Chapter 77

Chapter 77: Chapter 77

The groundskeepers had spent an hour before sunrise shoveling Friday’s snow out of Pit One and throwing down ten wheelbarrows of coarse grey rock salt over the frozen clay so nobody would slip and impale themselves on a live point.

When I stepped out to the edge of the sand at nine-fifty to test the footing, the salt crunched under my boot heels like crushed snail shells, turning the top half-inch of yellow dirt into cold, gritty slush.

Back inside the western tunnel, Master Bram wasn’t heating pitch today. He was sitting on his nail keg with a leather roll of surgical needles and catgut thread laid out on a clean towel beside his whetstone, just in case the field healers on the north wall got backed up.

"Let me see the wrist," Bram said as I walked back inside.

I held out my right hand. Under the dark leather gauntlet, Madam Sorrel’s resin-soaked linen wrap had dried overnight into a hard, stiff cuff that kept my wrist from bending backward more than ten degrees. It kept the bruised tendon over my middle knuckle from popping when I closed my fist, though it made turning my wrist for an inside parry feel like trying to twist a wooden broom handle.

Bram tapped the knuckle of my gauntlet with his iron caliper, then checked the brass wire guard he had wired over the hilt of Nia’s shortened boar-spear. Because we were using live steel today, he had unscrewed the blunt wooden practice head off her shaft and pinned on a six-inch leaf-shaped blade of grey border steel—sharp along the edges, with a wide iron crossbar welded two inches behind the tip so the point couldn’t sink deep enough into a chest to hit a lung.

"Understand the live-steel bracket rules before you walk out there," Bram told the four of us, looking mostly at Luckas and me. "This isn’t a border ditch. Four senior wardens are standing on the chalk line. If you open a cut across a man’s torso, thigh, or upper arm deep enough to soak through his wool gambeson, the warden blows the whistle and pulls that man out on a first-blood call. You disarm him, he’s out. You pin both his shoulders for a three-count, he’s out. You stab somebody through the throat or the eye because you got greedy, Corvus puts you in irons before noon and ships you to the salt mines. Clear?"

"Clear," I said, resting my hand on the leather-wrapped pommel of my own runic bastard sword. Having the real steel back across my shoulders after a week of swinging dead four-pound tournament bars felt like taking off lead boots.

"Don’t try to trade clean sword-work with Gentrimio," Bram added, squinting up at me through his spectacles. "The boy has been taking private lessons from the Grand Swordsman of the Capital since he was six years old, and his core runs hotter than my forge flue. If you stay at long measure and let him fence with you, he’ll nick your sword arm inside thirty seconds and let the judges call you out on blood."

"I don’t fence, Master Bram," I said.

"Good," the old man grunted, picking up his whetstone again. "Go make a mess."

Outside, the ten-o’clock bell began to toll from the high spire of Antiquity—ten slow, heavy strokes that vibrated through the stone arches over our heads.

Every single seat in the amphitheater was full. Up in the northern gallery, Duke Ramiro of Sospurro sat at the front rail in his sable-trimmed velvet coat, flanked by sixteen foreign captains in sky-blue wool and twenty Imperial generals wearing the crimson collars of the War Ministry. Even the roofs of the surrounding locker buildings had third- and fourth-year cadets sitting along the slate shingles with their boots dangling over the eaves because the bleachers had run out of standing room at eight-thirty.

Across the sixty-foot circle of salted mud, Squad One walked out of the eastern gate.

Aurio Gentrimio wasn’t wearing his crimson Student Council coat. He wore a close-fitting fourth-year combat gambeson of quilted black linen buckled with silver links, steel knee-cops over his riding boots, and no helmet—his blonde hair tied back at the nape of his neck with a simple leather thong. In his right hand he carried a forty-two-inch longsword of pale Damascus steel with a plain gold crossguard.

To his left stood Valen Dross—Rank Eight, carrying a heavy steel-rimmed kite shield and a broad-bladed arming sword. To his right stood Corbin Vane—Rank Six, holding an eight-foot ash long-spear with a bright steel point—and on the far wing stood Cassia Thorne, Rank Nine, spinning a pair of slightly curved cavalry sabers in her gloved hands.

