"We're working," Ehren said. "I get it."
Tavi had slept in his trousers and with his boots on. He rose, slipped on a tunic, and turned to greet Ehren with a rough hug.
"Good to see you, " Tavi said.
"Likewise," Ehren replied. He drew back and looked suspiciously at Tavi, up and down. "Crows, you've gotten taller. You're supposed to stop growing after age twenty or so, Ta-" He shook his head. "Ahem. Scipio. At the Academy, we started off the same height. Now you're as tall as Max."
"Making up for lost time, I suppose," Tavi said. "How are you?"
"Glad to be rid of the islands," Ehren said. He frowned and glanced away. "Though I wish I'd come back with better news. And given it to someone else."
"Did you speak to the prisoners?"
Ehren nodded. "They cooperated. I'm fairly sure that the dead man was Kalarus' agent, and was the brains of the operation. The rest were just... well. There's always shady business for a legionare to involve himself in."
"Especially troublemakers."
"Especially troublemaking veterans," Ehren agreed.
"Fine," Tavi said. "Release them and send them back to their century."
Ehren blinked. "What?"
"That's an entire spear of veteran legionares, Ehren. I need them."
"But... Captain..."
Tavi met the Cursor's eyes, and said, quietly, "This is my decision. Do it."
Ehren nodded. "All right," he said quietly. "The First Spear asked me to tell you that the Canim are moving through the second picket]ine now, and they're making no effort to conceal their presence. He estimates that they'll be here in an hour or so."
Tavi scowled. "I told him to wake me when the first pickets reported contact."
"He said you'd need your sleep more than he in the next day or two. Tribune Antillus agreed."
Tavi scowled. Max, of course, could rely upon his furycrafting to go for days and days without sleeping. Odds were excellent that Valiar Marcus could do it as well, but Tavi had no such resource-and though he'd needed less sleep and less time to rest in the past two or three years, he had no idea exactly to what extent he could rely upon the nebulous endurance.
Max and the First Spear had probably been correct to let him get as much rest as possible. Great furies knew, he'd need his wits about him today.
"All right," he said quietly. "Ehren, I know I don't have any authority to give you a command, but..."
Ehren quirked an eyebrow. "Since when have you let niceties like the law slow you down?"
Tavi grinned. "I don't mind law. Provided it doesn't get in the way."
Ehren snorted. "Seems like yesterday we were dodging bullies in the Academy courtyard. Now it's an army of Canim." He gave Tavi a long-suffering look and sighed. "All right. I'm in."
Tavi nodded. "Thank you."
Ehren nodded back.
"Tell Magnus to get you a courier's horse," Tavi said. "Armor, too. I want you close to me. I may need a messenger today, and I want it to be someone I trust."
"Of course," Ehren said.
"And..." Tavi frowned. "If things don't go well here, Ehren, I want you to go. Take word back to Gaius, yourself. "
Ehren was silent for a minute. Then he said, in a whisper, "You're a Cursor, Tavi. It's your duty to go yourself, if it comes to that."
Tavi reached up and ran his hand over the short, bristling hairs on his head. "Today," he said quietly, "I'm a legionare."
Tavi stood atop the city walls on the southern half of the town, on the battlements over the gate. The defenses were neither as tall as those of the fortress of Garrison, back in his home in the Calderon Valley, nor were they built as thick, but for all of that they were obdurate Aleran siege walls, grounded in the bones of the earth itself and all but impervious to any damage not supported by massive furycraft.
Of course, he had no idea if they would withstand whatever strange powers the Canim ritualists seemed to possess. He kept his face calm and confident and his mouth shut. Victory, today, depended far more upon the courage of his men than upon their raw strength, and he would not allow himself to weaken their morale. So though he was acutely afraid of a second bolt of crimson lightning, which might come down precisely where he was standing, he stood there without moving, his breathing steady, hopefully looking utterly indifferent to the oncoming danger.
Around him stood the veterans of the First Spear's century. Their brother centuries within their cohort waited along the length of the walls, ready to defend them or lend support to their cohort-brothers. In the courtyard behind them waited two more entire cohorts, one with a mixed level of experience, the second composed almost entirely of fish-including what had been Max's century. In total, nearly a thousand legionares stood in arms and armor, at the ready.
Tavi knew that behind them, placed at key defensive positions, ready to move in to support the defenders of the gate, were another thousand men, and behind that, at the base of the bridge, were three thousand more. The rest maintained a watch on the northern side, while the remaining cavalry waited at the apex of the bridge, ready to respond to any enemy thrust from unexpected quarters.
