The Academy group reacted in a way that told Declan it had been practiced. They scattered, all running as much ‘away’ as they could without clumping. The mercenaries struck with precision, slashing, but not killing.

  The strategy was, to Declan’s horror, perfect. It made the arcanists decide between attacking and trying to save their wounded and most couldn’t do both at once.

  “On my Target!” a House Taylor Senior shouted, pointing.

  Runes ripped through a mercenary, total over-kill, but it produced a gap in the net, and let the others flee.

  The enemy arcanists focused only on Rohan, and these weren’t soldiers meant to fight monsters, these were battle hardened men, probably duelists. Ash and shit, they were almost certainly duelists, specialized in killing arcanists. Declan couldn’t run, study and fight at the same time, so he rushed to a Taylor woman with a slash across her thigh, the muscle sliced in a way that left her crippled. “Help! I need help!”

  Better they assume he was a panicked student than a planning arcanist. It worked better than any stealth rune, as the mercenaries measured him and moved past, stalking toward the remaining Taylor soldiers.

  The ArCore were hardly helpless and they’d split into three teams, one on each arcanist, leaving Rohan by himself. He activated Wind Lift repeatedly but instead of soaring, it only sent him a dozen feet before he fell.

  “Hand it over and the others don’t die. You do, but they don’t,” one Arcanist shouted.

  It was a waste of words, Declan understood enough of Rohan to know if he pretended to listen it was only to delay the battle. Declan focused on tying the woman’s belt tightly around her thigh to halt the bleeding. Two mercenaries had peeled off to pursue the academy group. The house Taylor Senior lay dead on his feet, nailed to the ground with a spear of ice.

  The mercenary goal, without doubt, was to keep the soldiers from assisting the arcore, and they had two ways to do it. First, they were killing Taylor soldiers. That was the first attack. Wounding the students would split attention. Declan doubted they were paid by the pint of blood shed. Pop often said that in chaos, there was opportunity. In this case, opportunity to lead. Declan pointed at the soldier on the left. “House Taylor, that’s your target!”

  The man was a soldier and these were students, but most were functioning arcanists and his shout caused them to field runes.

  Declan screamed a battle cry and charged toward the soldiers. Well, for about ten feet, before he slid to a stop. Both had turned on him and both were trained and deadly. But he’d distracted them for just a second. Runes locked. Half a dozen Strikes flashed out, throwing one mercenary to the ground. The other half of the runes hit the second mercenary, whose armor deflected everything except the Fire Lance rune, which burned his hood.

  Ash and shit, if they’d all hit the same man, there would be half as many, now he had one desperately clawing at his face. Declan had heard the bards sing of how men debated taking a life. These men didn’t debate, and Declan didn’t either. He drew his sword and charged at the mercenary pulling his burning hood off. He slashed the way Anthony taught him, cutting across the belly so the blade cut deep. Armor stopped the slash, making his sword glance off.

  “Runes on him!” Declan shouted, pointing to the man down. He stabbed this time, and though he couldn’t run the mercenary through, the blade sank three inches deep and sluiced red.

  The mercenary screamed and threw a wild punch, hitting Declan in the head and sending him back.

  A pair of Strikes from House Taylor students who still couldn’t tell the difference in targets struck Declan’s merc in the back, and a third rune hit Declan in the mouth, filling his world with the taste and smell of copper. “Not me!” He screamed.

  The mercenary Declan had stabbed had ripped loose his cloak and kept one hand clamped on his stomach. The man’s shaven head was scarred, his eyes filled not with hate but calm. That was worse. The air of a man who understood wounds that killed quick and ones that didn’t. Now he focused on Declan, advancing.

  There was a world of difference between training with an instructor who was trying to teach and facing an experienced soldier hell-bent on survival. The man went for an immediate kill, stabbing at Declan’s heart.

