Spirit of the Sword: Pride and Fury (The First Sword Chronicles Book 1) (78 page)

"Lucilia knows full well just what I am," Tullia murmured. "I told her the truth, though I should not have, that she might think well of me and be proud."

"Is the fact that you are a killer supposed to fill her heart with pride?" mother asked mockingly.

"I. Am. A soldier!" Tullia roared. "In my heart, in my soul, I am as much a warrior as Aegea herself. I have the heart of a wolf and the courage of a unicorn. I am a daughter of Beltor and a handmaiden to Silwa. I am a soldier, and so my back is straight and my head is high. I will never be afraid and I will never be ashamed and
that
is what Lucilia will know of me, that is what she will think of when she thinks of what I am. She will remember that I fought for my pride and my honour and I was never ashamed. She is proud, I hope, to call me her sister; and if, god's willing, she is ever well, then she will have my example before her when she steps out on her path in life.

"I am not ashamed of what I am. There is no road that I would rather walk, no matter where it may lead."

Her mother and father stared blankly at her for a moment. Then...they disappeared.

Tullia relaxed by the tiniest fraction. "I see. It was a trick after all. Forgive me, Highness, I shall delay no further."

Beltor and Silwa keep him safe until I find him,
Tullia thought as she kept on running.

Fiannuala stalked from rooftop to rooftop, bow in one hand and spear in the other. She had strung the bow as soon as she had found herself alone. Her quiver flapped against her leg a little as she moved, but not enough to really impede her.

She had decided very quickly to keep to the rooftops, where the height would offer an advantage in finding her new friends, and where she would be a little safer if this city turned out to be hiding dangers within.

Fiannuala was grateful to the city folk for building their houses so close together that she was able to jump the gaps between them easily, as well for building so many flat roofs. Without those twin blessings she might have had to descend to the street, or try and use wood magic within this place of stone, and neither seemed very attractive to her at the moment.

She hoped all cities weren’t going to turn out like this. Aureliana was wrong to her, she could feel it in her bones. It smelled of death as though the battle had been fought yesterday instead of five hundred years ago. And it was quiet, silent even. Fiannuala had grown up with the sounds of the birds and the beasts and the whispering of the trees and this silence was wrong. All cities couldn’t be like this. They couldn’t, even if they were all built of stone and cut off from the soil. At least there would be life in those places: people, horses, rats. Not this still... lifelessness. It was like some twisted kind of immortality, where instead of living forever one died, but never decayed as the dead were meant to do. Never rejoined the soil, never nurtured a new tree, but simply existed as an old but never rotting corpse, stinking up the world forever. It was wrong.

Something broke the silence. A sound like something moving in the ruins. Footsteps. Fiannuala silently put her spear down upon the roof of the home on which she stood – not only was the roof flat, it had a small barrier around the edge of the roof to stop people falling off – and fitted an arrow to the string of her bow. This was why she had not called out for any of her friends, not because she did not wish to find them but because it was as likely to call peril down upon her as it was to draw their band together. More likely, maybe, depending on how far apart the spell had scattered them. She turned in the direction of the noise, crouched down, bow ready.

Show yourself, whoever you are,
she thought.
Whatever you are.

“You have suffered in my absence, haven’t you, Fia?”

Fiannuala spun around at the sound from behind her, drawing her bow taut. Fiannuala saw who had spoken and her eyes widened. “I don’t know who you are, but you stop looking like that right now!”

An image of her mother stood before her, shimmering in a breeze that did not exist. It looked like her, plucked exactly from Fiannuala’s memories: the skin gracefully turning to yellow, the hair of ash black, the golden eyes. The exactness of the resemblance was probably what maddened Fiannuala most.

“Did you hear me?” Fiannuala roared, and be damned to who heard her. “Drop that image, now!”

“What are you talking about, Fia?” the impostor asked. “I’m your mother.”

Fiannuala shot her right between the eyes. “My mother is dead,” Fia snarled. “She’s dead and she isn’t coming back. And you think that you can wear her appearance like a costume? You think you can fool me? Who do you think you are?”

The impostor laughed, unfazed by the arrow between her eyes. “I’m the product of your memories, Fiannuala. I’m created out of your mind. I’m only here because of you.”

“Shut up!” Fiannuala yelled. “I don’t care who or what you are, you’ve no right to look like my mother like this.”

The impostor cocked her head to one side. “You know I always did prefer Cati to you-“

Fiannuala bellowed like an angry bull as she fired another arrow, then another, then another. The impostor staggered backwards as three arrows sprouted from her chest and shoulders. Fia dropped her bow and snatched up her spear as she charged forward, yelling, hurling herself at the liar wearing her mother’s form before she recovered. The impostor tried to retreat, but Fiannuala was too fast. She slammed the spear-butt into the impostor’s stomach, making her double over, then drove the point through the neck of whatever had dared to assume her mother’s form.

“I don’t…” coughed the fake. “How could you kill your own mother?”

Fiannuala’s lip curled into a sneer. “If you were really my mother, I wouldn’t have been able to.”

The impostor twisted her mother’s face into a snarl, but no words came out. Then she was gone.

"What was that? I heard a woman shouting."

"Metella, is that you? Is Lord Father with you?"

"Metella doesn't yell," the first man replied.

"She yelled loud enough when Lysimachus looked to have killed captain Lucifer," a woman said. "Maybe the captain's dying now?"

"More likely it's Cressida or Olympia or someone who does like to raise their voice," the first man said irritably. "Whoever it was come out, we know you're there."

Fiannuala dropper her spear with a clatter as she ran for her bow. It was still strung, and she snatched an arrow from her quiver as she dashed to the edge of the rooftop. She could see five people down below: three men, two women, all of them armed and armoured.

