by Jim Butcher
Tavi had to establish himself, by himself, at once-and when it came to dealing with a Cane, actions undeniably spoke far more than words.
So, without another word, Tavi swung down from his horse and stalked over to the Cane, staring hard at his eyes. Tavi stopped about six feet from the warrior, and said, in the wolf-warrior's own snarling tongue, "Say that again, please. I didn't hear you."
The Free Aleran soldiers stared. Every single Cane in sight turned his head toward Tavi, ears swiveled entirely forward.
The warrior Cane lowered his chin, and a warning growl bubbled in his chest.
Tavi let out a bark of harsh laughter, showing his own teeth in response. "Is that supposed to frighten me?"
The warrior Cane rested one hand on the hilt of his sword. "Do you want your blood to stay where it is sochar-lar?"
Tavi lifted both eyebrows at the unfamiliar word, and glanced at Varg.
"Monkey," Varg supplied, in Aleran. "And male-child."
"He called me monkey boy?" Tavi asked.
Varg nodded.
Tavi nodded his thanks and turned back to the warrior Cane. "Take me to Nasaug," Tavi told him. "Now."
The Cane lifted his lips from his teeth. "Drop your sword and pray that I choose to be merciful, monkey boy."
"Will it take long for you to talk me to death?" Tavi asked. "I can't help but wonder why you, a warrior, are out here leading a group of makers and monkeys, guarding a back road. Badly. Are you too useless for an actual fight?"
The Cane let out a snarl and moved, sword sweeping from its sheath as he leapt at Tavi.
Tavi hadn't expected quite that strong a reaction, but he'd been ready to move since the moment he'd dismounted. He borrowed speed from the wind and slowed everything that happened, drawing his sword to meet the Cane's, pulling strength from the earth and twisting the whole of his body, hips and shoulders and legs, to strike against the Cane's weapon with all the force he could summon.
The Aleran gladius rang against the bloodsteel of the Cane's sword, and shattered it in a scream of tortured metal. The Cane staggered, thrown off-balance, and Tavi bulled forward, low, sword sweeping in a cut aimed at the back of the Cane's armored leg.
The Cane jerked his leg clear of the blow that could have severed tendons and rendered him immobile, and Tavi rammed his shoulder into the Cane's belly with all the power of his body and furycraft, actually lifting the huge wolf-warrior clear of the ground, before slamming him to the earth on his back. The Cane's breath exploded from his lungs in a croaking snarl, and before he could recover, Tavi had seized one broad ear in an iron grip and set the tip of his sword against the Cane's throat.
"I am Rufus Scipio," Tavi said calmly. "Captain of the First Aleran Legion. Defender of the Elinarch. I have faced the massed ranks of your army alone and unarmed. I killed the Bloodspeaker Sari by my own hand. And," he added, "I beat Nasaug at Indus. I have come to speak to Nasaug, and you will take me to him."
The warrior Cane stared at him for several seconds. Then his eyes flicked to one side, and he tilted his head slightly, baring his throat. Tavi released his grip on the Cane's ear, and returned the gesture, more shallowly. The Cane's ears twitched in what Tavi had come to recognize as a motion of surprise.
Tavi lowered the sword and backed away without letting his guard down. Then he sheathed the weapon and nodded to the Cane. "Get up. Let's move."
The Cane growled as he pushed himself up but tilted his head to one side again and gestured to the other Canim there. He turned to the Aleran centurion, and said, in mangled Aleran, "I leave the post in your care, centurion."
The centurion looked from the Cane to Tavi, his face full of questions, but he saluted the Cane, Aleran style, and began giving orders to the other men there. The Cane growled to his countrymen, and the Canim fell into a loose formation around Tavi, who mounted his horse again and pulled it up next to the wagon.
"How is he?" he asked Varg quietly, looking down on Ehren's ashen face.
"Sleeping," Varg replied. The Cane held steady the quill that still protruded from the slit in Ehren's neck, allowing him to breathe.
"Aleran," Kitai said, a note of reprimand in her voice. "If I must drive the wagon, it would be courteous of you to let me handle the fighting."