We walked out to the western chalk line and took our places: me in the center right across from Aurio, Luckas to my right facing Dross, and Nia and Kaelen on my left opposite Vane and Thorne.

Thirty feet away, Aurio raised his pale longsword in a crisp, polite salute toward the War Ministry box, then lowered the blade and looked straight across the grey slush at me.

"Good morning,Squad Seven," Aurio said, his voice warm and unhurried in the cold air. "I hope the wrist is feeling better today, Elvit. Seraphina told me you caught her estoc bare-handed."

"Had a glove on," I called back, drawing my dark runic bastard sword from my back scabbard with a long, dry rasp of steel. "Don’t worry about my hand, Representative."

"I always worry about my fellow students," Aurio smiled faintly, settling his back boot into the salted clay as the four corner wardens—all retired legion captains with heavy iron-shod staves—stepped up to the chalk perimeter. "Let’s give the Ministry a clean match."

The head warden raised the red linen flag between us.

"Championship Final! Live steel rules!" the warden bellowed, his voice echoing off the stone tiers. "First blood on the cloth, disarm, or pin eliminates a combatant! Two eliminations decide the first-place warrant! Guard yourselves—Fight!"

The flag snapped down.

"Together!" I barked.

We didn’t split into two pairs the way we had against Seraphina. If we gave four Top Ten rankers room to spread out across sixty feet of sand, Cassia Thorne’s sabers and Corbin Vane’s long-spear would cut our flanks to ribbons in under a minute.

All four of us charged straight down the center-left chute in a tight four-man diamond, heading directly for Corbin Vane and Cassia Thorne to force the whole fight into a twenty-foot mud patch where their reach wouldn’t help them.

Aurio saw the play immediately.

He didn’t stay on his side of the ring. He crossed behind Valen Dross’s kite shield in three blindingly fast strides, cutting straight across our front angle to intercept me before I could reach Corbin Vane’s spear shaft.

Ten feet before our blades met, the heat coming off Aurio’s shoulders hit my face.

It wasn’t like Luckas’s orange fire at all. There were no sparks and no flames—just a sudden, suffocating wall of dry, golden heat that smelled like hot brass and sun-baked stone. The salted slush around Aurio’s boots didn’t hiss into steam; it simply vanished into dry white salt crust as he stepped on it, and the air for three feet around his body shimmered and wobbled like the horizon over a desert road in August.

Aurio swung his pale Damascus longsword in a fast, rising cut aimed at my right forearm—a textbook tournament opener meant to slice through my leather sleeve, draw three drops of blood on the linen underneath, and let the corner warden blow me out of the match without breaking a bone.

I pushed a surge of heat into my sky-runes—making the dark steel hiss with blue static—and brought my crossguard down to catch his edge six inches in front of my wrist.

Clang!

My blade didn’t hit the middle of his sword where my eyes told me it was.

Because the dense heat shimmering around his steel bent the morning light by half an inch, his edge was actually an inch higher than it looked. Instead of catching his blade squarely on my crossguard, his sharp steel skated off the tip of my side-ring and sliced cleanly through the top leather strap of my right bracer, biting a quarter-inch deep into the wool padding underneath before I jerked my elbow back.

No blood—the boiled leather took the edge—though the cut strap flapped loose around my wrist.

I opened the Rune of Antiquity under my sleeve, letting a sharp needle of cold starlight into my right eye to map his next swing.

A sharp, stabbing pain immediately shot behind my right temple.

Looking at Aurio with the rune active was like staring straight into an open blast furnace through a magnifying glass. His internal core was so thick and bright—hovering right on the edge of the Bud Burst—that the pale predictive lines in my vision blurred and split into three overlapping ghosts at once.

Can’t use the eye on him, I realized instantly, shutting the rune down before the headache blinded me, and ducking low under his backhand return slash as the steel whistled an inch over my padded cap.

Ten feet to my left, the diamond hit the rest of Squad One in a loud crash of steel and shields.

Corbin Vane drove his eight-foot live-steel spear straight at Nia’s chest, aiming to catch the iron boss of her buckler and shove her backward onto her bruised ribs while Cassia Thorne came spinning around Vane’s right hip with both curved sabers flashing toward Kaelen.

