First Lord's Fury

CHAPTER 44

Tavi awakened smoothly, naturally, and free of pain. He was floating in a tub of warm water, his head and shoulders supported on an inclined board. He was naked. His toes poked out of the water at the far end of the tub. He lifted his head, which was an effort. There was an angry red puckering of his skin over his belly, to the left of his navel, where the vord Queen’s weapon had stabbed him. Little, angry veins of red spread out from the injury.

Tavi looked blearily around him. A healer’s tent. One of the ones that hadn’t been destroyed, obviously. Furylamps lit it. So he’d been unconscious for hours, but not many of them. Unless it had been more than a day.

He hated being unconscious. It always interrupted everything he had planned.

He turned his head to the left, and found the tub beside him occupied. Maximus lay in it. He looked awful, though that was mostly bruises beneath the skin of his shoulders, neck, face, head… There seemed very little of his friend that was not bruised, in fact. And his nose had been broken—again. His eyes were closed, but he was breathing.

Tavi leaned up a little and eyed the next tub over. Crassus occupied it, in the same condition he and Maximus enjoyed. The young Tribune stirred, though he looked like he felt even worse than Tavi did.

“Crassus,” Tavi rasped.

Though he blinked his eyes open, the young man was still clearly in pain. He looked at Tavi and lifted his chin very slightly in acknowledgment.

“Crassus,” Tavi croaked. His throat felt dry. It hurt to talk. “Report.”

“I hurt,” Crassus said, his voice slurring and weak. He closed his eyes again. “End of report.”

Tavi tried to get the young man to open his eyes again, but there was no rousing him. He sank back tiredly into the tub.

“He’s very tired,” said a quiet voice. “It’s better if you let him rest, Your Majesty. The attack on the headquarters tent was defeated and most of the attackers slain. We lost twenty-two, all of them from among the guards stationed around the command tent.”

Tavi looked up to see Dorotea sitting quietly on a camp stool near the tent’s entrance. She looked terrible, her eyes sunken, her cheeks bloodless. The collar on her throat threw back the subdued light of the lamp with a silent, malevolent gleam. She held a blanket wrapped around her though the night was not cold.

“Your Highness,” he corrected her gently. “I’m not the First Lord yet.”

The slave smiled tiredly. “You just stood against the nightmare of our time, young man. You put your life at hazard for the sake of a slave who once tried to murder you. Thank you. Your Majesty.”

“If you want to thank a hero, thank Foss,” Tavi said wearily. “He’s the one who saved you.”

“My thanks won’t matter to him now,” she said quietly. “I hope his rest is peaceful.”

Tavi sat up slowly. “Where’s Kitai?”

“Sleeping,” Dorotea said. “She was exhausted.”

“What happened after I went down?”

The slave smiled faintly. “Several of us were unconscious and dying. You. Me. Maximus. Crassus. She was not in good condition herself, and did not have the strength remaining to attempt a healing on more than one person. She had to choose whom to save.”

Tavi took a slow breath. “Ah. And she chose you. Someone to lead the less-experienced healers.”

Dorotea inclined her head slightly, as if she was afraid something might spill out if she tipped it too far. “Our senior folk were all conferring when…” She shivered. “When you saw us. Kitai’s was a remarkably rational decision, under the circumstances. Emotions tend to overrule reason when one is in pain and afraid for another. And her feelings for you are disturbingly intense. She could easily have let those feelings control her. And I, my son, and your friend Maximus would all be dead.”

“She made the right call,” Tavi said. He looked at Max and Crassus. “How are they?”

Dorotea tightened the blanket around her slightly. “I assume that you know that watercrafting does not simply make a subject whole again. It draws upon the body’s resources to restore what has been made unwhole.”

“Of course,” Tavi said.

“There are limits. And… and my Crassus had so many injuries. Broken bones. Shattered organs.” She bit her lip and closed her eyes. “I did all that I could, everything, but there are limits to what can be repaired. The body can only sustain so much of its own regeneration…”

She shuddered and shook for several seconds. Then suddenly Dorotea seemed to master herself and lifted her face, wiping tears briskly from her cheeks. Her voice was unsteady, but she attempted to use crisp, professional description. “Crassus’s injuries were extensive and serious. I repaired enough damage that they should not shorten his life. Assuming that there is no infection—which is an acute danger when a body is so badly strained—he may be able to walk again. Eventually. His days as a Tribune are finished.”

Tavi swallowed and nodded. “Maximus?”

