The Defiant (The Valiant #2)(92)

Swiftly, silently, we made our way to the main yard of the compound. There, we prepared for what I hoped would be the final act in the drama. The sounds of clashing weapons drifted back over the walls, but the ludus was almost entirely deserted. Pontius Aquila had turned out all his fighters, and he himself sat beneath a torchlit awning, high on a constructed platform that extended out from the guardwalk that topped the ludus walls. The platform was decorated in such a way that you could be forgiven for thinking it was Caesar himself who sat there. Even from that distance, I could see Aquila was surrounded by a crowd of fatuous, fawning men dressed in voluminous togas, and flanked by armed guards dressed head to toe in black. Their collective attention was wholly focused on the fighting that took place down below. I squinted past the fading spots that still clouded my vision and saw Aeddan was up there too, standing off to one side and dressed in the black garb of the Dis warriors. Clearly Aquila still trusted him. I wondered how Aeddan could stand being that close to the man.

I wondered even more how Tanis could.

She stood there, bow in her hand and a quiver on her back, dressed in black armor, and a wave of bitter disappointment swept over me. She truly was lost to us, and her betrayal of the ludus was my fault. I’d failed her.

I would not fail the others.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw that Damya and the Achillea girls had formed up behind Cai; the Amazons, behind Quint. In front of us, the main courtyard lay open to sky, with nothing and no one to come between us and the gates, which stood wide that night, a testament to Aquila’s arrogance. Then again, how much arrogance was it, really, when his forces clearly outnumbered ours?

Or so he thought.

I was also fairly certain Aquila expected that the moment “Victrix” succumbed to the perilous combination of Nyx’s vicious onslaught and the hemlock Varro had supposedly been dosing me with, the Achillea warriors would lose all heart and either flee the field or be cut down like wheat before the scythe.

But he was about to be disappointed.

And it was Nyx who would falter. That, I swore to the Morrigan.

I signaled to Cai and Quint, and, together, we all moved out. Keeping to the cover of the shadows beneath the walls, I led my gang of stealthy warriors to the open, beckoning gates. Signaling them to wait, I peered around, spying through the crack between the great oak doors and their enormous bronze hinges.

Nyx’s back was to the ludus. The timing couldn’t have been better.

I stepped into the empty archway.

The warriors at my back followed.

Sorcha saw us standing there, framed by the yawning maw of the gates, like the Morrigan’s own war band, loosed from our bonds in the Lands of the Blessed Dead and sent forth to exact the goddess’s vengeance on the unworthy. Sorcha raised her sword in that moment and backed off. I suspected that Nyx was already furious and frustrated at not having been able to kill “me” yet, and that must have only added to her confusion. She wasn’t alone.

The crowd expressed their confusion and displeasure right along with her.

“Come on, damn you!” Nyx howled over the hectoring voices.

And then Sorcha reached up and snapped open the buckle on the side of her helmet. She lifted it from her head, and Nyx staggered back as if she’d seen a ghost. She probably thought she had. As far as she was concerned, Thalestris had already ended Sorcha’s life, days earlier, beneath the light of a full moon and surrounded by her tribe of warrior women.

The mob in the stands knew none of that.

But still there were gasps and cries of outrage when the crowd realized that it hadn’t been me under that helmet after all. A confused silence followed, and then a gathering murmur that raced through the stands like wildfire when they realized who it had been. Many of them—most of them, from the sounds of it—still remembered the Lady Achillea from her arena days. The crowd was ecstatic. Their cheers, deafening.

But something inside Nyx broke in that moment.

I watched as she retreated from Sorcha, shaking her head.

“No!” she cried. “No! This isn’t how it’s supposed to be . . .”

“You disappoint me, Nyx,” Sorcha called out, her voice carrying across the arena and silencing the cheering crowd, who held their breath in anticipation of what was to come. “But then, you always have.”

“I won’t fight you!” Nyx’s face twisted in rage and anguish. “I won’t—”

The spear that came out of nowhere sang as it flew. Sorcha heard it just in time to dive for Nyx and tackle her out of the way as the spear thrower—dressed all in black, like the rest of Aquila’s fighters—stalked forward.

Thalestris.

Sorcha rolled away from Nyx, who lay gasping and winded—but alive—beneath her, and leaped to her feet.

“If you’re too weak to finish this fight, gladiolus,” Thalestris called out to Nyx in her raven’s-croak voice, “I assure you, I am not.”

Cai nudged my shoulder. “You said she’d be back. You were right.”

“I hate it when I’m right.”

What I hated even more was that whereas Nyx didn’t know how to beat Sorcha in a fight, Thalestris—my sister’s primus pilus, the woman who’d helped her develop her unique style—most certainly did. My hate was mitigated by the fact that I’d been half expecting the disgraced Amazon to put in an appearance that night. And to that end, I had prepared a welcome for her.