Chapter 47

Troops surged from concealed positions beside the road, a dozen Canim and twice as many men in the worn gear of the Free Aleran Legion. One moment, no one was in sight, and the next a formidable array of weapons was pointed directly at Tavi's chest.

"Well," Tavi said, his tone impatient, as he reined his nag to a halt. "It's about bloody time."

One of the men had begun to speak, but he blinked and simply stared at Tavi, evidently surprised to be so addressed. Tavi studied him for a moment and decided that he was the most advantageous point of attack. If he didn't manage a successful verbal assault with the first pickets around Mastings, it might take him hours or days of waiting to get to Nasaug, and he doubted his mother and Araris would have that long.

"You," Tavi said, pointing at the man, then indicating the wooden baton thrust through his belt. "Centurion, I take it?"

"Yes," said the young man. "Yes, I'm-"

"Don't you people watch the back door as closely as the front? Bloody sloppy."

The man's face turned red. "Now, see here. You are intruders on a Free Aleran causeway, and as such I am placing you under arrest in accordance with general order-"

"I don't have time to listen to you cite phrase and paragraph, centurion,'

Tavi said, his tone striking a fine balance of impatience and authority, all of it absent of malice. "Lead me to Nasaug at once."

One of the Canim, a warrior Cane decked in the dark red-black steel plate of his caste, narrowed his blood-colored eyes and growled in Canish to one of his companions, a raider. "Spit him on your spear. We'll see how much talking he does then."

Tavi turned and stared hard at the Cane who had spoken. Their battered group was not calculated to impress, and consisted of one mounted but unar-mored man on a horse who had seen better days, and one rickety wagon drawn by a pair of shaggy mules, driven by a Marat girl, and carrying an unclad Cane and a wounded traveler. They could hardly have passed as bandits, much less anyone of importance enough to demand an audience with the Canim's leader, and if Tavi allowed the warrior Cane to treat them as petty vagrants, they would doubtless be tossed into a cell to languish through being passed from one officer to the next, up the chain of command, and the entire enterprise of the last several weeks could come to nothing.

Varg could probably establish his credentials in fairly short order, but Tavi's instincts warned him not to ask the Cane to do so. Varg had agreed to follow and support him until they reached Nasaug-but only so long as Tavi behaved in a fashion appropriate to a leader. Among the Canim warrior caste, leaders did not detail matters of personal precedence to their subordinates. They established such guidelines themselves. It was how one became a leader in the first place.

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 at 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.

Tavi wanted to look away from the bodies, but he couldn't. Most of them were legionares. Many of them wore the slightly differently styled armor of the Senatorial Guard, but many others wore the achingly familiar armor of the First Aleran.

And still others were dressed in the clothing of common holders.

Tavi stared. Among the dead were the elderly. Women. Children. Their clothing was stained with blood, their bodies mangled by brutally violent attacks. If he didn't retch his guts out on the ground, it was only because he'd had so much practice holding them in over the past two years.

It took him a moment longer, but he realized that the Canim were... putting the bodies through some kind of process. A pair of ritualists in their pale mantles stood at two separate tables-no, they were more like wide, shallow, elevated basins, tilted at a sharp angle. As Tavi watched, two other Canim, older laborers of the maker caste, by their simple clothing and greying fur, gently picked up the body of a holder woman. They carried it to one of the tables and laid it down on the basin, with her head positioned at the basin's lower end.

The ritualist murmured something, a musical-sounding, even meditative growl-and then reached down with a curved knife and cut the dead woman's throat on both sides.

Blood trickled from the corpse. It drained down the shallow basin, where it gathered and flowed down through a hole at the bottom of the basin, out of a small spigot. There, it poured into a wide-mouthed stone jar.

Tavi could only stare at it in mute astonishment, unable to quite believe what he was seeing. The laborers fetched another corpse for the second basin. As Tavi watched, the first ritualist beckoned a nearby Cane, a young male not more than six feet tall, and far more wiry than an adult. The young Cane gathered up the stone jar, replacing it with another one from a row of similar vessels nearby. Then he turned and loped rapidly away, toward the sorcery-blasted hilltop.