“The vord Queen hit him on the head rather than anywhere vital,” Dorotea said with tired, almost fond irritation. “He’s fine. Or will be, when he wakes up. It could take a while.”

“How am I?” Tavi asked.

“The priority was to restore you to complete function,” she said. “The actual trauma wasn’t bad. The poisoning was acute, but not as difficult to overcome as others might have been. The only issue was keeping you breathing, for a while. You should be able to enter battle if you need to.”

Tavi nodded slowly. Then he sat up, and said, “You look terrible. Get some rest. Battle’s coming.”

Dorotea looked over at Crassus again. “I won’t leave him.”

“You’ve already said you’ve done all you can,” Tavi said, gently. “And other lives are going to depend on you. You’ll rest. That is an order.”

Dorotea’s eyes flickered back to him, hot for a half second, before her mouth turned up into a slow, tired smile. “You can’t give me an order, sir. You aren’t the captain of the Free Aleran. My orders come from him.”

“But I can order him,” Tavi said testily. “Bloody crows, what does a man have to do to get a little respect around here? Am I the First Lord or not?”

Dorotea’s smile widened, and she bowed her head. “Very well. Your Majesty. There are guards around and over and quite likely under the tent. But speak, and they will be here.”

“Thank you.”

Tavi waited until she had left to ease himself out of the tub. He felt shaky, but no worse than he had any of a number of other times he’d endured a healer’s attentions. He climbed out without help and found a clean set of clothes laid out for him.

Tavi got dressed, though it was painful to bend at the waist. The strange sword he had been stabbed with had left an equally strange scar, a stiff ridge of nearly purple tissue, and the area around it was exquisitely tender. He slid into his pants and belted his tunic on cautiously. A quick spike of pain went through him and made him clench his teeth over suddenly frozen breath.

The awareness of a gaze upon him made Tavi look back, and he found Crassus awake again, bleary eyes focused on him.

“M’ mother,” Crassus said. “She was alive. And you didn’t t-tell me.”

Tavi stared at his friend in pure shock. It was true. He hadn’t. Antillus Dorotea had been a traitor to the Realm, along with her brother, High Lord Kalarus. She had been snapped up for her talents in the slave rebellion that had followed the destruction of Kalarus and the chaos in Kalaran lands, and no one had known or cared who she was—only what she could do. Had he brought her true identity to light, it would have forced him to bring charges against her as well. More importantly, she had all but begged him not to tell her husband or her son that she had survived. Trapped in a slave collar that could not be removed without killing her, it was, in a sense, true. The woman who had plotted against the Realm would never return.

She had saved Crassus once before, when he was unconscious, but he had never wakened during the procedure, and she had been gone before he was awake again. She never left the Free Aleran camp or train and had hidden virtually in plain sight for the past years.

But this time Crassus had seen her.

Crassus’s eyes burned. “Didn’t tell me.”

“She asked me not to,” Tavi said quietly.

Crassus squeezed his eyes shut, as if in agony. Given his injuries, there was every chance that he was—even without other considerations. “Get away from me, Octavian.”

“Rest,” Tavi said. “We’ll talk, later, when this is all—”

“Get out!” Crassus snarled. “How could you? Get out.”

He dropped back down, wheezing, and was asleep again, or unconscious, within seconds.

Tavi sat down on the stool Dorotea had vacated, shaking. He lowered his head to his hands and just sat there for a moment. Crows take it. He had never wanted this. And yet, it had been such a small worry among so many others. Truth be told, he’d barely thought about it. And now, the lie he’d felt he had no other choice than to make might have cost him the love and respect of a friend.

“Such a small concern, for a man with your problems,” said Alera quietly.

Tavi looked up to see the great fury, appearing as she usually did, but this time also covered in a misty grey cloak and hood that hid all of her features but her face. Her gemstone eyes were calm and gently amused.

“I don’t have so many friends that I can’t be worried about losing one,” Tavi said quietly. He looked at Max, silent and still in his tub. “Or more.”

Alera regarded him steadily.

“I saw Foss die. I saw what was going to happen seconds before it did, and I just wasn’t fast enough. I couldn’t stop the Queen. He died. She killed so many people. And they died for nothing. She escaped. I failed them.”

