by Jim Butcher
Kitai rode for a moment, frowning. Then she said, “He’s stronger. Better focused. But I can manage more things simultaneously.”
The Princeps lifted his eyebrows. “You think so?”
Kitai shrugged her shoulders.
Fidelias frowned. “Ambassador . . . did you just ride up to the city gates under a veil and try to craft them down?”
Kitai shot Fidelias an annoyed scowl—and said nothing.
The Princeps looked back and forth between the pair of them, his expression unreadable. Then he said, “That was thoughtful of you, Kitai.”
“We want the gates down,” she said. “What matter who brings them down or when?”
Octavian nodded. “Most considerate,” the Princeps said.
Kitai’s scowl darkened. “Do not say it.”
“Say what? It’s the thought that counts?”
She slapped his leg lightly with the ends of her reins.
A Marat with furycraft in the same general vicinity as the Princeps of the Realm. A Princeps who had never demonstrated his skills beyond the most basic, rudimentary uses of the craft—except when he had apparently executed furycraftings so large that they could hardly be recognized as such. Fidelias himself, a proven and confessed traitor to the Crown, an assassin for the Princeps’ enemies, riding openly at the Princeps’ left hand, under an assumed face and a sentence of death, willingly staying where he was. Meanwhile, in the host behind them, following the Princeps’ banner were thousands of the finest troops of Alera’s oldest enemies—never mind another enemy, Ambassador Kitai, who quite clearly shared a great deal more than affection with Octavian. And all of them were about to assault an Aleran city overrun by a foe no one had even heard of ten years ago.
The world had become a very strange place.
Fidelias smiled to himself.
Strange, yes. But for some reason, he no longer felt like a man too old to face it.
It was not long before horns began to blow, and Aleran scouts appeared in the mists ahead, woodcrafted veils unraveling around them as they approached the column. The Princeps pointed at one of the men, and said, “Scout, report!”
“They’re coming, sir!” the man reported. “Skirmish line, maybe a cohort’s worth, coming at us hard, sir! And they’re ugly, big as they were in Canea, not those swamp-lizard things. Looks like they’ve got a hell of a reach on them, too.”
Octavian grunted. “Looks like the Queen changed them to better handle a shieldwall.”
Fidelias nodded. “Like you said she might. I’m impressed.”
The Princeps coughed. “It was a guess. I wasn’t certain about it. Just seemed reasonable.”
Fidelias frowned, and said quietly, “Piece of advice, sir?”
“Hmm?”
“Next time, just nod. People like it better when the Princeps seems to know something they don’t.”
The Princeps made a quiet, snorting sound and raised a hand, signaling the trumpeter waiting nearby. “Sound advance to the Canim. Let’s see what these vord think about meeting a few thousand Narashan warriors instead of a Legion shieldwall.”
“And see if the Canim will be willing to take your orders, eh?” Fidelias murmured, beneath the clear notes of the signal trumpet.
Octavian grinned, and responded, quietly, “Nonsense. I have no doubts whatsoever in the solidity of our alliance.”
“Excellent, sir,” Fidelias said. “That’s more like what I was talking about.”
The shrill, brassy cries of vord warriors came drifting through the mist, different than any Fidelias had heard before but unmistakable. He had to keep himself from shuddering. For the sake of the rest of the Legion, he was still playing the part of Valiar Marcus, relegated to the role of advisor to the young captain by advancing age. Valiar Marcus would not show fear before the enemy. No matter how bloody terrifying they were to anyone with half a mind.
A double column of Canim warriors, several hundred strong, came rolling up to the front of the host, led by Varg himself. Their loping pace was swift, and Varg stopped to confer briefly with the Princeps. He nodded to Octavian, then gave a few orders in the snarling tongue of the wolf-warriors, and his troops fell into a curved double line that arched out in front of the rest of the host like a legionare’s shield.