A moment later, the ritualist nodded to another set of workers-only these were half a dozen or so Alerans, also wearing the clothing of holders. They gently removed the woman's body, wrapped it in sackcloth, and carried it to an open wagon, typical of those used as an improvised hearse on the battlefield, where they laid it down beside several other similarly wrapped figures.

Tavi looked up to find Durias watching him from where he stood at his own mount's head. The centurion's face was bleak, but Tavi could read nothing from it, nor sense any of the young man's emotions through his own shock, revulsion, and growing anger.

"What is this?" Tavi demanded. His voice came out confident and cold, though he hadn't meant it to be.

The muscles in Durias's jaws flexed a few times. Then he said, "Wait here." He led his horse away.

Tavi watched him go, then averted his eyes from the basins and the stacked corpses. He walked his weary mount back to the wagon to give it the company of the mules drawing it.

"Varg?" Tavi asked quietly.

Varg watched the ritualists with a rigidly neutral body posture. "Blood into jars," he rumbled.

"This is where their power comes from," Tavi said softly. "Isn't it?"

Varg flicked his ears in assent, as bodies continued to be drained and runners continued to carry the filled jars toward the battle lines.

"This is how they used power against us at the Elinarch," Tavi snarled. "They killed our people after they landed and used their blood against the Legion."

"Take no particular offense, Aleran," Varg rumbled. "They are not choosy about which blood they take, so long as it is from a reasoning being. The ritualists have killed more of my people than the whole of your race. The sorceries they used to assault your shores, block your skies, redden your stars would have required millions upon millions of lives."

"And you allow them to exist?" Tavi spat.

"They serve a purpose," Varg replied. "They have the power to bless bloodlines. Increase fertility in our females. Increase the bounty of crops, and to lessen the ravages of storms, droughts, plagues."

"And you are willing to sacrifice your peoples lives for them to do it?"

"My people are willing to make a gift of their blood upon death," Varg growled. "Though there are times when a particularly powerful ritualist forgets that his power should be used to serve his people. Not the other way around."

"There are women there," Tavi said, his mouth tight. "Children. I thought better of Nasaug."

"And I," growled Nasaug, from behind Tavi, "thought better of you."

Tavi turned around, hand on his sword, eyes narrowed.

Nasaug stood ten feet away, in full armor-armor stained with several shining new nicks and dents and spattered with drying blood. The dark-furred Cane's lips were lifted from his teeth in open hostility, and a naked sword was in one of his hands. Durias stood at Nasaug's right hand, his teeth similarly bared.

Some distant part of Tavi's mind shouted that he should be calm and cautious. He could barely hear it over the outrage and horror, and he met Nasaug's eyes squarely. "Tell your men to get their hands off of my people."

"Or what?" Nasaug said, his eyes narrowing to slits.

"Or I'll bloody well make them do it," Tavi replied.

"You are about to die, Aleran," Nasaug said.

Tavi drew his sword. "You'll find me harder to kill than defenseless old holders and children, dog."

Nasaug surged forward-not a leap, but a controlled, blindingly swift rush, his sword gripped in two hands. Tavi lifted his sword, shifting his weight, preparing to slide the enormously powerful blow aside, summoning strength from the earth.

Until Varg hit Nasaug in the chest like a hurled spear.

Nasaug, though huge and armored, was still outweighed by the larger and more heavily scarred Varg. Both Canim went down in an explosion of deafening snarls, and a bestial struggle ensued. Varg knocked the sword from Nasaug's grip, but the smaller Cane sank his fangs into Varg's shoulder, drawing blood. Varg roared, driving a blow at Nasaug's nose, slamming his head aside, his teeth ripping great gashes in Varg's flesh.

