The Defiant

  Ropes that bound my sister Sorcha to the stone, holding her immobile.

  The sacrifice.

  Sorcha’s head hung down, hair obscuring her face. I sucked in a breath at the sight of her and was suddenly assailed by a strikingly vivid memory from my childhood. When I was five or six years old, Durovernum was attacked by raiders who’d sailed in shallow-keeled boats all the way up the River Dwr. They thought themselves brave but in reality were just too stupid to realize what they were up against. The fighting had been brief, vicious, and—on their end—lethal to a man. About the only thing the raiders managed was to set fire to a grove of pine trees near the town walls. I remembered my outrage as a child, because it was one of my favorite places to play. I also remembered the smell—the sharp, potent tang of blazing pine sap.

  I could taste it. Acrid green smoke. Just a hint on the breeze . . .

  “Look sharp!” I hissed. “We’re not alone!”

  An understatement.

  The moon rose before us, the sun set behind, turning the oppidum into a stone bowl filled with misty purple shadows. But in the distance, I could see thin lines of black smoke rising, and the branches of the olive trees glowed orange with the reflected light of flames.

  “Down!” I whispered, gesturing. “Quiet!”

  Arviragus clamped a hand over the Amazon girl’s mouth and dragged her into a crouch behind a boulder. The others followed, scattering to hide themselves behind rocks and trees. I saw Quint, crouched and sprinting, disappear behind a rise of hill, and then my attention was wholly occupied by the smell of burning and the sound of many footsteps. The Amazons of Corsica streamed out from beneath the trees. Twenty, maybe thirty of them altogether. More than twice our numbers.

  Too many.

  Far too many of them for us to fight . . .

  I felt a swell of despair in my chest as they strode out into the open. In their fists, they bore long chains from which strange lanterns swung—ball-shaped iron cages filled with pine-tar resin, the source of the green-tang smoke. They burned with roiling orange and blue flames and looked like smoldering souls captured from battlefields. As they entered the oppidum clearing and ranged themselves into a circle, some of the younger girls went around, lighting torches on poles with the lamps, and soon the clearing was bathed in an eerie, crepuscular glow.

  I didn’t see Thalestris among them as the torch lighters joined their sisters in a circle and, together, the Amazons began to stamp their feet on the bare earth—in time with each other at first. And then, slowly, the rhythm shifted, becoming complex with counterbeats and accent stomps that reminded me of the hide drums the Cantii warriors carried into the field to frighten our enemies. As the cadence built, growing faster and louder, the Amazons began to swing the lamp chains back and forth. Another stomp and one girl in the circle whipped her lamp overhead in a full fiery arc, followed by the girl next to her . . . and the next, until the clearing was full of roaring hoops made of flame. As I watched, open-mouthed, the shapes they drew in the air changed, and the circle they formed disintegrated as each Amazon broke out into a dance of her own—distinct from one another, and yet still a part of the whole. Individual flourishes flowed in fiery patterns from Amazon to Amazon, as if they were storytellers passing a tale from each to each. It was a mesmerizing spectacle—like nothing I’d ever seen before—and I began to understand the stories of the Amazons and their terrible war-magic, gifted to them by the gods.

  The flaming cages whirled, faster and faster, painting circles of fire in the darkening air, like red and gold flowers blooming in the darkness, and the whoosh of the roaring flames sounded like the fearsome cries of wild beasts. The Amazons moved like dancers, whipping the fireballs through the air so that they would loop around necks and limbs and then double back, lashing the air like the crack of Nyx’s whip and skimming past flesh by a hairsbreadth. They swung them in twisting arcs, leaping over the chains and ducking under them, and as they danced, the tempo of their feet increased until it was one great thunderous noise. The fireballs arced high over their heads to slam down into the ground in showers of sparks . . .

  And then silence.

  Deafening in the wake of the roaring war dance.

  I blinked against the momentary fire-blindness that marred my sight, lightning traces crisscrossing my field of vision as I squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them again, it was to see the Amazons standing statue-still in their circle, fire chains held at their sides, plumes of smoke rising from the still-burning cages.

