Princeps Fury

CHAPTER 34

At one time, Tavi would have been terrified by his situation. He was completely surrounded, outnumbered by implacable foes, and cut off from any of his support. Oh, certainly, Max and Kitai and the Canim were only a hundred yards away-but that was far enough to prevent them from intervening over the next several seconds, which were quite possibly all he had. He would have been helpless to prevent his fate from being decided by someone else.

Tavi still found the situation terrifying; but he wasn’t nearly so helpless anymore.

He called upon the furies of the wind, borrowing of their speed, and time slowed as the nearest Cane-form Vord lunged for him. He drew his sword from his side and turned to meet it, focusing on the steel as he went, upon the furies in the blade, and its edge cut through the Vord’s armored forearm as smoothly as if passing through water.

He ducked the Vord’s second set of talons, took that arm as well, then drew up power from the earth to deliver a hard kick in one of the creature’s heavy thighs. The blow flung it back from Tavi to land several feet away, thrashing at the croach and ripping through its surface to the glowing green “blood” that ran through it.

By then, a second Vord had closed in on him, and its talons slammed into the armor over his spine. The Aleran steel resisted the creature’s claws, though the blow drove Tavi several steps forward, into a third Vord. His sword cut through the creature’s thighs, and he drove his shoulder into its belly, knocking it to the ground as well. Then Tavi dropped straight down to his heels, spinning as he went, and his blade lashed out in an arc less than six inches from the ground, literally cutting the Vord behind him off at the ankles. It fell, shrieking and gushing green-brown blood like the others.

He’d killed three Vord in the time it would have taken to count them out loud, something he’d never have been able to do even a couple of years before-but that wasn’t what made him dangerous in that situation.

“Wait!” Tavi shouted toward the Vord queen, still lurking behind the rank of Cane-form Vord. “You have a more profitable and efficient alternative!”

Another of the warrior Vord came at him, and Tavi struck away its hand with his sword in a shower of blue-and-scarlet sparks. The clawed hand whirled through the air and landed on the ground near the Vord queen’s feet.

“How many more warriors do you want to lose?” Tavi called, slipping aside from the next blow. “It costs you nothing to hear me out!”

The attacking Cane-form Vord suddenly slowed, then halted in place.

The Vord queen spoke again. Her voice was eerie, multilayered, as if coming from several throats simultaneously. The creature herself was-rather obviously-feminine in shape, though Tavi could see nothing of her but an outline against the glowing green of the large hive behind her-and glowing green eyes that matched it. “It is unlikely that you are here to assist us. It is more likely that you are engaged in deception.”

“Against a being who can read minds?” Tavi asked. He kept his eyes on the Vord that had suddenly ceased its attack. It was well within range to strike again. “That would seem to be an irrational act.”

A figure covered in a dark, hooded cloak appeared from behind one of the nearby warriors. She walked a few steps toward Tavi, the cloak swaying, revealing rigid-looking, green-white flesh each time she took a step forward. The queen was considerably shorter than Tavi. Within the darkness of the hood, twin candles of green light burned with faintly luminescent fire. “Indeed,” the queen murmured. “Though desperation can sometimes drive non-Vord intelligences to acts beyond reason.”

Tavi felt himself baring his teeth in a smile. “It would be simple for you to determine if such desperation drove me. You just have to come closer.”

The Vord queen was silent for a moment, her eyes narrowed to slits of green fire, but she did not move. “How did you approach so closely without being detected, creature?”

Tavi smiled at her and said nothing.

The Vord queen looked past him and made sniffing sounds. “More of the local apex predators are nearby. Though I was told the Narashan strain had been eliminated.”

Tavi, stretching his watercrafting senses to the utmost, felt it then-a quiver of… not fear, precisely, but something akin to it, if infinitely more ordered-apprehension, perhaps. “Told? By whom? Who would withhold that kind of information from you? And why would such information be withheld?”

The queen stared at him, eerily motionless.

“It is possible that an opportunity for mutual gain through cooperation exists,” Tavi said. “If you are willing to listen to me, perhaps we can work together to accomplish a shared goal.”

The queen’s voice dropped to a buzzing whisper, her voice like locust wings. “What goal?”

“The removal of a mutual enemy.”

The queen stared at him for a moment more. Then she turned and began walking toward the hive. The warriors on either side of her took a step back, making way for Tavi.

The queen looked over her shoulder, and said, “Come this way.”