The two Canim struggled, rolling and twisting, exchanging blows and rakes of their claws and slashes of their fangs. Though Varg was larger and stronger, Nasaug was armored, and ruthlessly made use of the advantage his greater protection afforded him.

Nasaug managed to slam his armored forearm into Varg's throat, then his jaws opened and his fangs flashed as he snapped forward.

Varg was too swift. The larger Cane fell back, claws hooked in Nasaug's armor, then whirled the smaller Cane off the ground and down onto it in a vicious slam that shook dust from the earth for twenty feet in every direction.

Nasaug tried to roll away but, stunned by the impact, was too slow, and Varg was on his back, jaws on the back of his neck, body pinning the smaller Cane down.

Nasaug let out a howl of anguish and fury, then fell silent.

For a moment, Tavi thought that Varg had killed him. Then he realized that Nasaug still breathed. He simply lay there, unmoving, not struggling, and there was a quality of exhausted frustration in the snarls that continued bubbling from his throat.

Tavi looked up and met Durias's gaze. Then he put his sword away and took a step toward the two Canim.

Varg released Nasaug's throat, and Tavi heard the big Cane growl, almost too quietly to be heard, "Gadara-lar."

Nasaug shuddered. Then one of his ears twitched in assent. "Gadara-sar."

"Honor," Varg said.

"Honor," the smaller Cane echoed.

Varg rose slowly from Nasaug. The Canim commander turned to face Varg, and each of them bared their throats to one another, Nasaug more deeply.

"Lax"Tavi said quietly. "It means boy."

The two Canim turned their heads to face him.

"Sar," Tavi said. "It means sire. He's your son."

"Obviously," Varg growled.

"Andgadara," Tavi said. "It doesn't mean 'enemy.'"

"The people of the snows," Varg said, "you call them the Icemen. They have twenty-four words to name snow. Alerans have one. In the same way, Canim have eleven words to name enemy."

Tavi nodded slowly. "Can you tell me what gadara means? Describe it?"

Varg gave Tavi a very Aleran-looking shrug. "It means that you are a foe that is equal. Honorable. Trusted."

"A trusted enemy?" Tavi asked. "And you name your son as such?"

"Enemies are far more faithful than friends, Aleran, and more dependable than allies. One can respect an enemy far more easily than a friend. It is considered a mark of respect," Varg said.

Nasaug, meanwhile, had dropped to his haunches in a relaxed crouch, still panting to regain his breath. Struggling in the armor had wearied him far more than it had his unarmored sire. "Aleran," he said. "Why did you turn an honorable war into a slaughter of makers and females?"

"I didn't," Tavi replied. "I've been gone more than six weeks, bringing Varg to you, as we agreed." He frowned. "Your people didn't kill those holders?"

Nasaug spat. "No. Cavalry from your Legions have been striking steadholts for weeks now." He jerked his muzzle at the draining tables. "So I have allowed the bloodspeakers to drain the blood of the dead and so avenge them."

Tavi lifted a hand to his face for a moment. "These riders," he said. "Alerans?"

"Aye."

"Not Marat?"

"The white-hairs. No."

Tavi exhaled slowly. "Then it hasn't been the First Aleran. Arnos must have ordered the Guard's cavalry to do it."

"That matters little to the dead," Durias said quietly. "Or to their families. Manus's wife and children were killed two days ago. That's why he reacted as he did, Captain."

"Why would Arnos do such a thing?" Kitai asked quietly.

Tavi shook his head. "To ensure that there would be no peaceful conclusion to this campaign, maybe. Or..." He glanced at Durias. "Has the Free Aleran Legion engaged the Crown forces yet?"

"No," Durias said quietly. "We've been holding off as long as possible."

Tavi spat a bitter taste from his mouth. "That's why, then," he said. "This campaign has been about ambition from the start. Arnos wants to be sure you have reason to fight. Then he gets the credit for defeating an invader and putting down a slave revolt as well."

"If he wished to anger us," Nasaug said, "then he has succeeded. There will be no quiet end to this struggle, Aleran."

