The Defiant (The Valiant #2)(36)

Then, Cai and Quint were there to haul open the doors.

“Go!” Cai barked. “Both of you—back to the wagons! We’ve got this . . .”

I turned and ran, but I could already see light in the main house. Torches flared, guttering and smoking in the lashing rain as Aquila’s men came running. And not just his men. The Amazona girls too. I saw Nyx sprinting across the yard, her black hair flying loose behind her. Not this time, I thought. I wasn’t about to let her get close enough to finish what she’d started with me.

I signaled to the Achillea girls, and they started yelling and clashing makeshift weapon against weapon. The unpicketed ponies panicked and began to rear and scream—lashing out with hooves and teeth as the girls drove them to form a barrier between the others and us. Already on edge from the fire that had destroyed their barn and the time spent kept outside in unfamiliar conditions, the animals were easy to spook, and we used that to our best advantage. Once Cai and Quint were mounted on their cavalry horses and herding them toward the Amazona gladiatrices—none of whom looked excited at the prospect of attempting to breach a wall of panicked horseflesh—we had our opening.

Gratia was at the reins of one of the two wagons, somehow managing to keep her horses under control. Arm muscles bulging, she hauled the reins up short and shouted for the girls herding the other horses to hurry up and run for the cart. I ran for the other one, sprinting for the bench seat up front, where I could help Elka drive if needed. It was the very same cart I’d first ridden to the ludus in—a slave on the way to what, at the time, had seemed a fate worse than death—and now it was my chance at salvation.

I put my foot up on the rail and grabbed the sides of the wagon, hopping on one leg as I tried to gain my balance. But the movement of the cart wrenched my arm. Pain bloomed and I felt a wave of nausea sweep over me. I tried again and was startled when I looked back into the cart bed. One of the faces I saw there, staring up at me, was Leander’s. It was the first I’d seen of him since the ludus had been attacked. He must have heard the commotion and scrambled away from the kitchens, jumping into the cart bed in the confusion. Clearly Leander wanted about as much to do with an Aquila-run ludus as we did.

His face was white with fear, but he reached out a hand to me as I clung to the side of the cart, my feet scrabbling for a foothold.

“Domina!” he said. “Let me help you—”

I tried to grab hold, but his fingers slipped through my grasp.

And then, suddenly, Nyx was there. Reaching up for me. Mouth open and eyes blazing hatred, she grabbed my arm and threw herself backward, dragging me down into the mud with her. Elka didn’t see—she must have thought I was safely aboard—and slapped the reins, shouting for the horses to move. I lost my grip entirely. The cart surged forward, thundering through the main gate as I fell.

I landed on top of Nyx, and that was the only thing that saved me. My knee jammed up under her rib cage, and I heard the breath leave her lungs in a great whoof of air. I kneed her again for good measure and staggered up to my feet, leaving her there, lying on the ground and gasping for breath.

There was still a clot of Achillea girls dodging the black-clad guards in front of the gate as they struggled to swing the heavy doors closed again. Tanis, with her corpse hook, was one of them. She screamed my name and took a step toward me, faltering on her leg that still bore the marks of the rope burns she’d suffered in the naumachia. I started toward her, but Nyx—chest heaving and fury in her eyes—suddenly stood in the way.

Her whip cracked through the air, sending one of the draft horses bucking and rearing between us.

“Fallon!” Tanis cried frantically out over the mayhem. “Help me!”

The gates were closing. I’d never make it, I thought—with or without Tanis—but in that moment, a stray, white-eyed chariot pony skittered out from behind a wall buttress right in front of me. One of the smaller mares, used mostly in practice, but swift-footed and agile . . .

“Fallon! Don’t leave me!”

. . . and my last chance at escape.

Run! the Morrigan whispered in my ear. Live! Return to fight another day!

Or die. There was nothing else for me to do. I leaped for the horse.

“Fallon!”

Tears of helpless frustration burning my cheeks, I bent low over the little mare’s back and slapped her shoulder. With a burst of speed like a champion racer, she surged through the rapidly closing gap between the ironbound oak doors. I looked back over my shoulder at the ludus as we pounded down the road and saw that there were still girls caught on the wrong side of the doors. Too many of them.

The last thing I saw was Tanis. Her face, moon-pale, eyes wide and dark and blankly terrified. Staring after me as if I’d viciously betrayed her in that moment. Which, I suppose, I had. I told myself I didn’t have a choice. That it couldn’t be helped. That I’d go back for her . . .

In the last sliver of space between the gate doors, I saw one of Aquila’s men stalk toward her, and Tanis saw him too. The corpse hook fell from her hand and she dropped to her knees in the mud, lifting her hands above her head in surrender.

Lightning cracked the sky, and the rain began to fall in torrents.





VIII




I BURIED MY face in my pony’s mane. Hanging on blindly, I let her run for all she was worth as those of us who’d managed to escape galloped south down the Via Clodia. Lightning lashed the bellies of lowering clouds, and mud splashed up in great thick spatters. We traveled hard and fast in the darkness and the unrelenting rain, pausing only briefly to let the horses catch their wind at the side of the road.