by Jim Butcher
“No thanks are necessary, sire. Whatever those other jackals want to pretend, Sextus, you are the First Lord of Alera and my lord. I only did my duty.”
“Thank you all the same,” Gaius replied quietly. “I’m sorry about Vereus. He was a fine young man.”
The High Lord glanced out the coach’s window at the coming darkness. “Veradis?”
“Safe,” Gaius said. “And will be so while I have breath in my body.”
Cereus bowed his head. He took a deep breath, and said, “Thank you.”
“No thanks are necessary,” Gaius said, smiling faintly. “Whatever those jackals want to pretend, I am your lord. Duty flows uphill and down.” He frowned again and looked out the window. “I’ll have our Legions in position to support Ceres in another week. What can you tell me about the Vord advance?”
Cereus looked up wearily. “That it is accelerating, despite everything we can do.”
“Accelerating?” Ehren blurted. “What do you mean?”
The old High Lord shook his head and spoke without any inflection. “I mean, Sir Ehren, my lord, that my city does not have a week.
“The Vord will be upon us in two days.”
CHAPTER 13
Amara held the arrow nocked firmly against the bowstring, and kept enough steady pressure against it to ensure a swift and certain draw, but not too much to tire her arm. It had been a surprisingly difficult skill to learn, at least until she’d developed enough of the proper musculature to use the bow her husband had made for her. She took a slow step forward and put her foot down silently, her eyes focused into the middle distance, at nothing, the way she’d been trained. The forest was almost silent in the stillness just before dawn, but Cirrus, her wind fury, carried every tiny sound to her ears as clearly as if it’d been a voice speaking from directly beside her.
Trees creaked in tiny breaths of wind. Sleeping birds stirred, their feathers rustling. Something scuttled among the higher branches of a tree, probably a squirrel getting an early start on the day, or a night rodent of some kind crawling back to its nest. Something rustled, perhaps a deer making its way through the brush—
—and perhaps not.
Amara focused Cirrus on the sound and located a second rustling, that of cloth on cloth. Not a deer, then, but her target.
She pivoted toward the sound, in perfect silence, moving slowly to keep it, focusing on maintaining her own invisibility. Learning to master the use of the furycrafted cloth had been simpler than she had expected—certainly easier than employing a windcrafted veil. All she had to do was maintain a low level of concentration, focusing on the colors of her surroundings, drawing them in from what she saw, and the cloth would absorb and mimic them, rendering her into little more than a blur of background color. Granted, the original designer of the cloth, an expensive clothier in Aquitaine, had nearly shrieked the skies down when she’d heard how her invention, designed as the absolute pinnacle of wealthy fashion, was to be used.
The thought made Amara smile. Just a little.
She couldn’t see anything where her ears told her something should be, but that didn’t matter. She drew the bow in a slow, practiced motion, and loosed the arrow.
The arrow flew, swift and straight, and from the empty air appeared a form of blurred color that eventually resolved itself into the shape of her husband. The blunted wooden arrow hadn’t been a deadly threat, but as he cast back his own color-shifting cloak and rubbed at his ribs, wincing, Amara found her own side twinging in sympathy.
“Ouch,” she murmured, parting her cloak and revealing herself. “Sorry.”
He looked around for a moment until he spotted her and shook his head. “Don’t be. Well done. What did you think?”
“I had to use Cirrus to track the sound of your movement. I never saw you, not even when I knew where you where.”
“Nor I, you, even tracking you with earthcraft. I’d say the cloaks work then,” Bernard said, his wince of pain broadening into a grin. “Aquitainus Invidia may not have given a crow’s feather about the Realm, but it seems that her fashion sense is going to be of service.”
Amara laughed and shook her head. “When that seamstress heard we wanted her to break those gowns down and refashion them into traveling cloaks, I thought she was going to start foaming at the mouth—the more so when one was to be made for you.”