Tavi frowned. "I lived up to my end of the agreement."

"I agreed that if you freed Varg, we would talk. I have talked, and you may go in peace, gadara. But I will not allow those who murder makers and females to walk away unpunished." He jerked his muzzle at the besieged ruins. "They will not last the night."

Tavi clenched his jaw. Nasaug was no fool, and he could clearly see that the Legions were already in desperate straits. They'd been taken off guard, and the ongoing sorceries seemed more than able to pulverize what little shelter they had, given enough time.

And blood.

Tavi racked his brain desperately. There had to be some way out of this mess, some way to save the First Aleran, some way to...

"And what then?" Tavi heard himself ask quietly.

Nasaug tilted his head to one side.

"After you've killed them," he continued, struggling to keep up with a sudden flood of possibilities. "They'll be replaced by more Legions-and you'll be long gone. But the Free Alerans won't. And you can bet that whatever force comes next will have orders to wipe them out. They'll be the ones to pay for what you do to the men on that hill."

Durias lifted his chin defiantly-but there was something in his eyes that was not at all certain.

"For that matter," Tavi said, "how do you expect to get across the sea? When your fleet came, they used a storm the ritualists summoned to travel swiftly, and they came in large numbers to get through the leviathans. You won't be sailing nearly so swiftly on the way back. How many more ships will you lose? How much weaker will your army be when you finally return to your home?"

Nasaug growled in his throat. "We are willing to face those dangers, Aleran."

"What if you didn't have to?" Tavi asked.

Varg's ears flicked in amusement. "Perhaps you noticed," he growled to Nasaug, "that our young gadara is clever."

Nasaug snapped his jaws pensively. "What do you propose?"

"I'm going to give you the man responsible for those deaths," Tavi said. "I'm going to punish those who carried out his orders. I'm going to see to it that the Free Alerans are not treated as criminals for what they have done-and after that, I'm going to make sure your fleet gets safely over the sea and back to your home."

"And in exchange for all of this?" Nasaug asked, his tone clearly skeptical.

Tavi gestured at the ocean of Canim surrounding the hill. "You surrender."

Nasaug lifted his lips from his teeth. "What?"

"You surrender," Tavi repeated.

"Even if this was possible, I will never surrender to Alerans or their Legions," Nasaug said. "Too many of them are no better than animals."

"You won't be surrendering to Aleran Legions," Tavi replied. "You'll be surrendering to me, personally-a gadara."

Nasaug tilted his head, his ears swiveling forward in concentration. He traded a long look with Varg, then tilted his head to one side. He drew a heavy leather sash from his belt and tossed it to the larger Cane.

Durias's mouth fell open, and he stared at the exchange in pure surprise.

Varg donned the sash, belting it on with practiced movements. "Aleran," he said. "Let us assume that I agree to this proposal. What will you need to make it happen?"

Tavi's heart began to pound in excitement, and he felt a grin try to stretch his lips. He was careful to keep his teeth covered, lest he give the Canim the wrong idea.

"First," he said, "I'll need you to take my wounded man to a healer. I'll need his help."

Varg nodded, and said to Durias, "See to it at once."

Durias glanced at Nasaug, but even as he did his fist was banging out a salute on his chest, and he hurried away.

Varg nodded and turned back to Tavi. "And?"

"Any eyewitnesses to any of the attacks," Tavi said. "I'll need to speak to them."

Varg glanced at Nasaug, who nodded. "It can be done, sar."

Tavi pointed at the besieged ruins. "The attack needs to stop, at least temporarily."

Varg narrowed his eyes but nodded once. "Is midnight time enough for this plan?"

"It should be," Tavi said.

In fact, it should be plenty of time, Tavi thought. By the time midnight got there, he would almost certainly have fulfilled his word to the Cane.

And if he hadn't, he'd be too dead for his failure to bother him overmuch.

Chapter 48

Gaius Sextus fell upon the forward ranks of the legionares coming toward them, and terror like none they had known crashed over them.

