Chapter 45

The vord came precisely when Invidia said they would. Sunrise was still four hours away, and once the moon had vanished behind the mountains to the south, the night turned as black as the inside of a coffin.

Amara was on the wall, waiting to see if Invidia had spoken the truth. There was no warning whatsoever. In one moment, the night was completely silent and still. In the next, there was a single flicker of movement at the very edge of the ground illuminated by the wall's furylights, then the gleaming black chitin of the horde exploded from the night, rushing across the ground in the rumble of millions of feet striking the still-scorched earth.

They must have moved slowly and silently until they reached the edge of the lights, Amara thought. No Aleran Legion could possibly have moved stealthily in such vast numbers - but it hadn't done them any good. The legionares on the walls were ready and waiting.

Hundreds of Citizens brought up the flickering curtain of fist-sized fire-spheres that had first been used at Riva. It proved just as deadly to the foe here as it had at the great city. Vord surged into the burned zone before the wall and were slain in blasts of fire and superheated air, a million deadly fireflies barring their way. The horde died by the hundreds, then the thousands, but as they had at Riva, the weight of numbers began to let the vord grind their way forward, scrambling over the corpses of their fallen comrades, laying a road of death and twitching limbs for those coming behind them.

Within moments, the vord had paid the necessary toll, and the Aleran firecrafters who lined the walls began to crumple down, exhausted. As they did, they were replaced with every Knight Flora in the Legions, and every Citizen with the necessary skills to join them. Arrows began to leap from bows, their fury-enhanced limbs sending the shafts leaping forward with supernatural power.

Deadly arrows hissed through the night, with the Knights Flora working in teams of ten and twenty, sharing targets with shouts of coordination, each archer loosing as fast as he could. Hundreds of streams of arrows slewed back and forth across the vord lines, like the sprays of water used by fire wardens in cities all across Alera.

In many ways, Amara supposed, fighting the vord was a great deal more like battling a fire than an enemy. They rushed forward with the same implacable need to devour and spread. The streams of arrows would beat back the vord where their deadly skill touched them, but wherever a stream hadn't swept for a few seconds, the vord surged forward again, like a blaze chewing through an old wooden building - just as determined, and just as unstoppable.

Amara licked her lips, her heart beating faster, as the first vord mantis reached the wall and began gouging out fresh climbing holds. Archer teams began withdrawing, leaving heavily armed legionares to take their places.

Standing beside her, Bernard nodded judiciously. "About now, I think."

Amara nodded and turned to the trumpeter next to her. "Signal the mules."

The man saluted and immediately began blowing a quick signal on his horn. In the dark on the ground behind the wall, the mules went to work again. Their arms made a creaking sound, followed by a distinct report of wooden arm striking wooden crossbeam, followed by a rattling, thumping sound as the mule rocked wildly back and forth before settling down again. A few seconds later, the ground outside the walls was illuminated by a blossoming wall of flame, incinerating hundreds more vord.

But they never slowed down.

Bernard watched a while more, until every archer team in sight was down from the walls and in their second position. The legionares fought on doggedly, throwing down the enemy with sword and shield, spear and fury. "Any sign?" he asked Amara.

Amara swept her eyes over the sky. It was impossible to see even the stars of the moonless sky outside of the radius of the wall's furylamps. "Not yet," she reported.

Bernard grunted. "What about that reserve force?"

Amara looked up and down the walls for the telltale colored furylamps they were using to send messages. A flashing blue light would have indicated that someone had spotted the specialized troops Invidia had described. "Not yet," Amara said.

Bernard nodded and continued watching the battle, unmoving, apparently unconcerned.

Amara knew it was a facade, for the benefit of the troops, and she tried to support it by appearing just as calm and steady as her husband - but despite her efforts, she bit her lip when she saw a young legionare, barely more than a boy, seized by a mantis's scythes and tossed screaming into the swarm below. His companions in arms cut the vord responsible into quivering chunks - but they were too late for the youth. Wounded were being carried from the wall by field medicos every few seconds. Once more, the Marat and their gargants stood by, patiently waiting while dozens of wounded were loaded into their carrying harnesses, then turned to begin striding toward Garrison.

