by Jim Butcher
Tavi rose to stand in the prow, and the wind threw his cloak back as the longboat glided silently for the shore.
“First impressions, eh?” Max muttered.
“Right,” Tavi said. “When they get close enough to get a look at you, try to look like someone who isn’t impressed.”
“Got it,” said Max.
The longboat altered course to run parallel to the boat coming from Varg’s vessel. Varg’s boat was crewed by seven warrior-caste Canim, six of them pulling oars while a seventh held the longboat’s tiller. Varg, like Tavi, stood in the prow of his boat. He wore no cloak, but the fading light of day managed, somehow, to glitter upon the bloodred gem hanging from a gold ring in one ear, here and there upon his black-and-crimson armor, and upon the hilt of the curved sword hanging at his side.
“Carrying a lot of bloodstone on him,” Max noted.
“I get the impression that Varg hasn’t made a lot of friends among the ritualists,” Tavi said. “If I were he, I’d carry a lot of bloodstone, too.”
“Beats being annihilated by red lightning or melted into sludge by a cloud of acid, all right. You brought your stone, right?”
“Got it in my pocket. You?”
“Crassus loaned me his,” Max confirmed. “Do you really think that showing up with only two of us will impress the Shuarans?”
“It might,” Tavi said. “Mostly, I feel better knowing that I’m not leaving anyone helpless to Canim sorcery standing around on the dock behind me to be taken prisoner or wounded and used to slow me down.”
Max snorted. “You didn’t say anything about that aboard the ship.”
“Well. No.”
“Just did it to impress the girl, eh, Your Highness?”
Tavi threw a sly glance over his shoulder. “It was a pretty good kiss.”
Max snorted, then they fell silent until they reached the sea-gate of Molvar.
Huge bars of black iron rose from the cold sea, supported on either side by walls made from hand-hewn granite blocks. Even without the use of furycraft, the Canim had been able, somehow, to raise the seabed into something solid enough to support massive walls, built out from the sides of the fjord. Tavi could not imagine how much sheer, brute effort, how much raw sweat and muscle power had gone into their construction, or what techniques must have been used, even with the incredible strength of the Canim laborers, to maneuver the enormous blocks of stone. They made the ruins in Appia look like children’s projects by comparison.
As the two boats approached, the sea-gates groaned and began to move, slowly parting. Phosphorescence flickered up and down the metal bars, and eerie, fluttering waves of light danced over the surface of the water. Metal rattled on metal, an eerie, regular thump-thump-thump as the gates opened, swirling water in their wake.
The boats passed through, and Tavi spotted several Canim on the walls above them, in dark armor and strange, long, slippery-looking cloaks, all but hidden within their garments. Each of them bore one of the steel bolt throwers in his hands, the deadly balests that had claimed the lives of so many Knights and legionares in the wars in the Amaranth Vale, and Tavi’s shoulder blades developed a distinct itch as the boat passed them. A bolt hurled by one of the deadly weapons could slam through his armor’s backplates, his body, and his breastplate in an instant, and still carry enough momentum to kill a second armored man on the other side of him.
Tavi did not allow himself to turn his head or alter his straight-backed, confident stance. Posture and gesture were of enormous significance among the Canim. Someone who looked as if he expected to be attacked quite possibly would be, simply as an outgrowth of unspoken, unintended, but very real statements being made by his body.
A cold trickle of sweat slid along Tavi’s spine. It was no time for bungled communications to spoil an otherwise reasonably fine day. After all—he was about to get off the bloody water for the first time in weeks.
He let out a little breath of laughter at the thought and calmed himself as his boat, along with Varg’s, crossed the harbor of Molvar.
It was huge—half a mile across at the least, large enough to house the whole of his fleet and the Canim’s, too. Indeed, in the failing light he counted at least thirty Canim ships of war, whose designs differed subtly from those designed and built by Varg’s shipwrights. Granite bluffs framed the harbor, except for a long stretch of stone piers, as large as any Tavi had seen in Alera, where warships and other vessels, built more along the lines of merchants, were docked.