Bernard made his way quietly through the brush, as always seeming to pass through it with hardly a branch or leaf disturbed by his presence, despite his size. “I’m sure a liberal dosing of silver and gold eased the symptoms.”
“That will be up to Gaius’s accountants,” Amara said smugly. “I had a letter of credit with the Crown’s seal upon it. All she could do was pray that I wasn’t some sort of confidence artist watercrafted into the semblance of Calderonus Amara.”
Bernard paused for a moment, blinking. “My.”
She tilted her head. “What is it?”
“That’s . . . the name of my House.”
Amara wrinkled up her nose at him and laughed. “Well, yes, my lord. So it would seem. Your letters are all signed His Excellency, Count Calderonus Bernard, remember?”
He didn’t smile in reply. His expression was, instead, very thoughtful. He fell into a pensive silence as they walked back to their camp, after the final tests of their new equipment. Amara walked beside him without saying anything. It never helped Bernard to prod at him while he was forming thoughts. It sometimes took her husband time to properly forge the things in his head into words, but it was—at least usually—worth the wait.
“It’s always been a job,” Bernard said at last. “My rank. The way being a Steadholder was. Something I did for my livelihood.”
“Yes,” Amara said, nodding.
He gestured vaguely toward the northeast, toward Riva, and their home in Calderon. “And it’s been a place. Garrison. The town, the fortress, the people who lived there. The problems to be solved and so on. Do you follow?”
“I think so.”
“Calderonus Bernard was just that fellow who was supposed to make sure everyone had somewhere to go during furystorms,” Bernard rumbled. “And who made sure that men with more time on their hands than sense didn’t bother people trying to work for a living, and who was trying to build up a lasting peace with his neighbors to the east rather than occasionally being eaten by them.”
Amara laughed at that and slipped her fingers between his.
“But Calderonus Amara . . .” He shook his head. “I’ve . . . never heard it said aloud. Did you realize that?”
Amara frowned and thought about it. “No. I suppose it’s because for so long we were . . .” Her cheeks flushed. “Improper.”
“Illicit lovers,” Bernard said, not without a certain amount of satisfaction. “Frequent illicit lovers.”
Amara’s cheeks grew warmer. “Yes. Well. Your people, whom we spent most of our time together among, hardly wished to throw that in your face. So they just called me your lady.”
“Exactly. So now there’s this new person, you see. Calderonus Amara.”
She looked obliquely up at him. “Who is she?” she asked quietly.
“A temptress who seduces married men in their bedrolls in the depths of the night where all the stars can see, apparently.”
She laughed again. “I was cold. As I recall, the rest was your idea.”
“I don’t recall it that way at all,” he said gravely, his eyes shining. His fingers tightened gently in hers. “She is also the wife of that Calderonus fellow. The founder of House Calderonus. Something that . . . something that could last a good long while. Something that could stand, and grow. That could do a lot of people a lot of good.”
Amara felt herself quail a little inside, but steeled herself against it. “For that to happen, a House needs children, Bernard,” she said quietly. “And I’m not . . . We haven’t . . .” She shrugged. “At this point, I’m not sure it’s going to happen.”
“Or it might,” Bernard s
aid. “Some things can’t be hurried along.”
“But what if I can’t?” she asked, without malice or grief in the tone. After a second, she felt startled to realize that she didn’t feel any, either. Or at least, not nearly so much as she had in the past. “I’m not trying to gather sympathy, love. It’s a rational question. If I can’t provide you with an heir, what will you do?”
“We adopt,” Bernard said promptly.
She arched an eyebrow. “Bernard, the laws regarding Citizenship—”
“Oh, to the crows with those codes,” Bernard spat, grinning. “I’ve read them. They’re mostly an excuse for Citizens not to give up their money and status to anyone but their own children. Great furies know, if it was all based upon blood, all those bastard children, like Antillar Maximus, should certainly be inheriting Citizenship.”
“Adopt the bastard of a Citizen,” Amara mused.
