Codex Alera 06 - First Lord's Fury

by Jim Butcher

  Amara wanted to scream in frustration, but she managed to get him mostly upright. The two of them began staggering away from the wall, lurching like a pair of drunks. Faster. They had to move faster.

  There was a whistling shriek behind her, and Amara turned to see half a dozen mantises rushing her.

  Fighting would be impossible. Instead, she flung up a veil around herself and the disoriented High Lord. The charge of the mantises slowed abruptly as it lost a focus, and they began to turn this way and that, each of the six darting forward after the first moving thing it saw.

  Unfortunately for mantis number three, the moving thing it saw was Walker the gargant. Though the mantis charged with berserk aggression, Walker barely took notice of it. Instead, he simply lifted one big paw and brought it down in a simple, smashing arc that ended the vord’s offensive with abrupt and absolute finality.

  “Amara!” boomed Doroga from Walker’s back. A pair of gargoyles went hurtling by in pursuit of the vord who had broken through. Walker tossed his head and snorted as Doroga continued to call out. “Amara!”

  Amara dropped the veil. “Doroga! Over here!”

  The Marat leaned forward, and said something to Walker, and the gargant began striding toward her. Doroga grabbed the saddle rope and swung partway down Walker’s side, holding out a hand. Amara guided Riva’s arm into the Marat’s grip. Doroga hauled the man up with a grunt and dragged him onto the saddle. Amara swarmed up the braided leather rope after them, and Doroga shouted something to Walker. The gargant whirled, both front paws coming up off the ground, and turned to the east. It started forward at a pace Amara had never seen in a gargant before—a kind of lumbering gallop that nearly threw her off its back every couple of steps and covered ground with impressive speed.

  Doroga threw back his head in a howl of triumph, and Walker answered him. Amara looked over her shoulder. The wall of gargoyles was holding, but not perfectly. Hundreds of mantises were slipping through, and one of the vordbulks had reached the space where the wall had been, despite the treacherous footing. Walker was moving quickly, but not quickly enough to outrun the oncoming mantises.

  But then, he didn’t need to.

  A chorus of answering bellows came from ahead of them, and a moment later a long line of gargants came lumbering toward them out of the dark—Doroga’s tribesmen. Gargants, moving in trios and pairs, went smashing into the vord that had leaked through the gargoyles, crushing them before they could mount an effective pursuit of the fleeing Aleran Legions. The sound of battle began to recede behind them, and Amara felt herself shivering in reaction.

  She wasn’t cold. She wasn’t even reacting to the fear though she’d certainly been afraid.

  The chill that went through her did so because of what had happened.

  Invidia had told them the truth. They hadn’t expected the sheer size of the vordbulks, but Invidia had certainly tried to tell them they were larger than gargants.

  She’d been telling the truth.

  If there was even a chance that she might actually be able to deliver on her promise of taking them to the vord Queen, of ending the war, they would have no choice but to take her up on the offer.

  Amara looked overhead. The battle was winding down up there, and the fliers were coming down to support the Marat in holding off the oncoming vord. They would be the last troops to leave the battlefield—their speed meant that even if they kept fighting for two or three hours, they could potentially reach Garrison before some of the Legions.

  Invidia had told the truth.

  The one thing Amara did not need was to lose perspective on the situation, but she couldn’t help it. Hope fluttered in her chest: hope that perhaps Invidia really was sincere. That perhaps all the horrors she had seen and committed had changed who she was. Though every reasoning fiber in Amara’s brain told her otherwise, foolish hope continued to dance in and out of her thoughts.

  A dangerous emotion, hope. Very, very dangerous.

  She felt her smile bare her teeth. The real question was this: Whose hope was the more foolish? Her own?

  Or Invidia’s?

  CHAPTER 46

  “You realize, of course,” Attis said weakly, “that she’s going to betray you.”

  The Princeps lay in the bed in the quarters normally reserved for Amara and Bernard, and he was dying. Attis had forbidden anyone to enter the room, apart from Aria or Veradis, his physicians—or Amara.

