Page 86 of Legacy of Glass
He responded with a vicious blow that she only partially dodged.
Cade immediately let out a wild bellow and ran for the man, seeming oblivious to the three others standing in his way. Julius shouted as well, waving for the guards to join him in distracting the remaining three.
Two of the men had turned aside, moving to intercept Cade, but they wheeled back at Julius’s shout, each of them drawing a sword. Julius faced the man, putting himself between the abductor and Olivia, who had dashed after Cade. He wasn’t giving the armed men an opportunity to go after a weaker target.
The two guards surged forward valiantly, each engaging one of their attackers in a desperate struggle. Julius lunged for the remaining man who skipped backward, away from his blade. Julius remained in place, unwilling to be lured into a dangerous position.
The man changed tack, abandoning his strategic retreat and rushing Julius with a yell. Julius stepped back, expertly parrying the man’s attack. But he nearly misjudged the force of his counterattack, too accustomed to the careful bouts he engaged in with his friends.
Pulling back, he adjusted, his next lunge catching the man off guard. The man gave way before the force of Julius’s blow, his sword slipping away as Julius carried the thrust all the way through.
His opponent threw himself backward off Julius’s blade but immediately collapsed to the ground, both hands clutching his wound. Julius raised his sword again, panting as he looked toward the other two fights. One of the guards had subdued his man, but the other had somehow lost his blade, as had his opponent, and the two were pummeling each other with their fists.
Julius watched the cadence of the fight, ready to intervene when an opening presented itself, but a piercing cry of “Julius!” made him swing around.
Chapter27
Olivia
Olivia gripped her dagger in a sweating hand, but she wasn’t foolhardy enough to take on a man armed with a sword. She would leave the guards to handle them.
Instead, she ran along the inside wall of the warehouse, following behind Cade. By the time she got a clear view of him, he had Marigold’s attacker lying at his feet and was attempting to free Marigold while she sobbed noisily.
Something wound tight inside Olivia loosened. Her friend was all right. The tears sounded more like a natural overflow of emotion than the deep wail of someone badly injured or in extreme distress.
Olivia started to move closer to the pair when she remembered that the warehouse held another captive. And the second captive didn’t have a desperate lover to rush to her rescue.
Olivia swung around, searching for Elisabeth and her remaining captor. But Daphne was ahead of her. Before Olivia had done more than visually locate the abducted girl, Daphne was shouting for Elisabeth to duck.
Elisabeth obeyed promptly, and Daphne hurled a broken piece of plaster at her captor. Olivia wasted no time in following suit. Swapping her dagger to her left hand, she seized a piece of loose debris from the floor and aimed it at the man.
He had successfully dodged Daphne’s plaster and was attempting to haul Elisabeth back upright again. The girl was stubbornly resisting, however, and her captor wasn’t prepared for Olivia’s chunk of wood. It hit him on one shoulder.
He bellowed and swung around just in time for Daphne to catch him in the side of the head with part of a brick. He swayed and crumpled to the ground.
Daphne hurried to Elisabeth’s side, helping her to her feet and talking in a soft, reassuring flow. Energy coursed through Olivia, and she breathed hard, despite her relatively minor exertion.
She couldn’t relax yet, however. Spinning around, she searched for Julius, hoping to find he had already completed his fight.
For a second all she could see were swaying, shouting figures, but her eyes latched onto Julius, a point of calm in the chaos. He appeared unharmed, his focus on two men locked in a rapid fistfight.
Before she could release a sigh of relief, however, her eyes caught on another man. Whatever Cade had done to incapacitate Marigold’s attacker, the effect hadn’t been permanent. He was back on his feet, unnoticed by Cade, who was still working to free Marigold, and was approaching Julius from behind.
He no longer had his sword—if he had ever had one—but he held a brick raised high, ready to bring it down on the back of Julius’s head.
“Julius!” Olivia screamed, throwing herself forward in a desperate lunge.
She slid forward across the ground, her wild, screaming approach distracting the man. As she slid all the way to his side, she stabbed her dagger—still clutched in her left hand—awkwardly into his foot.
Julius turned, his sword coming up as he instinctively ran the man through. The attacker gave a soft, surprised grunt and dropped the brick, his hands going to the sword now protruding from his middle.
The brick fell toward Olivia. Trapped in an awkward position, she tried to roll away, but there was no time.
She braced herself for the strike of the brick, but instead a heavy weight fell over her as Julius threw himself across her. Bracing himself with his arms, he took the blow of the brick against his back.
“Julius!” she cried again, her words muffled this time.
But while the brick must have hurt, it had missed his head, and he was able to scramble easily to his feet. He pulled her up after him, his eyes roaming over her.