"This is getting tight," Bernard muttered. "They're pushing harder than they did before."

"Should we sound retreat?"

Bernard stood calmly, looking down at the battle and giving no indication of his concern on his face or in his body language. "Not yet. We've got to know."

Amara nodded again and struggled to control her outer self once more. It was difficult. Calm and composure in the face of personal danger was something she had been trained for, something she had mastered. Watching others carried away, screaming in agony - or worse, dying in perfect silence - in support of the plan she'd helped to shape and create was something else entirely. She hadn't been ready for this. She'd had no talent whatsoever for watercrafting, and could barely make water roll across the bottom of a shallow pan, back at the Academy, when she'd been practicing hard. Now she wished she'd done even more. She would give anything to be able to let herself feel the horror that was hammering down on her without fearing that the sight of tears on her face might make things even worse.

She clenched her fists instead, forcing away the emotion. Later. She could let herself feel it later, she promised, when signs of panic among the command staff wouldn't deal gaping wounds to the legionares' morale.

She didn't know how long she held herself there, rigid and still. Only moments, surely, but they felt like hours - hours of nightmare, suddenly broken by distant, crackling reports from the night sky overhead.

Amara snapped her gaze up to see fire-spheres blossoming there in balls of grass green, arctic blue, and glacial purple. Black shapes like swarming moths flickered near and around the flaming spheres - vordknights, thousands of them. "Bernard!"

Bernard glanced at her, then up, then grinned suddenly, and the explosion of another massive salvo from the mules cast his face in a feral, almost blood-thirsty combination of light and shadow. "Trying to sneak over the wall to take out the mules in the dark, when we couldn't see them coming," he said. "But the Placidas and the northerners found them first." He pursed his lips for a moment, then said, "Glad they aren't directly overhead."

As if to punctuate Bernard's statement, the corpse of a vordknight, missing its head and two-thirds of the surface of its wings, plunged down and landed on the ground beside one of the crewmen of the mules. The crewman jumped and let out a shriek of surprise, before falling onto his rear, earning a round of frantic-edged belly laughs from his crewmates.

More vordknights appeared, beginning to dive upon the crews of the mules - but each team of Knights Flora had retreated from the wall to its assigned war engine, and they began providing their mule crews with a deadly shield of withering archery. Vordknights fell from the skies and smashed to the earth like rotten fruit. One of them came down on the small ammunition wagon of fire-spheres behind one of the mules, and it exploded in a sudden angry bellow of fire that roared out and consumed the vordknight, the wagon, the mule, its screaming crewmen, and the archers who had been protecting them. Deadly shards of wood from the shattered wagon flew out in every direction, wounding more men on either side, and Amara saw one shard no less than four feet long completely transfix one legionare's thigh, sending the man screaming to the floor of the battlements.

Amara made a gesture to the trumpeter, and the man sounded the call for an aerial attack. With a roar, hundreds of Citizens and Knights Aeris rose into the skies to do battle with the enemy in the darkness overhead. The sound of their windstreams was like the roaring of the sea crashing against stone cliffs. Each unit of Knights was led by Counts and Lords, many of them gifted in multiple disciplines of furycraft, and the number of exploding firecraftings overhead doubled and redoubled, a soaring panoply of brief-lived, swollen stars in every color imaginable. Roaring windstreams rose and fell in pitch and tone, making oddly musical harmonies amidst the flashes of chromatic fire.

Every eye in the whole of the Calderon Valley not being used to fight for survival was glued to the beautiful, deadly display.

"And now that our attention is on the sky," Bernard said, "it's time for the surprise attack. Your Lordship, if you would be so kind as to light the field."