The Vord queen entered the hive through a wide, unsettlingly organic-looking doorway. It reminded Tavi, somehow, of the nostril of some great beast. Vord in various forms crouched upon the hive, silent shadows against the glowing green wax. Wax spiders sat everywhere, blending into the background, and Tavi was certain that there were more in evidence than he could see.

Tavi found his feet dragging as he approached the entrance to the hive.

Well, of course they dragged. The interior of the hive was certain to be a death trap. He still remembered the Cane in the caverns beneath the Citadel, and how the Vord, possessing the bodies of the warrior’s former comrades, had forced him into the hive-and how he had emerged, taken, moments later, without expression or mind or will. Only a fool would go in there after the Vord queen unless the situation absolutely necessitated it.

His did. Besides, he told himself, going into the hive wasn’t an entirely hideous decision, tactically speaking. On open ground, the Vord could come at him from every direction. Inside the building, he could at least put his back to a wall.

Granted, he would probably find himself sinking into it to be slowly devoured by the croach if he did, but there would be a wall there nonetheless.

Tavi entered the hive, sword still in hand, dripping the watery, foul blood of the Vord. The interior was a simple dome, and though the glowing croach around them was translucent, the light flowing from it rendered the night beyond in complete blackness. Inside, though, Tavi could see as clearly as by any furylamp.

The Vord queen turned to face him, and Tavi sucked in his breath.

The creature looked like Kitai.

There were differences in this Vord queen and the last one he had seen. Her skin was nearly human instead of dark chitin, though it had an odd greenish sheen to it. She had hair, as pale as Kitai’s, but worn full and long, hanging down to her hips. Her green eyes, burning with light from within, were multifaceted like an insect’s, and her hands and feet sported dark, gleaming, deadly-looking nails as long as a predator bird’s talons.

Beneath her cloak, she was also naked. Intensely so.

“Aleran,” the queen said, and Tavi shuddered at the familiar phrase from a familiar face delivered in such an utterly alien voice. “You are far from your home.”

“A coincidence,” Tavi said. “I had business in the area.”

“Speak of what you can do to help the Vord.”

Tavi paused for a fraction of a second before he spoke, to order his thoughts. His next words could get him killed if he didn’t choose them carefully.

“I know,” he said, “that the Vord do not usually operate in the pattern you have been following on this continent. I know that your queens normally produce other queens, frequently, the better to perpetuate your kind.”

The Vord stared.

“Yet that has not been the case, here,” Tavi continued. “The queen that created you has, evidently, taken away your ability to create subordinate queens of your own.”

“What makes you think that I am not the senior queen?” the creature asked him, her voice flat and expressionless.

“Logic,” Tavi replied. “The operational patterns of your attack on Maraul suggested that the senior queen regarded the subordinate queens as expendable assets. Why would she place herself in such an exposed position here when she could send one of her juniors in her place? If any of you can produce more queens, why are there only three of you instead of the dozens there should be by now?”

The Vord queen was silent for several aching seconds. Then she nodded once.

“And further,” Tavi said quietly, “I presume that she is not here. That she has left you and another junior queen to finish off the Canim.”

“This is information I already possess,” the queen hissed quietly. “It is worth nothing to me.”

The walls of the hive stirred, and a dozen wax spiders appeared from where Tavi would have sworn no creature could have been hidden.

“Why?” Tavi asked. “Why has your queen changed you in this way? Does it not hamper the growth of the Vord?”

The queen’s eyes narrowed. “Of course. But… she acts improperly. Irrationally. She has sampled too much of the blood of your breed.”

The Vord’s words were uninflected, calm, but the surge of emotion that screamed across Tavi’s senses as the queen spoke was painfully intense. The young queen was filled with raw, unadulterated rage, with jealousy, and with intense, ambition-driven hate, the emotions as pure and intense as those produced by infants, unrestrained by any sense of self-control.

Tavi had to fight to keep his jaw from dropping. The Vord queens had, somehow, become more human. Distrust, the need to rule, the emotions themselves could all be used against them.

“I think she’s returned to Alera by now-or at least she’s on the way. What if I told you I would be willing to remove her?”

The Vord tilted its head to one side. “Why would you do such a thing?”

“Survival,” Tavi replied. “If we are to survive, we must eliminate her-and you must let us escape unharmed in order for us neutralize her.”

“Let you escape…” The queen leaned forward slightly. “Who?”

“All of my people and the Canim of this land,” Tavi replied promptly. “All of them. They will return to Alera with me. They are necessary to deal with the threat.”

She looked slowly around the interior of the hive. Then her green eyes focused on Tavi.