"Up there!" shouted the man who had thought she might be this Metella person who hardly yelled. He pointed up at her with one of his long arms. "That isn't-"

Fiannuala loosed her arrow, taking him in the shoulder. He spun around, crying out in pain as he collapsed to the ground.

"Get her!" the first man yelled.

Fiannuala leapt off the roof as two fireballs streaked towards her, her bound carrying her to the next roof along. She turned, loosing off another arrow before she ran onwards, dodging another fireball that leapt up into the sky. She was not rewarded by a cry of pain, but if she kept on loosing then she would make them keep their heads down.

She reached the edge of the roof and grinned as she leaned over the edge to shoot again at the pursuing warriors. She hit one of the women, in the eye this time, before leaping over to the next rooftop.

"Arus, Lord of Fire," the first man she had heard cried out. "Let the fire erupt around her!"

The building Fia was leaping to exploded in a flash of heat and light. Fiannuala flung up her arms to cover her face as her bow and spear were snatched away from her. Heat washed over her, making her cringe in pain as she was borne backwards by the blast, slamming into the wall of the house she had just jumped off with a crack. It felt worse than the time she had fallen while climbing the great tree and landed on her head; it hurt so much that she cried out in pain. Groaning, Fiannuala slid down the wall to the ground, landing with a thud and another moan of pain. She sat there for a moment, wincing softly, before a loud warcry recalled her to her more immediate predicament.

A warrior charged at her, a sword held in two hands, his chainmail shifting on his shoulders, slashing down at her wildly. Fia rolled out of the way, scrambling to her feet as she looked for her spear. Her foe kept yelling as he pursued her, still slashing wildly in every direction.

"Princess Fiannuala!" Michael shouted as he appeared from out of one of the side alleys, rushing bodily into her opponent and bearing him into the wall where he ran him straight through his mail with the drake-forged blade Fia had given him.

The remaining woman of the diminishing enemy group shrieked, throwing fireballs in their direction, but Fia picked up a stone off the ground and threw it at her, striking her on the head and knocking her to the ground.

Only the sorcerer remained, the same sorcerer who had blown up the building. He pointed his staff at Michael, but as he opened his mouth to speak, instead of words a cry of pain emerged, and he crumpled to the ground.

Tullia stood behind him, her hand bloody and wreathed in lightning.

"Sorry I'm late," she murmured.

Michael smiled. “Filia Tullia. We are right glad to see you safe from harm.”

Tullia smiled back out of one corner of her mouth. “I am glad to find you well also. Have you seen His Highness?”

“I regret, ma’am, we have not,” Michael replied.

“Then we must find him,” Tullia said. “And swiftly.”

Michael nodded. “And swifter still since there are enemies within these walls.”

Tullia nodded. “Do you know who these people are?”

"Quirian's men," Michael said. "I caught one of them alone, and he told me that they are here escorting Quirian in person. We must be wary."

“Be wary?” Fiannuala said. “He’s our enemy, if we have the chance to put him in the ground we should take it.”

“He is skilled and experienced,” Michael said. “A match for Gideon, perhaps. I would prefer not to engage him until the entire company is united.”

“We all joined together to fight,” Fiannuala insisted. “And I’m not going to run from a battle just because Amy isn’t here. It would be shameful for us to turn our backs and run for help.”

“If it is the price of victory then I will bear a little humiliation,” Tullia said. “Though I confess that flight sits ill with me, my priority must be to find His Highness.”

“Once Quirian’s dead we can find him at our leisure,” Fiannuala said.

“Our first task must be to reunite with our companions,” Michael said. “We will not seek battle, but nor will we avoid it if the conditions favour us. I understand the demands of a warrior’s pride and a warrior’s code, highness, but we would be fools to seek an unequal contest when we can wait and confront our foe together.”

“All right,” Fiannuala muttered. “But it isn’t very gallant, is it?”

“We are not, when all is said and done, warriors answerable only to a code of our device,” Tullia said. “We are soldiers, and though our pride may be precious to us all it cannot be so precious as a victory.”

Fiannuala nodded in agreement despite a somewhat clenched jaw.

“Then let us go,” Michael said. “With good fortune, as we have found each other so will our dear friends too have come together in shared strength. Were it not the case that there are enemies about I would have you, Filia Tullia, loose lightning into the sky to let them known of our position.”

“Sorcery would be better for that,” Fiannuala said. “If I fire off an Ultimate Spear straight up they’ll see it all over the city.”

“In view of our circumstances, that is probably an argument for not doing it,” Tullia said. “Which way do we go?”

“It would be strange if, having scattered us, the magic of this place deposited us all towards the same eastern corner of the city. Therefore we should head west, and if we can gain a high landmark see if we can spy the others from there.” He gestured with his sword towards a half-ruined temple, topped with a golden statue of a winged warrior. “That is the temple of Cupas, if mine eyes deceive me not. The blade is not there, it has been hidden in Silwa’s temple, but that high tower will give us good vantage point.”

“Do we risk leaving the sword where it lies until we have found the others?” Tullia asked.

“I think so,” Michael said. “If Quirian obtains it first, then we will cut him off before he can escape and lay him low, the seven of us. Now, we should be off.”

“And may the gods speed our feet,” Tullia murmured.

They moved through streets empty and abandoned; the houses dark and shrouded, their open doors like mouths opening to tempt the unwary and devour them.

“You know what the worst thing about this is?” Fiannuala asked. “There’s no wood around here, I can’t use my magic at all.”

“You really believe that is the worst part of our situation?” Tullia asked sceptically.

“Well, it’s all right for you, isn’t it, you can create lightning out of nothing,” Fiannuala replied.

“I meant that the worst part of our predicament must surely be our absence of information about the others,” Tullia said.