The Defiant (The Valiant #2)(14)

“This is Quintus,” Cai said. “My second.”

When Quintus the second didn’t seem to have heard his introduction, Cai rapped on the young man’s helmet with his knuckles.

“Hm?” Quintus turned around, his expression a bit dazzled.

“Quint?” Cai regarded him from under a raised eyebrow.

“I am. Yes.” He turned and offered me a perfunctory nod. “But more to the point . . . who was that divine nymph?”

I almost choked on the laugh that burst out of my mouth. Quintus the second was lucky Elka was far enough away not to have heard him, I thought. Nymph? If there was any mythological creature Elka saw herself as, I was fairly certain that “nymph” was as far away from it as one could get and not fall off the edge of the world.

Cai cleared his throat, and Quintus seemed to realize he was slack-jawed and gawking. He straightened up and snapped to semi-attention. “Sir,” he appended belatedly.

Cai shook his head and grinned. “Quint, this is Fallon.”

“Oh, I knew that.” He nodded at me. “I could have picked you out of a crowd at fifty paces, what with the way Cai here’s gone on about y—” Cai elbowed him in the ribs, sharply enough that Quintus must have felt it through the shirt of ring mail he wore, and his jaw snapped shut. “What I mean is,” he continued after a moment, “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance. Your reputation in the arena precedes you, Victrix.”

I would have responded, but his attention had drifted right back after Elka, so I turned to Cai instead. “Your father was here visiting only a week ago,” I said. “He never mentioned you were coming home.”

Cai shook his head. “He didn’t know at the time. It’s not exactly a scheduled return.” I frowned at him in confusion, but he handily shifted the subject, saying, “How about that dance? I’m saddle-weary and could use the exercise to loosen up my muscles.”

He gestured me over to the practice pitch and reached up to unfasten the crimson cloak that hung from his shoulders. It was then that I noticed Cai wore not one gladius but two. His sword belt bore a sheath on both hips. Dimachaerus—fighting with two swords at the same time, one in each hand—was definitely not standard fighting procedure in the legions. But it was the way I had chosen to fight in the arena.

I raised an eyebrow at Cai, but he just grinned.

The very first time he and I had sparred it had been with single blades—wooden ones—and he’d offered me the use of a shield. I’d foolishly declined, given him the advantage, and he’d trounced my sorry carcass soundly all over the pitch . . . right up until the moment when a last, lucky blow had given me the win. And him, a broken rib. This time, I would be the one starting out with the advantage—double swords were, after all, my chosen weapons—but I had no illusions that would necessarily mean I’d win again.

Just as Cai—with his advantage—hadn’t, that first time.

At the first moment of engagement, I could tell Cai wasn’t about to pull any of his blows or go easy on me.

Good.

Because neither would I.

He was a seasoned soldier, trained and hardened in actual battle. And he was very skilled. As the sun climbed higher into the sky, the sweat was running into my eyes, blurring my vision as we chased each other back and forth across the practice pitch. The scarlet plume of Cai’s helmet crest tossed like the mane of a stallion as he came toward me, aiming alternating blows at my head and hips, side to side in a familiar sequence that I suspected he must have learned from watching me practice. Which meant I could counter his moves almost without thinking . . .

Until I couldn’t.

I heard myself shout in surprise as Cai suddenly broke the pattern and ducked low, bringing both his blades up in a sweeping right-side attack that screeched along the length of my frantically blocking blades. He let the momentum of that carry him around in a full circle and came at me again, slashing straight across with a single blade from the left. I felt the wind of the weapon’s passage on my skin at the near miss and backed off a step, tracking the angle of his shoulders to anticipate the next blow. Both swords again this time—circling overhead. I crossed my blades high in front of me and braced for the blow. When it came, I felt it all the way down into the soles of my feet, and sparks flew from the edges of our clashing weapons.

Every muscle in my body strained to keep those swords at bay.

I blinked rapidly, trying to clear the sting of sweat from my eyes, and looked up into Cai’s smiling face.

“I’ve been practicing,” he said.

“I noticed.” I grinned back at him through clenched teeth.

“How’s my form?”

“Very nice,” I said.

Then I shifted forward and tipped my top guard on a sharp angle—a dimachaerus-specific move I’d worked hard on perfecting. Cai’s blades slid past my shoulder as he lost his balance, falling toward me. He caught himself a moment too late and found the tips of my blades resting in the hollow at the base of his throat.

I leaned in close and whispered, “But your technique needs work.”

Cai laughed and said, “Then I’ve come to the right place.”

He held his blades out to the side, dangling from his fingertips, in a gesture of surrender. I stepped back and crossed my swords in front to me in salute, smiling, sweaty, ridiculously happy. Cai sheathed his blades in the double-scabbard belt he wore around his waist and reached up to lift his helmet off his head. I looked around to see that we were alone in the courtyard. The sun was high overhead, and it seemed everyone else had wandered indoors, out of the heat, and left us to our sparring. Cai scrubbed a palm over his sweat-damp legion-short hair.