When the Canim came, the first thing Tavi saw was the crows.
At first, he thought it was a column of black smoke rising from the hills southwest of the town. But instead of drifting with the wind, the darkness rose, widening, stretching out into a line, then Tavi could see that it was the crows he'd been looking at, spinning over the heads of the Canim host like a wagon wheel on its side. He half expected to see the Canim only a moment later, but nearly a quarter of an hour went by while the vast disc of wheeling crows grew larger.
Tavi understood. He had underestimated the number of crows. Four or five times as many of the carrion birds as he guessed whirled over the Canim. Which meant that this was the largest murder of crows he had ever seen-including those that had descended upon the carnage of the Second Battle of Calderon.
A mutter went up and down the wall among the legionares. Tavi got the sense that they had never seen that many of the scavenger birds, either.
Then they heard the drums and droning war horns. The sound of the drums began as a low rumble, hardly audible, but rose quickly to a distant, steady, pulsing crash. The horns screamed mournfully through the din, and the whole was like listening to the cries of some unimaginably vast wolf loping through a thunderstorm.
Tavi could feel the men growing restless behind him, expressed in a thousand uncomfortable shiftings of stance, in mutters, in the rasp of metal on metal as legionares fought their own anxiety by checking and rechecking their arms and armor.
On the open ground nearest the town, horsemen and infantry alike appeared, moving toward the town-the pickets and skirmishers who had been watching for the Canim and harassing them on their way in. They had gathered into groups as they retreated, and came toward the town at a weary trot after a full day and more in the field. Not all of the skirmishers would return. Some had undoubtedly fallen. Others, the most woodcrafty auxiliaries and local volunteers, would remain in the field, hiding from the enemy host, watching its movements, and striking its flanks and rear in hit-and-run missions.
At least, that was the plan. Tavi was well aware of how quickly and lethally reality could deviate from his intentions.
The last of the returning troops reached the shelter of the city's walls, and the gates rumbled shut behind them. The drums and horns drew nearer, and Tavi wanted to scream with the sheer frustration of waiting. He longed to fight, to kill, to run, to do anything at all, really.
But it was not yet time to act, and his men had to be feeling much the same as he. So Tavi stood facing the enemy, apparently calm, apparently bored, and waited.
The first of the Canim finally stalked into sight over the top of the last hill to hide them from his view. A skirmish line of raiders, spread out before the army, crested the hills in a line half a mile across. Upon sighting the city, and the Aleran defenders upon its walls, they tilted back their heads and let out long, ululating howls. The warbling cries sent the hairs on the back of Tavi's neck to standing.
A burst of chatter rose up from the cohort of fish in the courtyard behind them, and Tavi heard Schultz telling them to pipe down.
"All right, Marcus," Tavi said. He was surprised at how calm his own voice sounded. "Raise the standard here."
Marcus had opposed any move that would identify the captain's position to the enemy, but Tavi had overruled him, and one of his men lifted the banner of the First Aleran, with its red-and-blue eagle, to fly in the wind at the tip of the wooden shaft from a long battle lance. As the banner first flew into the breeze, Tavi stepped up onto the battlements, where the legionares could all see him. He drew his sword and raised it over his head, and this time a thousand swords did the same, a chorus of steely chimes that rose in defiance of the eerie howls and savage drums.
Tavi threw back his head and let out his own cry of challenge, wordless, throwing all of his impatience and fear and rage into it, and he was instantly followed by a thousand legionares, a furious storm of sound that shook the walls of the town.
As the full numbers of the Canim host crested the rise, they were met with the sight of a thousand steel-clad legionares, bright swords in hand, standing to battle and casting screams of defiance into their enemy's teeth. Unafraid, furious, and spoiling for a fight, the First Aleran stood behind their captain, ready-and more than ready-to meet the Canim host. Though outnumbered, strong position, furycraft, and sheer will would make them a dangerous foe.
Or so Tavi wanted the Canim to believe. Uncle Bernard had taught him a great deal about successfully facing down a predator threatening a flock. First impressions were important.
Tavi leapt back down from atop the stone merlon, as the cheers died, and the First Spear began roaring out an old Legion marching song. It had more to do with wanton maids and mugs of ale than war and battle, but every legionare knew it, and it had a seemingly inexhaustible number of verses. The First Spear bellowed out the opening call, and the refrain came as a rumbling, rhythmic shout from the rest of the legionares.
It was part of Tavi's plan to keep his men occupied with their singing as the Canim host came over the hill-Canim in armor of lacquered black, oddly ornate, here and there touched with various colors in what was probably some sort of system of denoting personal honors won. Many thousands of them, every one of them large, lean, enormous-and, if what Varg had told him about their life spans was true, each of them probably possessed much more personal experience and knowledge than even his veteran legionares.
