by Jim Butcher
“Ink.”
CHAPTER 26
The First Spear strode into the command tent and found Magnus glaring silently at Sir Carleus, the youngest, gangliest, largest-eared of the Knights Aeris in service to the First Aleran. Marcus nodded to the elderly Cursor and returned the young Knight’s immediate salute.
“Magnus,” the First Spear said, “what’s going on?”
“Wait a moment,” Magnus said, his clenched jaws making the word tight with tension. “I don’t want to have to explain it twice.”
“Ah.”
Magnus grimaced. “Bloody crows, I don’t want to have to explain it at all, but . . .”
Just then the tent flap opened and admitted a tall, gangly man; Perennius, the senior Tribune and acting captain of the Free Legion. He saluted the room generally. “Marcus, sir Knight, Maestro. I came as quickly as I could.” He paused, then added, mildly, “Why?”
“Please, Captain,” Magnus said. “If you will be patient for a moment more, I will explain.”
Perennius glanced at the First Spear, who shrugged.
A moment later, there was something of an anticommotion outside; the sudden absence of the camp’s usual background noises. Marcus went to the tent flap and peered out, only to see a dozen heavily armored warrior Canim striding through the First Aleran’s camp, their paw-hands resting upon their weapons. Legionares stood out of the path of the group of Canim, but every one of them kept a hand on his own weapon, as well.
From the markings on their armor—though Marcus was hardly an expert on the intricate customs that infused the Canim practice—it would appear that the soldiers were among the best in the horde that had returned from Alera, their black armor heavily decorated in bands and whorls of scarlet.
Leading them was Nasaug, his own armor nearly solid red across its entire surface. Beside him walked Gradash, the grizzled Cane that Marcus had come to think of as his opposite number among the Canim.
With no discernible signal whatsoever, the escort of Canim warriors came to a halt on the same stride, perhaps thirty feet from the command tent. Nasaug and Gradash continued on, Nasaug tipping an Aleran-style nod to Marcus.
Marcus returned it with the Canim motion, dipping his head slightly to one side, and said, “Good afternoon. Please come in.”
“First Spear,” Nasaug said. “Word has come from my sire?”
Marcus made a growling sound in his chest. “That isn’t entirely clear yet.”
Gradash’s muzzle wrinkled in distaste. “Secrets. Pah. Hunter-games, is it?”
“Smells like it,” Marcus confirmed, and went back inside with the two Canim.
Perennius threw Nasaug a smart salute as he entered, and Nasaug returned the gesture with a slight tilt of his head. “Ah!” the Free Legion’s captain said. “Now I see. Word from the expedition inland.”
“Gentlemen, please,” the old Maestro said. “Wait for the Knight to secure the conversation, if you would.”
Sir Carleus sighed, frowned in concentration, then lifted his hand. Marcus recognized the signs of a man strained almost beyond his crafting limits. The young Knight was exhausted—but the windcrafting that snapped up around them and put a brief pressure on his ears was solid enough, and should serve to completely silence the conversation to the world outside the tent.
“Thank you,” Magnus told the Knight. He turned to the others and held up a letter, written on the overlarge pages of Canim vellum. “This letter bears the signature and seal of both the Princeps and of Warmaster Varg. According to its text, I was to summon the current company to the tent, ward it from observation, and turn the briefing over to Sir Carleus. Tribune Foss has already worked a truthfinding on Sir Carleus, and found no reason to doubt his claim. Can we agree that the signatures and seals are genuine?”
He passed the letter over, and Marcus scanned over them, finding what he knew the Cursor had already learned. The letter was in Octavian’s handwriting, and both seal and signature looked genuine. Granted, the average soldier wouldn’t have known the signs of a forgery, so Marcus—perhaps he hadn’t completely forgotten intrigue craft, after all—replied, “It seems to be the Princeps’ hand to me.”