One pier was set apart from the others. Torches had been lit at its end and burned scarlet with more intensity than any normal fire. It was crowded with Canim, also in their odd, wet-looking cloaks, but Tavi caught glimpses of midnight blue steel armor beneath their cloaks and similarly tinted weaponry in their hands.
Varg’s longboat headed for that pier, and without being told, Max altered his heading slightly to do the same. The two longboats pulled up on opposite sides of the pier in almost-total silence. The only sound was the rattle of wood and metal fittings as the rowers in Varg’s craft shipped their oars.
From there, Tavi thought, looking up at the pier, it certainly looked like a great many more Canim were present than had been there a moment before. They also looked quite a bit taller. And their weapons looked a great deal sharper. Doubtless, he thought, it was all just a trick of the light.
“No fear,” he muttered to himself. Then he took a long step up to the pier and stepped out of the longboat and onto the Shuaran stone.
Opposite him, Varg was doing the same, albeit having less difficulty with the scale of the construction. He tilted his head slightly toward Tavi, who returned the gesture at precisely the same depth and timing. They turned simultaneously to face the warriors gathered on the pier.
Silence ruled.
Tension mounted.
No one stirred.
Tavi debated saying something to break the ice. His time in the Academy, both in academic studies and in training as a Cursor, had included considerable exposure to diplomacy and protocol. Both fields of knowledge offered several potential courses of fruitful action he might pursue. He mused over it for a moment, then discarded them entirely in favor of a lesson his uncle Bernard had taught him on the steadholt: that hardly a man ever made a fool of himself by keeping his bloody mouth shut.
Tavi held his tongue and waited.
A moment later, footsteps sounded, and a runner approached. He was a young adult Cane, lean and swift, running very nearly as fast as a horse might, his odd cloak flying behind him. His fur was a strange color that Tavi had never seen in the wolf-warriors, a kind of pale golden brown fading to white at the tips of his ears and tail. He loped up to the end of the pier, bared his throat deeply to one of the warriors, and growled, “It is done as agreed,” in Canish.
The warrior in question flicked his ears in acknowledgment and stepped forward. He faced Varg, stopping a few inches outside the range of what Tavi judged would be the reach of Varg’s sword, should he draw it.
“Varg,” growled the strange Cane. “You are not welcome here. Go.”
Varg’s eyes narrowed, and his nostrils flared for a few seconds. “Tarsh,” he snarled, pure contempt in his voice. “Did Lararl lose his wits in the snow, that you are pack leader here?”
Tarsh reached up a paw-hand to rip back the hood of his cloak, revealing another golden-furred Cane. This one’s muzzle was heavily scarred, including an odd-looking ridge of scar tissue across the black skin of his nose. He was missing one ear halfway up, and Tavi noted that instead of a sword, he bore at his hip an axe with a long, vicious spike protruding from the back.
“Have a care, Varg,” he spat, harshly. “A word from me will spill your blood into the sea.”
“Only if someone listens,” Varg replied. “I do not bargain with scavenging muzzle-lickers like you, Tarsh. You will order your men to prepare to receive my people. I will give you my pledge of peace. We will debark here and camp outside the walls of your city, so that you will feel safe
. You will provide me with a priority courier, that I may send word to Lararl of our presence and our need for the presence of someone with the stature to treat with me.”
Tarsh bared every fang in his head. “This is not Narash, tree-runner. You have no authority here.”
“I am garada to Lararl, Tarsh,” Varg rumbled. “And every warrior in your range knows it. Lararl will have the throat of anyone who denies him the pleasure of spilling my life’s blood.”
Tarsh snarled. “I will send a courier to Lararl, of course. But that is all. You may abide here to await an answer. Your ships will stay where they are.”
“Unacceptable!”
Tarsh coughed out a growling laugh. “You will accept it, Varg. I am pack leader here.”
“A storm approaches,” Varg said. “Many of my vessels are damaged. Lives will be needlessly lost if they are not given the shelter of the harbor.”
“What are they to Shuar, Narashan ape? My warriors have their orders. If your ships attempt to sail up the fjord, we will destroy them.”
Varg’s lips peeled back from his fangs. “Is this Shuaran hospitality, then? Shuaran honor?”