The men kept the song up while Tavi counted enemy numbers, eventually coming to a grim estimate-twenty thousand Canim regulars, at the least, and twice that many raiders, roving in loose packs of fifty or so ahead of the main body of the army, loping along its flanks, ranging out behind it, following the way lean wild dogs would follow a herd of grass lions, waiting to scavenge from the larger predators' kills.
The Canim outnumbered them ten to one, and facing regulars toe-to-toe would not yield the decisive successes of the cavalry assaults upon isolated packs of raiders. Men now singing around him would die. Tavi himself might die. The fear that came with those thoughts made Ehren's statement that he was a Cursor, and that his duty was to report to the First Lord, a poisonously seductive one. He could be on a horse and riding away from the Canim and the Legion alike in moments, should he wish it.
But Tavi had also made a promise to Captain Cyril, to serve the Legion as well as the Crown. He could not abandon that promise. Nor could he leave his friend behind him, and Max would never leave fellow legionares in danger, not if ordered to do so by Gaius himself.
Tavi desperately wished he could leave. But then, so would anyone born with brains enough to walk and talk. So did every man there with him on the wall and waiting behind.
He would stay. Regardless of the outcome, he would see it through to the end.
With that decision, the fear faded, replaced with a sense of quiet purpose. He did not quit feeling afraid-it simply became a part of the situation, of the day before him. He had accepted it, the possibility of death, and in so doing it had lost some of its power over him. He found himself able to focus, to think more clearly, and felt certain that this was the best thing he could have done for himself, and for the men now following him. That confidence in turn reassured him about his own plans, that they gave the Legion, if not a certain victory, at least a fighting chance to survive.
And so he faced the enemy as the skirmish packs of raiders parted, scarlet lightning flashed madly in the clouds, and, with an earthshaking roar, the Canim regulars washed over the earth toward the city like a tide of howling shadow.
Tavi was sure that his voice would sound every bit as weak and thready as he felt, but it came out smooth and strong. "All right, Marcus. Let's open negotiations."
"Ready!" bellowed the First Spear, and along the walls, legionares snapped into their standard defense formation-one man bearing a shield stepping up to his crennel, while his partner, armed with a bow, stepped up close to the shield-man's flank. At a nudge from the archer's hip, the shieldman would swiftly step aside as his partner took his place, loosed a shot, and reversed the process, letting the shield move back to cover both men, providing but a bare second for the enemy to hit a living target.
Though all legionares were given basic training in the use of a bow, they were hardly a substitute for Knights Flora. The legionares had the reach on the their foe, but the Canim were swift, difficult targets, and well armored. Several Aleran arrows found their marks, and some of the enemy went down-but not many, especially when compared to the number of Canim still remaining.
The Canim covered the distance to the walls with unnerving speed-not so swiftly as horsemen, perhaps, but far more quickly than a man could run. Once they were within perhaps sixty or seventy yards, the oncoming Canim hurled a shower of javelins thicker and heavier than an Aleran battle spear.
The weapons hit hard. Beside Tavi, there was a heavy, crunching sound and a grunt of surprise as one of the javelins smashed into a veteran's shield. The Canim weapon shattered, but threw the legionare to the ground and left an enormous dent in the shield's surface.
Down the wall, one of the archers stepped up for a shot, just as the missiles flew. A spear slammed completely through one biceps, its red steel tip passing all the way through, to half the length of the weapon's haft. The hit legionare cried out and fell.
"Medico!" Tavi shouted, and the waiting healers rushed to the man.
"Sir!" Marcus shouted, and Tavi felt something hard hit him between the shoulder blades an instant before something else hit the back of his helmet. Thunderous sound filled his ears, and he fell to one knee. In the corner of his eye, he saw a Canim javelin arc away from him on a skewed, wobbling line of flight.
"Keep your eyes open, sir!" bellowed Marcus as he hauled Tavi back to his feet. "The men know what to do."
"Ram!" screamed a grizzled legionare farther down the wall. "Here comes their ram!"
"Ready over the gate!" Marcus roared.
Tavi took a quick look around the sheltering merlon. Below, the Canim surged for the wall. Perhaps twenty feet behind the leading Canim came a tightly packed group bearing a rough wooden ram nearly three feet in diameter between them. Around them, new ranks of Canim hurled their javelins as the whole of the body charged the walls, and more of the creatures came within range, so that there was a continual stream of deadly shafts arching through the air. Tavi barely jerked his head back in time to avoid one such javelin, and it flew past him to bury itself to the base of its head in the wooden beam of a two-story building behind him.
