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shield, which now lay discarded at the edge of the crowd. There was no room for defensive armor in this fight. She needed deadly weapons in each hand against the considerable strength and skill of her opponent.
    The sun, what there’d been of it that day, had reached its pinnacle at the start of the contest. Now it dove like a phoenixof fire in the shadowed sea behind the western hills to the clashing cadence of weapons. Darkness was all but upon them and still Maire had gained little more against her opponent than a few scratches. Rowan ap Emrys had scars on his body bigger than the wounds she’d inflicted, and her strength was wearing down. Time and again, the God of the amulet managed to turn her opponent’s flesh to air before her quickest thrust.
    Not that the forces conjured by Brude’s song had not done the same for her. Twice she’d felt the wind of Rowan’s sword as it narrowly missed her neck, once nicking the adorning gold of her protective collar. Her breastplate bore evidence of a steely slice that would have cut her in half had more than the tip of his weapon grazed her. Her agility and speed were all that saved her, allowing her to dodge his powerful blows better than block them. No, it was not Brude’s gods Maire doubted now, but herself. Her strength was fading like the sun.
    The druid might sing of her ancestors’ skill and courage till his voice gave out. Her clan might chant her name to the heavens in encouragement, but Maire knew her burning limbs were becoming dangerously slow. Her return blows weakened in succession. If she could get close enough to lock swords, just one more time, there was a chance she might slip the thin dagger from its hidden haven between her breasts and plunge it upward into his chest, where Rowan’s erratic expansion of breath and sinew tapered to a lightly furred valley. There, perspiration from the chase she gave ran in rivulets through the clinging dust stirred by their fierce dance of death.
    She could not be the only one who was tired, Maire thought in an effort to thwart despair. Their lively banter, which had entertained the onlookers as much as the fight itself, had now dwindled down to breathless exchanges between them. Many of which were unfinished. Her adversary’s dark hair curled wet about his neck and face—a face mottled with the blood rush of possible triumph.
    With a telling grimace, the Welshman came at her as she circled him seeking her chance for offense. Her arms afire with the effort to parry his sudden thrust, Maire spun about with the momentum of her sword to dance to the other side of the arena before he caught her on the back swing. Her legs were willing, despite the aching protest of her muscles, but something went wrong.
    The blade of Rowan’s sword struck her buttocks hard enough, had not it landed broadside, to cleave them to the bone. Maire went to her knees with the blow, the coarse dirt tearing at her flesh with stinging fingers. She caught herself with her left hand and rolled away, leaving the dagger she had wielded behind. She would need a hand free to loose the stinger anyway. Let him think she’d lost another weapon and was reduced to her sword alone.
    “Will you concede, Maire? Unlike your desire to take my head, I’ve no desire to take yours.”
    “Our queen has used but half her tricks,” Declan boasted behind her. “She toys with you, Welshman.”
    Her foster brother’s dying breath would be one of rebellion to its god. He refused to see the obvious as his still clansmen had. Only Brude continued to sing her on to glory, caught up in the poetry of the past. It was all he had to lean on in his advanced years, and all that was left for her in her last hour.
    By the gods who had set her mother on glory’s path, she had used all her well-tutored tactics… all but one. Maire gasped for air, her lungs screaming with the effort even as she did so. The last blow had inflicted as much a wound on her pride as her bruised