Fidelias could clearly see only the nearest of the Canim, at the center of the line—Varg and the warriors closest to him. The lean, powerful bodies of the Canim moved in a fashion that was both completely nonuniform and fluidly coordinated, each armored warrior occupying precisely enough space to move and use his weaponry, with his companions on either side maintaining a precise distance, seemingly without any conscious effort.
The Canim were soldiers, sure enough, clearly moving in coordinated discipline, but their methods and tactics were utterly alien to those used by Aleran legionares. Fidelias didn’t even want to think of the pure shocking power of a Canim shieldwall. If they used such infantry tactics, an Aleran Legion would not be able to survive the clash of close combat.
Then again, the few times Alerans had clashed with Canim of the warrior caste, the battle had never gone in their favor in any case. At best they had attained a draw, during several brief clashes during the two years of combat around the Elinarch and in the Vale. In the worst cases, the warrior caste had handed the Alerans their heads.
The vord shrieked their alien cries again, this time from closer, and Fidelias felt his heart laboring harder. He straightened his back and forced his expression to Marcus’s closed, prebattle discipline. He heard the Princeps giving rapid orders beside him—sending the scouts back out to the army’s flanks and front, and ordering Maximus’s cavalry to come up to anchor both ends of the Canim lines, to be ready to help if needed.
One Canim element to one Aleran, Fidelias noted. Even when fighting together, the Princeps was showing caution against his allies, who would see it as a reassurance and a mark of respect. The Princeps had been the first to understand the way the wolf-warriors thought, and he had applied that knowledge ably to both the battlefield and the conference table with undeniable success. Rarely had Octavian attained an overwhelming victory against the Canim, and yet at day’s end, he had always managed to hold the most vital terrain or gain another mile of ground—and now his former enemies let out a howl and engaged the vord as they appeared out of the mist.
The battle was brief, elemental, and savage.
The vord warrior forms slowed for a few steps upon seeing the Canim ready to meet them, but then hurtled forward with shrill wails and whistles. Horrible scything limbs plunged at the wolf-warriors with the kind of power that would leave Aleran legionares screaming or dead without extraordinary skill or luck.
Against the battle line of Canim in full armor, it was . . . insufficiently impressive.
Varg simply struck the scythes from his opponents’ limbs as they swept toward him, his red steel blade flashing in the strobes of blue-white light from the powers leashed above them. A third strike took the head from the vord, and a heavy kick both crumpled the black chitin of its armored torso and sent it sprawling back to die on the ground, thrashing uselessly. Varg’s sword whipped one way and struck a supporting limb from one vord, then reversed itself and removed a scythe from the vord on the other side, which had been wetted in Canim blood, saving a stunned warrior’s life.
Varg let out a roar of rage and what seemed to Fidelias like pure, joyous enthusiasm, struck down a second vord, and covered the fallen warrior as he rose and retrieved his weapon. Varg then broke to his right, while the recovered Cane went to his left. Both darted through the line of battle, and the Canim in the second rank followed them, so that the vord on either side of the hole Varg had created found themselves surrounded by warriors, cut down from the front and from behind.
The gap in the vord line widened, as each fallen vord’s opponent pushed through and went after the flanks and rear of another foe, so that the battlefield in front of Fidelias and the rest of the command group seemed to bre
ak into two halves and part to the left and right, like two curtains opening onto a stage—one littered with the bodies of broken vord warrior forms. The battle raged off into the mist to the left and right, and out of their immediate view.
At some point, the vord shrieks turned to a new, urgent pitch—a retreat?—and Maximus’s cavalry horns began to sound the charge, already receding into greater distance.
“Ah, they’ve broken,” said the Princeps, his teeth bared in a wolfish smile. He clenched one hand into a fist. “Max is after them. They’re running. By the great furies, they’re running!”
He never turned or raised his voice above simple conversational volume—nor could he, as the image of the calm, controlled Princeps of the Realm—but Fidelias judged that Valiar Marcus would be more than happy to do it for him. “They’re running, boys!” he bawled out in a training-ground bellow. “Varg and Antillar were too much for ’em!”
