Now there was no Rap there, being her champion. And no rain falling. The casement had been a flawed prophet.
Kalkor swung his weapon up on his shoulder—as predicted—and went marching smartly across the grass. The troll shuffled forward to meet him, idly waving his own ax as if it were a fly whisk. The crowd murmured appreciatively.
Then the troll stopped and raised a tree-trunk arm over his head, spinning the huge weapon around like a baton to show how easy it was. The crowd rumbled and roared in delight. Mord of Grool, the favorite, was about to wreak justice on the murdering raider.
Kalkor had also stopped and was watching.
When the troll ended his display, Kalkor lowered his ax to touch its blade to the grass and then hurled it heavenward. It went spinning up, and up . higher even than the onlookers on the bank . . . it seemed to hang in the air . . . and then it began to fall, faster and faster. Kalkor reached out and caught it effortlessly, without needing to move his feet. The spectators groaned a low, grievous cry.
Could mundane human muscles have performed that miracle unaided? Inos knew just how heavy those axes were, because the casement had shown Kalkor straining to hold his out at arm’s length. Yet now he was suddenly able to perform circus stunts with it?
“Sorcery!” muttered the senator’s voice somewhere near Inos.
Nobody argued.
The two combatants began to advance again through the silence, more slowly this time, holding their weapons ready. They came to a halt just out of each other’s reach, and perhaps they spoke then, taunting each other.
The troll moved first, with unexpected agility. Wielding his ax like a saber to take advantage of his superhuman reach and power, he made a horizontal lunge at his opponent’s neck. Kalkor did not attempt to parry, nor was he foolish enough to attempt the same stroke—lacking Mord’s great bulk, he would have overbalanced at once. Instead, he skipped nimbly back, holding his ax in both hands athwart his chest. The troll followed, jabbing repeatedly with the great blade. Kalkor withdrew, staying out of reach. The crowd started to jeer.
This might go on indefinitely, Inos thought. Trolls were reputed to be tireless; they had been known to work until they dropped dead.
Kalkor did not wait for that to happen, and he struck so fast that Inos had to take a moment to work out what she had just witnessed, because she had not registered the movements. The thane must have ducked and sliced upward at the troll’s wrist and slipped away again before the ax could fall on him. She was not alone in her surprise—for an instant neither the onlookers nor Mord himself seemed to realize what had happened. Relieved of its burden, Mord’s arm had jerked upward of its own volition. The colossus just stood there, arm raised high, staring at his life’s blood hosing from the stump. Belatedly Inos closed her eyes and put her hands over her ears to shut out the animal howling rising from the spectators.
When she looked again, Kalkor was standing on the corpse, holding the great head in the air, rotating slowly so that all might see its face.
Azak whispered in her ear, “I always did want to visit the City of the Gods. We barbarians have so much to learn about civilization.”
3
“Give me Angilki!”
Kalkor had arrived at the base of the bank, as near to the throne as possible. He still held the great ax, and he wore the troll’s lifeblood as if it were an honor. Hair, face, torso—all were joltingly red on so drab a day. The centurion had already told his men to draw, and a cordon of swords stood between the bloodsoaked thane and the slope. He looked madly angry, ready to scythe through them with his ax.
Leaning forward on the throne, the regent seemed scarcely less enraged. His scheme to rid the world of the raider had been a disastrous flop. “He is not here. He is in the infirmary.”
“Get him!” the thane screamed. “He should have been here! He must be fetched. He must be brought out to me so I can have my satisfaction!” He was rock ing from foot to foot in his fury, barely in control of himself. “I demand his head!”
The legionaries were about as taut as longbows fully drawn. Inos had watched jotnar brawl on the streets of Krasnegar and she knew their frenzies, but she had never seen a true bloodlust before, a mad-dog ravening.
Rain was starting at last, in scattered, splashy drops. The crowd seemed to be easing back, although there were no gaps visible in it yet. The hussars were riding the lines again.