Varg's ears flicked in amusement.
"Next time," Tavi told her. He glanced at Varg and arched an eyebrow in silent question.
"Your grammar is terrible," Varg said. He glanced up at the warrior Cane, as he signaled his men, and their group and its new escort started down the road. "But you make yourself understood, gadara. Calling him 'useless' may have been more than was necessary to goad him."
Tavi grunted. "It is an insult word to your kind?"
Varg snorted again. "Rear-area duties such as this are often assigned to overly aggressive young warriors, to temper them. They often resent it."
Tavi nodded in understanding. "I'm just glad I didn't have to kill anyone to get through."
"Why?" Varg asked.
Tavi glanced back at the Cane. The question had been delivered in a neutral, almost casual tone, but Tavi sensed that there was more to it than that, in Varg's mind.
"Because it would be a waste of a life that could be better spent elsewhere," he said.
Varg looked at him steadily. "And perhaps because your people do not all enjoy killing for its own sake."
Tavi thought of Navaris's flat, reptilian eyes and suppressed a shiver. "Perhaps."
Varg's chest rumbled in a low, pensive growl. "You begin to understand us, I think, gadara. And perhaps I begin to understand you."
"That," Kitai said in an acerbic tone, "would be remarkable."
They reached Mastings in the midst of the afternoon.
The Canim, Tavi saw at once, had turned the city into a veritable fortress, with multiple ranks of earthworks and palisades surrounding a solidly crafted curtain wall, leading up to full thirty-foot siege walls around the town itself. The outermost wall was lined with both Free Aleran and Canim troops, and at the gate they were challenged by another warrior Cane. The leader of their escort went forward to speak with the sentry, and Tavi paused, looking around.
The conversation between the two Canim became animated, but no louder. The Cane at the gate beckoned an older Aleran man over, and the three of them met in a quiet conference. The man glanced at Tavi and frowned, and Aleran sentries on the wall began to gather in, overlooking the group at the gate.
"We've attracted attention," Kitai noted under her breath.
"That was the idea," Tavi replied.
Ten minutes later, no one had come to speak to them, but a runner had been dispatched toward the city, and a rider had left the gates, riding hard toward the north.
Another half hour passed before a group of horsemen emerged from Mast-ings and made their way through the extra defensive walls until they finally reached the outermost wall. As they did, Tavi squinted at the outer wall, then at all the positions on the inner wall, where thousands of uniformed figures stood on guard.
"Kitai," Tavi breathed quietly. "Look at the guards on the second wall, and farther in, and tell me what you see."
Kitai frowned at them for a silent moment, and then spoke suddenly. "They aren't moving. At all."
"They're scarecrows," Tavi said quietly. "Imitations. Only the guards on the outer wall are real."
"Why?" Kitai breathed.
"To put the Legions off their guard," Tavi said quietly- "The scouts would never have gotten this close to the city, to see through it. They'd report back that the city was heavily occupied, and the Legions would count on twenty thousand troops at least being behind the city walls. Under observation. Safely located. Then Nasaug could bring the actual troops in unexpectedly.'
"Nasaug is not planning on fighting a siege, as we thought," Kitai said.
"No. He met us in the field, probably before we could dig in." Tavi shook his head. "Crows, he's good."
Varg growled thoughtfully. "You beat him a
t ludus?"
Tavi glanced back over his shoulder at Varg. "During a truce to allow him to recover the bodies of his warriors. His game on the skyboard isn't as strong as it could be, and he underestimated me."
"Understandable," Kitai noted. She glanced at Varg. "I was also unimpressed with the Aleran on our first meeting."
Varg glanced at Kitai, and his jaws parted briefly in amusement, his ears quivering in a motion Tavi had never seen in a Cane before.
They fell silent as a group of mounted horsemen approached from the gates of Mastings, riding swiftly. The horses pulled up to a halt only a few feet away from them, and the officer who led the group, presumably a Tribune, judging by his more modern and well-fitting armor, flung himself from his horse, his face already scarlet with rage.
"What have we here?" he demanded. "Some of the scum at last?" He whirled on a man in a centurion's crested helmet and stabbed an accusing finger at the ground directly before Tavi. "Centurion. I want the gallows constructed right here."