  And into that smoldering circle strode Thalestris, dressed for war.

  She carried no lantern, only a slender spear in one hand and a long-bladed knife in the other. I felt every muscle in my body tense as she stalked across the circle to stand before the menhir where Sorcha was bound. I saw my sister lift her head to meet Thalestris’s gaze, her eyes burning with defiance.

  “Cybele!” Thalestris shouted to the skies, arms spread wide in supplication. “Black stone mother! Guardian of the boundaries between the living and the dead! Accept this blood sacrifice that we may wash the shame of our sister Orithyia’s disgrace and defeat from our skins and from our souls!”

  It seemed to me, in that moment, some kind of twisted version of the oath rites of the Ludus Achillea. Like something seen in a warped bronze mirror, glimpsed through a pall of oily dark smoke. Something Pontius Aquila and his Sons of Dis would appreciate . . . I shuddered at the thought.

  There was a moment of ominous stillness among the women warriors gathered there, and then a battle cry errupted from their collective throats, shattering the gathering night. I felt a hand of panic squeezing my heart. There was nothing we could do in that moment—facing off against a ring of flame-wielding warrior women—that would save my sister. A direct charge of the Achillea fighters would only get them killed outright, and that I would not do.

  So I readied myself to do the only thing I could think of. Charge them myself and hope that a single target would be harder to hit. Hope that I could get to Sorcha before—

  Thalestris raised her knife . . .

  The cage flames whirled again. Faster and faster . . .

  And then, above it all, I heard the high-pitched skree of Quintus’s signal whistle as he sounded three short blasts.

  “Legio Achillea!” Cai reacted immediately, shouting in his command voice. “Form up!”

  I spun around to see him standing atop a boulder—sword raised high, shield at the ready—and I was up and moving before his command had died in the air. As I ran, I reached over my shoulder and unhooked the shield that hung on my back, drawing the sword from my left hip with my right hand. I saw the other Achillea girls leaping from their hiding places to do likewise.

  The reaction from the Amazons was instantaneous. The circle of warriors spun outward, and their battle cries turned from exultant to enraged. Their sanctum had been violated, their ceremony disrupted. It wasn’t a transgression they were about to take lightly.

  Good, I thought, feeling the snarl on my lips crack the war paint on my cheeks. Come on then . . .

  In the chaos of that moment our young captive shook free of Arviragus’s grip and, yelping her own skirling war cry, bolted like a young deer up a twisting path to one side of the sprawling enclosure, disappearing behind one of the carved stone sentinels. Arviragus started to scramble after her, but I stopped him.

  “Arviragus!” I shouted. “We’ll handle the Amazons—you get to Sorcha!”

  At the sound of her name, Sorcha’s head came up fully and her eyes locked with mine. I saw her mouth form the shape of my name, and even though I couldn’t hear her voice, I felt my sister’s strength flow into my arms.

  Then my view of her was cut off, obscured by a phalanx of Amazons as they moved toward us and we suddenly realized that the lamps they bore were in no way purely ceremonial. Thank the Morrigan, Quint seemed to realize it too. From his high hidd
en vantage point, he blew a sharp, frantic sequence on his whistle, and the Achillea gladiatrices snapped into a testudo formation as if we’d been practicing to join the legion all our lives.

  It saved our lives.

  Legion tactics. I fervently ignored the irony.

  The flaming iron cage balls soared out of the darkness like stones hurled from catapults, slamming into the protective shell made from our wall of shields, and the darkness exploded into showers of sparks and cinder-bright smoke. The Amazons retreated, regrouped, and came at us again—from three sides. The whistle blew. And just like we’d practiced for hours on the boat, we shifted into position forming a defensive hollow square. Shields locked and held up and at an angle, we withstood that second frantic onslaught of the fire chains slamming into our wood-and-iron defenses. The thunder of the impact was like the gods themselves hammering against our shields.

  But our shields held.

  Our blades darted out like serpents’ tongues, sometimes tagging flesh.

