First Lord's Fury

CHAPTER 25

The fleet reached Phrygia in the false light of predawn, when the eastern sky had just begun to turn from black to blue. Starlight and moonlight on the snow made it easy to see, and Antillus Crassus and a handful of Knights Pisces had flown ahead to bring official word of the fleet to Phrygius Cyricus, Lord Phrygius’s second son and seneschal of the city while his father was in the field.

“Times are changing,” Fidelias said. “I don’t think anyone’s ever outrun the wall’s grapevine without flying.”

“What makes you say that?” Tavi asked him.

The Cursor gestured up at the wall, where a surprisingly sparse number of faces looked out from the battlements. “If they’d gotten wind of something like this, the whole city would have turned out.”

Tavi glanced back behind him, at the seemingly endless river of masts and sails gliding over the ice. It had been an impressive sight when he’d first taken it in, even to someone who had sailed with a veritable armada over the deeps. To the folk and legionares of Phrygia, most of whom had never seen a tall ship, much less the open sea, it must be awe-inspiring, scarcely believable.

He glanced aside at Fidelias, who stood beside him in the tunic, breeches, and cloak of a civilian. He was unarmed. Two Knights Ferrous stood within sword reach of him, their weapons sheathed, their hands hovering near the hilts. Maximus stood on Tavi’s other side and kept track of Fidelias’s movements with an oblique eye.

Tavi studied him for another reason. Fidelias looked different than Valiar Marcus. Oh, his features hadn’t changed, though Tavi supposed they might do so gradually, should Fidelias wish to reassume his former appearance. It was something subtler than that, and much deeper. The way he spoke was part of it. Marcus had always sounded like an intelligent man, but one who had been given little education, a hard-nosed and capable soldier. Fidelias’s voice was smoother and more mellifluous, his inflections elegant and precise. Marcus had always held himself with parade-ground rigidity, and moved like a man carrying the extra weight of Legion armor, even when he wasn’t wearing any. Fidelias looked like a man coming near to the end of an exceptionally vigorous middle age, his movements both energetic and contained.

Then Tavi hit on it, the real thing that separated Valiar Marcus from Fidelias ex Cursori.

Fidelias was smiling.

Oh, it wasn’t a grin. In fact, one could hardly tell it was a smile at all. But Tavi could definitely see it in some subtle shift of the muscles in his face, in the scarcely noticeable deepening of the lines at the corners of his eyes. He looked… content. He looked like a man who had made his peace.

Tavi had no intention, however, of removing the guards tasked with watching him. For that matter, Tavi himself would be watching the man like a hawk. Fidelias ex Cursori had lived a lifetime in an exceptionally dangerous, treacherous line of work. It had made him into an exceptionally dangerous—and treacherous—individual.

“Our next step,” Tavi told him, “is to gather whatever information Cyricus has that we don’t. We’ll use it to plan our next movement.”

“That would seem logical,” Fidelias said.

Tavi nodded. “I’d like you to be present.”

Fidelias arched an eyebrow and glanced up at him. “Is that an order?”

“No,” Tavi said. “It would be meaningless. What would I do if you refused? Put you to death?”

Fidelias’s eyes wrinkled at their corners. “Ah, true.”

“It is a request. You have more field experience than Magnus, and you may have some insight into the thinking behind the current leadership of the main Aleran forces. I would value your advice.”

Fidelias pursed his lips. “But would you trust it?”

Tavi smiled. “Naturally not.”

The older man let out a quick bark of a laugh. He shook his head, and said, “It would be my pleasure, Your Highness.”

Phrygius Cyricus, Seneschal of Phrygia and commander of its defending Legions, was sixteen years old. He was an almost painfully thin young man, dressed in the white-and-green livery of the House of Phrygius, and his dark hair was untidy enough to merit an assault from some kind of elite barbering strike force. His dark eyes peered out from behind his hair as he bowed to Tavi.

“Y-your Highness,” Cyricus said. “W-welcome to Phrygia.”

Tavi, accompanied by Maestro Magnus, Fidelias, and Kitai, stepped over the threshold of the High Lord’s citadel and into the cramped courtyard beyond. “Master Phrygius,” he replied, bowing slightly in return. “I’m sorry I couldn’t arrange to arrive at a more convenient hour.”

“Th-that’s all r-right,” Cyricus replied, and Tavi realized that the boy was not stammering in nervousness. He simply had a stammer. “If y-you would come w-with me, m-my lord father’s staff has prepared a r-report of the latest news from the f-front.”