Lord Gram stood nearby and grunted acknowledgment. Though the Princeps had put Bernard in charge of the defenses, Amara's husband had also served Gram for many years as one of the first Steadholders placed in the then-Count's service. Now Gram was a Lord (granted, his lands had been overrun by the enemy, but he was still a Lord), and her husband had made an extra effort to show Gram courtesy, despite his pained jaw. Gram didn't need it, Amara thought, and would have been perfectly comfortable following a simple order - but even in the face of ruin, Bernard had the presence of mind to be considerate. She supposed that, in a way, that sort of grace was symbolic of a great deal of what they were fighting for; the preservation of unnecessary beauty.

Gram stepped forward, lifted his hand, and casually held it out, palm up. Fire kindled in his cupped fingers, until a moment later a tiny form hovered there, just above the surface of his hand - a little feathered figure, its wings blurred into invisibility with their speed. The hot wind washing from them stirred Amara's hair. Gram whispered something to the little fire fury, and flicked his wrist. The fiery hummingbird shot off into the night, gathering speed and brightening in intensity as it flew.

It swept over the battlefield, a globe of white daylight several hundred yards across. It zipped over countless mantis warriors, and at one point blew entirely through the torso of a vordknight that had flown down to intercept it, not even slowing down.

"Bad idea," Gram said, shaking his head, "getting in Phyllis's way like that."

"Phyllis?" Bernard asked.

"Keep those teeth together, Calderon," Gram said testily. "Named her for my first wife. Hotter than any torch, couldn't sit still, and you didn't want to get in her way, either."

Amara smiled at the exchange and tracked Phyllis's progress - and within moments, she spotted the oncoming special units, exactly where Invidia had said they would be.

"Bloody blighted crows," Gram breathed, as if barely able to summon enough wind to speak.

Amara understood the feeling.

The oncoming vord were huge.

They weren't huge on the same order as a gargant. They were huge on the same order as buildings. There were half a dozen of them, each the size of three or four of the largest merchant ships. They moved on four legs, each thicker than the trunk of any tree Amara had ever seen. Their vaguely triangular heads ended in a jagged, black chitin beak that rather reminded her of that of an octopus, except large enough to hold three or four hogshead barrels. The creatures had no eyes that she could see, and their beaks simply seemed to flow up into their skulls, and from there into enormous arching fans of the same material, spreading around the titans' heads like shields. Every stride carried them a good twenty feet, and though they looked ponderous, their pace was, like a gargant's, swifter than one would expect. Dozens of mantis warriors could run beneath them at a time, and though a mantis could run faster than some horses, they passed the enormous bulks of moving black chitin only slowly.

A word from Gram halted Phyllis above the nearest bulk, and everyone on the walls who could be spared from fighting could only stare. Centurion Giraldi stepped up to the battlements beside Bernard and Gram. He stared at the bulks for a moment, and breathed, "Sir? I'd like a bigger wall now."

In the same instant, all six of the bulks raised their opened maws and let out basso bellows. They did not sound loud, precisely, but the sound shook the wall and Amara's bones with unnerving intensity.

The mules loosed another volley, which landed all around the leading bulk, exploding into fiery destruction. The great beast did not react. It just kept coming on, as vast and unstoppable as a glacier. As the bulks passed through the fires, Amara saw vord behemoths and mantises crouched upon their glossy, armored backs, as tiny as parasite-birds on the backs of gargants.

Amara could see the idea behind the creatures at once. They would roll forward and smash through the wall like so much rotten fencing. Anyone that attacked them would be forced to deal with the defenders riding upon them.

Amara started as a sudden presence intruded close upon her, but looked over to find that Doroga had arrived and made his way to them on the wall. The slab-shouldered Marat looked calm and interested as his eyes traveled along the walls, through the skies, then down to the field out in front of them. He, too, stared at the bulks for a slow count to seven before pursing his lips, and saying, "Hungh." After a moment, he added, "Big."

"Bloody crows," Gram said. "Bloody crows. Bloody crows."

"We got a problem, Count," Giraldi said.

"Bloody crows."

Bernard nodded. "Possibly."

"Bloody crows," said Gram. "Blighted bloody crows."

Giraldi's hand was resting on his sword. "I'd say get some archers and go for the eyes. But they ain't got any eyes."

"Mmmm," Bernard said.