  And we advanced.

  Step by practiced step, shifting one way or the other as Quint’s whistle signals pierced the din. With each onslaught, pine tar resin flew in thick, sticky gobs of flame from the iron cage balls at the end of the chains. Dangerous and devastatingly painful, the stuff would cling to any flesh it came into contact with and burn clean through to the bone. We weren’t about to let that happen. But we couldn’t hold them off forever. From behind the splintering wooden barrier, I glanced over at Cai on my left and saw that he was grimacing fiercely, his teeth bared in a savage grin.

  “Is this what it’s really like in the legion?” I asked him breathlessly.

  “No,” he said, stepping to the left as another series of whistles pierced the air. “This is much more fun!”

  With each blast of Quint’s whistle, we moved through the steps of the martial dance of legion formations. We wheeled and spun, locked shields and advanced, switched positions and rush-attacked, frustrating the Amazons’ efforts to crush us or immolate us. Safe in formation we advanced, pushing the Amazons—who fought like the berserker warriors of legend, hurling themselves against our defenses—slowly backward, toward where the hills climbed sharply upward.

  Behind our wall of shields, I looked down the line, left and right. To my right, Gratia and Elka held strong at the center of our broad wedge. Elka howled a stream of Varini curses, and Gratia’s teeth were bared like a tiger on the hunt. To my left, Cai and Ajani harried the attackers with darting blades through the narrow gaps in our formation. On the other side of Ajani, I saw Antonia duck low beneath her shield edge and swipe at the legs of an Amazon with the crescent-bladed sheath weapon strapped to her arm. An ugly scream told me she’d hit her mark, and suddenly there was an easing off in attack pressure as her comrades dragged the wounded woman away from our advance.

  The urge to break formation and spill through that gap was almost overwhelming. It’s what the Cantii in me would have done. What the gladiatrix would have done too.

  “Hold the line!” I called, deferring to my legionnaire self. “Advance on the line!”

  Realizing the futility of their attacks, Thalestris and her sisters retreated behind a raised ridge of earth, and that’s when the arrows began to fly. They could hold us off indefinitely from that position. Except for one thing . . .

  Cai and I realized it at the same time.

  The heat from the fire chains was no longer coming in waves. Instead, it had become a constant, brutal presence pressing against our faces. The shields we’d taken from Charon’s boat might have been old and battered, the bright-painted designs faded and peeling from exposure to the wind and salt sea, but they were stout and well-made. They’d withstood the battering of the iron cages, cracking and splintering in places but holding together. The thing we hadn’t expected was that the flaming resin would stick to the shields.

  And burn. Furiously.

  Behind our shield wall, the air was almost too hot to breathe, and we were blinded by the scorching shimmer of the flames. It wouldn’t be long before we’d have to ditch the shields. But maybe just long enough . . .

  “V!” I shouted. “V formation! Form on me, Achilleans!”

  Cai glanced at me, wild-eyed. I think he thought I’d gone battle mad.

  But then he cried out, “Form your wings on Fallon! Move!”

  Again, the girls slid between each other seamlessly, shifting their blazing shields over their heads and fanning out, dropping them down to face forward as we formed a sharp-angled wedge. With me as its lead point.

  “Advance! Triple-time!” Cai shouted.

  We charged forward at a dead run—a single, solid wedge of fire—roiling, roaring flame that nothing could withstand. Not even a pack of mythical Amazon warriors. We chased them back, cresting the ridge like the gods’ own Furies, fiery vengeance, bearing blazing disks of celestial fire. Howls of battle turned to cries of alarm as we charged, rushing forward up a ridge of earth to leap at our foes.

  The Amazons dropped their fire chains and scrambled to draw swords and battle-axes as we pressed our attacks. The combined heat from the flames was too much to bear, and our line broke as we split off into individual combat, attacking with blade and flame, and a descent into the chaos of desperate battle.