Tavi lifted his eyebrows, impressed. “Straight to business, eh?”

“Th-there’s f-food and wine waiting for you and your…” Cyricus paused and swallowed, glancing past Tavi to the hulking form of Varg, who had entered the courtyard last. “G-guests.”

“That is well,” Varg said. “I am hungry.”

Cyricus swallowed again. Then the boy lifted his chin and marched over to face Varg, meeting his gaze. “Y-you are w-welcomed as a guest, sir. B-but if you hurt anyone under my lord f-father’s p-protection, I will kill you myself.”

Varg’s ears quivered. He bowed from the waist to the youth. “It will be as you say in your house, young Master.” Then he glanced at Tavi, and rumbled, in Canish, “Does the pup remind you of anyone, Tavar?”

Tavi answered him in kind. “As I recall, I had a knife to your throat at the time.”

“It did give you a certain credibility,” Varg admitted.

Tavi carefully kept himself from smiling, and said, “Master Cyricus, I assure you that Warmaster Varg has had extensive experience as a guest of Aleran Citizens and that he has always displayed admirable courtesy.”

Varg’s ears twitched in amusement.

Cyricus inclined his head to Tavi. “V-very well, Y-your Highness. This way please.”

The young man and an escort of “honor guards,” all of whom stared warily at Varg, led them into a small reception hall within the citadel. A dozen men were waiting there around a large sand table, presumably the young seneschal’s staff and the commanders of the city’s defenses. As Tavi entered, they offered a crisp salute as a group. Tavi returned the gesture and nodded. “Gentlemen.”

Cyricus made introductions for his people and Tavi did likewise, leaving Fidelias entirely out of the matter. Then he said, “Let’s get an idea of the larger picture so far. Who can summarize the current position of our forces at Riva?”

Canto Cantus, a steely-haired man in Legion armor, glanced at Cyricus, as if for permission. The young man’s nod was barely perceptible but very much there. Cantus didn’t speak until after he’d gained approval. “The short version is that Riva has fallen. Completely. In a single night.”

Tavi stared at Cantus for long seconds, and his heart began pounding harder in his chest. He limited his reaction to digging his fingernails into the heel of his right hand, then forced himself to relax. “Survivors?”

“A great many,” Cantus said. “Princeps Attis realized what was happening in time to evacuate most of the civilians from Riva. But the Legions took a bloody beating covering the retreat of the refugees. They’re still sorting out what’s left.”

“Tell me what happened.”

Cantus gave a cold, concise summary of the tactics used by the vord.

“That isn’t much,” Tavi said.

Cantus shrugged. “Bear in mind that we’re putting this together from garbled watersendings and reports from refugees who were running for their lives and were not trained observers. The reports all seem to conflict with one another.”

Tavi frowned. “All right. They’re retreating. To where?”

“The C-calderon V-valley, Your Highness,” Cyricus said. “A-allow me.” The young man touched a finger to the sand table, and the smooth white grains shifted into ripples that settled into the shapes of mountains and valleys, displaying causeways as flat rectangular strips. A miniature walled city, representative of Riva, appeared and began crumbling almost immediately. Rippling motion along the causeway north and east of Riva showed the position of the refugees. Solid rectangular blocks following in their wake represented the Legions. A series of menacing triangles, representing the spread of the vord, followed after the Legions.

Tavi frowned down at the map for a long moment. “What do we know about enemy numbers?”

“There appear to be quite a few of them,” Cantus replied.

Tavi looked up from the table, arching an eyebrow.

Cantus shook his head. “It’s hard to get within sight of the horde during daylight, even for fliers. There is a constant battle for control of the air with those wasp-men they’ve got. I can spare only a handful of fliers to use for reconnaissance, and they’ve returned reports varying from three hundred thousand to ten times that number. So far, none of them have turned north for Phrygia. They seem to be intent on pursuing Princeps Attis.”

“They don’t dare do anything else,” Tavi said. “If the High Lords get a chance to catch their breath, they can still be very, very dangerous to the vord.”

Fidelias cleared his throat. He pointed a finger toward the far end of the northeastern causeway, the one that ended at Garrison. “Offhand, I’d say your pessimistic scout was the most likely to have been correct in his observations.”

“Why?”

“The geography,” Fidelias said. “Princeps Attis is seeking advantageous ground. Calderon may suit his purposes.”

“Why say that?” Varg rumbled.