A thunder of cheers and Canim roars bellowed out for several seconds before Fidelias passed a cutoff signal back through the line to the cohorts, where Aleran centurions and Canim huntmasters began snarling and growling orderly quiet back into the ranks.
Moments later, the first returning Canim began to appear, walking back toward the ranks in the same arching battle line in which they’d begun the fight. Several were walking only with assistance—but there were no breaks in the line. On the flanks, the Aleran cavalry was returning to its original position in the order of battle. Antillar Maximus came riding in a moment ahead of Varg and saluted the Princeps, slamming his fist into his armor, over his heart.
Varg rolled to halt in front of them and nodded to the Princeps as well. “Not much of a fight.”
“It seems that they do have a breaking point, if the will of their Queen isn’t driving them,” the Princeps said. “Your warriors found it.”
Varg let out a pleased growling sound of agreement.
“I hope you will do us the honor of allowing our healers to treat your wounded. There’s no sense in having them out of action when we can put them back into top condition.”
“That would please me,” Varg replied. “I will request it of them.”
Octavian inclined his head to the Canim leader and returned Antillar’s salute. “Let’s have it.”
“A few of them managed to get out of the close fight,” Antillar Maximus said. “None of them made it out of the fog. The scouts reported other vord like these falling back to the city. They went right up the wall. They’re inside now, maybe a thousand.”
“And those are just the ones we saw,” Octavian said. “We can’t leave them in a fortress at our backs, growing a supply of croach to feed reinforcements they move into the area. This one will be up to us, I believe. Signal the Prime Cohort and the Battlecrows. I want them to be the first through the gates. Both cavalry elements are to take up positions around the city, to catch any others who try to run.”
Antillar blinked. “Those gates aren’t exactly made of paper and glue, Calderon,” the Tribune said. “The High Lords were probably reinforcing them for months, this winter. You know how to run the figures. Any idea of the kind of power it will take to bring them down?”
The Princeps considered Antillar’s words. Fidelias eyed Antillar and Varg alike, but he didn’t think either of them could see how nervous Octavian was. Then the Princeps nodded, and said, “A considerable amount of force.”
“I don’t think we have it,” Max said.
“I think you’re wrong, Max,” Octavian said calmly.
The Ambassador’s eyes narrowed in anticipation, all but glowing green, and her smile somehow made Fidelias take more note of the points of her canine teeth than any of the others.
The Princeps grinned at her in reply, almost unsettlingly boyish, and said, “Let’s find out.”
CHAPTER 32
Tavi wondered if he was about to make a very large, very humiliating, potentially fatal mistake.
He frowned, and spoke to that doubting part of himself in a firm tone of thought: If you didn’t want to take the big chances, you shouldn’t have started screaming about who your father was. You could have moved quietly across the Realm and disappeared among the Marat, if you had wanted to. You decided to fight for your birthright. Well, now it’s time to fight. It’s time to see if you can do what you have to do. So quit whining and bring down that gate.
“Warmaster Varg will have operational command while I deal with the gate,” Tavi said.
The Legion command staff had been briefed on Tavi’s intention the day before. They hadn’t liked it then. Today, though, they simply saluted. Good. Varg’s part in the opening skirmish of the battle (itself but a skirmish for what was to come), had convinced them of the Cane’s ability.
“Tribune Antillus!” Tavi called.
After several signals were exchanged, Crassus came cruising down to the ground and landed beside Tavi’s horse. They exchanged salutes, and Tavi said, “I’ll be moving forward with the Prime and the Battlecrows. I want you and the Pisces hovering over my shoulders.”
“Aye, sir,” Crassus said. “We’ll be there.”
“On your way,” Tavi said.
Crassus took off, and there was nothing left but for Tavi to break down a defensive structure prepared for decades if not centuries to resist precisely what he was about to attempt. He glanced over his shoulder, at Fidelias. Valiar Marcus would have been waiting stolidly, his expression hard and sober. Though his features hadn’t changed whatsoever, Tavi could feel the differences in the man, the more flexible, somehow leonine nature of him. To any casual observer, Fidelias would have appeared exactly like Valiar Marcus. But Tavi could sense that the man was aware, somehow, of his fear.
