Pri stood at the front of the crowd. He didn’t look like soone who had lived most of the way through two millenniums. Under the single light, his brush cut, blond hair shone. His face, all hard lines, but still smooth, could have easily passed for thirty.
As we stepped closer to him, he pulled a sword out of his trench coat. Between Lee’s teaching, and Daniel showing so books on Roman history, I recognized it as a gladius, the Roman legions’ traditional sword.
Behind , Marcus muttered, “There can be only one.”
In front of , Lee pulled out his own gladius, apparently from nowhere.
Only Lee wasn’t Lee. I knew him as Gaius Calidius Gallius and I always had. Except I also knew that I knew him as Lee.
Gaius had dark hair, and tanned skin. Even though he wore jeans and a t-shirt instead of a toga or any armor, he sohow reminded of the film “Gladiator.”
Gaius walked straight toward Pri, both of them shouting at each other -- probably in Old Frankish.
We followed him (but not too closely) until they surrounded us.
Oddly enough, this was according to plan.
Once Gaius and Pri stood under the light, and roughly ten feet away from each other, Pri shouted, “Halt.”
Pri’s people stopped, creating a circle around the fight, and two groups within it -- Pri, and the people we’d fought earlier on one side, and Gaius (Lee!) with us on the other.
Gaius turned briefly toward us, “We’re going to duel. Rember the plan.”
Once he gave his attention to Pri, they said a few words to each other, and then they attacked.
Lee had taught the basics of sword fighting, but even the first few seconds of the fight showed how much better they were than I expected to ever beco.
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Blades flashed faster than I could follow except in the most general way.
Still, I could see patterns in the way they fought.
Gaius never blocked Pri’s blade in a way that could let it beco a contest of strength. He always deflected the blade at a small angle. Sotis he didn’t block at all, managing not to be where the blow fell.
Not that Pri’s fighting style included a lot of wild swings. It didn’t.
For the most part, Pri didn’t slash, he stabbed, barely missing Gaius again and again.
Gaius showed no hesitation to slash instead of stab, cutting through Pri’s trench coat and shirt, leaving a long, bloody line.
Pri didn’t stop fighting, but his eyes widened as Gaius cut. Pri aid blow after blow at Gaius even as the skin ca together and healed.
anwhile Gaius’ strikes and blocks seed slow, almost lazy, by comparison.
But they worked.
Gaius’ sword slashed Pri’s thigh, cutting a couple inches into it.
Even though the skin ca together almost imdiately, the blood flew half a foot away.
It struck as desperation, but might not have been. Still, instead of moving a step or two like he had been doing, Pri rushed forward, running his sword through Gaius’ abdon.
In anyone else, it would have been fatal, but Gaius barely even showed an awareness of the pain. Another sword appeared in his left hand, and he cut into the bicep of Pri’s sword arm. Then he used the sword in his right hand to cut into Pri’s neck.
The blow wasn’t strong enough to take the head clean off, so even as Gaius pulled his sword back for another shot, I could see Pri’s neck and bicep begin to knit themselves whole.
Unable to pull the sword out quickly enough to avoid Gaius’ blow, Pri let it go, backing away.
Ignoring the sword in his gut, Gaius stepped after him in no particular hurry, one sword in each hand.
If I were a betting man, I would have bet that Pri’s life would end less than ten seconds from that point.
I would have been wrong.
Pri shouted, “Now!”
And they rushed us from all sides.
Crazily, that still fit into the plan. Well, one of them anyway.
I pointed my left arm at the people running at us from that direction, and blasted them with the sonics, wishing I could do the sa to the people coming from my right.
Not that it mattered. Jaclyn stood to my right. In a blur of purple, she knocked at least five people backward into the people behind them, giving us the ti we needed to get into position.
By the ti Pri’s people stopped holding their ears, or began to pull themselves up, I stood back to back with Jaclyn. Marcus stood to my left and back to back with Cassie.
Rachel floated above us, intangible.
Our next step? Fight our way through to Lee, and hope they didn't take us out through sheer numbers.
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