Nasaug took the letter. His ears quivered as he read the Canim script aloud to Gradash. “The tavar is clever. Heed him. Varg.”
Magnus winced at the words and muttered something less than gracious beneath his breath. “. . . begotten jackass, thinks that, of course, anyone who disagrees with him must be a drooling old moron—”
The First Spear cleared his throat pointedly.
Magnus flipped his hand at him in an irritated wave, and said, “Sir Knight, your report, please.”
Carleus bobbed his head toward the group in general in a brief bow. “My lo . . . uh, sirs. The Princeps wishes you to know that the province of Shuar is the last Canim range that has not been overrun by the Vord. He further advises you that it cannot remain standing for much longer. He and the Shuaran command estimate that the Vord will have engulfed the range entirely within the next three weeks.”
The tent was deathly silent. Marcus glanced at the two Canim but could read nothing in their body language.
“His Highness warns you that Vord queens are operating in the area. Their operating patterns and their success thus far suggest that they may be gathering intelligence directly from the minds of their opponents.”
Perennius let out a low whistle. “They can do that?”
“Yes, yes,” Magnus said, waving a hand at the Free Legion’s acting captain in a suppressing gesture. “It was in the documents sent to you at the beginning of the trip.”
“Ah,” Perennius said, smiling at Magnus rather wolfishly. “Must have missed that detail. I did find something useful to do with the paper, though.”
“Perennius,” Nasaug rumbled, the faintest hint of a rebuke in his tone.
Carleus coughed quietly. “In an effort to conceal his intentions from the enemy, the Princeps has issued written orders for each of you. The orders are sealed closed, and it is his command that you open them one at a time, in sequence. Instructions for opening the second order will be found within the first, and so on.”
Marcus pursed his lips and mused on that. Clever. A spy that can lift information directly from the enemy’s thoughts was a dream or a nightmare come true, depending upon whom the spy was working for: But a man could not give away information he did not possess in the first place, no matter how talented the spy might be. It was a simple, clever counter to the Vord’s abilities.
In theory, at any rate. Conditions in the field were never static. Whoever was following Octavian’s orders would effectively be blindfolded, bound to the chain of orders, and unable to operate upon his own initiative. That was a recipe for disaster. Octavian had a natural talent for that kind of thing, but not even a scion of the House of Gaius could see the future with the necessary accuracy. Every passing hour would make it more likely that his planning and his orders would become hopelessly irrelevant.
“As the Princeps is well aware,” Magnus said, “the environment of a military theater is neither static nor entirely foreseeable.”
“Yes, sir,” Carleus said, nodding. He unslung a heavy courier’s pouch from the strap over his shoulder and dropped it on a table with a weighty-sounding thud. “He has done his best to outline the most probable courses of events.” Carleus flushed slightly. “It means he’s built a number of options into each set of orders, and into each of those options and so on, including the possibility that you might need to act outside his outline. It was quite a bit of writing.”
Marcus grunted. “That’s something, at any rate,” he said. He glanced over at Nasaug. “And you? Are you willing to follow these orders?”
“For now,” Nasaug said. “I trust my sire’s judgment.”
The old Cursor shook his head. “He’s going to clever us all into a bloody grave.” He extended his hand to Carleus. “If it’s going to happen, I’d rather not wait around for it. My orders,
please.”
The young Knight passed a packet of folded, sealed orders to each of them. Marcus examined his own stack of papers. Each individual order was clearly, simply numbered, and written on an individual, overlarge page of Canim parchment. He found one labeled “Order Number One,” and opened it.
Hello, Marcus.
I need you to take every legionare along with Nasaug’s troops and the Free Legion, and march directly west at the earliest possible moment. Do not attempt to conceal your movements. Coordinate with Nasaug and Perennius.
Leave your engineers and the entire contingent of Knights behind, along with those of the Free Legion. Maestro Magnus will set them to their tasks.
Take whatever supplies you can. Open the next set of orders when you have marched at least twenty miles.