  With good reason. He looked horrible, wasted from a magnificent specimen of masculinity to a starving scarecrow within days. His hair was beginning to fall out. There was a yellow tinge to his skin, and a horrible stench surrounded him. No amount of incense could conceal the smell. It could only dull its edge. It even defeated the room’s gargant scent.

  “Is it not possible,” Amara asked, “that Invidia has had a change of heart?”

  “No,” Attis said calmly. “A heart would be prerequisite. As would the ability to admit her mistakes.”

  “You’re certain of that?” Amara asked. “Without a doubt?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “That was my assessment as well, Your Highness,” Amara said quietly.

  Attis smiled faintly. “Good.” His eyes fluttered closed, and his breath caught for a second.

  “My lord?” Amara asked. “Should I send for a physician?”

  “No,” he rasped. “No. Save their strength for men who might live.” He panted for a moment before opening his eyes again. They were glazed with fatigue. “You’re going to use her,” he said.

  Amara nodded. “Either she will lead us to the Queen and betray us to her. Or she will not lead us to the Queen and betray us. Or she will lead us to the Queen and assist us as she said. Two of three possible outcomes result in an opportunity to remove the Queen. We can’t pass up a chance like that.”

  “And she knows it,” Attis said. “She can do the math as well. She knows you have no choice but to try. And your figures are fallacies, really. I would make it seventy percent that she intends to lead you to the Queen and betray you. Another thirty percent that she simply intends to take you to a trap without ever revealing the Queen.”

  Amara shrugged. “By your argument, we have a seventy percent chance, instead of sixty-six. Regardless, it’s still a better opportunity than we’ve ever had or will ever have again.”

  Attis said nothing. Outside, trumpets blared. It was nearly noon, and the vord pursuing the fleeing Legions to their final fortification had begun their attack by midmorning. Crushed into the relatively small frontage of the final redoubt at the outskirts of Garrison, the vord were making little headway against the determined legionares. Mules operating from town rooftops and squads of firecrafters brought blazing death to the enemy. The air was filled with the grotesque stench of internal fluids and burned chitin, even here, inside the little citadel. The incense didn’t help with that smell, either.

  “I think you know what she intends to do,” Attis said.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re willing to pay the price this could entail?”

  “I have no choice,” she said.

  Attis nodded slowly, and said, “I do not envy you. When?”

  “Four hours after midnight,” Amara said. “The team will meet Invidia and strike just before dawn.”

  “Bother,” Attis said. “I hate not knowing the end of a story.”

  “Your Highness?”

  He shook his head. “You didn’t need to consult me, Amara, and yet here you are. You must want something of me.”

  “I do,” she said quietly.

  His weak voice turned wry. “All things considered, it is probably best if you do not dawdle. Out with it.”

  She told him what she wanted.

  He agreed, and they made the necessary arrangements.

  Not long after noon, Gaius Attis, High Lord Aquitaine, fell quietly unconscious. Amara sent for the healers, but they only arrived in time to see him take his last slow, quiet breath.

  He died
there, his expression that of a man with few regrets.

  Amara bowed her head, and wept a few silent tears for the man Gaius Aquitainus Attis had become in his last weeks, for all the lives she had seen lost, the pain she had seen in his last days.

  Then she dashed the tears from her face with one fist and turned to leave the chamber. This night would see the most important mission of her life. There would be time for weeping soon, she told herself.

  Soon.

  Durias, First Spear of the Free Aleran, rode beside Fidelias, looking back over his shoulder at Octavian’s forces. They had stopped for water, the first such rest in six hours, beside a small, swift-flowing river. Thousands of men and Canim, taurga and horses, drank thirstily.

  “This is mad,” Durias said, after a moment. “Absolutely mad.”

  “And it’s working,” Fidelias pointed out.

  “You can’t think that anyone is pleased with it, Marcus,” Durias pointed out. “The men are puking their guts out.”

  “As long as they don’t do it where everyone is drinking.”

  Durias smiled and shook his head. “The Canim resent it, you know.”