  Deflect just to the right, combined with Declan stepping left, sent him off balance and let Declan slash at the man’s right forearm. The blade caught at the armor edge and cut deep. The mercenary’s arm fell loose, and blood flowed freely from his stomach.

  “Taylors, target on mine!” Declan shouted.

  He wasn’t the least bit surprised the Flame Lance struck the prone, not moving merc, but luck couldn’t always roll against him. A Claw ripped at the standing Merc’s knee, and he twisted, unable to catch himself with his sword arm. Declan drove the sword deep through the exposed flesh of the man’s back and stepped on him until he stopped gasping. Four mercs still lived and they attacked two remaining House Taylor soldiers. One of the enemy arcanists lay dead, split down the center of his corpse, but Jackson—gods, it shook Declan, the man was missing his chest. It was gone. Thin ribbons of flesh kept the top and bottom halves connected.

  Tears threatened to cloud Declan’s eyes but he had orders to give. “House Taylor, target only soldiers, I don’t care which. Don’t intefere with the arcanists.” Mixing targets would actually help in this case. And Declan, too, had a role to play. Duelists depended on overwhelming force and not being countered. The ArCore had somewhat survived the alpha strike and long battles favored numbers.

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  The hail of runes from Taylor students did what Declan wanted, forcing them to split up. The absolute lack of focused fire continued to hit the two still engaged.

  Then Flame Lance rocketed over Declan’s head, striking one enemy arcanist. He’d been engaged with two of the ArCore while the other simultaneously kept Rohan on the defensive and blocked attacks from the survivors without effort.

  Six runes circled the lead arcanist, three of them Declan instinctively sensed were shields. The other arcanist had realized the students were alive, organizing, and capable of more than just screaming. A rune flashed. Landslide Smash, Declan read. A pillar of stone errupted behind him, throwing students into the air and cracking bones on those it struck. This was shit and ashes, but it was the only way.

  Declan activated Claw and kept the other runes ready. The claw wasn’t laced with intent, and it glanced off the enemy arcanist’s shield, which was a hell of a lot better than a Protect. Which is what Declan used to block the spear of ice that lanced out.

  He kept the mana stone in orbit, identifying himself as a arcanist. An enemy.

  The arcanist locked a rune, blazing as it did. Declan sure as hell hoped it really was Landslide Smash. He also hoped his counter would work. He leaped straight up. Something snapped in his ankle as rock errupted beneath him, launching Declan. But instead of a dozen feet, it shot him a thousand feet into the air, spinning, screaming, helpless. Then gravity remember he existed, and Declan began to fall.

  The enemy hadn’t even bothered to follow up with a second rune, he’d turned and hammered Rohan with River of Stone, a wave attack that not only inflicted damage, it left the target dizzy as the ground rolled beneath them. A setup rune for a killing strike.

  Declan activated Feather Fall, his charged rune from the flits. It caused him to float, drifting on the breeze until he guided it. His pack was heavy but as Declan drifted down, he pulled his mana bearing from it.

  Runes flashed around Rohan. Shining Sword Storm, and beneath him four golden swords of light formed, swirling inward to cut at the enemy arcanist, who activated shield after shield, then locked a single rune and began to overcast it.

  ‘Mana-Bearing To the Back of the Skull’ was not a rune in the almanac. Declan couldn’t control his fall, but canceled Feather Fall, bringing it down on the crown of the arcanist’s head. It crunched, and the arcanist dropped, screaming.

  Declan fell on him. Now he would be too close for Protect to work, too close for most runes. If he’d charged a Corrosive Slime that would have been handy but it wasn’t like the enemy would back away and give him an hour or two. It was a grappling war now, and Declan drove his fingers deep into the man’s eyes. The world flashed as something struck him in the face, but he held on, raking deeper. The arcanist had driven his head backward, smashing Declan’s face.

  Desperate and afraid, Declan triggered his only remaining rune, aiming it at the back of the arcanist’s head. Pierce activated, drilling a pea-sized hole through the skull. The man went limp.