“She is most formidable. You knew that.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Tavi said quietly, his voice growing harsh. “It was my responsibility. My duty. I know not everyone survives a war, but by the furies, I will not see my men give their lives for nothing.” His throat tightened, and he bowed his head. “I… I wonder. I wonder if I am the right man for this work. If I had… if I had learned more, if I had been given more time to practice, if I had practiced harder…”

“You wonder if it would have made a difference,” Alera said.

“Yes.”

She considered the question gravely. Then she sat down on the floor beside the stool, folding her legs beneath her. “There’s no way to be certain of things that never took place.”

“I know.”

“You agree. Yet you still feel that way about it.”

Tavi nodded. They were both silent for a time.

“Good men,” she said quietly, “must feel as you do. Or they are not good men.”

“I don’t understand.”

Alera smiled. “A good man, almost by definition, would seriously question any decisions he made that led to such terrible consequences for others. Especially if those others trusted him. Would you agree?”

“Yes.”

“Would you agree that you are fallible?”

“I feel it is manifestly obvious.”

“Would you agree that the world is a dangerous and unfair place?”

“Of course.”

“Then there you have it,” Alera said. “Someone must command. But no one who does so is perfect. He will, therefore, make mistakes. And, since the world is dangerous and unfair, it is inevitable that some of those mistakes will eventually have consequences like those today.”

“I can hardly dispute your reasoning,” Tavi said quietly. “But I do not see your point.”

“It is quite obvious, young Gaius,” Alera said, smiling, her eyes wrinkling at the corners. “The logic is indisputable: You are a good man.”

Tavi lifted his eyebrows. “What has that to do with anything?”

“In my experience?” she asked. “A very great deal. Perhaps Kitai will explain it to you later.”

Tavi shook his head. “You saw the battle?”

“Of course.”

“Is the Queen as strong as you believed her to be?”

“Not at all,” Alera said.

“Oh?”

“She is stronger,” the great fury said calmly. “And she handles herself almost as well as you do. Someone has been giving her lessons.”

Tavi nodded ruefully. “I noticed.” He shook his head. “I… I can’t believe anything could be so powerful. So fast.”

“Yes,” Alera said. “I warned you about that.”

“Then you see why I must question my place here,” Tavi said quietly. “If I can’t outwit her, anticipate her, overcome her… why am I attempting to lead these men at all? Can I take them forward with me, knowing that… that…”

“That you quite likely take them to their deaths,” Alera said.

Tavi closed his eyes. “Yes.”

Alera’s voice turned wry. “How many more would have died had you done nothing, young Gaius? How many more would have died had you perished with the Queen’s first strike? Do you not see what this attack means?”

He opened his eyes and frowned up at her.

“She cannot have many Citizens left to her,” Alera said. “Yet she attacked this camp with more than fifty strongly gifted earthcrafters, knowing that it was a suicide mission. She told you she’d only come to weaken you.”

“That… doesn’t make any sense,” Tavi said. “To waste such a valuable resource merely to weaken an opponent? Why would she do such a thing?”

“Indeed, why?” Alera asked.

“Because she thought it was worth the sacrifice,” Tavi murmured. “But that doesn’t make sense. Our losses were…” His lips tightened bitterly. “Light.”

“She didn’t come here to kill you, young Gaius. Not yet. She came here to bleed you.”

“But why?” Tavi asked. “If she’d waited until the Legion was closer, she could have hit us with overwhelming support rather than losing her collared Citizens. It isn’t rational! It’s…”

He suddenly stopped speaking. He blinked twice.

“It isn’t rational,” he said softly. “It’s the kind of mistake a young commander makes when victory is threatened. He forgets to be disciplined. He decides that doing anything is a better idea than doing nothing.” Tavi’s eyes widened. “She was afraid of me.”

Alera inclined her head and said nothing.

A moment later, Tavi snorted. “Well. I think I must have cured her of that mistaken impression.”

“And yet,” Alera said quietly, “she ran. You didn’t.”

“Of course she ran. It prevented us from concentrating forces on her. It allowed her to control the pace of the fight…” His eyes widened.

Defeating the vord Queen was not about simple bloodletting. It was not about tactics, about furycraft, about organization or technique or ranks of shining armor.

It was about minds. It was about wills.

It was about fear.

Tavi felt himself shoot up off the table. “The horde,” he said. “Where is it now?”

Alera considered the matter for a moment, then said, “They are about to attack the second defensive wall of the Valley. I do not think there is a reasonable chance of the Legions holding the wall.”