Tavi began to ask Cyricus to expand the sand table’s view of the Calderon Valley, only to find that the stuttering young man was already in the process of doing it. Tavi made a mental note to himself: If he survived this war, he simply had to offer the young man a job. Initiative like that was uncommon.

“Ah, thank you, Master Cyricus,” Tavi said. “Princeps Attis is leading the vord into a funnel,” Tavi said. “Once they’ve passed the western escarpments and entered the Calderon Valley, they’re going to be forced to crowd in closer and closer. Sea on the north, impassable mountains in the south.”

“Neutralizing the advantage of numbers,” Varg growled.

“In part. But he’s also going there because my uncle has turned the place into a bloody fortress.”

Fidelias glanced up at Tavi, frowning.

“You saw the holders of the Calderon Valley throw up a siege wall in less than half an hour at Second Calderon,” Tavi said. “Now consider that my uncle’s had the next best thing to five years to prepare.”

The Cursor lifted his eyebrows and nodded. “Still. If the numerical disparity is that great, the Shieldwall itself might not be enough. And if he’s leading the vord into a trap, he’s going to be stuck in it as well. There won’t be any way for him to retreat any farther. There’s nowhere else he can go.”

“He knows that,” Tavi said, frowning. “And the vord know it, too. Which is why he did it.”

Cyricus frowned. “Y-your Highness? I d-don’t understand.”

“He isn’t so much leading them into a trap as he is playing the anvil to our hammer.” Tavi touched the sand table, made a minor effort of will, and added multiple rectangles to the landscape, representing his own forces. Then he began to shift the pieces as if they’d been part of a game of ludus.

As the Legions fell back into the Valley, the vord crowded in behind them. As they pushed back the Legions, bit by bit, the frontage of the horde continued to contract—and the pieces representing his forces and Varg’s came rushing up behind to pin them into the valley. “We hit them here.”

Varg grunted. “Few score thousand of us, and millions of them. And you want us to ambush them.”

Tavi bared his teeth when he smiled. “This isn’t about killing the vord host. This is about finding and killing the vord Queen. She’ll likely be somewhere at the rear of the horde, guiding them forward and coordinating their attack.”

Varg’s tail swished pensively, and his eyes narrowed. “Mmmm. A bold plan, Tavar. But if you do not find and kill her, our forces will be left facing the vord in the open field. They’ll swallow us whole.”

“We aren’t getting any stronger. If we don’t neutralize the vord Queen here, we might never have such an opportunity again. They’ll swallow us whole in any case.”

Varg growled low in his chest. “True enough. I have seen the end of my world. If I’d had the opportunity to make a choice like this one when they were ravaging my own land, I would not have hesitated.”

Tavi nodded. “Then I want boots on the causeway by midmorning. We’ll have to move fast if we’re going to plug them into the bottle. Master Cyricus—”

“I’ve had logistics p-preparing p-provisions and supplies for your forces since Tribune Antillus arrived yesterday after-n-noon. They are w-waiting for you at the southern gate of the city, next to the causeway. It’s only a week’s w-worth, but it was the best we could do f-for the time being.”

“Oh my,” Kitai said in Canish, her eyes sparkling. “I may be in love.”

Tavi replied in the same tongue. “I saw him first.”

Varg’s ears quivered again.

Tavi turned to Cyricus, and said, “You may have noticed that we have a number of Canim with us. They aren’t able to use the causeways.”

Cyricus nodded rapidly. “Would supply wagons do, Your Highness?”

“Admirably,” Tavi said.

“I will requisition as m-many as can be f-found.”

Tavi met the young man’s eyes and nodded. “Thank you, Cyricus.”

Cyricus bowed again, and began giving stammering orders to Phrygia’s command staff. None of the men seemed to react adversely to Cyricus’s youth or to the confident manner in which he issued orders. The men obviously trusted the young Citizen’s competence, which suggested that he had given them good reason to do so. Tavi was even further impressed.

“Two days to Riva,” Kitai murmured, looking at the map. “Two more days up to Calderon. Four days total.” She looked up at him from across the sand table, green eyes intent. “You are going home, Aleran.”

Tavi shivered. He drew his knife from his belt and thrust it into the sand table at the western mouth of the Valley. That was where it would all be decided. That was where they would find the vord Queen; or else see his Realm and his people consigned to oblivion.

The dagger stuck there, quivering.

“Home,” Tavi said quietly. “It’s time to finish what we started.”