  Fidelias smiled. “They’ll resent it a lot less when Legion shieldwalls and Legion Knights are holding their flanks.”

  Durias grunted. “You think we can win this fight?”

  “No,” Fidelias said. “But I think we can survive it. In the long term, it’s probably the same thing.”

  Durias frowned thoughtfully and eyed him. “How are you feeling? Word is your heart started acting up.”

  “Better now,” Fidelias told him. “I feel like a new man.”

  “That’s because you’re sandbagging it, slacker,” Durias said. “You’re going to miss that armor tomorrow morning.”

  Fidelias grinned easily. “That’s a long time from now. Besides, I don’t see you walking and letting some poor legionare have a turn on horseback.”

  Durias sniffed. “Rank has its privileges,” he said piously. “I go letting some random legionare ride while the First Spear takes his place, I’m upsetting the natural order of the Legion. Bad for morale. Totally irresponsible.”

  “Good, kid,” Fidelias said. “You’ll make officer yet.”

  Durias grinned. “Take that back.”

  A Tribune of the Free Aleran rode up to them and threw Durias a salute. His armor, though standard Legion lorica, was old and worn, if obviously currently in good maintenance, and scoured free of any insignia whatsoever. “First Spear.”

  “Tribune,” Durias said, returning the salute. “Report.”

  “Four more contacts with the enemy, all of them with the wax spiders. We also burned out another half a dozen patches of the croach. They like to start it around the edges of a pond whenever they can. They’re getting easier to find.”

  “That means that the well-hidden patches will be that much more difficult to spot,” Durias said. “Don’t ease up on them.”

  The officer let out a rueful laugh. “Not bloody likely.” He eyed Fidelias. “How’s he doing?”

  “He feels like a new man,” Durias said.

  “He looks like a lazy man.” The officer leaned a bit to one side to peer around Durias at Fidelias. “Story is you shot at the vord Queen.”

  “Didn’t shoot at her,” Fidelias said. “I shot her. With a balest, no less. The bolt bounced right off her.”

  The officer lifted his eyebrows. A balest bolt could pass through a horse and fatally wound an armored legionare on the other side. “How far out were you?”

  “Twenty yards, maybe,” Fidelias said.

  The officer stared at him for a moment. Then he fretted his lip and eyed Durias. “And we’re chasing that? This is pointless. This Princeps is going to get us all k—”

  Durias dug one heel abruptly into his horse’s flank, and the beast lurched forward and to one side, slamming its shoulder against the Tribune’s mount. Durias’s hand flashed out and seized the man by the plates of his lorica, half-dragging him from the horse.

  “Legionares complain,” Durias said in a harsh, low voice. “Officers lead. Shut your bloody mouth and lead. Or if you can’t do that, have the balls to resign your commission and let someone who isn’t a bloody coward do your job.” He didn’t give the officer time to respond. He just shoved him, stiff-armed, away.

  The officer recovered his balance and control of his horse, his face chagrined. “Aye. Aye. We’ll get back to work.”

  Durias grunted and said nothing. The officer saluted and turned to ride away. Durias turned to Fidelias, a belligerent gleam in his eyes. “Well?”

  Fidelias pursed his lips and nodded. “Not bad.”

  From the head of the column, not far away, trumpets began to blow assembly. The water break was over.

  Men and Canim began to return to the causeway, walking in pairs of one Cane to one Aleran, moving wearily. They assembled into a column.

  “We’re going to get there exhausted,” Durias said quietly. “On open ground. No fortifications.”

  Fidelias took a slow breath, and said, “If the Princeps must sacrifice us all to give him a chance to take down the Queen, he should do it. I would. In a heartbeat.”

  “Yes,” Durias said, even more quietly. “I suppose that’s what is bothering me.”

  “First Spear,” Fidelias said. “Shut up and lead.”

  Durias let out a snort of bitter amusement. “True enough.” The two exchanged a salute, and Durias turned to ride back toward the Free Aleran’s section of the column.

