Chapter 11

"Cohort!" Marcus bellowed in a voice that every single legionare in the Prime Cohort could hear. "Halt!"

The men's steady steps thudded twice more, then fell silent, as the ranks of the First Aleran reached the crest of the low ridge overlooking the Canim's first defensive position. The Prime occupied the center, of course, as it always did. The Fourth, holding his cohort's right flank, took a moment to dress its ranks. The Seventh, whose Tribune spent more time in drill, had no need to straighten out its lines.

"Three days to get here," muttered one veteran to another, as Marcus passed. "We'd have done it in one. Senatorial Guard. Bunch of tenderfoot pan-sies, can't march without a causeway."

Marcus snapped his baton back against the veteran's shield, and growled, "Quiet in the ranks." He gave the man a glare, and said, "You might hurt the pansies' feelings."

No one actually laughed (and great furies help any man who had), but several muffled snorts puffed out of the men of the Prime, and Marcus could sense them settling into the tense, familiar silence of prebattle. No joke or song or stirring oration could take the fear away from soldiers. Oh, it made for a fine story, no question, the stirring speech upon the edge of battle. But when facing an enemy as determined to survive as you were, talk was cheap, and the men on the ground knew it.

The joke had helped, though, providing a small release of tension, and helped the men settle down into the mind-set of victorious legionares: that they were professionals with a job to do, and that it was time to get to work.

Marcus stalked up and down the front rank, doing his best to look like he had more interest in his men's discipline than he did in the battle raging five hundred yards away. The sound of the fight washed up to their position like distant surf, mercifully indistinct, a distant rumble of drums, a clamor of horns, an ocean of individual cries and shouts. Marcus glanced at the battle as he paced the front rank, his steps steady and unconcerned.

A few moments later, horses thundered up through the gaps between the cohorts, and the captain, his singulare, one of the First Aleran's Knights Aeris, and an escort of Marat cavalry troopers rode along the front rank of the Legion. Marcus turned and saluted as the captain drew his horse up. The captain dismounted and returned the salute. "Good morning, Marcus."

"Sir," the First Spear replied.

The captain swept his eyes over the battle below. Marcus took note of where the young man looked and for how long. Excellent. He was paying attention where he should. He'd always possessed the talent to be a skilled battlefield commander, but even so, he'd come a long way since Marcus had seen him in that first frantic defense of the walls at the Elinarch.

After a silent moment, he nodded once, and said, "What do you think, First Spear?"

"It's their first dance, sir. No telling until it's over."

The battle was being waged along a road-a common trail, not a furycrafted causeway. The gentle, rolling terrain of the Vale narrowed, at that point, where a pair of old stone bluffs faced one another across an open gap. A small town called Othos filled that opening but sported only a modest defensive wall. The town was overlooked by a small steadholt high upon the eastern bluff. The omnipresent crows found on any Aleran battlefield whirled overhead in enormous numbers, like a great, dark wheel circling high above the embattled town.

The Canim had gone to work on the defenses, throwing up earthworks outside the walls of Othos itself, and the wolfish creatures now fought tenaciously to hold the outer wall. The First Senatorial had assaulted up the middle, driving hard down the road for the earthworks. Even as Marcus watched, the first assault began to falter, as legionares failed to bull past the enormous defenders. A moment later, the trumpets began to sound a retreat, and the First Senatorial pulled back, falling into interspersed columns.

More trumpets sounded, and in the gaps between those columns, the Second Senatorial charged, hurling fresh troops into the defenders without giving them a chance to recover from the first assault. The Second almost immediately began to push forward, breaching the earthen wall in two places before the Canim managed to plug the gap, driving the Second back. Just as they did, the First Senatorial, having reorganized its ranks and given its legionares a chance to breathe, charged forward in turn, smashing into the weary defenders like an axe into rotten wood. They crested the defenses in half a dozen places in the first minute, and then it was the deep, braying horns of the Canim that sounded the retreat.

"Not bad," the captain mused aloud. "That kind of retreat isn't easy to coordinate with a countercharge."

Marcus grunted. "They've had a year and a half to train, sir, while we were on the job."