“You have won your contest,” Ythbane shouted. “You are not about to murder a sick man in cold blood.”
“You agreed to a Reckoning! Angilki must die!”
“Not if I can help it! There is another claimant to the throne of Krasnegar.”
That news worked a strange magic on the thane. His gibbering wrath vanished like a snuffed candleflame. He stilled, and his eyes traveled over the group near the throne until they settled, eerily blue even at that distance, on Inos.
“Aha!” Now Kalkor yelled in glee, and tossed the ax over his shoulder like a pinch of salt—it traveled a good ten paces. Legionaries reeled aside as he stepped forward. He ran nimbly up the bank and angled over to Inos, coming to a halt so close to her that their toes were almost touching. She could not retreat, because Azak and Eigaze and the senator were all behind her, together with several other people. Else she might have fled, screaming. She tried not to cringe before the bloody killer.
He was very big. Not quite as big as Azak, but certainly big enough to intimidate. She had to bend her head back to see his beaming smile, and the stench of blood on him made her nauseous. Fists on hips, the infamous murderer and rapist surveyed her gloatingly.
“So you have arrived, Inosolan! What a hideous mess you have made of your face. That excludes one option, anyway. And where is that raccoon-eyed faun of yours?” He glanced around, and his height let him scan the whole court party.
The courtiers were at a loss. Ythbane was seething at being thus ignored. The rain grew steadily more persistent.
Inos’s whirling wits grasped onto one solid thought—Epoxague’s guess had been correct. Kalkor knew of the prophecy. He even knew of Rap’s tattoos, and he had picked out Inos so easily that he must have been given a detailed description of her.
He had also passed through the line of guards with no apparent effort.
“Dead! Rap’s dead,” Inos said, tugging her cloak around her and fighting a need to shiver. Everyone but Azak was quietly backing away from the murderous madman.
The sapphire eyes came back to hers in a flash. “Oh, that was very careless of you. You have spoiled my fun.” He flashed a smile, white teeth in gory mask. “Quite sure?”
“Yes.”
He accepted that without hesitation. His mood became petulant. Rain was thinning the blood on him, running in red trickles down his chest and face. ”Very annoying. And who will be your champion now? Anyone worthwhile?”
“Come here, Nordlander!” Ythbane roared from the throne.
Kalkor ignored him, his glittering gaze rising to rest on Azak, who was marginally taller, but perhaps only because he was wearing boots.
“This?” The jotunn laughed scornfully. “A camelloving djinn?”
“My wife withdraws her claim,” Azak said with astonishing calm. ”Keep your rotten little kingdom.” Ythbane jumped off the throne and came striding over. Praetorians rushed to follow. His wife moaned and put a hand to her mouth, staring after him. The little prince just gaped as if he were halfwitted.
Inos said, “Azak—”
“Be silent, wife! You need not challenge, Thane. She acknowledges you as King of Krasnegar.”
“No, Azak!” Inos shouted. “I said I withdraw my claim only if—”
Azak roared, “Silence!” at Inos, just as the regent arrived beside her and Kalkor spat in her face. She cannoned back into Epoxague, shocked speechless.
“Stop !” the regent snapped. “There will be no more of this!”
Kalkor turned the ice-blue glare on him. “Hold your tongue, imp! I am a Nordland thane—violate your own safe conduct and I promise you the coasts of the Impire will burn for a generation.” His bare shoulder was higher than the regent’s fine plumed hat.
Shakily Inos wiped her cheek with a linen kerchief. Before either Ythbane or Azak could speak again, Lady Eigaze uttered a loud shriek from the background.
Kalkor’s scowl had just come back to Inos . . . suddenly it became a broad smile.
Inos looked past him to where three people were arriving at the bottom of the slope beyond the line of legionaries: a hussar leading his horse and escorting a well-dressed elderly lady, and a . . .