  The final arcanist was tier six and winning a battle of three ArCore against one. The remaining two soldiers lay dead or dying and Rohan’s face was so drenched in blood Declan couldn’t tell where or what the wound was.

  Lake Domine had told him once how Duelists thought, and Declan was risking his life on that guidance. “Swirling Cloud Shield,” he shouted, “Scales of Stone, Darkness’s Shadow, those are his shields. Fuck him up!”

  The tier six arcanist spun, using Wind Lift to soar upward to dodge three different runes. He stared at Declan and the dead arcanist beside him. Then activated a rune and disappeared.

  Spirit Path, he thought. A line of sight teleport that had a life and mana cost. Duelists understood a losing battle. Faced with the possibility, he’d made the choice to fail the mission and survive.

  The silence after battle was deafening. Declan’s blood pounded in his ears, wounded people moaned, and students wept. Survival was sweeter than any rin.

  Declan wiped blood from his eyes and blinked as Rohan approached, still carrying his pack. “He’s gone. Teleport rune that costs life force along with mana.”

  Rohan nodded, his cheer gone, his face grim. He drew a short dagger and tossed it into the dead grass. “In his abdomen, where the arccsoul attaches. Take his runes. Jaimeson, Wind Lift to the keep. Get help.”

  Declan rolled the dead man over and began to carve.

  ###

  When Rohan had showed him to a room the first time, Declan had thought it like an inn, a temporary assignment. The House Taylor guide who brought him back to it didn’t hesitate. “Senior Taylor assigned it. She says you’re her student.”

  The aftermath of battle left him cold in a way the heat rune wouldn’t touch no matter how he cranked it. The arcanist had been only a tier four. Four runes nestled in the man’s gut, and five more in the leather pouch he carried. At the moment, Declan couldn’t muster the attention to care. He was four hours into the day and exhausted from adrenaline, not to mention the nosebleed that stopped and started and the ankle that shot pain up his leg with every step.

  He didn’t even want to bathe, even though the smell of dried blood and viscera clung to him almost as tightly as the memories. What stood out was how easy killing a man had been. Not the battle itself, that had been brutal. The act. It was empty, meaningless. He wasn’t filled with triumph nor sadness, only a hunger to survive.

  There was a time to work harder, a time to work smarter, and a time to work different, his pop always said, but there was always work to do. And the first work was taking care of his inuries, even if he didn’t want to. Declan carried his pack, now loaded with runes, and rode the lift downward to the first floor.

  Taylor guards and members stared.

  He didn’t care.

  At the medical outpost, they rushed to work, first scolding him for not coming immediately and second scalding him as they cleaned away the blood. He’d been rolled to a room on the third floor where he leaned against the wall as a water jet sprayed him clean, and now sat, waiting for a healer, his ankle wrapped in cloth, bound with thick leather, and a heat-stone in his lap to warm the blanket they’d given him.

  His nose was broken, his front teeth chipped, his tongue bitten through and so many bruises he couldn’t count. And he was hungry, his stomach deciding that near death was no reason for near starvation.

  A tier five healer with a tier five rune was a difference that couldn’t be expressed at first. This was what he imagined when he thought of magic based healing. Bones popped and shifted as they set, his nose set into place, and a warm glow settled accross him. The healer finished his work with the bad news. “The bruises have to fade on their own, circulate mana if you can, even without an arcsoul, it will help you heal, and your body can heal itself better than I can. It knows what is wrong in much finer detail.”

  Declan thanked the man and swore he wanted to see the ArCore with proper healing runes. He’d limp for a week while the muscles and tendons recovered from being twisted wrong, but survive. And waiting outside was Ava Taylor.

  First, she hugged him. Then she pushed him back and looked him over. “There’s a debriefing going on right now. They’d like to ask you questions but this isn’t an inquisition. Then my dear brother is going to explain how he let this happen. Or I’m going to kill him.”