Nia knew she couldn’t hold off Vane and Thorne for three minutes today. Her ribs were strapped too tight to breathe deep, and Vane was Rank Six in the citadel.

So she didn’t try to stay on her feet.

As Vane’s sharp steel spearhead came in at her left shoulder, Nia tilted her twelve-inch iron buckler sideways so the point glanced off the rim, Then—instead of sliding past him the way she had practiced—she let go of her buckler strap entirely, reached out with both gloved hands, and grabbed the bare ash shaft of Vane’s spear right behind the iron collar, throwing her entire body weight sideways into the salted slush.

"Vane, let go of the pole!" Aurio shouted from five feet away while locking blades with me.

Corbin Vane tried to yank his spear back, except Nia had locked both arms around the wood and tucked her chin against her chest as she hit the mud, rolling once over her bruised left side to wrap the front of Vane’s shaft inside the slack of her heavy grey wool cloak.

The sudden eighty-pound jerk on the front of his eight-foot lever pulled Vane two steps forward off his balance just as Cassia Thorne darted in from the flank and flicked the tip of her left saber cleanly across the back of Nia’s exposed right shoulder.

The sharp curved steel sliced four inches through the grey wool of Nia’s cloak and tunic, immediately staining the cloth dark red.

"First blood on Valerius!" the west warden bellowed, raising his white staff and blowing a single sharp note on his whistle. "Valerius is out! Clear the pile!"

Nia was out—though because she was still lying flat on her stomach in the mud with Vane’s spearhead tangled tight in her cloak hem for the half-second it took the whistle to blow, Corbin Vane couldn’t pull his weapon back up to guard his chest.

Kaelen was already moving before Cassia Thorne’s saber even finished cutting Nia’s sleeve.

While Thorne’s left arm was extended over Nia’s back to make the cut, Kaelen didn’t try to block her right saber; he stepped straight inside the guard of Corbin Vane’s tangled spear, slammed the flat pommel of his left shortsword down onto Vane’s front wrist hard enough to pop his fingers open on the wet ash wood, and kicked the spear shaft sideways out of Vane’s right hand into the slush while pressing the live steel point of his right blade half an inch from Vane’s collarbone.

"Disarm and point on Vane!" the north warden roared, slamming his iron-shod staff down on the chalk line two heartbeats after the first whistle. "Corbin Vane is out! One to one!"

"Roll clear, Nia!" I shouted, taking a heavy two-handed downward chop from Aurio across the flat of my raised bastard sword that drove my boots two inches deep into the grey salt.

Nia rolled quickly out from under Vane’s boots, clutching her bleeding right shoulder with her left hand as the field healers pulled her and a swearing Corbin Vane across the chalk line out of play.

Now there were six of us left in the circle—and the next elimination on either side ended the tournament.

On my right, Luckas was in deep trouble.

Valen Dross wasn’t trying to beat Luckas with fancy swordplay. Dross was six feet of solid fourth-year muscle hiding behind a four-foot steel-rimmed kite shield that completely ignored Luckas’s fire. Every time Luckas sent a wave of orange heat across his silver blade, Dross simply tucked his boots behind the iron-faced shield, absorbed the flame until the painted heraldry on the front blistered and smoked, and pushed forward six inches at a time—herding Luckas backward toward the eastern chalk line while Cassia Thorne circled around from Nia’s old spot to cut at Luckas’s unprotected left hamstring.

Kaelen tried to cut across the middle of the pit to intercept Thorne before she reached Luckas’s back.

Aurio didn’t let him pass.

Still holding my bastard sword locked against his golden crossguard with his right hand alone, Aurio thrust his open left palm sideways toward Kaelen’s chest and released a blinding, concentrated pulse of golden heat-light that hit the wet salt between them like a small lightning strike.

The slush exploded into a scalding cloud of salt-steam. Kaelen threw an arm across his eyes and dove backward on his shoulder to keep his face from getting blistered, sliding ten feet back toward the west wall and leaving Luckas completely alone against Dross and Thorne.

"Thorne, take Vance’s leg!" Aurio called out, his breathing slightly faster now, a bead of sweat rolling down his temple as he shifted both hands back onto his longsword hilt to keep me pinned in front of him. "Clean cut above the boot!"