium. Derek was the best fighter among them, and if this is how he had fared he could only imagine what was happening with the rest.

Then, suddenly, it hit him: his analogy of steel upon steel. Both the Persian’s armor and his Spectral Gladius were made of Perfect Light...and just like steel, one might overcome the other with the right application of force.

The Persian’s movements had become lackadaisical—playful, even.
He is mocking me
. Without a doubt, the man was a much better fighter. But skill with the blade wasn’t everything. Derek feinted left, and the Persian swung wide, leaving an opening for Derek to drive
Exusia
straight through his chest.

A high-pitched noise, like metal being ripped, echoed off the buildings as the Persian’s armor gave way. It glowed white at the site where the blade entered the man’s body, and the Persian wore an expression of pure shock.

Derek withdrew the Gladius with another high-pitched rip, and the Persian crumpled to the ground. A few feet beyond him, Gentry stood locked in battle with another scimitar-wielding Persian. Derek advanced quickly and drove his Gladius up to the hilt into the Persian’s back. Gentry stared at him with wide eyes.

“This is no time to fight fair, Specter General,” Derek smiled. “Now let’s go kill some Persians.”

And that was when their enemies began to die.

-X-

“There is a pocket of heavy resistance developing out on the larger road toward the square,” Shahzad said, pulling his scimitar from the body of a fallen Specter. “Many of our men are falling at the hands of Grand Admiral Blaine.”

The black-clad warrior paused and turned his head in that direction.

“Blaine must be dealt with,” Shahzad went on. “If you would like, I can—”

“No,” the black-clad warrior said, holding up a hand. “
I
will deal with him.”

Shahzad's scimitar whirled in the air as he prepared to face more attackers. They were coming in pairs, now, after the fashion of their grand admiral. “As you wish, Commander. This is, after all,
your
party.”

D
EREK PULLED
E
XUSIA
FROM
the chest of another black-armored foe, and in the intervening pause took stock of the battle. The Spectorium had come into the fight with greater numbers, but with their armor the Persians had quickly eliminated that advantage. In the moments since Derek had introduced their new fighting tactic, the tide had turned, but only in their small section of the battle, which by that point had almost shifted all the way back to the city square.

Their killing spree had made the enemy withdraw from them to regroup, which meant there was a hole in the battle surrounding he and Gentry. Not because the Persians were cowards, but because they knew how to win. Once the rest of the Spectorium was defeated, the danger he, Gentry, and their companions posed would also be gone.

Yet still, that didn’t stop some from trying.

One of the black-clad warriors approached, and again Derek felt that spark of recognition. This was the one who had first fallen between him and Grace Sawyer, he was certain of it. And there was something about the way he carried himself, that air of confidence and command, that warned this encounter would be different.

He turned to Gentry and nodded in the newcomer’s direction. Then together the two men raced to meet the shadowy foe. So far they had been successful by catching their enemies in a pincer attack, forcing them to fight one from the front while the other dealt the killing blow from the back.

The warrior met them in the hole their foray had made in the battle, so calm and collected as he entered their domain that Derek, by instinct, put out his hand to signal Gentry to stop. The warrior just kept on walking, and when Derek signaled Gentry again, this time to split and get around the enemy, the warrior still came on calmly. He stepped into the space right between them, looking first to his left, at Gentry, and then to Blaine on his right.

Derek paused for a moment and noted the color of the man’s Gladius: pure crystal, the refracted light giving it the appearance of a very large diamond. Again something tingled at the back of his memory, but he couldn’t quite place it.

“You hesitate, Grand Admiral Blaine,” the warrior spoke in his mechanical voice. “Why, when you have already killed so many?”

“None of your men have come at us this brazenly,” Derek replied. “Just trying to decide if you have some hidden plan or if you are just stupid.”

“You should decide quickly,” the warrior said. “Your men may not survive long without your aid.”

Derek’s gaze shifted to the surrounding battle, where nearly three of the Spectorium were falling for every one Persian. Despite his revelation of the armor’s weakness, there were many who simply could not best their opponent long enough to accomplish the maneuver. Where glancing blows were enough for the enemy, they had to plunge their blades straight through that armor to do any damage. Not the most even of battles.

But the time to order a withdrawal had come and gone. His forces were committed now, to the bitter end. And he had no plans to die here.

He lunged forward,
Exusia
flashing like a bolt of lightning straight at the black-clad warrior’s chest. The warrior knocked Derek’s blade away and turned just in time to avoid Gentry’s equally quick strike from behind.
He’s good
, Derek noted.
We need to be careful...

Derek’s follow-up swing would normally have sliced the man’s arm off at the elbow, but instead his blade ricocheted off the black armor. Derek was forced to duck as the warrior swung at his head and then blocked Gentry’s next blow with his arm.

Interesting
, Derek thought. This man was the first he had fought that truly used the armor to his advantage. The rest had attempted to fight them as any normal swordsman, viewing their armor as a last defense. The warrior used his armor as both weapon and shield, parrying blows as he might have done with a second Gladius.