Overhead, the spectators hurled insults at them, using the name Hallowtide as a curse, but they ignored them. Jary growled and attacked, bringing the sword in an arc over his head. Sibba raised the ax, deflecting the bow with the handle, rage simmering just below the surface, her blood rushing in her ears. He wanted her to give up. He expected her to lie down and take it. Like Gabel, like Evenon. Like their father. Like the king across the sea.
Flipping the ax in midair for a better grip, she brought it back around one-handed, trying to spare her sore shoulder, slicing it across the space between them. It was her first offensive move and it nearly caught him off guard, but he recovered, his sword pushing away the ax head. She swung again, this time in an arc parallel to the ground, but he ducked and came back over with another blow that she knocked away.
The crowd loved this, the excitement building as they waited for the first one to draw blood. She knew she should stop. The last thing she wanted was to kill her brother, but she also wasn't going to lie down and die. She sliced at him again. He leaped backward, the blade of the ax missing him by a breath, but she had the advantage now. She followed the swing through behind her back, switching the ax to her other hand and swinging again, pushing through the pain that came with the movement. He leaned away to avoid the blow, but she kept going, bringing the ax overhead with two hands and spinning, pulling it in a downward arc that he sidestepped.
The momentum lodged the head of the ax into the hard-packed dirt floor and it was the opportunity he had been waiting for. He heaved the sword over his shoulder, but keeping one hand on the shaft of the ax, Sibba flattened herself against the wall and the blade harmlessly skimmed the air in front of her. She jerked the ax free just in time to knock away his next blow. Teeth bared, she raised the ax over her head and used all her power, all her anger, all her despair, to thrust it back down at him on his blind side. The Crowheart sword stopped it just in time, pressed between the ax blade and Jary's neck.
“Kill her!” Isgerd the Younger shouted from somewhere up above, but neither of them dared to take their eyes off the other. Sibba pressed down with both of her hands while Jary fought to keep the blade from digging into the place where his shoulder met his neck. The weight of it drove him to his knees. The arena grew dark as a storm cloud moved into place, casting them in shadow. It seemed somehow appropriate for it to rain at a time like this.
Sibba felt him slipping and knew she could end it, lean on the handle and drive the blade home. But that wasn't what she had come to do. I couldn't handle another ghost. She knew what Evenon meant. There were so many already. What would she do with her brother's blood on her hands? She would never be able to go back to Ottar again. She would never be able to face Tola or Estrid or Ari, or more importantly, herself. How would she be able to live with herself? She had come to Ydurgat to save him, and that's exactly what she would do.
She pulled the ax away and stumbled backward, dropping to her own knees in front of Jary. They were on each other's eye level and she saw astonishment on his face. What did he see in hers that kept him on the ground? Sibba held the ax out to one side, limp in her hand. She wouldn't drop it, though. Their mother and her sisters waited for her in Elanos; she intended to meet them there.
He stood, the hand that held the sword trembling.
“It's okay,” Sibba said.
“Kill her!” Isgerd the Younger cried again. There was desperation in her voice and Sibba wondered what would become of them. If they would really let Jary leave. If Jary would even want to leave. Maybe the two of them could join their clans by love instead of violence, if the girl was even capable of love.
Jary didn't say anything, but raised the sword, bouncing it in his hand. Thunder clapped and the sky, with its rolling clouds, looked so much like the one she had seen in her vision of Ey Island that Sibba's mouth dropped open. I'm coming for you. Surely not. The first drop of rain struck her squarely between the eyes and she blinked. Jary raised the sword over his head but Sibba wasn't looking at him. She was looking past him, at a dark shape circling in the sky. Lightning forked overhead, illuminating golden wings against the clouds.
“Jary,” Sibba said, just before something else came, a sound as familiar to Sibba as her own voice: the twang of a bowstring releasing an arrow.
CHAPTER FORTY
Sibba
Jary dropped back to the ground with a grunt, the sword skittering out of his grip. Fearing more arrows, Sibba crawled to his side, expecting an entry wound in his chest or his side. Expecting to lose him when she had been the one meant to die. She ran her hands along his torso, finding nothing. Then she noticed he was holding his leg, a guttural moan whining from his throat, barely audible over the rolling thunder that shook the ground. She found the shaft protruding from his thigh. The arrowhead was buried deep but hadn't hit anything vital.
Sibba lifted her eyes from her brother and searched the edge of the pit until she found him. Evenon stood with his bow still raised, his eyes on her. The tattoos on his arm seemed to swirl in the strange storm light. He had told her once that he never missed. He hadn't been shooting to kill. He had been shooting to save her. Everyone was frozen, like the world was taking a breath to prepare itself for what would come next.
The sky ripped apart. Lightning forked down, striking the enormous sutvithr tree that stood before the great hall. The tree all but exploded, flames licking the sky. Sibba looked away, shading her eyes, and when she looked back, Evenon was gone and the people of Ydurgat had gone mad. The fire had spread to the thatched roof of the great hall, and the spectators had forgotten the pit completely.
All but two. The two Isgerds stood at the edge, watching as Sibba snapped the shaft of the arrow. Sibba was exhausted. She wanted nothing more than to sink down beside Jary, hold him against her and cry, but there would be time for that later.
“It's over,” Sibba said, hauling on his arm. “We have to go. Now. While we can.”
“I can't,” Jary said through gritted teeth.
“You can, lean on me—”
“No,” Jary said. He had picked up the ax and was using it to support his other side as he struggled to his feet. “I can't leave her.”
Sibba almost let him fall back to the ground.
“Alive,” he finished. “She cannot live.”
“There will be time to finish this later,” Sibba said, trying to pull him to the rope ladder that was still draped over the side.
“I have to finish it now.”