The flaming brand in his fist cast out a blinding radiance, and Amara could feel the very edges of the fearcrafting that imbued it. Once before she had borne a flame containing a fury of terror, and she had barely remained conscious during the act. Count Gram's fearcrafting had been formidable, routing thousands of barbarian Marat and their war beasts alike, sending them screaming from the walls of Garrison during Second Calderon.

Beside the horror Alera's First Lord now sent against the Kalaran legionares, Gram's fearcrafting had been a momentary flutter of insecurity.

The men nearest Gaius, those file leaders of whatever luckless century had the fortune to make up the column's center, never got to scream. Their eyes rolled back in their heads, and as a single man, they convulsed and fell to the stony ground.

Then the screams began.

Hundreds of throats opened in terrorized howls, a sudden and deafening cacophony. Ranks and files melted like butter on a hot skillet, and Legion discipline vanished like dew beneath a desert sunrise. Some men fell, clutching at their shoulders and chests, bleeding from the eyes, or frothing at the lips. Some sobbed and staggered to their knees, weapons tumbling from fear-numbed fingers. Some turned their weapons upon those near them, panicked beyond reason or ability to recognize their sword-brethren. Most simply fled, casting aside their swords and shields.

Among those hundreds of afflicted souls, one man alone stood his ground. Though his face was ashen, somehow this man withstood that horrible fear, bracing his shield and raising his sword in wavering defiance.

The First Lord's blade of fire swept down, and no shield or sword in all of Alera could have withstood that molten furnace of a blow. In a flash of light, the legionare's shield shattered into cleaved halves and droplets of molten metal, parted every bit as easily as his armor and the flesh beneath. He fell in a horrible cloud of hissing gasses and the stench of scorched flesh, and Amara could not help but feel pity that the poor man had been so rewarded for his courage, greater than any of the Legion about him.

Even in Gaius's shadow, unable to see the flame, and shielded from the worst of the fearcrafting, it was all that Amara could do to keep moving forward. The terrible light of the First Lord's sword created a nightmare army of shadows that raced in senseless panic over the slopes of the mountainside and flashed back from polished armor and the bright steel of discarded blades. It created a dizzying display of light and blackness, making it difficult to judge distances or to maintain her awareness of their direction or position. She had grown used to tracking their movements, of maintaining her orientation, and she realized in a sudden panic that she was no longer sure of their way.

Not that it would matter, she realized a beat later. The largest threat the poor, howling legionares posed to Amara and her companions was that of a broken ankle to be had from stumbling over the fallen forms of those incapacitated by terror.

Such was the screaming chaos around her that Amara nearly missed precisely the threat she was supposed to be on guard against-a sudden knot of resistance, discipline, and purpose amidst the horror. Several heavily armored men had gathered around another figure, one holding his hand aloft-a Knight Ignus. Blue fire wreathed that single man's fingers, a countercrafting, Amara judged, not strong enough to stretch far from his body against the will of the First Lord, but of sufficient power to enable the men immediately around him, Knights Terra by their outsized weapons, to maintain their reason.

"Bernard!" Amara screamed, pointing with her sword. Her voice was lost in the din of maddened men around them, but she sensed his change in pace and dropped into a crouch as he lifted his bow and loosed an arrow that passed close enough to her scalp to stir her hair. The arrow leapt through the shifting shadows-

�C and missed the Knight Ignus by the width of a finger. It flicked past one of the Knights Terra and drew a streak of crimson across his cheekbone. The enemy Knights' mouths opened in cries Amara could not hear through the tumult, and they charged, the Knight Ignus at the center of their group.

Amara tried to shout a warning to the First Lord-but Gaius had his face turned away from the threat, his eyes instead focused upon three other men coming from the opposite direction, their faces blank with the detachment of Knights Ferrous, their swords gleaming.

In the corner of her eye, she saw her husband swipe a hand over his eyes in a gesture of frustration and fear as he reached to his quiver for another arrow, but the enemy Knights were too close, and there was no way he would have the chance to loose it.