"Bloody crows," said Gram.

"Sir?" the centurion asked. "What do we do?"

"We be quiet for a moment, so that I can think," Bernard said. He stared at the oncoming bulks. They were bellowing almost constantly, and signs of panic had begun to spread along the wall. A nervous gargant, somewhere nearby, let out its own coughing roar, and Bernard glanced over his shoulder in irritation - and then his eyes locked onto Doroga. They narrowed once, and the wolfish smile reappeared.

"We don't go for the eyes, centurion," Bernard said. "We go for their feet."

Doroga looked at Bernard, then barked out a harsh laugh, one that sounded rather remarkably like the one that the gargant, probably Walker, had just loosed.

Amara looked at Doroga, blinking, and suddenly understood. Years before, during the first vord invasion in this very valley, they had spoken with Doroga after a battle, while the Marat took care of his gargant's enormous padded paws:

"Feet," the Marat had rumbled. "Always got to help him take care of his feet. Feet are important when you are as big as Walker."

It made sense. Those creatures, whatever they were, had to be of fantastic weight - all of it settling upon four relatively small feet. Something that large could not easily manage its own mass, Amara was sure. A crippled foot might prevent the beast from moving at all.

Of course, the thousands of mantises running in a living river around and sometimes upon those feet could make it a bit difficult to reach the target. One of the High Lords might make short work of it, but they were mostly engaged above, and the Legion firecrafters had already exhausted themselves.

Of course... one didn't really need to hurt the bulks. They only needed to stop them, before they breached the wall and left gaps into which the vord swarm would pour, running down the retreating Legions before they could reach Garrison.

"Bernard," Amara said, her own voice thready. "Riva."

"Hah," Bernard said. He turned to Giraldi. "Centurion, signal arrows. One: Lord Riva to report to me. Two: General call for engineers at this location."

Signal arrows were bright enough to be seen for miles. The message would get to Riva within a moment. It would take him little longer to fly back to the front, but Amara was not sure how much time they actually had.

It seemed to take forever, and the bulks pressed ever closer. The mantises seemed to go mad with eagerness as they did, as if the bulks were pushing out some kind of psychic bow wave. One breach appeared atop the wall, and another, and Bernard dispatched reserves to reinforce the weakened areas.

There was the roar of a nearby windstream, and Riva, dressed in trousers and a loose, unbuttoned shirt, his hair a wildly tossed mess, looked blearily around the wall. He spotted Bernard and moved to him, lifting his fist in a salute and glancing out at the bulks as he did. He froze. "Bloody crows."

"Bloody crows," agreed Gram.

"We need water," Bernard said to Riva. "My lord, we need to water that ground, and we need to do it now."

Riva opened and closed his mouth a few times, then seemed to shake himself. "Oh, of course. Bog them down. We'd need a river to do it in time."

"The Rillwater," Bernard said. "It isn't far from here. Maybe a quarter mile southwest."

Riva lifted his eyebrows and nodded. "Possible, perhaps. Engineers?"

"Assembled below."

"Aye, aye," Riva mused. "Just like irrigating a field. Only more so. Ex cuse me."

Riva leapt from the wall to the courtyard below, braking his fall with windcrafting, and turned to the engineers. He began issuing rapid orders. The men gathered in ranks and knelt to place their bare hands against the earth. Riva, at the front of the group, did the same, and several hundred experienced engineers, led by Riva, began to make the earth quiver.

It didn't take long. There was a moment where nothing changed, then the charging mantises began to appear with their lower extremities covered in mud. The mud splatters began to go farther and farther up their legs - but the ground before the walls had been superheated several times over the last day, and had baked into something almost like hardened clay.

"More!" Riva shouted. "More, crows take you!"

The strain upon the furycrafters was enormous. One of the engineers let out a strangled squeak and abruptly fell onto his side, thrashing and clutching at his left shoulder. Two others simply collapsed, dead or unconscious.

Rushing water abruptly spread over the ground beneath the walls, rolling across it like a vast mirror that reflected the deadly glory of the ongoing aerial battle.