“It costs you nothing,” Tavi urged her gently. “Slow the offensive long enough for the Canim to escape the continent. They will no longer be a threat to anything you’ve built here. You won’t have to fight them anymore.”

The queen’s eyes flared with a brighter light, and she took a step closer. Tavi felt a sudden rush of thoughts flicker through his head-irrational fear sputtered through his body for no apparent reason. (He considered entirely rational the fear that he was surrounded by nightmarish creatures which might kill him, or worse, at any moment.) A rush of memories went by, bringing with them a dozen scents so distinct that he was half-certain that they were real, and not mere memories.

“There are others nearby,” the queen said, slowly. “They came with you. But you have not told them your true purpose here.”

A chill went down Tavi’s spine as he realized that the creature was actually examining his thoughts. “No,” he answered. “They never would have accepted what I planned to do.” He smiled faintly. “They aren’t the negotiating sort.”

“You are sincere,” the queen murmured.

“What is the point of attempting to deceive a being who can read your mind?” Tavi asked. “I’ve accomplished a lot of things by finding common interests between myself and my enemies.”

“An enemy who becomes an asset is defeated as surely as one who is killed,” the Vord queen said.

“More so,” said Tavi.

The Vord queen gave him an odd little smile.

The dark-armored shapes of Vord warriors began to fill the entrance to the hive behind him. The Cane-form Vord came forward slowly and silently, moving awkwardly in the confined space.

Tavi’s stomach seemed to drop into his boots.

“Your logic was sound but for a single, flawed assumption,” the Vord queen said. “You assumed that because the junior queens had been created without the ability to create their own subordinate queens, that they would still have the desire to rule. It is a shortcoming of individuality.”

Wax spiders emerged from the walls and flowed over the floor between Tavi and the queen in a miniature flood, crawling over one another until they were chest high, walling her away from him as surely any pile of stone.

“Your breed seek authority, leadership, as an extension of your personal identity. You know nothing of devoting yourself to something larger. You know nothing of truly subordinating the self for the greater good of all.”

Tavi glanced around the interior of the hive again, but there was no escape. Warrior Vord filled the doorway. Spiders continued to crawl from the walls-and ceiling, it seemed. He would never be able to get out. He’d known it was a risk, that his proposal to the Vord could be rejected-but he truly hadn’t believed that it would happen. The cold intellect of the Vord, from everything he knew about them, should have compelled them to protect their nearest hive and kin.

But what drove this queen was… entirely too human. It was a devotion to her senior queen-to her mother, Tavi realized, his senses flushed with an intensity of emotion coming from the junior queen. That was mixed with a horrible and abiding need that was closer to physical hunger than anything else-a need to expand, to overcome, to grow. And mixed with all of that was contempt-contempt for humanity, for the creatures that fell before the united might of the Vord.

Tavi realized that he was never going to leave the hive, and suddenly felt very, very tired.

Well.

Well, then.

He had been held in contempt before. If there was one thing Tavi knew, it was how to take advantage of being underestimated.

Tavi took a deep breath and tightened his hand on his sword. Then he reached to the short blade on his right hip, and drew it slowly into his left hand. Enough earthcrafting should give him the strength to bull through the wall of wax spiders. He’d be bitten as he did it, many times. The poison would kill him, but not for a minute or two at least.

He had another advantage: The cramped quarters inside the hive, combined with the reinforcements blocking the only exit, would prevent the queen from escaping every bit as much as it trapped Tavi. She wouldn’t be able to simply cut and run.

He’d have to kill the queen quickly, with all the windcrafting he could muster. He remembered well the blinding speed a Vord queen possessed-but he would have another advantage she probably did not expect. He could accept a lethal stroke if it allowed him to deliver one in return. Metalcrafting would let him ignore the pain of a death blow long enough to deliver a killing strike of his own.

Provided he was fast enough, this hive would become her tomb. With the queen dead and the Vord undirected, Kitai, Max, and the others should have a real chance to escape. And as long as Crassus and the First Aleran had done their jobs, Varg and the Canim should escape as well, to assist Alera against the common foe.

Really, he thought, planning became a great deal simpler and easier when one didn’t have the additional bother of working out how to survive said plan.

“It looks like I’m not the only one to make a flawed assumption,” Tavi told the queen quietly.

Her eyes narrowed, and he felt the quivering pressure of her mind on his thoughts again.

Her eyes widened.

Princeps Gaius Octavian called upon rock and wind and steel and shifted his body forward into the rush that would-if he was lucky-kill them both.