I’d heard it a hundred times, something strange that twisted the tongue. Something I’d never bothered to remember. What did it matter?

I looked at the eagle in his hand. My blood still pounded in my veins, begging for a fight, but my tongue might have been stone in my mouth. Why couldn’t Titus have been here to face this clever king? Titus could have talked him down in that soft voice; quoted something clever and moving about the nobility of surrender. But I wasn’t any good with words. Never had been.

We looked at each other, the Dacian king and I, and suddenly he sat, more falling than lowering himself. He gave a soft grunt and lowered the eagle to the stones, but took his ax with a warning look at me and poised it over the proud wing.

“All right, all right.” I lowered my own sword, sitting warily on the edge of the solar disc. The king pressed his free hand under his lion skin out of sight, the knuckles of the other hand clenching white on the ax haft. “Left-handed,” I said. “So am I.”

“I noticed. Pity. My son was never any good against left-handers.”

“Your son?”

He nodded at the man I’d killed, then at the other Dacian who lay slumped in the grass with the dead legionary’s gladius buried in his throat. “Both of them.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. The wrong thing, and my eagle would be lying in two pieces. I saw a black shadow beneath him, spreading on the stones.

“What is your name?” I blurted suddenly.

“Decebalus.” His Latin was blurring.

“Good name.” It meant strength of ten. Better than slightly.

The shadow under him grew, creeping liquid-black toward the eagle.

“What gave us away?” Decebalus said. “What made you attack?”

“You called the eagle ‘it,’” I said. “To us, the eagle is always ‘her.’”

“Ah.” He lay down carefully on the stones, one hand still stuffed under the lion skin. I started to edge forward, but the ax in his other hand jerked up, and I froze. “Don’t test me, boy.”

I held up a hand, appeasing.

He looked up at the watching moon, now poised almost exactly overhead. “I was crowned here,” he said to no one in particular. “But at noon. Such a bright day. I was crowned at noon, and now I’ll die at midnight.”

“Give me the eagle,” I said.

He made an inarticulate sound through clenched teeth. Under the lion skin his fist clenched, and more glossy blood spilled across the stones. The eagle was drowning in it.

I rose, came toward him. His eyes rolled in his head. “Bury my sword hand.”