"Lines!" called another legionare, just as the shapes of several enormous iron hooks the size of boat anchors, attached to lengths of steel chain flew up from the ground outside the wall. The hooks landed with heavy clanks, and their chains were drawn tight. Legionares seized and threw down most of them before they could settle into position, but a few caught solidly, and their chains rattled as Canim began swarming up them.
Tavi suddenly heard and felt an enormous boom, an impact that made the walls tremble beneath his boots, the sound loud enough to drown even the howling chaos of the battle for a moment. The ram had reached the gate, and it seemed inconceivable that it could withstand the terrible power driving its weight for long.
"Ready!" shouted the First Spear, leaning out to look down despite the deadly javelins still hurtling through the air. He flicked his head to one side to idly dodge an incoming missile, then growled, "Now!"
The bowmen over the gate had already dropped their bows. Now they lifted large wooden buckets of hot pitch, grunting and straining with the effort, and poured them down to splash over the area before the gate, eliciting shrieks of surprise and agony from the Canim beneath them-and liberally spattering the wooden ram with the material, as well.
Marcus got back under cover, and shouted to Tavi. "Ready!"
Tavi nodded and lifted his fist, glancing back over his shoulder at the courtyard.
At the signal, Crassus and a dozen of his Knights Pisces, as the Legion had generally dubbed them during the march, suddenly shot up out of the courtyard on columns of wind. They shot out over the river, dodging and weaving in a flight pattern meant to make it difficult to target any single Knight in the air, banked around to face the city again, and streaked by no more than sixty feet over the earth, scattering hundreds of startled, circling crows as they did.
More missiles flew up at the flight of Knights, but none found their mark, and as Crassus flashed past the gates, Tavi saw him point a finger and cry out. A flickering bead of white-hot fire appeared before him and screamed earthward, striking the pitch-soaked wooden ram and bursting into a sudden cloud of angry fire.
The flame seared and burned, and Canim screamed. The deadly hot pitch took fire as well, dooming anything already soaked in it to a swift and terrible demise.
Atop the walls, Tavi saw one of the Canim reach the wall above his scaling chain, but hard-faced legionares were waiting. Swords and spears lashed out, and the Cane fell out of sight. Other legionares used captured javelins as pry bars, levering the heavy grappling hooks out of position and sending more Canim to the earth.
Tavi could not have said precisely what it was that let him understand it, but he sensed the sudden hesitation in the Canim charge. He turned to Crassus and whirled his arm in a circle over his head.
The Knight Tribune had blackened eyes since Tavi had broken his nose, but they were sharp, and the flight of Knights banked and hurtled along the walls again upon a furycrafted gale, casting dirt and dust into the Canim's eyes and noses while Crassus hurled half a dozen more blazing spheres down into the Canim, tiny beads of light blossoming into explosions of flame.
Before Crassus and his Knights could make another pass, the low horns of the Canim sounded in rapid rhythm, a signal to the attacking troops, and the armored regulars below began a swift and orderly withdrawal. They were back out of bow range within two minutes, though the Alerans on the walls sent as many arrows as they could into the departing ranks.
Crassus began to lead his Knights into a harrying action, but Tavi saw the movement, and lifted his spread hand straight over his head, clenched it into a fist, and drew it back down to shoulder level. Crassus saw the signal, acknowledged it with a raised fist, and he and the other Knights returned to the fortifications.
Around him, legionares let out cheers and rained defiant insults on the backs of the departing Canim. Every man there knew that the battle was far from over, but for the time being, at least, they were alive and unbeaten, and Tavi did nothing to discourage the jubilation given them by the small victory in the opening moments of the battle. He sheathed his sword and watched the retreating Canim, breathing hard though he had barely been physically involved. He leaned out over the battlements and looked down. Still, broken forms lay below, totaling perhaps seven- or eightscore dead. None of the Canim left behind were wounded-only the dead lay there. The regulars had taken their wounded with them.
"Well," Ehren panted behind him. "That was bracing."
"Medico!" Tavi called to a nearby healer. "What's the count?"
"Three casualties, two moderate, one mild. No dead, sir."
That drew another round of shouts from the legionares, and even the First Spear almost smiled. "Good work!" Tavi shouted to them. Then he turned and headed for the stairs down to the courtyard.
"So," Ehren said, following. The little spy was hardly able to wear the armor Magnus had procured for him. "Now what happens?"
"That was just a probe," Tavi replied. "And I'll give fair odds that their leader wanted it to fail."
