The swordsman brought both hands to the hilt of the sword and struck. Tavi saw the cold, bloodied metal of the blade falling toward him and knew that he was about to die. He screamed and lifted a hand, knowing full well that it would do him no good, but he was unable to do anything else.
The sword came down in the death stroke.
And met steel in a cold, clear chime, like a bell. A cloud of silver sparks
rained down where Aldrick's blade had met the steel of the guardsman's sword.
Fade stood over Tavi, both hands on the hilt of the short blade, his legs spread out wide, knees bent, his body relaxed. The swordsman bore down on his weapon, but Fade seemed able to hold it away from Tavi with little effort, and after a scant pair of heartbeats, Fade twisted his body. Aldrick's blade slid to one side, and he skipped back from a counterstroke-but not fast enough. Fade's sword whipped toward Aldrick's face, and split the white scar there open anew, blood flowing.
Aldrick dropped back into a guard position, watching Fade, his eyes wide, his reddened face going pale. "No," he said. "No."
Fade took a step forward and stood between Tavi and the other two men on the wall. His voice came out quiet, low, steady. "Stay behind me, Tavi."
Tavi stared in shock. He clutched the dagger and scooted back from the two men.
"You aren't," Aldrick snarled. "You can't be. You're dead."
Fade said, "You talk too much."
Then he spun forward, deftly stepping over Amara's unmoving form, his sword gliding toward the swordsman. Aldrick parried in a shower of scarlet sparks, slid a thrust to his belly aside, and cut at the slave's head. Fade dropped to a crouch, and the blow struck cleanly through two feet of furycrafted battlement stone. A chunk of stone the size of a big washtub slid down the wall and fell into the battle outside the fortress.
Fade rose, blade dancing, and pressed the swordsman back, down the battlements, his ragged and unkempt hair flying about his head, his scarred face set in an expression of cool detachment. When his sword struck Aldrick's, scarlet fire rained down, and when he caught one of the swordsman's strikes, clouds of silver-white motes flew forth in a flash.
Tavi saw Aldrick begin to panic, his movements becoming jerkier, faster, less elegant. He retreated step by step, and Fade pressed him relentlessly. The slave swept one blow at Aldrick that missed altogether, throwing up another shower of sparks as the blade cut through the stone near Aldrick's feet, but the slave seemed to recover rapidly, and he began to push Aldrick down the wall once again.
Tavi had never seen anything so graceful, so terrifying, as the two men clashing together. Though Aldrick was the larger of the pair, Fade seemed more nimble, his movements more fluid, again and again blocking blows
that might have killed him to miss by the barest margin. He leapt over one strike, ducked under another, and thrust at Aldrick's belly once more. The swordsman parried him aside, spinning on his feet to reverse positions with Fade on the narrow battlements, so that he now stood with his back to Tavi.
Aldrick rained a pair of heavy blows down on Fade, who danced aside from one and slid the other off the guardsman's blade. Fade countered with a volley of cuts and thrusts too swift for Tavi to follow, and Aldrick once again backed down the wall, defending himself.
Fade's blade whipped at Aldrick's foot and missed, slashing stone. Aldrick kicked the slave in the face with one heavy boot, and Fade's face snapped to one side. He turned the motion into an upward slash, but that blow too missed Aldrick altogether, instead slashing through the massive merlon beside him.
Aldrick's sword darted down to Fade's wrist, a swift cut that drew blood and threw the sword from the slave's hands and down into the courtyard below. Fade cried out and fell to his knees, clutching the hand to his chest.
Aldrick stood over Fade, panting, white around the eyes, and drew his sword slowly up behind him. "Over," he said. "Finally over. You lose."
Fade said, "Look where you're standing."
Tavi looked down at Aldrick's feet, at the deep slashes in the battlements where Fade's sword had cut through the stone.
Aldrick looked down, and his face went white.
The merlon beside him slid to one side along the upward-sweeping line Fade had cut in it, the