"True." The captain watched as the Canim defenders fell back to the city wall under the cover of a veritable thunderstorm of missiles. The Canim favored spears sized to fit them, and the crow-eaten things were thick and long enough to spit a cow upon. Driven by the unbelievable strength of the wolf-warriors they could pierce a legionare, body, armor, and all, and still retain enough power to wound the man behind him.

Worse than the spears, though, was the sudden thunderstorm of hurled stones. A Canim warrior could hurl a stone the size of a man's head without any particular effort, and they lobbed them in high arcs, so that they plummeted almost straight down upon the hapless Guard below. Armor and helmets of Aleran steel were of limited use against the impact of stones so large and heavy. Even when laboring Tribunes began bellowing the orders for their cohorts to shift to a tortoise formation, the rain of stones disrupted the tight ranks necessary for it, leaving men exposed and breaking upraised arms, even through the shields they wielded.

The primitive missiles were less deadly, in a relative sense, than well-aimed arrow fire, but they possessed a far greater capacity to inflict crippling injuries, and the ranks of the Guard nearest the town walls were badly mauled before they were ordered back to the earthworks and out of rock range.

The retreat left the ground before the walls exposed, and the excited crows plunged down toward the corpses; but not before Marcus was able to get a quick estimate of the fallen. The Guard had left the still, armored forms of between seven and eight hundred legionares lying dead on the killing field.

"Bloody crows," the captain muttered in a tone that only Marcus was close enough to hear. Disgust tinted the young man's voice. "The battle's not fifteen minutes old, and he's already lost a tithe of one of his Legions."

Marcus grunted his agreement. "Going to be a lonely walk to Mastings at this rate, sir."

"Especially since they outnumbered us to begin with," the captain spat. "We have to pick our moments for attrition tactics."

"Yes, sir," Marcus said.

The captain drummed the fingertips of one hand against the hilt of his sword. "I hate standing around watching."

Marcus glanced aside at the captain's profile. "You've been given your orders, sir. We're a necessary reserve."

Below, the Guard Legions were massing behind the earthworks. Scaling ropes and ladders were being prepared for the assault on the walls, and half a dozen Knights Terra, recognizable by the preposterously outsized mallets they wielded, gathered in the center to smash down the town's gates.

"Crows." The captain's voice sounded distant and tired. "I tried to warn him."

Marcus caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, and glanced up to see twin arrowhead formations of Knights Aeris streaking through the sky toward the town.

The captain had seen them, too. "There they go."

"Textbook," Marcus agreed.

Another trumpet sounded, and with a roar the Guard plunged forward. Spheres of white-hot flame burst into being upon the walls overlooking the gate, as the Guard's Knights Ignus unleashed their furies upon the defenders.

The missile storm began again, but the two formations of Knights Aeris strafed the battlements, sending Canim flying as they were caught in the enormous gale of the Knights' combined windstreams. The legionares charged, ladders and ropes rising, even as the Knights Terra rushed the gate.

The captain's head snapped aside, and he pointed up at the western bluff. "There."

Marcus looked up to see dark shapes rising from concealment atop the bluff, and they were soon mirrored by more movement on the eastern side. Marcus could see forms atop both bluffs moving strangely, but it took him a moment to realize what they were doing.

They were spinning in place.

The stones that began to fall upon the conveniently massed ranks of the Guard made the hand-tossed projectiles of moments before seem like pebbles by comparison. Stones half the height of a man came crashing down, lethal to anyone beneath them, crippling to anyone close enough to be struck as the stone rebounded from the earth and tumbled wildly.

Marcus stared in mute surprise. It would take an earthcrafter of considerable talent to throw stones that size, and the Canim had no earthcrafters. Not only that, but even if they had been strong enough to throw the boulders, they could not possibly have been thrown at such speed to such distance-and yet they were doing it.

The captain narrowed his eyes, staring at the bluffs, and let out a sudden snarl. "Slingers," he said. "Bloody crows, they're slingers."

Marcus shot a glance at the captain and peered more closely. The young officer was right, by the great furies. The Canim atop the bluffs were whirling the enormous stones at the end of long, heavy chains. Each slinger would rush forward, get the stone moving, then begin to spin, whirling the boulders in great circles, gathering speed, until they released them to sail out and down onto the Guard below.