"Fail? Why?"
"Because Sari is a ritualist, but he's got a bunch of warriors to control," Tavi said. "To do that, he has to convince them that he's strong enough and worthy enough to lead them. He let the warriors take the first swing at us, knowing we'd hit them hard enough to let them know they'd been kissed. His next move is going to be to prove how worthy a leader he is, when he uses whatever powers he has to help them take the walls. He saves lives. Gets to be the hero. Proves his strength."
Ehren nodded, as he and Tavi reached the courtyard, and Tavi walked toward a horse being held there. "I see. So what are you doing now?"
"Cutting Sari's drama out from under him," Tavi replied. He sheathed his sword and mounted the horse. "If I move now, I can steal his thunder."
Ehren blinked. "How are you going to do that?"
Tavi nodded to the legionares at the gate, and they swung it wide open. He whistled up at the First Spear, over the gate, and Marcus tossed him the Legion's standard on its wooden haft. Tavi grounded it next to his boot on the stirrup.
"I'm going to ride out there and make him look like an idiot," Tavi said.
Ehren's eyes widened. "Out there?"
"Yes."
"By yourself?"
"Yes."
Ehren stared at Tavi for a second, then turned and looked out the gates, to where the Canim host waited less than a mile away. "Well, Captain," he said after a beat. "Whatever happens, I suppose someone's going to look awfully foolish."
Tavi flashed Ehren a smile and winked, though on the inside he felt more like screaming and running to a very small, very dark hiding place. It was possible that his whole plan was little more than a fantasy-but after spending so much time with Ambassador Varg, Tavi thought that his knowledge of the enemy might be the only effective weapon against them. If he was right, he could cripple Sari's support, and if extremely lucky, he might even divorce Sari from his regulars altogether.
Of course, if he was wrong, he probably wouldn't live to ride back into the shelter of the town's walls.
He closed his eyes for a second and fought against his fear, forcing himself to tightly controlled calm. Fear, now, would quite literally kill him.
Then he kicked his horse lightly and rode forward out of the protection of the First Aleran Legion and the safety of the town's walls, toward sixty thousand savage Canim.
Tavi rode out past the crackling bonfire his legionares had made of the Canim's ram. The scent of burnt wood and of something astringent and bitter filled his nose. The fire popped, his mount's hooves struck the ground in the three-beat of a slow canter. Crow calls had become a constant, low background noise, like the crashing of the surf in a seaside town. Otherwise, the gloomy afternoon in the space between armies was freakishly silent.
That was fine by Tavi. The farther he could stay from the Canim host and still be heard, the better.
The ride took forever, and as he drew closer to the Canim host, they seemed larger and larger. Tavi was familiar with the enormous, dangerous presence of the Canim, but even so the sight of the monstrous warriors roused a kind of primitive, instinctive alarm that threatened to undermine his self-control far more powerfully than he would have believed. They crouched down on their haunches on the earth in organized ranks, their own version of standing at ease, tongues lolling out of open mouths as they rested after the attack.
A moment later, the odd, acrid scent of Cane filled his nose. Seconds after, his horse balked, alarmed at the smell. Tavi moved swiftly, hands tight on the reins to turn the horse's flinch into a sharp turn without breaking the animals pace. Not even his steed could be allowed to show fear, regardless of how well justified it might have been.
Tavi cantered down the line, perhaps a hundred yards from the Canim host. During the attack of the regulars, the raider troops had dispersed, spreading out into an enormous half circle around the town, hemming in the Alerans between superior numbers and the river. He wheeled his horse and rode down the lines in the other direction, finally stopping in the center of the Canim lines, before the black-armored ranks of their warriors. His horse screamed and shook its head, half-rearing, but Tavi kept the animal under control, and stared at the Canim with his chin lifted, the First Aleran's standard in his right hand.
Tavi took a deep breath. "Sari!" he cried. His voice cut through the silence, ringing out clearly. "Sari! I know you are there! I know you lead these warriors! Come out and face me! Come forth that I may speak to you!"
There was no response. Only thousands of blood-colored Canim eyes and tens of thousands of fangs.
"Sari!" he called. "I am captain of the Legion you now face! I come to you alone, to have words with you!" He took the standard into his left hand for a moment and drew his sword, holding it up for the Canim to see. Then, with a gesture of contempt, he cast it aside. "I, an Aleran! Alone! Unarmed! I bid you come to me, scavenger!" His voice turned mocking. "I will guarantee your safety if my presence terrifies you so badly that you fear for your pathetic life!"