His perfectly reasonable fear. His very well-advised fear. His quite mature and wise fear, even.
Shut up and get to work, he thought firmly.
Acteon, the long-legged black stallion Tavi rode, tossed his head and shook his mane. The horse had been his, and in the care of the First Aleran Legion, since shortly after he had been forced to take command—a gift from Hashat, the Marat clan-head of the Horse. The Marat stallion had greater agility and endurance than any Aleran horse Tavi had ever seen, but he wasn’t a supernatural beast.
He wouldn’t save Tavi from anything he didn’t handle himself.
“Standard-bearer,” Tavi said quietly. “Let’s go.”
Hoofbeats came up beside him, and Tavi looked aside at the dappled grey mare Kitai rode. His eyes went up to her rider, and he smiled faintly at Kitai, who was wearing her Legion-issue mail. It didn’t offer the same protection as the heavier steel plates of his own lorica, but though she was more than strong enough to wear the heavier armor, she disdained it, preferring the greater flexibility of the mail.
“I suppose you’re going to ignore me if I tell you to wait here,” he said.
She arched an eyebrow at him and settled her grip on the standard. The misty wisps of faint scarlet, drifting outward from the standard like strands of seaweed, seemed to whisper to the mists around them, gathering them closer. Kitai had not picked up the royal standard of the Princeps, the plunging eagle, scarlet upon blue. Instead, she bore the original standard of the First Aleran. It had once been a blue-and-scarlet eagle, wings spread as if in flight, its background also scarlet and blue, halved, contrasting the colors of the eagle. The first battle the Legion faced had left the eagle burned black, and the First Aleran’s “battlecrow” had never been replaced.
Tavi had carried the standard into an extremely dangerous situation himself . . . had it been only three, almost four years since the Elinarch? It felt like a hundred.
Kitai met his eyes and lifted her chin, a small smile on her mouth. Her message was clear. He had triumphed at that meeting. He would do so again at this one. Something quivering and tight went out of him, and his hands and mind felt a great deal steadier.
“I suppose so,” he said.
He made no gesture, but the pair of them started out together at t
he same instant.
Tavi rode through the fog. Acteon’s hooves clopped on the ground. The track to the nearest of the city’s gates was obvious before him, littered here and there with the remains of the battle the rest of Alera had fought there days before. Here a splash of scarlet Aleran blood, now brown and buzzing with flies. There, a gladius, broken six inches from the hilt, the results of hasty construction or shoddy maintenance. A legionare’s bloodstained helmet lay on its side, its crown bearing a puncture mark shaped much like the profile of a scythe of a new warrior-form vord they had fought that very day.
But there were no corpses, either of fallen legionares or of any vord beyond those slain that very hour. Tavi shivered. The vord did not let fallen meat go to waste—not even that of their own kind.
The leashed thunder of the storm came with them. Tavi could hear the steady windstreams that kept the Knights Pisces aloft nearby, within a couple of hundred yards, above and behind them. The nearest of their number, probably Crassus, hovered almost directly overhead, only just visible in the cloud.
The walls of Riva loomed suddenly out of the mist, along with the city gates. They stood forty feet high, with the towers on either side rising twenty feet beyond that. Tavi felt the muscles in his back tightening, and his heart began to beat faster.
He was about to announce his identity to anyone who was watching.
And then something, he was sure, would happen—and he doubted it would be anything he would enjoy.
Tavi focused on the gates. They were made of stone sheathed and woven with steel. They weighed tons and tons, but they were balanced so perfectly on their hinges that a single man, unassisted by furies, could push them open when their locks were not engaged. Even so, they were stronger than the stone siege walls that framed them. Fire would not distress them. A steel ram could batter them for days with no effect, and the swords of the finest Knights Ferrous in the Realm would shatter upon them. The thunderbolts held ready by the First Aleran’s Knights would do little more than scar the finished steel surface. The earth itself could not be shaken around them.