Tavi narrowed his eyes, and he traded a glance with Kitai.
The centurion banged his fist to his chest and began giving orders to the Free Aleran riders. The legionares began hurrying about at once, and someone returned with rough lumber within a moment.
Their Cane escort let out a rumbling growl in his throat, watching the angry Tribune with narrowed eyes, but he did not move or speak. Tavi waited a moment before it occurred to him that he was in the same situation with the young warrior Cane as he was with Varg. He'd declared himself the Cane's superior, and any responsibility for acting in a dispute belonged to him.
He nudged his horse forward a few steps, and said, "Excuse me, Tribune. Might I ask what you think you're doing?"
The red-faced Tribune whirled on Tavi in a fury, one hand on his sword. "Centurion!" he bellowed.
"Sir?"
"The next time the condemned speak, you will carry out their executions at once!"
"Sir!"
Tavi met the Tribune's hard eyes for a long moment, but he didn't speak. He glanced aside at Kitai. The Marat girl's expression didn't change, but she shifted position on the driver's bench of the wagon, and reached back to adjust the unconscious Ehren's clothing. Tavi never saw any indication of it, but he was sure she had palmed one of the many knives Ehren habitually secreted about his person.
From the set of his ears, Varg took note of it. He glanced up at the young Cane, whose ears suddenly flattened to his skull.
Tavi suppressed a grimace. If it came to a fight, they'd have no chance, not even if the young warrior and his entire patrol joined in. There were simply too many of the Free Aleran legionares about, and in any normal Aleran Legion, the orders of a Tribune would draw immediate support from every legionare and centurion in sight.
Another rider came galloping up from the city, kicking his horse the entire way, and when the beast arrived it was in a near frenzy. It screamed and reared, hooves lashing, and the rider dropped off, threw off his helmet, and drew his gladius from his belt.
Tavi recognized him immediately, though the last time he had seen Durias, his features hadn't been mottled with rage.
Something was happening here, something more than merely tension during a time of war. There was far too much emotion in the reaction of the Free Alerans, and such things didn't occur for no reason. It didn't bode well for their situation. Men in such an excited state of mind were capable of anything.
Tavi tensed, readying himself to borrow the wind and draw his sword before anyone could stop him-but Durias stalked over to the hard-eyed Tribune, and without a word, fetched him a blow to the face with the back of his empty hand.
The Tribune reeled. Durias lifted his sword and shoved it hard against the Tribune's armored chest, forcing the man to the ground.
"Stand up," Durias snarled, "and I will strike off your useless head, Manus."
The Tribune looked up in a fury. "Centurion. I will have your head for thi-"
Durias leaned back and kicked Tribune Manus in the mouth with the heel of one foot. The man's head snapped back in a sudden spray of broken teeth, and he flopped to the ground, unconscious.
Durias glared at him, then at the nearby centurion. "In his cups again?"
The centurion's mouth twisted in distaste, and he nodded.
"Then get him something harder," Durias said. "If he's too drunk to walk, he'll be too drunk to do something this stupid. Now put the crowbegotten lumber back and get those horses back to the stables."
The centurion nodded and immediately began giving orders that were more or less the precise opposite of those he had just uttered. The legionares collected the unconscious Tribune and carried him off.
The blocky Durias, who looked even blockier dressed in armor than he had in a scout's field clothes, turned and walked over to Tavi, putting his sword away as he came. He nodded to Tavi as he approached. "Captain."
"Durias," Tavi said. "Nice to see you again, all things considered."
The Free Aleran centurion twitched his mouth into a faint smile. "I wish I could say the same. We need to get you away from here."
"Not until I speak to Nasaug," Tavi said.
Durias narrowed his eyes, glancing from Tavi to the wagon and its passengers and back. "You're kidding."
"This doesn't seem the appropriate place for levity," Tavi said. "I need to see him."
"You need to be elsewhere," Durias insisted. "Fortunately, in this case the two aren't exclusive. Nasaug's in the field."