A low, almost-subsonic murmur went through the black-armored warriors. It was a wordless expression, a muted growl, but it came from ten thousand throats, and Tavi could feel the sound vibrating the breastplate of his armor.
And then a single Cane rose to his feet. He was a big one, nearly as tall as Varg, and like the Ambassador, his coal black fur was broken by a maze of old scars. His lacquered black armor was intricately patterned with stripes of bright red. The Cane stared intently at Tavi. Then he moved his head very slightly, casting an oblique glance over his shoulder.
"Scavenger!" Tavi shouted again. "Sari! Come forth, coward!"
Then a rumbling horn blared. From the rear of the host, there appeared two rows of Canim in long black half capes and cowls with mantles of pale leather. The leader in each row carried a bronze censer suspended from dark, braided strands of rope. Viscous-looking clouds of grey-green incense oozed over the sides of the censers. The cowled Canim paced slowly to the front line of troops, then divided, spreading out in a straight line ten yards ahead of the rest of the host. They faced Tavi, then, in a single movement, settled slowly to their haunches.
Then Sari appeared from the ranks.
The Cane looked precisely as Tavi remembered him-dirty, wiry, reddish fur, where it wasn't covered, sharp features and beady, malicious eyes. Instead of his scribe's dress, though, he wore the dark cape and cowl of the Canim who had preceded him, and he wore lacquered armor of solid, bloodred. A heavy satchel the same color as his mantle rode at his side.
The ritualist walked out to meet Tavi, steps slow and deliberate, and stopped ten feet away. The Cane's eyes burned with bloody fury. It was plain to Tavi that Sari had not wished to come forth-but Tavi's phrasing, and especially his accusations of cowardice, had left Sari with little choice. He was far more likely to survive facing a single Aleran in the open than his own warriors-and the Canim, Tavi knew, had little patience for cowardice.
Tavi returned the Cane's stare, then made a slight, deliberate motion of his head, a fraction to one side, then back, a Canim gesture of greeting and respect.
Sari did not return it.
Tavi couldn't be sure, but over the ritualist's shoulder, he thought he saw the eyes of the warrior leader narrow.
"These are not your lands, Sari," Tavi said, letting his voice carry, his gaze never wavering from the Cane's. "Take your kindred and depart now, while you still have a chance to escape. Remain here, and you will find nothing but your death and the death of those you lead."
Sari let out a choking, snarling sound that passed for laughter among the Canim. "Bold words," he said, his throat and fangs mangling the words almost beyond recognition. "But empty words. Flee that hovel you defend, and we may decide to kill you on another day."
Tavi laughed, a sound full of arrogance and scorn. "You are not in your home territory. This is Alera, Sari. Are all ritualists so ignorant of lands outside their own? Or is it just you?"
"You do not face expeditions from a handful of ships this time, Aleran," Sari replied. "Never have you fought a host of our folk. Never will you defeat them. You will die."
"One day," Tavi replied. "But even if you slay me and every man under my command, others will take our place. Perhaps not today. Nor tomorrow. But it will happen, Sari. They'll keep on coming. They will destroy you. When you burned your ships, you turned any chance of survival you might have had into ashes and smoke."
Sari bared his teeth and began to speak.
"You will not pass," Tavi snarled, interrupting the Cane. "I will not yield you the bridge. I will destroy it before it can fall into your hands, if need be. You will throw away the lives of your warriors for nothing. And when the lords of Alera come to wipe our land clean of your kind, there will be no one to sing the blood songs of the fallen. No one to bear their names up through the dark sea to the blood lands. Turn away, Sari. And live a little longer."
"Nhar-fek," the Cane snarled. "You will suffer for this arrogance."
"You talk a lot," Tavi said. "Don't you?"
Sari's eyes blazed. He thrust a hand up, a dark claw pointing at sullen, cloud-covered sky. "Look up, Aleran. Your very skies are already ours. I will take you. I will make you watch. And when you and the other nhar-fek have been hunted down, to the last female, the last squalling spawn, only then will I rip out your throat, so that you can see that the earth has been purged of your, unnatural kind." One of the Cane's hands shot toward his satchel.
Tavi had been waiting for just such a thing. He had known that, whatever happened, Sari couldn't afford to be so openly challenged. If Tavi walked away from this confrontation, it would display weakness to Sari's fellow Canim-and among their kind, it would be a lethal mistake. Sari could not afford to let Tavi go free, and Tavi knew that it had only been a matter of time until Sari made a move.
Tavi lifted a finger into a dramatic point toward the Cane, and his voice crackled with sudden tension and menace. "Don't try it."
Sari froze, fangs bared in hate.