They waited, while the engineers kept up the effort of redirecting the little river. Men collapsed every few moments. Lord Riva's face became strained, with blotches of color on his pale cheeks. The water rose.

Then one of the vordbulks let out a higher-pitched bellow as one of its feet slid out from beneath it, sliding on the smooth clay surface made slippery by water and by the dust and grains of dirt churned up by the passing of so many mantis feet. It listed far to one side, like a ship wallowing between swells, but then slowly, slowly righted itself. A moment later, it took another step and resumed its advance

"Close!" bellowed Bernard back toward Riva over his shoulder. "Can you give them a shake?"

"Aye!" Riva panted, his jaw set. Then he closed his eyes again, speaking to the engineers, and suddenly the earth itself groaned. It jerked and quivered once. Then it lurched abruptly to one side, and Amara staggered against Doroga, who caught her and prevented her from falling.

Out on the field, two more vordbulks, no more than two hundred yards from the walls, screamed and slipped, falling awkwardly. They pitched over toward their sides in motions that were rendered slow-looking by sheer scale. It took them what seemed like seconds to fall, letting out bone-shaking basso calls of distress as they did. They hit the ground hard, driven by their own vast weight, sending tons of water and mud flying into the air with the impact. Dozens, if not hundreds, of vord were crushed beneath each of the monstrous creatures, whose weight was sufficient to leave a deep impression even in the baked clay. They thrashed, their limbs crushing more vord, and moaned out low calls that made the surface of the shallow water around them quiver.

"Good enough," Bernard said. "Good enough. It'll have to be." He looked at Giraldi, suddenly sweating. "Centurion, the stone."

Giraldi reached into his pouch and retrieved a smooth, oblong stone of the same color as the wall. He passed it to Bernard, who placed it upon the ground, and said, "Prepare to sound retreat."

The trumpeter looked nervously out at the field and licked his lips.

Bernard took a deep breath, then drove the heel of his boot down onto the stone, shattering it.

A pulse of cold wind seemed to flow out from the broken stone, raising dust and smearing fresh blood into new streaks. Seconds after it did, one of the merlons, the large blocks of stone atop battlements, suddenly quivered and groaned, its form twisting into a new shape. What looked like a Phrygian sled dog seemed to come shuddering out of the block of stone as if digging its way from a snowbank.

It promptly turned, lunged forward, and crushed a vord warrior against the opposite merlon, splattering the mantis to shards of broken chitin and smears of green-brown blood.

All along the walls, the canine gargoyles came to life and began smashing into the vord with implacable ferocity - and once all of them were free of the merlons, the stone beneath that recently vacated place began to quiver and heave, and more gargoyles began to emerge.

"Sound retreat!" Bernard ordered.

The trumpet began sounding the signal, and the Legions moved back instantly, as if Bernard's voice had carried to each and every one of them. Amara joined her husband and the rest of the command staff as they turned to abandon the walls, while all around them more and more canine gargoyles tore their way free of the stone that made the wall and began killing vord with what looked like ferocious glee, their upcurved stone tails wagging.

The mules and their teams were already on the move, and as Amara reached the Valley floor again, she noticed - the ground was growing soft even on this side of the wall. Riva stayed where he was, gasping, both hands on the ground.

Amara rushed to Riva's side, and said, "Your Grace! We've got to go!"

"In a minute!" he panted. "Ground on this side of the wall is all loose earth. Watering it will slow them down even more."

"Your Grace," Amara said, "we do not have a minute." She turned to the engineers and snapped, "You men heard the signal. Retreat."

Exhausted, only a few of them had enough energy to salute, but they all groaned to their feet to begin shambling away from both the steadily shrinking wall and the steadily growing numbers of gargoyles.

Amara looked wildly around her. Everything was flashing colored lights and screams and confusion. Here and there, vord broke through the living wall of angry gargoyles. Knights Terra and Ferrous would close in on each of them, slowing their progress to give the tired legionares more time to retreat. Men dragged the wounded toward safety. Horses screamed in panic. Vordbulks continued their vast, deep bellowing while the mantises shrieked and screamed fit to pierce Amara's eardrums.

