Cursor's Fury (Codex Alera 3)

Her cut had been too shallow to open the artery in the man's neck, but he let out a shout that sounded more like a sound of pleasure than agony and pressed his attack more furiously than ever.

Bernard let out a shout of effort, followed by a heavy thudding sound behind her. Steel whistled in the air, and Bernard cried out again.

"No!" Amara screamed, terror making her voice shrill.

And then, behind the attackers coming down the walkway at her, Amara saw a man in the somewhat grimy white tunic of a cook or scullion, in contrast to the clean white smocks that the assassins wore. He was of medium height and build, and his hair was long, shaggy, and greying. He landed on the walkway in catlike silence, a worn old gladius in his right hand, and with a single simple, ruthlessly efficient motion drove the blade through the base of the nearest assassin's skull.

The man dropped as if he'd simply fallen asleep. His killer glided forward to the next assassin on the walkway, dark eyes gleaming behind the curtain of ragged hair. The next man in line fell to the same stroke, but dropped his blade to the stone with a clatter of metal, and the next assassin in the line whirled around.

"Fade?" Amara shouted, parrying again.

The slave never slowed. A quick bob to one side stirred some of the hair from around his face, revealing the hideous scarring on one entire cheek, the Legions' brand burned into cowards who had fled the field of battle. Fade's blade moved in graceful, deceptively lazy-looking circles, shattering the assassin's weapon with contemptuous ease, then sheared off the top quarter of the man's skull on the next stroke. Fade kicked the dying man into the one in front of him and simply strode down the rock walkway. His sword arm moved in small, simple, unspectacular-looking movements, shattering blades and bodies with equal, dispassionate ease.

Assassins fell, every single injury a blow to the neck or head, and when Fade's sword struck them they did not move. Ever again.

The last one, Amara's opponent, shot a swift glance over his shoulder. Amara howled her defiance and swung her captured, curved blade with both hands. She struck true, and buried the weapon to the width of its blade in the assassin's skull. The man stiffened and twitched, sword falling from his fingers.

Fade gripped the sword's hilt and ripped it from the assassin's skull, simultaneously sending him falling from the ledge, then murmured, "Excuse me, Countess."

Amara gaped for a second, stunned, then slipped aside to let Fade through. The slave nudged Bernard to one side, into the grotto wall, caught a blow intended for the Steadholder on his blade. Fade moved forward to the wooden walkway like a dancer, swords spinning, blocking, killing. The assassins pressed forward to attack.

They died. They never came close to touching him.

In the space of four or five seconds, Fade slew nine or ten men, left a legless casualty on the stone behind him for Brutus to crush, and kicked another off the walkway and into the pool below. On the far side of the walkway, he dropped into a crouch, swords ready, eyes scanning all around him.

"F-fade?" Bernard rumbled.

"Bring Isana," the slave snapped to them. "Countess, take the lead." He dropped the curved sword and glided back over the bridge to get a shoulder beneath Bernard's arm and assist the dazed Count to his feet.

"Fade?" Bernard said again, his voice weak and confused. "You have a sword?"

The man did not answer Bernard. "We have to get them out of here, now," he told Amara. "Move and stay together."

Amara nodded and managed to gather up the Steadholder and stagger along behind the swordsman.

"What are you doing here?" Bernard asked. "I thought you were in the capital, Fade?"

"Be quiet, Count," Fade said. "You're losing blood. Save your strength."

Bernard shook his head, then suddenly jerked, tensing. "I-isana!"

"I've got her," Giraldi grunted.

Bernard blinked once, then nodded and bowed his head, hobbling along only with Fade's help.

Corpses and blood littered the restaurant. The collared assassins had spared none they could reach. Elderly men and women, even children lay where they had fallen, wounded, dead, or dying. Fade led them to the street outside the restaurant, where the nightmarish results of the attack seemed intensified. Many had managed to flee the restaurant, though their wounds had been mortal. Wounds that sometimes looked minor could prove fatal within a moment or two, and many who thought that they had escaped the slaughter had only survived long enough to die on the street.

People screamed and shouted, rushing back and forth. The signaling horns and drums of Ceres' civic legion were already converging on the spot. Other folk lay on the ground, curled up into a tight ball, sobbing in incapacitating hysteria, just as Isana was. Amara realized, with a sickening little burst of illumination, that whatever had incapacitated Isana had done it to those folk as well.

They were all watercrafters, the only folk who might possibly save the lives of many of the wounded. They had all been struck down, and though others struggled to close wounds and stop bleeding, they had little more than cloth and water to work with.

Blood had spread into a scarlet pool, half an inch deep and thirty or forty feet across.

And then the great chimes in Ceres's citadel began to ring in deep, panicked strokes, sounding the alert to the city's legions. Horns began to blow the Legion call to arms.

The city was under attack.

"Bloody crows," Amara whispered, stunned.

"Move!" Fade snarled. "We can't let her-"

Then the slave suddenly glanced up. He dropped Bernard and threw himself at Giraldi and Isana, hand outstretched.

An arrow, a black shaft with green-and-grey feathering flickered through the air and slammed completely through Fade's left hand. A broad, barbed arrowhead erupted from his flesh.

Without blinking, he pointed with his sword to a nearby rooftop, where a shadowed figure quickly vanished from view. "Countess! Stop him!"

Amara seized Fade's blade from his hand, called to Cirrus, and flung herself into the sky. She streaked toward the rooftop and saw the dark figure, bow still in hand, crouching to climb down.

Rage and fear made it impossible for Amara to think. It was on pure reflex that she cast Cirrus out in front of her, the sudden rush of wind throwing the cloaked figure from the rooftop to fall twenty feet to the ground. The archer landed with a sickening, crunching sound and let out a high-pitched scream of pain.

Amara darted down into the alley, alighting on the stone almost atop the fallen woman, and struck downward as the woman raised the bow. The sword shattered the wood, and the woman fell back with another cry.