“They’d have every bit as much potential for strong furycraft as a child born of us would,” Bernard said. “And crows, there are enough of them, the way some Citizens carry on. Why not provide some kind of positive direction for a few of them? I’d bet every sword in my armory that nearly every one of those mercenary Knights of the Aquitaines is a bastard child of a Citizen.”
“Suppose we manage to get away with it?” she asked him. “Then what?”
He arched an eyebrow at her. “We raise them.”
“Raise them.”
“Yes. You’ll be a good mother.”
“Ah. It’s that simple, is it?”
He laughed, a warm, booming laugh that rolled through the trees. “Raising a child isn’t complicated, love. It isn’t easy, but it isn’t complicated, either.”
She tilted her head, looking up at him. “How’s it done, then?”
He shrugged. “You just love them more than air and water and light. From there, everything else comes naturally.”
He stopped and tugged gently on her hand, turning her to face him. He touched her cheek, very lightly, with the blunt fingertips of one hand.
“Understand me,” he said quietly, his eyes earnest. “I haven’t given up on the idea of your bearing my children, and I never will.”
She smiled quietly. “Depending on what nature has to say,” she replied, “we may have to agree to disagree on that issue.”
“Then let me tell you exactly where I’m drawing the line, Calderonus Amara,” he rumbled. “I’m building a future. You’re going to be in it. And we’re going to be happy. I’m not willing to compromise on that.”
She blinked up at him several times. “Love,” she said in a near whisper, “in the next few days, we’re going to begin a mission for the Crown that, in all probability, will kill us both.”
Bernard snorted. “Heard that before. And so have you.” He leaned down and kissed her mouth, and she was suddenly overwhelmed with the enormous, warm, gentle power behind that kiss, and the touch of his hand. She felt herself melt against him, returning the kiss measure for measure, slow and intent as the light began to change from wan grey to morning gold.
It ended a time later, and she felt a little dizzy.
“I love you,” she said quietly.
“I love you,” he said. “No compromises.”
The last ridgeline between them and their eventual area of operation was at the top of a long slope, and Amara’s horse reached it several moments before Bernard’s. The poor beast labored mightily under Bernard’s sheer size, and over the course of many miles, it had added up to a steep toll in fatigue.
Amara crested the rise and stared down at the broad valley, several miles south of the city of Ceres. The wind was from the north, chill without being unpleasant—even the depths of winter were seldom harsh, there in the sheltered southern reaches of the Realm. She turned her face into the wind and closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying it. Ceres lay several leagues north of their current position, at the end of the furycrafted causeway that ran through the valley below. From there, she and Bernard would be able to wait for the Vord to pass by, then slip among them.
The wind suddenly felt a little colder. She shivered and turned her head to survey the valley below her.
The sky to the south was smudged with a dark haze.
Amara drew in a sharp breath, lifted her hands, and called to Cirrus. Her fury shimmered into the space between her hands, bending light, letting her see into the far distance much more clearly than she could have on her own.
Dozens and dozens of plumes of smoke rose into the sky, far to the south—and crows, so many of them that from where she stood they almost seemed like clouds of black smoke themselves, wheeled and swirled over the valley.
Amara turned her gaze to the causeway, and with Cirrus’s help, she could now see, as she had not before, that the furycrafted road was crowded with people, traveling with as much haste as they could manage—holders, mostly, men, women, and children, many of them half-dressed, barefoot, some of them carrying unlikely bits of household paraphernalia, though most carried nothing. Some of the holders were doing their best to herd livestock. Some drove carts—many loaded with what looked like wounded legionares.
“It’s too soon,” Amara breathed. “Days too soon.”
She was hardly aware of Bernard’s presence until he rumbled, “Amara. What is it?”
She shook her head and wordlessly leaned over, reaching out to let him see through the sightcrafting Cirrus had provided.
“Crows,” Bernard breathed.