“They aren’t supposed to,” Tavi said. “The vord have no chance of overcoming Garrison unless they are directed. To control them, the Queen must be within twenty-five or thirty miles—well beyond the second wall. That’s near Bernardholt. I know that region, and there are only so many places where she could set up a defensive position around her hive.”

Alera tilted her head thoughtfully. “You’ll have the advantage of knowing the terrain.”

“Yes,” Tavi said, showing his teeth. “And if she’s afraid of me interfering, it means that I can.” He nodded firmly. “Every important fight I’ve ever been in was against someone bigger and stronger than me. This is no different.”

Alera’s gemstone eyes glittered. “If you say so, young Gaius.” And she was gone.

Tavi stalked out of the healer’s tent.

Twenty legionares snapped immediately to attention. Another sixty, within the immediate circle of light, came hustling off the ground, some of them rousing from (fully armored, fully uncomfortable) sleep to do it. Every legionare in sight bore the symbol of First Aleran, the eagle upon the field of scarlet and silver—but the design had been blackened and subtly altered into the shape of a crow. The Battlecrows had been the cohort who had followed Tavi into the horrible business at the end of the Battle of the Elinarch, and ever since they had maintained a reputation for discipline, absolutely deadly efficiency on the battlefield, and reckless disregard for danger. In most Legions, men sought to gain promotion to the Prime Cohort, traditionally the cohort composed of the Legion’s most experienced (and highest-paid) soldiers. In the First Aleran, men strove very nearly as hard to be accepted into the Battlecrows, the cohort that most often followed the captain into the deadliest portions of the battlefield.

Eighty men slammed their armored hands into their armored chests at the same instant, like a report of mortal thunder.

“Schultz,” Tavi called quietly.

A centurion strode out of the ranks, a soldier younger than Tavi himself. Schultz had come a long way since the Elinarch. He’d grown half a foot, for one thing, and added sixty pounds of muscle to the frame of a youth. His face and armor both bore scars, and he had discarded the helmet crest that denoted him as something other than a legionare, but he walked with erect pride and carried his baton beneath his arm in the best tradition of Legion centurions. He snapped off a precise salute to Tavi. “Sir.”

“We’re leaving,” Tavi said.

Schultz blinked. “Sir? Do you want me to round up the command officers for you?”

“We’re not waiting that long,” Tavi said. “The vord Queen knows where we are, and we’re going to be somewhere else as soon as possible. I need runners, Schultz, to go to each cohort’s Tribune and bear my personal command to break camp. I want to be on the road in no more than an hour. Anyone who can’t be ready to go will be left behind. Understood?”

Schultz looked dazed. “Ah. Yes, sir. Runners to each Tribune, your personal command to break camp, moving in an hour or left behind, sir.”

“Good man,” Tavi said. He turned to the assembled century of men and raised his voice. “The Legions have a long tradition, boys. You march hard and fast and show up in places where no one expects you—and then you go to work.” He grinned. “And you do it all carrying a hundred pounds of gear made by whoever did it for the least coin—but every one of those slives gets paid better than you! It’s tradition!”

A growl of laughter went around the group of soldiers.

“This march,” Tavi said, “is different.”

He let silence sit over the men for a moment.

“In a moment, you’re going to go out and give the orders to move out. And you’re going to tell the men this: No packs. No tents. No blankets. No spare boots. They don’t matter anymore.”

The silence thickened.

“We have to move, fast and hard,” Tavi said. “There are millions of lives at stake, and the enemy knows where we are. So we’re not going to be here. We’re going to be in Calderon by tomorrow, a full day before we’re expected. And then we’re going to find the vord Queen and pay the bitch back for what she did tonight.”

Eighty men raised their voices in a sudden, furious roar of approval.

“Schultz will give you your assignments,” Tavi said. “Get it done.”

Another roar went up, and Schultz began striding down the ranks, striking each man lightly on his armored shoulder with his baton and issuing the name of an Aleran or Canim officer he was to contact. The men went sprinting into the dark, and within minutes trumpeters were sounding the signal to prepare to march.

“Sir,” Schultz said, after he’d sent the last of the men off, “we might make Calderon that fast. But the Canim can’t, sir, nor their beasts. There’s no way.”

Tavi showed the legionare his most Canish smile. “Faith, Schultz,” he said. “Where there’s a will, there is a way. And my will is for us all to be in Calderon by the sunrise after next.”

Schultz blinked. “Sir?”

“Get the rest of the ’Crows ready to move out, Schultz,” he said. “That’s your job. Getting all of us there? That’s mine.”