William Dietrich - Hadrian's wall

The barbarian danced back, Galba tracking him. "Poor armor, boy!" It hung on Arden with a bloody fold.

"Then I'll fight in the armor of my ancestors. I'll fight with the shield of the gods and the oak." With his free hand he gripped the tunic and wrenched until it ripped and fell away, leaving him naked. "This is how my people first went into battle against the Romans, murderer, and this is how we'll fight the last battle as well." His body was lean and sculpted and his act both challenge and insult, a tactic as old as the Greeks of Olympia and the Gauls who'd charged Caesar.

Galba smirked. "Then you'll leave the world as naked as you came into it!"

The tribune lunged again, missing, and Arden took the moment's space to utter a high, wavering cry that echoed in the room, an eerie reminder of earlier times and older gods. "Daggggggdaaaaaa!" Then he lifted his tall sword and closed with his opponent in earnest, both hands on his weapon now as it beat furiously toward Galba, the churning of their blades so swift that it made a subtle wind Valeria felt on her cheek. She could feel the sweat of the antagonists, the room hot and close. The suspense was suffocating. She longed for a weapon if Galba triumphed, to kill him or herself.

The swords danced and clanged like flashing beams of light, stroke and counterstroke so quick it couldn't be followed, like the beat of raptor wings. Both men were grunting, taking harsh breath.

The cavalry officer was trying to get under Arden's guard as the barbarian had gotten under Clodius's, but the ferocity of the Celt's attack wouldn't let him. The barbarian sword was longer and heavier, designed to cleave a man in two, and the pounding of its weight was twisting the tribune's wrists. Galba's sword was chipping under the pounding, bits from its edge flying like fire. The tribune was snarling and backing, beginning to pant, sweat beading as he realized this wouldn't be the easy kill he was accustomed to.

"You're carrying your murders on your back," Arden taunted him. "You're wheezing like a crone."

Galba began to give ground in a circle. In response the chieftain shifted his relentless assault to the other side, so Galba had to back the other way. Then Arden reversed again, and then again. Thus the tribune found himself being forced into a corner, hemmed by the ceaseless rain of blows.

"Damn you!"

Arden's attack seemed as tireless as it was relentless. Valeria remembered the Roman probatio exhausting himself against the post in the training courtyard and wondered if that would happen here. Yet there was no slowing, no respite, and no opportunity for Galba to duck in and under. Instead the Thracian was being pounded downward, shrinking under the barrage of steel, his spatha darting near Arden's flesh but never striking as it was parried.

Caratacus, Galba realized with incredulous dread, was the stronger. "You're going to tire, scumlet!" he gasped, as if the threat might make it true. Yet the opposite was occurring.

The corner of the room was against Galba's back, trapping him, and for the first time the officer's dark eyes showed fear. There was something supernatural about this assault, he thought, a combination of strength and fury he'd never faced before. Were there really gods? And had this barbarian oaf somehow summoned them? Had that fat cow Savia summoned hers?

It was time for something desperate.

As Arden swung, the Roman suddenly dove to one side, sacrificing his own balance to put the Celt off aim. The tip of the barbarian sword slammed into stucco and stone and sheared off with a shrill ring, the broken piece spinning backward and narrowly missing Arden's face. Plaster exploded in a puff of smoke. Galba's knee hit the floor, but he managed to stab as he fell, his spatha finding his opponent's thigh. It sank in an inch, and Arden saved himself only by recoiling, falling onto his back.

It was enough!

In an instant Galba was up like a cat, his sword swinging overhead for a final cleaving blow at the man sprawled beneath him. The spatha made an audible whistle as it cut an arc through the air. Yet at the last moment Arden spun desperately on his back, and the death slash missed by inches, thunking disastrously into the wood floor. It stuck there, imprisoned.

It's my blunder against the Scotti chieftain all over again, Galba realized with a curious detachment. Then Arden's own long sword swept horizontally like a scythe and struck the Thracian in the ankle, severing tendons.

Brassidias roared with fury and toppled, wrenching at his sword.

It broke too, snapping off a hand's-breadth from its tip.

The men reared up, both limping and desperate now, Galba managing to make a thrust toward Arden's throat before the Celt could get his guard up.

His sword stopped harmlessly, however, missing by a finger's width because the Thracian hadn't adjusted to his shortened sword. Even as he missed, his severed ankle buckled beneath him.

"Dung of Plut-"

The curse was cut off as Arden's sword, its tip gone too, whipped down and chopped at the joint between head and neck, slicing into Galba's shoulder, chest, and chain mail with a sickening thud of connection. It struck like an ax into a block of wood, and the tribune quivered as the force reverberated through every fiber of his being to confirm his mortality. His own sword dropped.

Arden wrenched his bloody blade free, chest heaving, arms trembling. "Look your last on my woman, Roman pig."

Then he swung horizontally, and with a crack of severed spine Galba's head came neatly off, its expression locked in stunned surprise, the skull flying to whap against the wall with a wet crack. It and Galba's torso hit the floor at the same time, the latter ejecting a great gout of blood.

In a corner, the head rocked like a spilled pot.

The barbarian staggered back, his body shaking from the violent exertion, muscles dancing, his great sword wavering.

"Arden!"

Then his own sword dropped, and he collapsed into Valeria's arms.

Even as the barbarian chieftain gasped for breath, bloodied and naked, the locked door of the commander's house boomed dully as Roman soldiers roused by Marta hammered against it. "Open up!"

Falco, frozen in fascination by the fight, jerked to action. "Come!" he shouted to the couple. "Onto the roof!"

"Wait." Arden broke from Valeria, stooped for something, and then came back to seize her hand. The rhythmic pounding followed the fugitives as they clambered upstairs to the building's loft. Below they could hear the front door splintering.

"What now?" Valeria asked when they reached the rafters. They seemed trapped.

"Across the rooftops to the parapet!" Falco explained. "You'll find a horse waiting on the far side."

"A horse?" Arden asked.

"My slaves, it seems, have friends among your people." It was a grim, almost regretful smile.

"You're a Celt yourself, aren't you, Falco?"

"Aye, loyalties have become blurred. Who's a Roman and who's not? Who a Briton and who an invader? We sort it out with blood and thunder."

Falco used his shoulder to butt the underside of the roof. Clay tile broke loose and skittered to the pavement below, making enough of a hole to let Arden scramble out onto the roof's slippery surface, his torn tunic now tied haphazardly around his waist. He reached down and pulled Valeria up after him. They could hear the front door caving in far below, the shouts of anxious Roman soldiers, and then their sudden stunned silence at the sight of the decapitated body of Galba Brassidias.

What had happened to his head?

"Go!" Falco called up at them. "I'll misdirect them. The moat has been dammed and filled with recent rainwater as a defense. It may be enough to break your fall."

"They'll kill you, centurion."

"No, I'm the only commander they have left. Get over the Wall, and they'll stop worrying about you and start worrying about their own survival. Run!" He disappeared to intercept the soldiers climbing the stairs.