Horns blared with frantic authority as the deadly rain disrupted formations and sowed panic and confusion in the ranks. The Knights Aeris formations wheeled up and separated, each soaring toward one of the bluffs, to suppress the slingers and sweep them from their position.

Marcus felt nothing but contempt for the arrogance of the commander who had sent those men into the battle unprepared. It was no fault of Arnos's men, but they were going to die for it.

As the Knights bore down upon the bluffs, they began to fall out of formation. Men twisted and jerked in midair, then began plummeting out of the skies to smash upon the ground below.

"Balests," Marcus grunted.

The captain nodded tightly. Without the Knights Aeris to suppress the battlements, the Canim began the terrible rain of smaller stones again, hurling them down upon the legionares attempting the walls. They regained their positions around and over the gate, slamming stones down at the Knights Terra attempting to destroy it, forcing them to draw back or risk a crushed skull.

"Crows," Marcus said. "The only thing the Guard is doing is providing the Canim cover from our own firecrafters." He watched as men struggled and died, as the chaos of the battle took hold of the legionares. The pressure on the walls faltered, and Marcus had seen battles enough to know that the Guard would soon withdraw, whether or not their officers ordered it.

The captain snarled again. "I'm not waiting any longer." He turned to Sir Callum, the Knight Aeris who had ridden up with him, and said, "Go."

Callum dismounted and dragged a roll of bright scarlet cloth from his saddlebag. He took a pair of quick steps and flung himself into the air, soaring upward. He let the scarlet banner come unrolled as he did, until he was dragging the twenty-yard signal flag behind him.

Almost instantly, fresh trumpets sounded, silvery notes that seemed to float down from overhead. There was a quiet rumble, like distant thunder, and suddenly horsemen flying the banner of the First Aleran were racing along the top of the eastern bluff. They fell upon the slingers holding those heights, putting a sudden halt to the rain of enormous stones.

On the western bluff, the regular cadence of a war chant drifted down through the morning air, audible over the scream of battle thanks to its rhythm. Along that ridge appeared the solid formation of the First Aleran's Thirteenth Cohort, the Battlecrows, marching at the quickstep for the Canim positions overlooking Othos. Once in position, a concerted battle roar went up from them, and the Battlecrows slammed into the Canim like a single, enormous hammer.

A small sphere of blue fire exploded in the air over the bluff, and was echoed by a second sphere over the other bluff.

"There's the signal," Marcus murmured.

"Sharpshooters cleared," the captain growled under his breath. "Take em, Crassus."

Twenty armored Knights Aeris, windcrafters of the First Aleran's Knights Pisces, came screaming down out of the sun. They dived upon the battlements, blinding and confusing the defending Canim long enough to allow them to land and clear out a short section of wall.

The Guard's officers saw them come in and seized the opportunity. Scaling ladders went up in the area the Knights Pisces had secured, and legionares began flooding onto the battlements to support them.

Canim horns began to bray again, and the defense crumbled. The Guard surged raggedly forward, still too disordered to press home a charge that might have destroyed a sizeable portion of the Canim defenders. The Guard banners, red and blue fields behind the Senates silver laurel leaf, were lifted upon the walls. The Guard poured into the town, securing it.

Several minutes later, Marcus let out a slow breath and shook his head. "They let us take it."

The captain nodded. "Could have been worse."

A messenger wearing the livery of the First Senatorial rode up the First Aleran's battle lines, toward the captain and Marcus. The young man dismounted, gave the captain a salute, and said, "His Honor the Senator requests and requires that you meet with him in one hour, sir."

The captain nodded. "My compliments to His Honor, and I will be there."

The messenger saluted again and departed.

Marcus frowned. "Senator isn't going to be happy with you, sir. He ordered you to sit tight."

The captain smiled bleakly. "That's why I waited for things to get as bad as they did before I sent them in. He might scream and rant, but he can't get away with laying charges against me for turning a rout into a victory-and he knows it."

Marcus grunted. "Probably true."