Tavi faced him steadily, finger pointing, his mount dancing restlessly in place. "You have some power, ' he said, more quietly. "But you know what Aleran furycraft can do. Move your hand another inch, and I'll roast you and leave you for the crows."
"Even if you succeed," Sari growled, "my acolytes will tear you to pieces."
Tavi shrugged. "Maybe. ' He smiled. "But you'll be just as dead."
The two faced one another, and the moment stretched on and on. Tavi fought to remain calm, confident, as a powerful furycrafter would be. The fact of the matter was that if Sari tried to rip him apart, his only choice would be to trust to his mount's speed and flee. If Sari tried some kind of sorcery, it would kill him. He was, by any reasonable standard, helpless against the Cane.
But Sari didn't know that.
And when push came to shove, Sari was a coward.
"We are speaking under truce," he growled, as though he hated the fact, and that it was the only thing keeping Tavi alive. "Go, Aleran," he said, hand lowering to his side. "We will meet again shortly."
"Now we agree on something," Tavi said. The bluff had worked. His anxiety began to give way to giddy relief, and it was almost as difficult to contain as the fear had been.
He began to turn his mount, then paused, looked at the standing Canim warrior behind the line of Sari's ritualists, and called out, "Should you wish to recover the remains of your fallen, I will permit unarmed Canim to retrieve them provided they do so in the next hour."
The Cane did not respond. But after a few pensive seconds, he tilted his head, very slightly, to one side. Tavi mirrored the gesture, then began to withdraw, turning his face into a mild breeze.
Sari suddenly sniffed, a snuffling sound nearly identical to any canine investigating a scent.
Tavi froze, and the relief he'd begun feeling transformed itself in an instant to an almost-hysterical terror. He looked over his shoulder in time to see Saris eyes widening in shock and recognition.
"I know you," the Cane breathed. "You. The freak. The messenger boy!"
Sari's hand flashed to his satchel and flicked it open, and Tavi suddenly realized that the pale leather case, like the ritualist's mantles, was made of human skin. Sari withdrew his hand, flinging it straight up over his head. His hand was covered in fresh, scarlet blood, and the droplets flew into the air, scattering, vanishing. He howled something in Canish, and the acolytes behind him joined in.
Tavi turned his horse, desperate to flee, but everything moved with nightmarish deliberation. Before he could give the beast its head, the clouds above them lit up with an inferno of scarlet lightning. Tavi looked up in time to see an enormous wheel of streaming lightning suddenly condense into a single, white-hot point overhead.
Tavi tried to kick the horse into a run, but he was moving too slowly, and he could not tear his eyes from the gathering stroke of power-the same power that had massacred the First Aleran's officers, none of whom were as helpless as Tavi.
The point of fire suddenly expanded into a blinding white light and an avalanche of furious noise, and Tavi opened his mouth and screamed in terror and disbelief. He never heard it.
Blinding light stole Tavi's sight. A sudden pressure became a single, enormous pain against either side of his head, and there was no longer any sound. He lost all sense of direction, and for a moment everything whirled around him, leaving him with no point of reference, no sense of position.
Then his sight returned in shadows that deepened into colors, and he was able to sort out his perceptions.
First-he was alive. Which came as something of a surprise to him.
Second, he was still mounted, though his horse was staggering in jerking little jumps, as though it couldn't decide whether to run or to buck him off. There was an overwhelming scent of ozone, clean and sharp.
Tavi looked down blearily. There was smoke everywhere, and he felt himself coughing though he could not hear it. The ground beneath him was burned black, the grass charred to ash. More grass burned in a twenty-foot circle around him-an area almost precisely the size of the blasted earth of the command tent.
His clothes were singed. His armor was blackened, but not hot. He still held both the reins of his mount and the lance staff that bore the Legion's standard. The standard's pole was burned along one side, but whole. The flag's eagle had been wrought of a different thread than the rest, and that thread had charred, so that instead of the azure-and-scarlet emblem, the whole of the war bird was black.
Tavi stared dully up at the black bird, while overhead him thousands of crows swirled and danced in hungry excitement. The breeze pressed silently against one cheek, and the smoke began to clear. As it did, Tavi began to gather his wits about him again, to realize where he was, and he somehow managed to get the horse to stop trying to throw him off, though it still danced restlessly.
The smoke lifted, and Tavi found himself standing not ten yards from Sari.