She couldn't see Bernard and the command group.

"My lord!" she screamed. "We must go! Now!"

Riva let out a short, hollow-sounding gasp and sagged to one side, throwing out an arm to catch himself. It was too weak to hold him up, and he crumpled to the steadily dampening ground.

"Get up!" Amara shouted. She knelt and pulled one of the man's shoulders over hers. "Get up!"

Riva blinked and stared at her with glazed eyes.

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?"

Isana folded her arms over her chest. "What are you doing to defeat them?"

"You are familiar with the fortress?"

"Somewhat," Isana said. Technically, that wasn't actually a lie. Her knowledge of the new defenses was positively sketchy compared to that of many others.

"You know, then, that it straddles a natural choke point - a steep cut in a stone shelf. There are no practical routes to move large bodies of troops from this continent to the next except through the fortress."

"Yes," Isana said.

"Practically impassable is not the same thing as impassable," the vord Queen said. "My children think little of vertical land barriers. They have already overcome them in significant numbers on both the north and south sides of the fortress. They will approach and enfold the fortress from either side, and as they do, my juggernauts will pound the walls to rubble. And then, Grandmother, I will be free to concentrate upon Octavi - "

There was the howl of a windstream, practically at the entrance to the hive, and the Queen's black faceted gaze snapped to it. Dozens and dozens of wax spiders seemed to come from nowhere, flowing out of the croach upon the ceiling, floor, and walls.

Invidia entered, striding fast. A nervous spider leapt at her, fangs extended, and she swatted it out of the air without slowing pace. "Stop the flanking maneuver. Do it now."

The Queen let out a feline hiss, lips peeling back from her teeth. There was a blur of motion, and suddenly Invidia's shoulders were pressed against the back wall of the hive, seven feet off the ground. The vord Queen held her by the throat with one hand, and Invidia's heels waved and drummed against the wall.

"Where have you been?" snarled the vord Queen.

Invidia kept choking, her face going redder. The vord Queen tilted her head to one side, staring at her, and hissed again, more quietly. "The fortress. Why were you at the fortress?"

Invidia's eyes rolled back into her head, and her face turned purple.

Isana cleared her throat gently. "You may receive a more coherent answer if you release her."

The Queen glanced back at Isana, then at Invidia again. Then she simply let her go, and the Aleran woman crumpled to the floor. Invidia lay panting for a moment, her hand at her throat, and Isana could actually see the crushed dents in her windpipe being pushed back into the proper shape by Invidia's watercrafting.

"I was," she croaked, a moment later, "securing our future."

"What?"

"It was too easy. They deliberately left you an obvious approach." She swallowed, grimacing. "I went to scout out the tops of the bluffs. It's a trap."

The Queen eyed Invidia, then stalked to the edge of the pool. She passed a hand over it, and light and color began to flow up from its tranquil surface.

Isana rose and walked over to join the Queen at the pool. Invidia came over, too, and the women watched the images flowing there.

Several hundred mantis warriors flowed along the top of a bluff, one of the ridges overlooking Garrison. Several hundred yards before they could possibly threaten the fortress was a heavy stand of evergreens. The vord poured into them without hesitation.

Distant brassy screams echoed up from the pool. The pines and the ferns that grew up around them shook violently.

Then they went still.

Another group of mantises rushed the trees, this one twice the size as the one before, raising their scythe-limbs in anticipation - but just before they reached the timber line, the trees exploded with howling pale forms that came bounding out to meet them, clothed in hide with thick mantles of black feathers. At their sides came the enormous, nearly wingless predator birds, the herdbanes. They were taller than a man, thickly muscled, their feet tipped with razor-sharp claws to complement their deadly, hooked beaks. They fell upon the mantis warriors beside their Marat companions, each and every one of them armed with a heavy axe, decorated with carved handles, fringe, and feathers, but made of Aleran steel.