The captain stared down at the dead beneath their dark, shifting blanket of hungry crows. Here and there, among the gleaming forms of fallen legionares, Marcus could see the darker, larger form of a Cane. No few of them had fallen, but the Legions had paid a ruinous price to drive the enemy from a position he had never intended to keep.

"Marcus," the captain said.

"Sir."

"Send up Foss and his men. The Guard took a mauling today, and this is the first time their Tribunes Medica have real casualties to treat. They'll need the help."

"Yes, sir."

The captain was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "I wish I could have acted sooner, Marcus. But if I had, Arnos would have had cause to strip me of command."

"Yes, sir," Marcus said, very quietly. "He would have."

The captain rubbed his hands against the sides of his trousers, as if trying to wipe something off them. "All right," he said quietly. "Let's get moving, centurion. It's a long way to Mastings."

Chapter 12

Tavi rode into Othos with Araris at his side.

The town's gates had been thrown wide open, though not without effort. Tons of earth had been piled up behind them when they were closed, and the Knights Terra who had been part of the assault were only now finishing crafting it clear.

"Look at that," Tavi murmured to Araris. "Even if they had broken the gates, the Guard couldn't have pushed through all of that. They just wanted to make us stand still while they dropped rocks on our heads."

Araris nodded grimly and called out to the squad who held the gate. "Centurion! Could you direct us to the Senator's command, please."

A blocky man with a centurion's baton and blood on his helmet and breastplate looked down from the walls. He stared at Araris and his branded face for a second, and his lip lifted in a snarl of contempt-until his eyes moved past him to Tavi.

Tavi said nothing. Captains and other important people weren't expected to do the talking. That's what their retainers were for.

The centurion nodded toward the young captain, and thumped a fist to his chest in salute. "Town square, big white house. Used to be the local Count's residence."

"My thanks," Araris said, the faintest trace of irony in his voice, and they continued on their way.

The leggy Marat horses moved at a kind of dancing trot down the central street of Othos, their hooves clopping distinctly on the cobblestones. The air carried a strong scent of Canim, an odor that was pungent, musty, and somehow a little metallic. The streets were very quiet as they kept going. With the exception of several passing squads of legionares, they saw no one else. In fact...

Tavi's mouth suddenly filled with bitterness, and he swallowed, fighting his stomach back down. "The people. Where are the townspeople?"

Araris's expression became colder, but he remained silent. They passed from midmorning sunlight into one of the vast, cold shadows cast by the bluffs rising on either side of the town. Tavi shivered.

They came to the town square, situated flush against the town's southern wall-and found out where the people of Othos had gone. There were perhaps eight or nine hundred townsfolk seated on the stones of the square, and they were surrounded by lines of grim-faced legionares. More of the Guard had taken positions on the southern wall, most of them archers. About half of them were facing the square, rather than to the south, where the Canim forces were, Tavi fervently hoped, still retreating.

The square was completely silent, the men and women and children sitting very still, not speaking. Here and there a dog barked, or an infant cried, and the spring wind occasionally slammed shut a door left hanging open. They were fifty yards away, but even Tavi's limited watercrafting senses could detect their quiet, acidic fear. It was a hideous sensation because unlike his own personal fear, this emotion seemed unable to remain inside him. It was as if each part of him, his limbs, his hair, his very skin, could each feel independent terror of its own, and the sensation rolled over him in a sickening wave.

He looked away from them, closed his eyes, and rested his hand on the hilt of his sword. Tavi drew upon the silent, cold strength in the weapon, let it roll up over him and armor him against the townsfolks' terror. The sensation faded at once, enough to let him get control of himself again, and continue riding.

They rode up to a large white house. Legionares were stationed outside its front garden, and Tavi spotted one of the Senator's singulares, a small, dark-haired woman with a bow, on watch at the house's front door.

As they dismounted, one of the valets from the First Senatorial emerged from the house and hurried to take the reins of their horses. "Good day, Captain Scipio."

"Good day..." Tavi quickly searched his memory. "Tharis, isn't it?"

The valet gave him a quick smile and bowed his head. "Indeed, sir. The Senator is waiting for you. Go inside the front door, and you'll find him in the office on the left."