  The second trumpet signal came—the normal cavalry call to mount up. Fidelias stopped to watch the nearest legionares. Each of them carried a pair of long, wide canvas straps, cut from the cloth of their tents. A loop in the cloth had been tied in one end. The legionares stepped behind their Canim partner and slipped their boots into the loops. Then they passed the straps to the Cane before them.

  After that, there was a bit of scrambling as the Canim slid the straps over their own shoulders, wrapped their other ends about their paw-hands, and crouched as their Aleran partners clambered up onto their backs, the straps becoming makeshift stirrups, the Alerans taking on the role of human back-packs. Men occasionally fell. Canim occasionally were kicked in inconvenient (and unarmored) places. Several tails, particularly, seemed to be put in harm’s way in service to the Princeps’ novel concept in transportation.

  Other legionares, Fidelias knew, were now mounting up behind taurg cavalry riders, and doing just as much complaining. But when the trumpet sounded again, the Canim began to work up to their loping overland pace, then even faster, running without difficulty as the Aleran partners bid the furies of the causeway to help them. Not a single Aleran was touching the causeway with his own feet. The Canim’s greater natural speed meant that they could use the causeway to move almost as swiftly as a good horse. Within minutes, the entire column was on the move again, miles vanishing beneath Canim feet. They were making faster progress than any Legion would have made marching alone.

  Fidelias began to guide his horse back toward the front of the column as they marched, trying very hard not to think about what the Free Aleran Tribune and its First Spear had said about their prospects for surviving another day.

  “Shut up, old man,” he breathed to himself. “Shut up and face it head-on.”

  He pursed his lips and thought about a different portion of the previous conversation. Then he barked a short laugh to himself.

  Whatever might happen in the next day or so, one thing remained true: Fidelias did feel like a new man—and it would not be long before the scales of his life were finally balanced.

  Soon, he told himself.

  Soon.

  Isana sat at the silently entombed Araris’s feet, her hands folded in her lap, watching the vord Queen command her brood. The Queen stood in the alcove, staring up at the green-lighted ceiling, her eyes seemingly unfocused and far away. The light of sunset added the barest hint of yellow to the croach that grew near the entrance to
the hive.

  “The defenses at the final position are quite cohesive,” the Queen said abruptly. “They are very nearly as formidable as those in Shuar, and the counter-strikes far more effective.”

  Isana frowned, and asked, “Shuar?”

  “The hive of a subspecies of the Canim. A particularly tenacious strain of the breed. Their fortifications had withstood siege for more than a year when I left Canea.”

  “Perhaps they withstand it still.”

  The vord Queen looked down at Isana, and said, “Unlikely, Grandmother. The presence of Shuaran Canim in your son’s expeditionary force would suggest that they are refugees, cooperating because they have no other choice.” She turned her face back up to the ceiling. “Though it is far too late, at this point. A unified resistance might have stopped us several years ago, but you were all quite busy exhibiting the most glaring weakness of individuality: self-interest.”

  “You see self-identity as a weakness?” Isana asked.

  “Obviously.”

  “Then one cannot help but wonder why you have one.”

  The Queen looked at Isana. The vord’s alien eyes were narrowed. She was silent for a long moment before she looked back up, and answered, “I am defective.” Green light flowed down over her upturned face for a time before she said, “I ran a poisoned sword through your son’s intestinal tract yesterday evening.”

  Isana felt her breath stop.

  “He seemed well on the way to death when I left him.”

  Her heart pounded very hard, and she licked her lips. “And yet, you do not say that he is dead.”

  “No.”

  “Why did you not kill him, then?” Isana asked.

  “The risk-benefit ratio was far too high.”

  “In other words,” Isana said, “he ran you off.”

  “He and approximately forty thousand troops. Yes.” She flexed her hands, finger by finger, black nails sliding out like claws, then retracting. “It doesn’t matter. By the time they arrive, the fortress called Garrison will be gone, the Alerans there scattered to the winds. They fight upon the walls as if anchored to them. Do they expect me to simply permit them the advantage?”