Furies of Calderon Read Online Free PDF Page B

table, a light gladius little longer than her own forearm, and spun, her body still clumsy from its imprisonment, just as a dark shape filled the entry flap to the tent. She lunged out at it, muscles snapping together to drive the point of the sword in a vicious stroke at the heart of the figure in the doorway—Aldrick.

    Steel glittered. Her blade met another and was swept aside. She felt her point bite flesh, but not much or deeply. She knew she had missed.

    Amara threw herself to one side, as Aldrick’s blade rose in a swift counter, and was unable to escape a cut that flashed a sudden, hot agony across her upper left arm. The girl rolled beneath a table and came up on the far side from Aldrick.

    The big man came into the tent and stalked her, pausing across the table. “Nice lunge,” he commented. “You pinked me. No one’s done that since Araris Valerian.” He smiled then, that wolfish show of teeth. “But you aren’t Araris Valerian.”

    Amara never even saw Aldrick’s blade move. There was a hissing hum, and then the table fell into two separate pieces. The man started toward her, through them.

    Amara threw the gladius at him and saw his sword rise up to parry it aside. She dove for the back of the tent, now holding only the little knife, and with a quick move slashed a hole in the canvas. She slipped through it and heard herself whimpering in fear as she began to run.

    She flashed a glance behind her as Aldrick’s sword opened the back side of the tent in a pair of strokes and he came through after her. “Guards!” the swordsman bellowed. “Close the gate!”

    Amara saw the gate start to swing shut, and she slipped to one side, ran down a row of white tents, gathering up her skirts in one hand, cursing that she hadn’t seen fit to disguise herself as a boy so that she could have worn breeches. She looked behind her. Aldrick still pursued, but she had left him behind, like a doe outstripping a big slive, and she flashed a fierce smile at him.

    Caked dirt fell off of her as she ran for the nearest wall, and she prayed that she could get enough of it off of her to call to Cirrus. A stepladder rose up to the wall’s defensive platform in front of her, and she took it in three long strides, barely touching it with her hand.

    One of the legionares , a guard on the wall, turned toward her and blinked in shock at her. Amara made a ridge of her hand, let out a shout, and drove her hand into the man’s throat, never slowing. He tumbled over backward, gagging and choking, and she ran past him, to the wall, and looked over.

    Ten feet down to the ground level, and then another seven or eight feet of ditch lay beneath her. A crippling fall, if she didn’t land correctly.

    “Shoot!” someone shouted, and an arrow hissed toward her. Amara threw herself to the side, grasped the top of the wall with one hand, and vaulted it, throwing herself out into empty space.

    “Cirrus!” she called—and felt the stirring of wind around her, finally. Her fury pressed up against her, turned her body to a proper angle, and rushed down beneath her, so that she landed on a cloud of wind and blowing dust rather than on the hard ground of the ditch.

    Amara gained her feet again and ran without looking back, stretching, covering the ground in leaps and bounds. She ran to the north and the east, away from the practice fields, away from the stream, away from where they had left the gargant and its supplies. The trees had been cut to make the walls of the encampment, and she had to run across nearly two hundred strides of broken stumps. Arrows fell around her, and one struck through a hanging fold of her skirts, nearly tripping her. She ran on, with the wind always at her back, Cirrus an invisible presence there.

    Amara reached the shelter of the trees and paused, breathing hard, looking back over her shoulder.

    The gates of the camp swung open, and two dozen men on horses, long spears gleaming, rode out and turned as a