Amara drew upon Cirrus and the battlefield slowed to a crawl as she dashed forward. She was upon the leading Knight, a man armed with an enormous axe, before he could bring his weapon to bear properly upon her. She slipped aside from a hasty and badly aimed swing and whipped her sword across the man's face with one hand, while giving the axe's haft a sharp downward slap with the other.

The sword stroke did no real harm, rebounding from the ridges of his helmet, though it drew a crimson line across the bridge of his nose-but it did serve to make him jerk his head sluggishly back from the blow. Far more dangerous was the suddenly altered path of his enormous axe. It swept down and around, into the thigh of the Knight beside him, and the fury-assisted blow sheared completely through the luckless Knight's armored thigh.

Both men fell, hampering those on either side of them, and it gave Amara a single, flickering instant of opportunity. She drew a dangerous portion of her fury's essence within herself-far more than she ever had before, far too much-until that instant expanded into a nearly motionless lifetime.

She lunged forward, moving with a speed no body in Alera was designed to bear, and she felt muscles and joints scream in protest and tear like wet paper as she did. She had an age to experience the pain, an eon to aim her thrust, an eternity to focus all of her body's weight and strength and speed upon the gleaming, needle-sharp tip of her gladius.

The Knight Ignus saw her coming, and his eyes widened as slowly as ice forming on a winter pond. He tried to draw aside from the oncoming blade, but he did not have the time she did. His head moved a fraction of an inch, no more.

Then her sword's point sank into his desperately widened eye, and the length of its blade followed in slow, dreamlike motion-all the way to the weapon's hilt. The man's head snapped languidly back, and droplets of blood spewed forth in a misty cloud.

Amara felt an explosion of fire in her hand, her wrist, her elbow, her shoulder. Her bond with Cirrus faltered, and everything rushed into a single blurring motion.

Though she could not hear it, she felt her throat go raw with screaming.

Pain and terror wiped the world away.

Amara awoke to find herself dizzily content to remain absolutely still. It took her a mildly astonished moment to notice that she was still moving. Her hair hung about her face-crusted with mud and blood and the filth of their swampy journey. It smelled like rotting vegetables.

Beyond her hair, her hands dangled limply. Her right hand, from wrist to fingertips, was swollen up like a collection of sausages knotted together into a rough doll. The skin was deep purple, one solid, livid bruise that covered it all equally-or so she supposed. It was difficult to be certain because of the mud and blood and flecks of something grey and gelatinous still clinging to her skin.

She was fairly sure something like that ought to hurt. It didn't. She attempted to wiggle the purpled fingers and found them entirely unresponsive. She felt sure that was not an encouraging sign, but for the life of her, she couldn't remember why.

Past her fingertips was stony ground, moving steadily by. Something was pressing up hard against her stomach in steady rhythm. Bernard, she thought. His shoulder. She was draped over Bernard's shoulder. Yes, she could see his swamp-ruined boots, down by the ground.

"Hurry," snapped the First Lord. He sounded steady, confident. That was good. It had almost been more than Amara could stand to see Gaius, who had always been so dynamic, so vital, reduced to a fevered wreck on an improvised litter. He must have watercrafted himself better, lying still on the litter, while Brencis had examined her and Bernard.

It occurred to her that she did not know if even the First Lord's skills could have wholly restored himself so swiftly. She felt a vague sense of worry, that the old man had simply shored up his condition as best he could, then opted to block out the pain of it with his metalcrafting, proceeding as if nothing was wrong. If he was, in fact, operating on the borrowed time given him by a crafted insensitivity to pain, then he was in danger-and that bothered Amara enough to make her move her head and stir her weary limbs in a faint effort to attract someone's attention.

"She's waking up," Bernard said, his tone urgent.

"We're almost there," Gaius said. "Once we've crested this rise, I'll be able to see the mountain Kalarus has prepared, and-" The First Lord drew in a sharp breath. "Knights Aeris are coming, Count. Quite a few of them. We have only moments. I should think we would both appreciate it if some of your salt arrows are ready."

