First Lord's Fury

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.