The two forces clashed together in mindless ferocity, but the Marat had the weight of numbers on their side, and the tremendous strength and speed of the herdbanes allowed them to wreak havoc among the mantis warriors, snapping off scythes, limbs, legs, and heads with thoughtless, primal ferocity, crippling them so that the axes, powered by barbarian muscle, could finish them off.

The Queen hissed and threw her hand to one side. The image in the pool blurred, then resumed itself - this time on the opposite side of the valley. There, though, the attacking mantises were being torn apart by thousands of warriors clad in grey hides and fighting beside enormous, shaggy wolves, some of them nearly the size of ponies.

The wolves and their barbarian companions were all wearing some form of armor - what looked like aprons fitted with steel plates. Moving swiftly, these Marat and their companions fought in tightly coordinated groups, all working to cut single mantises out from their companions, where they would be surrounded and brought down. Though Clan Wolf wasn't inflicting the sheer, savage amount of harm Clan Herdbane had, their efforts were bogging down a much larger number of mantises, and their cooperative tactics seemed to Isana to be doing a very great deal to keep their fighters from being severely injured: Wolf had made their battle into a contest of endurance.

"Withdraw them," Invidia urged quietly. "Wait until we can build a greater mass of troops atop the bluffs. Then we can remove the Marat and take the fortress."

The vord Queen looked distant. "It will take until nearly dawn to build up such a concentration."

"What matter?" Invidia said. "It still leaves us nearly a day to prepare for Octavian's force."

"You," the vord Queen said slowly, "are treacherous."

Isana looked hard at Invidia, and said, "Yes. Because she is a slave to her own self-interest."

"Mmmm," said the Queen thoughtfully. Then she waved a hand and turned from the pool. The image faded, but before it did, Isana saw the mantises within it begin to break off combat with the enemy, withdrawing. "You will proceed to the deployment areas and do all in your power to expedite the buildup of forces. Earthcrafting a number of ramps over the worst terrain should be sufficient."

Invidia bowed and turned toward the exit.

"And, Invidia," the vord Queen said in a very soft voice. "Do not make another covert departure until after the fortress has fallen."

The creature on Invidia's chest let out a hiss, and its limbs stirred. Invidia made a choking sound and fell to her knees. She kept her teeth clenched over a scream that lasted for several heartbeats, then sagged down to the floor.

She pushed herself up slowly, a moment later. She nodded to the Queen and departed, her expression a mask - one Isana had often seen her use to hide her anger.

The Queen ignored Isana and went back to the alcove, staring up into the green light above her.

Isana turned and walked slowly over to Araris, her heart beating quickly. She stared into his eyes through the murky translucence of the croach that held him and mouthed the word, Soon.

For an instant, one of his lips quivered, baring his teeth in the smallest of wolflike smiles.

Isana nodded and settled back down onto the floor. Waiting. But not for much longer. The time to act would be soon, she told herself.

Soon.

Gaius Octavian rode his horse at the head of the rather unusual column behind him, shivering as Acteon pounded steadily down the causeway, through the cold hours of midnight and beyond. He had never traveled the roads outside the Valley on foot, but when the moon had risen, he had been able to see the lofty peak of Garados, rising above the other mountains like an enormous, surly, dangerous drunk on the fringes of a harvest festival.

He was nearly home.

Beside him, Kitai rode with the same easy grace she brought to every endeavor - and if she looked weary, Tavi could hardly blame her. He was more than tired enough to suit himself, as was every man and Cane there with him. But he had made better time than even he had expected. They would reach the western end of the Valley well before sunrise. And then...

He shivered.

And then he would cast them all into harm's way beside him. With any luck, he would be able to coordinate with the Valley's defenders, cooperate in a mutual attack from either direction. Though badly outnumbered, the Alerans might still be able to use furycraft and the terrain to overwhelm their foe - and force the vord Queen to appear and intercede.

And then he would learn whether or not a lifetime of uphill battles would save his Realm and people - or see them both smashed to pieces and devoured. Either way, everything he had ever been and done would be justified or found wanting soon, he told himself.

Soon.

P/S: Copyright -->www_novelfreereadonline_Com

***