“If you do not care for it,” Tarsh suggested, his voice openly mocking, “seek elsewhere.”
Varg’s eyes narrowed further. “Were I not honor-bound to take up quarrels with Lararl instead of with his pack leaders, I would have your throat.”
Tarsh’s leering snarl seemed to grow more self-satisfied. “Many decrepit old creatures have used such an excuse to hide their weakness.”
Varg, instead of answering, glanced aside, just for an instant, at Tavi.
Tavi blinked.
Insults like those Tarsh was offering Varg were more than a mere invitation to a challenge to a fight—they were practically demanding it. Under any normal circumstance, any Cane who spoke to another that way could expect an instant and violent response. Varg, in particular, was not one to gladly suffer either insults or fools, and from what Tavi had seen, he didn’t know how to back down from a fight. Which meant that for whatever reason, something to do with the Canim concept of honor, Varg couldn’t act against this windbag.
But perhaps Tavi could.
It seemed that this was the moment for diplomacy.
“Varg is correct,” Tavi said calmly, stepping forward. “There is no time for this foolishness. His people and mine seek safety from the winter and give you our word that our intentions are peaceful. We need to work out the best way to get them all into the harbor before the storm arrives.”
Every set of eyes on the pier swiveled to Tavi and hit him like a physical weight.
“Oh bloody crows,” Maximus whispered, somewhere behind him.
“This creature,” Tarsh said after a moment. “It is the Aleran leader?”
“I am,” Tavi said.
Tarsh growled and turned to the warriors behind him. “Kill it.”
Oh, bloody crows, Tavi thought.
Uncle Bernard had been right after all.
CHAPTER 11
The nearest Cane, a particularly muscled brute, drew and threw his axe in the same underhanded motion, a smooth and professional cast that sent the weapon through a single tumble before its razor edge sliced at Tavi’s face.
Tavi had both of his short blades free of their sheaths before the axe had begun to fly. Rather than dodging aside, he deflected the heavily tumbling weapon back upward and over his head. Tavi had time for the brief thought that most sensible men would, at that point, dive for the boat and run like mad for the Slive.
Instead, Tavi borrowed speed from the cold wind circling the cauldron of Molvar’s harbor, and as time seemed to slow, he launched himself toward Tarsh.
The warriors on the dock tried to stop him. Two more axes tumbled toward him, spinning gracefully. Tavi rolled his shoulder from the path of one weapon, though its blade cut a perfectly straight slice from the hem of his cloak. The other he deflected with a sweep of his armored forearm. The shock of impact shook him hard enough to rattle his teeth, but he simply tightened his jaw and moved on.
The heavily muscled warrior who had first thrown his axe managed to step in front of Tarsh, but Tavi was on him before he could get his secondary weapon into a proper guard position. As he closed, Tavi could sense the strange midnight blue metal of the warrior’s sword, and instinctively sensed a flaw in its manufacture, a weak point a few inches above the tang. He thrust high, forcing the Cane to lift the weapon to protect his throat and face. Tavi then swung with his other weapon, striking the weak spot of the sword, shattering it.
The Cane reeled as flying shards of steel cut into his face. Tavi laid a whipping slash across one of the warrior’s thighs—painful, but not deadly, forcing him to put his weight upon his other leg. Then, with a single, powerful motion, he called upon the earth for strength enough to sweep that foot from beneath the Cane with his own leg, toppling the wolf-warrior to the ground.
The sweep likely saved the Cane’s life. Tarsh’s wavy-bladed sword thrust straight for Tavi’s throat, and would have transfixed the Canim warrior’s left lung had he still been standing.
Tavi never lost his forward momentum, dropping under the thrust, reversing his grip on one blade as he went. He fended off the Cane’s sword with the blade in his left hand, while with fury-assisted strength, he drove the sword in his right hand down like a spike through Tarsh’s paw-foot and into the stone of the pier.
Tarsh howled in agony and hacked down at Tavi with his blade. The blow was swift and as powerful as any earthcrafter’s—but it was not nearly as skilled as Tavi would have expected. It lacked the instantaneous reflex response that would have made it a deadly counterattack, and Tavi was able to strike it aside with his gladius, then surge to his feet and shove the point of his weapon up and into the soft underside of Tarsh’s throat.