Then there was much huffing and puffing and scrabbling of boots over stone. Amara gave up on her efforts to move and drifted through a haze for a while. She wasn't sure how long it took for things to change, but it didn't seem like a very long time until Bernard slowed, then set her carefully on the ground.

He dropped to one knee beside her, breathing hard, his face set in an expression of pain. He drew the arrows from his quiver and began thrusting their tips into the earth. Then he muttered and laid his hand upon the ground among them.

"Bernard," Amara said. It barely came out, but her husband turned to her immediately.

"Love," he said quietly. "You mustn't move. You've been badly hurt."

"I'm tired," she replied. "But it doesn't hurt."

"Sire," Bernard said, his voice hard. "She's awake. Shivering. I think she's going into shock."

Amara looked to one side, where the First Lord stood staring down, and for the first time she noticed that they were high upon the shoulders of the mountain and that they could see clearly into the vast bowl below them.

There, miles away, twinkled the lights of the city of Kalare, a luminous emerald jewel in the darkness. The smaller clusters of other lights showed where several smaller towns lay in the region around the city, and small, single pinpoints of light showed where dozens of individual steadholts lay. The moonlight shone off the shallow-water fields of barleyrice, turning them into mirrors that were acres across.

Amara had been to Kalare. It was an ugly city, run-down, deprived of any apparent virtue, where the only thing in greater abundance than slavery was misery. After two years of war and economic isolation, it was bound to be even worse, dirtier, poorer, cruder, and more disease-ridden. But from up there on the mountain, from far away, when only the characteristic greenish furylamps of the city were visible, Kalare and its flock of child-cities possessed an eerie and fragile beauty.

"Sire!" Bernard barked. He began jerking arrows from the ground, their heads now encased in translucent crystal. "She needs your help."

Gaius stood facing a mountain on the far side of the valley, and Amara realized that she shouldn't have been able to see the mountain from here, or at least not in the dark. But she could, see it, a vast black cone backlit by dim red light at its crown.

Bernard nocked an arrow and rose to his feet. "Sire!"

"In a moment, Count," Gaius murmured. "There are other matters that-"

"No," Bernard said. "You're going to see to her. Now."

Gaius's head snapped around. "Excuse me?"

"She's hurt," Bernard said. "She might be dying. Fix it."

"You have no idea," Gaius said from between clenched teeth. "No idea what is at stake."

Her husband faced the First Lord without flinching. "Yes, I do." His eyes hardened. "The life of a woman who was willing to sacrifice everything to get you here. You've planned enough pain for her already, Sextus. Or maybe you think it would be easier to let her die."

Wind whispered over the stones for several empty seconds.

Then Gaius was at her side. He leaned down and laid his hand on her forehead. His fingers were long, rough, and fever-hot. He murmured, quietly, "I'm sorry for what is to come, Amara."

Fire engulfed the entire right side of her body. She felt herself contort strangely, saw the shape of her abdomen alter, watched as her arm straightened, unwinding as it went, almost like a twisted cord. The pain was indescribable, but there was a sensation of silvery ecstasy mixed with it that left her unable to move or cry out. She could only weep, and the stars blurred upon her tears, mixing with the lights of the city below.

There was a roar of wind, the thrum of Bernard's bow, and a horrible, wet sound of impact.

Gaius lifted his hand away from her and rose. "Keep them off me, Count."

"Aye, my lord," Bernard growled, taking position standing over Amara, his bow in hand.

Amara could do nothing but watch as the First Lord stared at the distant fire-mountain and raised his hand.

There was another roaring sound, a windstream, and Bernard loosed another arrow, drawing a scream. Armor clattered against the stones as a Knight Aeris in full gear crashed to the mountainside and slid along it in a bone-breaking tumble, sparks leaping up in his wake where steel armor met stone.