The Canim ritualist was stretched to his full height, head tilted back in a pose of bizarre ecstasy, jaws gaping, his bloody hand still raised to the sky. Then he flinched, evidently at some sound, and his eyes dropped to settle on Tavi. The Cane's eyes widened, his nostrils flared, and his ears quivered and flicked about. His jaws opened and closed twice, faltering motions, though Tavi could not hear any sound Sari made, if any.
Tavi was still stunned, trying to sort out what had happened, and he never gave any real thought to what he did. It flowed out of him on raw instinct as his emotions coalesced into a single incandescent fire of rage and he dug his heels into the near-panicked horse's flanks.
The terrified horse shot forward, seemingly attaining a full run within the space of a single surge of power, directly at Sari. Tavi felt himself screaming, felt the pounding of the horse's hooves striking the earth, and felt the banner drag at the air as he swung the standard down upon Sari with all of his strength and in total silence.
Tavi's aim was true. The heavy haft of the lance came down at an angle upon Sari's muzzle, and struck with such force that the Cane's jaws clamped shut on his lolling tongue and drove the ritualist to the ground.
Tavi whipped his head around in time to see on of Sari's acolytes leaping for him. Tavi pulled his mount around to face the Cane, and the warhorse's hooves lashed out and struck with terrible force. A second Cane ran at Tavi, and he jabbed the lower end of the standard pole squarely into his attacker's face, striking with such force that he clearly saw the yellow shards of shattered fangs fly into the air.
His wits returned to him in full in a sudden flash, and he knew the other acolytes would be charging as well-and that there were another sixty thousand Canim behind them. He'd fought off the first two, but even without help, they would kill him if he stayed to give them battle. He looked around wildly, got his bearings, then turned the horse for the town and gave the beast its head.
The animal needed no encouragement, and it fled for the shelter of the town.
Fast as the beast was, it wasn't fast enough to avoid another Canim that threw itself at the horse in a frenzy, clawed hands ripping at the horse's withers, drawing a splatter of blood. The horse's body shook with the scream of pain Tavi could not hear, and the animal veered wildly, ripping the reins from Tavi's hands.
A glance over his shoulder showed him more acolytes rushing forward, and others sprinting through the ranks of squatting warriors-though the warriors themselves did not rise. One of them threw a dart of some kind. Tavi could not see if it struck, but the horse bucked in pain and nearly faltered before thundering on.
Tavi reached for the reins, but his head was still whirling, and the horse was pounding over open ground as fast as it could move. It was difficult enough simply to stay seated, and by the time Tavi recovered the reins, he looked up to see the broad waters of the Tiber not fifty feet ahead.
Tavi looked around wildly to find the walls of the city several hundred yards to the east. He checked over his shoulder. Behind him, dozens of ritualists were not ten seconds behind. The beast's injuries must have slowed its pace. Tavi turned the horse toward the town, but its feet slipped on the loose earth and shale near the river, and the mount fell, taking Tavi with it.
The water of the river slapped him hard in the face, and there was a brief and terrible pressure on one of his legs. The horse thrashed wildly, and Tavi knew that the panicked animal could easily kill him in its frenzy. Then the horse's weight was gone, and Tavi tried to rise.
He couldn't. The leg that had been pinned beneath the horse had sunk into the clay of the river's bottom. He was trapped there, with the surface less than a foot away.
He almost laughed. It was inconceivable that he had escaped an entire army of Canim, survived that deadly, bloody lightning, only to drown.
He forced himself not to thrash in panic and instead reached down, digging his fingers into the clay. It had been softened by the water, or the task would have been hopeless, but Tavi was able to work his knee lose, and from there to pull the rest of his leg from the cold grasp of the river's bottom.
Tavi rose from the river, looked wildly around him, and saw the standard lying half out of the water. He sloshed to the river shore and seized it up, taking it in a fighting grip, and looking up to face twenty or more of the ritualist acolytes, in their black cloaks and mantles of human skin. They had fallen upon the horse as it came from the water, and now their claws and fangs were scarlet with new blood.
Tavi looked back to his left, and saw that the Aleran cavalry was already on the move over the Elinarch. It would be a futile gesture. By the time they arrived, there would be nothing of Tavi left to rescue.
Strange, that it was so quiet, Tavi thought. He saw his death in the eyes of the bloody Canim. It seemed that such a thing should have been a great deal noisier. But he heard nothing. Not his enemies snarls, nor the cries from the city. Not the gurgle of water as the Tiber flowed around his knees. Not even the sound of his own labored breath or the beating of his heart. It was perfectly silent. Almost peaceful.
Tavi gripped the standard and faced the oncoming Canim without moving. If he was to die, it would be on his feet, against them, and he would take as many of the things with him as he possibly could.
Today, he thought, I am a legionare.