“How could this have happened?” Amara asked.
Bernard was silent for a second, then let out a sharp, bitter bark of laughter. “Of course.”
She arched an eyebrow at him.
“We were told that they’re furycrafting now, correct?”
“Yes.”
He gestured at the road below. “They’re using the causeways.”
A chill went through Amara’s belly. Of course. The explanation was utterly simple, and yet she had never even considered it. The furycrafted roads of Alera, whose construction allowed Alerans to travel swiftly and almost tirelessly across the countryside, were a staple of life, practically a feature of the landscape. They were also the single most reliable advantage Alera had in defending the Realm against the foes that so often outnumbered her. The causeways allowed the Legions to march a hundred leagues in a single day—more, if the need was dire. They meant that the Legions would always be able to field a maximum amount of force to ideal positions.
Of course, none of those enemies had used furycraft.
If Bernard was right, and the Vord could make use of the causeways, Amara wondered, then what else could they do? Could they intercept messages sent by water fury through the rivers of the Realm? Could they tamper with the weather? Could they, bloody crows, rouse the sleeping wrath of one or more of the Great Furies, as Gaius had done with Kalus, the previous year?
Amara stared at the fleeing holders and the rising smoke and the circling crows, and in her heart became abruptly certain of a simple, undeniable fact.
Alera could never survive what was coming.
Perhaps if they had acted sooner, in accord, instead of bickering and infighting, something could have been done. Perhaps if more people had heeded their warnings, and had been willing to back their belief with resources enough to create some kind of sentinel organization, it might have been nipped in the bud.
But instead . . . Amara knew—not feared, not suspected, but knew—that they were too late.
The Vord had come, and Alera was going to fall.
“What are we going to do?” Amara whispered.
“The mission,” Bernard replied. “If they’re using the causeway, they’ve got their crafters with them. In fact, it should make them easier to find. We just follow the road.”
Amara began to reply, when her horse suddenly threw back its ears and danced sideways for several steps with several harsh breaths of apprehension. Amara steadied the animal only with difficulty, keeping the reins tight and speaking quie
tly. Bernard’s mount reacted in much the same way, though he had far more skill at calming the beast. A touch of his hand, a brush of earthcraft, and a murmur of his rumbling voice calmed his mount almost immediately.
Amara swept her gaze left and right, to see what had startled the horses so.
She smelled it before she saw it—putrescence and rotting meat. Then a breath later, she saw the grass lion emerge from the shadows beneath a stand of scraggly pine trees.
The beast was eight or nine feet long, its golden hide dappled with greenish stripes that would blend perfectly with the tall grasses of the Amaranth Vale. A powerful creature, far more heavily muscled than anything resembling a common house cat, the grass lion’s upper fangs curved down like daggers from its upper jaws, thrusting past its lower lip, even when its mouth was closed.
Or, more accurately put, a living grass lion’s fangs would do so. This grass lion no longer had a lower lip. It had been ripped or gnawed away. Flies buzzed around it. Patches of fur had fallen away to reveal swelling, rotted flesh beneath, pulsing with the movements of infestations of maggots or other insects. One of its eyes was filmy and white. The other was missing from its socket. Dark fluid had run from its nostrils and both its ears, staining the fine fur surrounding them.
And yet it moved.
“Taken,” Amara breathed.
One of the more hideous tactics employed by the Vord was their ability to send small, scuttling creatures among their enemies. The takers would burrow into their targets, killing them and taking control of their corpses, directing them as a man might a puppet. Amara and Bernard had been forced to fight and destroy the remains of scores of taken holders, years before in the Calderon Valley, during the first Vord outbreak—the one that had been stopped before it could become too large to contain. The taken holders had been oblivious to pain, swift, strong beyond reason—but not overly bright.
The grass lion stopped and stared at them for the space of a breath. Then two.
Then, moving with a speed that a living beast could not have bested, it turned and bounded into the trees.