Octavian
Marcus read it again, just to be sure, then shook his head. “Well. That’s cryptic.” He glanced up at the old Cursor. “Yours?”
Maestro Magnus glowered at his orders, his face twisted up as if he’d been sipping vinegar. “They are brief and irrational,” he said.
Nasaug snorted and refolded his own orders. “The Princeps has flaws that can be exploited,” the Cane said. “Predictability is not one of them. Nor is stupidity.”
Perennius said nothing, but his eyes were narrowed, the set of his jaw stubborn. For a long moment, no one spoke.
“The question,” Marcus said, “is now before us. What will we do?”
He could all but feel the weight of their intent gazes upon his face. He looked slowly around the tent. Nasaug nodded once at him. Perennius followed the Cane’s lead. Magnus sighed, and nodded to the First Spear as well.
“Well, then,” Marcus said, nodding. “The Princeps has made his will known to us. Let’s get to work.”
CHAPTER 27
Amara and Bernard took their next major risk about an hour before sundown.
They had been drawn to what had been a small but obviously prosperous steadholt by the presence of several of the lizard-shaped Vord who loitered outside the place, instead of rushing about on the hunt, as had all the creatures they had seen thus far. Amara and Bernard had slipped past the guards and into the steadholt, to find that the Vord had overrun the place and set it up as some kind of base of operations.
A vordknight crouched at the peak of the steadholt’s main hall, as motionless as any statue. The croach had spread over most of the ground and was growing up the walls of every building. The steadholt’s well was completely blocked off by the waxy substance. One of the doors to the barn had been torn from its hinges and lay on the ground, already buried in the wax.
Pale wax spiders glided busily back and forth, tending the croach as bees might their honeycomb. All of them that Amara could see emerged from the shadowy interior of the barn and returned to it once their tasks were complete.
Bernard drew close enough to her side to touch her and pressed his fingers lightly against one of her ankles. She tapped his forearm with her fingertips twice, lightly, to acknowledge his signal. Then, one at a time, they slipped on the broadened shoes that they had made specifically for walking on the croach. The waxy substance served the Vord as sustenance and as a kind of sentinel. The weight of an adult human would break the resinous surface, spilling out the faintly luminous liquid within like blood and immediately drawing the attention of the wax spiders who stood watch over it.
Bernard and Octavian, in one of their regular written planning sessions, had between them come up with an idea for broad-bottomed shoes that would spread out the weight of an adult onto a larger surface, reducing the stress upon the croach. With them, the two should be able to walk, carefully, on the croach without breaking its surface or summoning a swarm of its guardians.
In theory.
In practice, the shoes were bloody difficult to use, and Amara suddenly felt very glad that she had insisted that Bernard have a swift-release mechanism built into the pads of leather and still-flexible wood. If they didn’t work the way that they had hoped, Amara wanted to be able to get the ungainly things off her feet as rapidly as possible.
With their stealth-craftings still wrapped securely about them, they walked—waddled, really, Amara thought—along the inner wall of the overrun steadholt toward the cavernous barn, until they finally stepped onto the croach itself. Amara moved as carefully as she ever had in her life, stepping forward with the awkward motion the shoes demanded, an unusually high lift of the knee, then the first foot forward onto the glowing surface, then the whole of her weight brought slowly to bear upon the forward foot, so that the broad pads of the shoes spread her weight. She supposed that were she a character in a dramatic tale, she’d have one hand on her sword and one eye upon the nearest of the spiders—but that was perfect nonsense. She was a great deal more interested in making sure that she kept her balance and that the edges of the shoes didn’t come down at too sharp an angle, tearing the croach and revealing their presence to foes who were, in all likelihood, too numerous to fight successfully in any case.