  I saw Hestia battered down to one knee by a long-limbed warrior who wielded a club and danced from side to side to avoid the sputtering fire on Hestia’s shield. The gladiatrix looked beaten, but when the Amazon went a handsbreadth too close, she suddenly found herself hamstrung by the wickedly curved sica blade Hestia put to such good use as a thraex fighter in the arena.

  She fell writhing in pain, and Hestia was back up and standing in an instant, shaking the smoldering, now-ruined shield from her arm and stepping over her fallen opponent to engage another fighter. Elka’s shield was gone too, but that just gave her more freedom of movement to swing the short spear she’d carried ashore like a scythe, clearing a circle around her and knocking the blade from the hand of an Amazon.

  I saw bodies on the ground but couldn’t identify any as Achillea girls.

  And then I had no more time to look.

  Vorya shouted a warning, and I spun on my heel as a woman with long gray hair in braids swung an oak staff at my head. I still bore my shield—flames guttering, wooden slats charred and crumbling at the edges—and I caught the blow at an angle. The staff scraped across the surface of my shield, flame and tar sluicing off and clinging to the Amazon’s weapon, effectively turning my fiery advantage back on me.

  The Amazon matriarch was all lean muscle and sun-dark skin, with eyes like polished black river stones, hard and cold. She fought with precision, determination, and an utter lack of visible emotion. And she was winning . . . up until I saw a fraction of an opening and ducked beneath a wide swing, lunging up from my crouch to head-butt her in the face. I felt her nose break. Blood gushed and she reeled backward, pain-blind, and I sprinted toward where Arviragus was still sawing at the bonds that held my sister captive.

  “These . . . women . . .” he grunted at me, hacking desperately at a multitude of intricate knots that held Sorcha bound “. . . have too much time . . . and too much damned rope . . . at their disposal!”

  “Sorcha!” I skittered to a stop in front of her and grasped her by the shoulders. “Sorcha—look at me . . .”

  “You shouldn’t have come for me,” she said in a parched rasp. “Any of you.”

  “Staying back at the ludus wasn’t exactly an option for us, Sorcha,” I said. “And you didn’t think I’d let you leave me behind again, did you?”

  I expected a dry retort. A raised eyebrow at the least.

  But there was nothing. I looked my sister in the face, and it was almost as if a flame had been snuffed out inside of her. She squeezed her eyes shut to avoid my gaze and turned her head away from me. The side of her face, beneath the curtain of her hair
, was livid with bruises.

  My breath hissed between my teeth when I saw the injuries. “What have they done to you? Are you all right? I saw blood in your room at the ludus—”

  “Hers,” Sorcha ground out through clenched teeth. “Not mine. In a fair fight, Thalestris never would have gotten the drop on me.”

  “She had Nyx’s help, I’m guessing?”

  She nodded, anger and crushing disappointment stark in her face. “I’m a fool, little sister. I misjudged everything so terribly and now all is lost. All of it . . .” Bitter tears escaped through her lashes to spill down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry . . .”

  “Sorcha?”

  “Everything is gone . . . everything . . .”

  Her head lolled to one side, and I felt a swell of fear for her. This . . . this was not my warrior sister. She wouldn’t just give up like that. What had Thalestris done to her? What had she said?

  That was easy to guess. She’d told her about the ludus. And Pontius Aquila. And shattered Sorcha’s dream.

  A shrill cry of agony split the chaotic discord of battle noise, and I looked up to see another one of the Amazons crumple to the ground. Fallen girls—theirs mostly, it seemed—lay sprawled all over the clearing. Dead or wounded, I had no way of knowing, but it seemed as if years of living in isolation had dulled the edge of the legendary Amazonian prowess. The tide of battle was definitely turning in our favor. The Amazons were holding their own—for the moment—but in spite of facing superior numbers, the Achillea girls were pressing their attacks. If the Amazons dug in and fought to the bitter end . . . they would lose. And it would be a slaughter.

  “Fallon . . .” I turned back to see Sorcha surveying the gathering carnage through horrified eyes. “Stop this madness.”

  “I’m not leaving you—”

  “Go!” Sorcha snapped with a hint of her usual spark. “Just . . . stop this fighting!”