“Do not move!” Varg thundered in a voice whose raw authority rang from the stones and echoed around the harbor. And as swiftly as that, the dock was motionless, the other warriors, one in the very act of drawing his arm back to throw his weapon, holding their positions as if frozen in a sudden arctic gale.
Tavi had already stopped his motion, even before Varg had spoken. The very tip of his sword, no more than a quarter of an inch of steel, lay buried in Tarsh’s throat. A tiny rivulet of blood trickled from it and down the shining steel of Tavi’s weapon. Tarsh stood frozen, hardly daring to breathe. His sword clattered from his hand and to the pier.
Without taking his eyes from Tarsh, Tavi gave Varg an acknowledging nod. “I appreciate the courtesy.”
“Of course, gadara,” Varg rumbled.
Tarsh’s ears quivered in shock and his eyes widened.
“Hear me, pack leader,” Tavi said quietly—too quietly for the nearby Canim warriors to hear, he hoped. “Varg has named me gadara, and I have responded in kind. I will not permit you to take advantage of his sense of honor in order to abuse it and thus cheapen his reputation.” He narrowed his eyes. “I wish it to be intact when I kill him. Do you understand me?”
Tarsh continued to look shocked for a few seconds. Then his lips quivered on one side of his muzzle, briefly baring his fangs.
Tavi promptly stomped on the foot that his gladius held pinned to the stones.
It took Tarsh several moments to regain his breath.
“I asked you a question,” Tavi said.
Tarsh bared his fangs in earnest. “I understand.”
“Good,” Tavi said. He reached down and jerked his gladius clear of the stone and the luckless Tarsh’s foot. Then he withdrew his blade from the golden-furred Cane’s throat and stepped two quick paces back from Tarsh. He raised his voice, and said, “Now. Pick up your sword.”
Tarsh just stared at Tavi for a blank second.
“Did you lose your hearing with your ear, Tarsh?” Tavi asked tartly. “Pick up your sword.”
The Cane let out a snarl and snatched up his weapon—careful, Tavi noted, to keep his weight off his injured foot.
“
Out of respect for Lararl, who holds the respect of Varg, I have not killed you out of hand,” Tavi said. “Instead, I give you this choice. Behave honorably toward Varg, as you know Lararl would have you act—or face me, here and now, in front of everyone, to the death. And after I’ve killed you, I will give your second the same choice.”
Tarsh’s eyes glittered. “What makes you think that you are worthy of my attention, Aleran scum?”
Tavi spread his swords in mocking invitation. “I’m the size of a half-grown puppy, Tarsh. You’ve got twice my reach, three times my weight, several times my strength, you’re fighting on your home ground and with your own men all around you. Except for that little hole in your foot, you hold absolutely every advantage. Surely only a coward of legendary proportion would be afraid to fight me.”
From the ranks of Canim warriors came a number of coughing growls—the Canim approximation of Aleran chuckles, or so Tavi judged them. The loudest such sound came from the wounded Cane on the ground—the one Tavi had put there.
Tarsh’s eyes swept back and forth across the ranks of his men, and his ears flattened slightly toward his skull.
Tavi could follow his line of thought easily enough. A moment ago, Tarsh might have been able to order his men to dispatch Tavi as he would tell them to kill any other animal. Now, however, the situation had changed. Varg had recognized Tavi as gadara, a respected foe, a word more highly regarded than “friend” among the wolf-warriors. More to the point, Tavi had issued a direct and personal challenge, changing the situation from a group assault to an issue of dominance and personal strength. And, most importantly, Tavi had demonstrated the virtues most unquestionably held valuable by Canim warriors—courage, confidence, and most importantly, competence in the arts of violence.
“Think carefully Tarsh,” Varg growled, unmistakable amusement in his voice. “I would, before I dueled this Aleran.” He turned to the assembled warriors. “Who is the second to this pack leader?”
The wounded, heavily muscled Cane on the ground tilted his head slightly to one side. “I serve in that capacity, Warmaster Varg.”