Tavi grimaced as Durias confirmed his guess regarding Nasaug's plans. "I see. Lead the way, then."
"Aye." Durias went back to his horse and swung up without bothering to use the stirrups, hauling himself up purely by the muscles in his chest and arms. He nodded to their Cane escort, and said, "Thank you, Sarsh. I'll take them from here."
The Cane tilted his head casually to one side, and growled, "Watch the one on the horse. He's quicker than he looks."
Durias nodded, frowning, and said, "This way."
They followed Durias away from Mastings and toward the north. Once they were well away from the city walls, Tavi urged his horse up alongside the Free Aleran's. "That was quite a reception committee," he said quietly. "What brought that on?"
Durias glanced aside at Tavi, his expression unreadable. "Isn't it obvious?"
"Not to me," Tavi said. "I've been away awhile."
Durias exhaled through his teeth. "Of course you'd say that," he murmured, almost to himself. He glanced back at the wagon. "That's Varg?"
"I'll speak to Nasaug about that," Tavi said quietly.
Durias shrugged. "Fair enough. Then I'll let Nasaug answer your questions as well."
Tavi grunted, but nodded. "One thing more. One of my men is hurt. He needs a healer before we go any farther."
"He can't have one," Durias snapped. He took a deep, steadying breath. "That is, there are none at the city in any case. They're all in the field, and we're already heading their way."
"The ruins?" Tavi guessed.
"Just keep up." Durias nudged his horse into a trot for a few steps, drawing ahead of Tavi.
They traveled for three hours that way, Durias leading them, though Tavi became aware that the countryside on either side of the track they followed was far from empty. Once in a while, he managed to catch vague, flickering glimpses out of the corner of his eyes; movement in a stand of tall grass, or a slightly too-solid shadow among the trees. They were being watched, presumably by Durias's scouts, concealing themselves behind woodcraftings of varying skill.
The track began to show much heavier signs of use as they went. When they rounded a final hilltop and came into view of the ruins on their hill, and the battleground Nasaug had chosen to once more pit his forces against the Legions of Alera, Tavi drew up short for a second, unconsciously stopping his horse. He wished like the crows that Max had been nearby to provide a vision crafting for him, so that he might see the besieged hilltop in greater detail, but a few things were obvious,
even from there.
The Legions had been hard-pressed, and their outer palisade wall shattered. They'd taken serious losses while doing so. Tavi could see the gleaming armor of fallen legionares lying in rough groups and singly, as often as not mixed with the dark-furred forms of fallen Canim. Presumably, they'd died while buying time for the engineering cohort to reinforce the walls of the ruins, which now stood at a conspicuously uniform, formidable height.
A sea of Canim surrounded the hilltop, and even a glance showed Tavi that Nasaug had trained his conscripts into disciplined troops and equipped them with uniform weaponry-even with their own armor, if lighter than that of the warrior Canim or Aleran legionares.
Worse, the Canim had brought forth their ritualists again. Streamers of violet fire fell upon the hilltop in what was almost a regular cadence, slamming onto the walls and blasting great gouges from the stones, or from the earth when they struck the ground-and presumably from any Aleran unfortunate enough to be beneath one. Sharp, crackling reports resounded from the hilltop in a steady, hollow-sounding thunder.
"Bloody crows," Tavi whispered.
Kitai stared at the hilltop, her expression closed, but he could feel the sudden surge of fear and anger in her.
Durias looked over his shoulder, and said, harshly, "Keep moving."
They pressed on, passing through several checkpoints, where the Canim sentries seemed to have been expecting them. They waved Durias through without speech, though Tavi could feel their bloody eyes tracking his movements.
As they approached what Tavi recognized as the command area of the Canim force, they came upon a nightmare made flesh.
At the base of a small hillock, the Canim were piling bodies.
There were so many corpses that at first Tavi thought that they had been stacking bags of grain, or sand. Hundreds of dead Alerans lay in the oncoming sunset. The smell was something hideous, and both Tavi's and Durias's horses began to shy away from the stench, nervous at the smell of death. Tavi had to dismount, and moved to the horse's head, holding the bridle and murmuring quietly to soothe the beast.