Amara took one step, then another. No whistling, warbling outcry went up around her. She paused to look back as Bernard stepped onto the croach. Her husband was a great deal larger than she was, and heavier, and his shoes proportionately wider—and therefore more clumsy. Even from barely more than an arm’s length away, Amara could hardly see more than his outline, but she saw him move with the same steady patience with which her husband did everything else as he stepped onto the croach behind her.
No cry went up. The shoes were working. So far.
Amara turned her focus back to her own movements, leading the way, and tried to tell herself that she was walking like a graceful, long-legged heron, and not like a waddling duck, in the broad shoes. It wasn’t far to the door of the barn—twenty feet, or a little more. Even so, it seemed to take at least an hour to walk the distance. That was ridiculous, of course, and Amara told herself so quite firmly. But her throat was so tight and her heart pounding so loudly that she wasn’t sure she could have been expected to hear herself very clearly.
It could only have been a few moments later that she pressed her back against the stone wall of the barn and leaned cautiously forward to peer inside to see what it was that the Vord were standing watch over so diligently.
It was a larder. Amara could think of no other way to describe it.
The croach was deeper there, rising in murky swirls to a foot off the stone floor of the barn and more.
People—bodies—were sealed within it. Amara could make out few details. The croach was translucent, but shapes beneath it remained murky and mercifully indistinct. The bodies were not twisted in the shapes of death. They simply lay peacefully, as though the folk who had met their deaths there had fallen asleep and been sealed into waxy tombs. Some of the more indistinct shapes, deepest in the croach, were too thin to be bodies—but they might, Amara realized, be bones, the flesh eaten from around them by the croach.
Except for three who had been standing, sealed into the croach where it lined the wall behind them. They had been two men and a woman, their limbs restrained by the waxy resin—and their bodies had been damaged badly before they died.
They had, Amara realized, been tortured.
She took swift stock of the three bodies. They were not clad as holders, but in the greens and browns, in the cloaks and leathers of woodsmen, even as she and her husband were. In fact, taking into account that their faces had been distorted by pain as they died . . .
She felt a chill run through her.
She recognized them all. She’d been at the Academy with the young woman, Anna, who had been from a steadholt near Forcia. She’d gone through her basic training as a Cursor with Anna, before graduating the Academy and being apprenticed to Fidelias.
The Vord had captured, tortured, and murdered three of her fellow Cursors, men and women chosen specifically for this mission for their ability to remain unheard and unseen. For all the good it had done them.
Her
belly twisted nauseatingly, and she turned her face away. For a second, she fought to control her stomach. Then she forced herself to look again, to think.
Two more spiders, she realized, were busy repairing a trail of damage in the croach inside the building—footprints. Human footprints. They led from the doors to the dead scouts.
The Vord were without pity but also without rancor. None of the other bodies showed signs of torment. They were simply . . . devoured.
Alerans had done this, she realized.
Alerans had done this.
Amara saw in her mind’s eye the Alerans surrounding the Vord queen at the battle of Ceres and shivered again—this time with raw rage.
She felt her husband’s presence next to her, the brush of his body against hers as he looked at the inside of the barn as well. She felt it when the same realization reached him, when his body tensed suddenly and one of his knuckles made the softest of creaks beneath his gloves as his hand tightened into a furious fist.
She touched his wrist, willing her rage into frozen stillness, and the two turned to begin making their torturously slow way across the croach again, and out of the steadholt. They took off the croach shoes and ghosted back into the countryside. Without a word, Amara stepped back and let her husband take the lead.
Whoever had tortured the scouts had done so within hours of when Amara had found the bodies. Whoever the culprits had been, they were obviously tied in some fashion to the Vord, to the Alerans who had been helping them—the source of the Vord’s furycraft. They were therefore a lead to the heart of Bernard and Amara’s mission, and in all probability, they had left a trail.
Bernard took the lead. He would find them.
It took the best part of two days of almost unceasing, agonizingly cautious movement to catch up to the traitors who had tortured the scouts. Their trail led back to Ceres.