She wasn't sure how long it went on, before the pain began to fade somewhat and she found herself able slowly to sit up-but her husband now stood with his last arrow against the string of his bow, staring up at the night sky with dull, exhausted eyes.

The First Lord let out a sudden sigh, closing his eyes. "Crows take you, Brencis. At least your son had wisdom enough to know when he was beaten. Crows take you and rip out your eyes for forcing me to this."

And then Gaius Sextus suddenly closed his reaching hand into a fist and jerked it back, as if snapping a particularly tough cord.

The night went red.

Blinding light flared from the distant mountain.

It took Amara several dull, thudding seconds to realize what she was seeing.

Fire erupted from the mountain, white-hot, lifting in a great geyser that rose miles into the air. That first rush of blinding liquid flame spattered out for what had to be miles and miles in every direction around the mountain and only then did the earth suddenly move, the mountain jumping as if it had been an old wagon hitting a pothole in a bad road. Rocks fell. Somewhere nearby, a cliff-side collapsed in a deafening roar.

Amara couldn't take her eyes from what was happening below. The mountain itself began to spew out a great cloud of what looked like grey powder, illuminated from within by scarlet light. The cloud billowed out in slow, graceful beauty-or so it looked from the distance. She watched as it rolled down over the valley of Kalare. It washed over the poinpoint lights of the little steadholts. It devoured the larger clusters of lights marking the little towns and villages around the valley.

And, within moments, it washed over the city of Kalare itself.

Amara could not help herself. She lifted her hands, tiredly willing Cirrus into a sight-crafting. The grey cloud was not simply ash, as she had at first thought. It was... as if fire had been made into one vast thunderhead. Whatever was caught in the path of that scarlet-limned grey flood was instantly incinerated by its touch. She saw, just barely, small moving shadows flying before the oncoming inferno, but if the cloud moved with lazy grace, those tiny figures-those Alerans, she realized-moved at a snail's pace. She herself, one of the fastest fliers in Alera, could not have outpaced that incendiary nebula. Those holders had no chance. None at all.

She stared at the valley below them in numb shock, as more jolts and tremors rattled the mountain beneath her. How many thousands-tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people had just died? How many families, sleeping in their beds, had just been reduced to ashes? How many children had just been burned alive? How many homes, how many stories, how many beloved faces and names had just been incinerated like so much useless garbage?

Amara knelt there beside her husband and witnessed the death of Kalare- of its city, its people, its lands, and its lord.

A vast cloud of steam rose as the watery valley surrendered to the embrace of the fire-mountain, and their view of that steam vanished as dust from the rockslides and tremors rose up around them, creating a thick shroud that blotted away the stars.

There was still light, though. Light from the blazing mountain and from the burning corpse of the city of Kalare painted everything in a surreal, scarlet twilight.

Only after their view of the valley had been obscured did Gaius Sextus turn away. His gaze slid past Bernard and found Amara. He walked over to her with slow, heavy steps, and faced her, his expression a mask, his eyes showing nothing.

"Had I waited for Kalarus to loose it, Countess," he said quietly, "it would have been worse. Refugees fleeing the front lines would have been forced into the city and doubled the numbers there. Our own legionares would have been there. Died there." He sought her eyes, and spoke very quietly. "It would have been worse."

Amara stared at the weary First Lord.

She pushed herself slowly to her feet.

She reached up and found the slender chain around her neck. She wore two ornaments upon it. The first was Bernard's Legion ring, worn there in secret testimony to their marriage.

The second was a simple silver bull, the most common coin in the Realm, marked with Gaius's profile on one side. It was the symbol and badge of office of a Cursor of the Realm.

Amara grasped the ring in one hand.

With the other, she tore the coin and chain from her throat, and cast them into Gaius's face.

The First Lord didn't flinch.

His eyes became more sunken.

Amara turned and walked away.

"Go with your wife, Count," Gaius said softly, somewhere behind her. "Take care of her for me."

P/S: Copyright -->www_novelfreereadonline_Com

***