"Thank you, Tharis," Tavi said.

He glanced at Araris, who nodded. Tavi straightened his cloak and started inside, striding briskly. Araris kept pace, walking slightly behind him and to the left, his eyes narrow and wary.

The entry hall of the house held several more legionares on guard, and the remainder of Arnos's singulares-a nasty-looking bunch, all in all, though none quite so unsettling as Phrygiar Navaris. Upon seeing them, she rose, slender and deadly in her all-black clothing, and approached.

"Good day, Captain," she said politely. No, thought Tavi, not politely. Something about her tone seemed subtly inconsistent, as if she was speaking a language she had learned sound by sound, without knowing the meaning behind it. It was an imitation of politeness and nothing more. "If your singulare would be so kind as to wait here, the Senator is expecting you."

"Sir," Araris said quietly. It was as close to making a protest as he ever came.

"I'm sure the Senator won't mind if you take position outside the office door," Tavi told him.

Navaris gave them a narrow glance, and said, "Not that it would matter where he was standing, if it came to that."

Araris paused at that and turned very deliberately to stare at the cutter. She returned the stare in kind.

"You're probably right," Tavi said. "After all, there are five of you and only one of him. That's a serious mismatch." He took off his cloak and tossed it at Navaris's chest, as if she was a mere attendant. "So why don't you run along and get another five or six. That should make things even."

The woman caught the cloak on pure reflex, and her flat, somehow reptilian eyes flickered with a sudden, incomprehensible light. Tavi ignored her and strode past her to the indicated doorway. Araris followed him, glanced around inside the room after Tavi stepped into it, and took up a position immediately outside the office.

Amos sat at a desk, reading from the top of a stack of papers. "Captain, come in."

Tavi strode to the front of Arnos's desk and saluted. "Reporting as ordered, sir."

Arnos said nothing. He read to the bottom of his current page, flipped it to the bottom of the stack, and only then looked up at Tavi. He just stared for a moment, and rather pointedly did not invite him to sit. After a long silence, Arnos said, "I ordered you to hold back, Captain. You were our reserve force."

"Yes, sir," Tavi said. "There was no time to consult with you while the Guard was engaged. I saw that the leading elements of the Guard needed support and provided it as best I could."

Arnos gave him a wintry little smile. "Really. To reach the tops of those bluffs, one must ride nearly three miles to the east, and a mile and a half to the west before usable ascents can be found. Which means your units had to cover twice that distance to reach the Canim positions on the bluffs. Which means that you had to have dispatched them almost the moment fighting began."

Obviously, thought Tavi. But that wasn't the sort of remark one could make to a superior officer without making him look like the ass he was. Tavi remained silent.

Arnos snorted a moment later. "Granted, I'm glad they were there when we needed them. But I was counting on your support to be available at need. If the enemy had approached with a more extensive force, for example, I might have needed the First Aleran to reinforce the assault, or redeploy to hold off the second force."

"And the First Aleran would have been there, sir," Tavi replied. "Minus two alae of our auxiliaries and a single infantry cohort."

Arnos tilted his head to one side. "Your howling barbarians, you mean?"

Tavi reminded himself not to be goaded by such an obvious attempt before he replied. "The Marat cavalry, yes, sir."

Arnos made a tent of his fingers and frowned at Tavi. "I was given to understand that they went to battle almost entirely naked. Men and women alike."

"Marat can tolerate greater extremes of temperature than the average Aleran, sir. In their homelands, they generally wear a breechcloth and find it sufficient."

"Mmm," Arnos said, imbuing the sound with skepticism. "How did you convince them to wear uniforms?"

"The Marat have very formal cultural conventions with regards to the giving of gifts, sir. If one is given a gift and does not put it to use, it is considered a kind of insult to the gift-giver. So I went around to each of the Marat who had come to support the First Aleran and personally gave them their uniform and armor." He shrugged. "They have to wear it now, or they'll be insulting me. They're too polite to do that."

Arnos shook his head again. "One might question your judgment, Captain, in sending a crowd of savages on such a critical mission."

"One might question my judgment in sending anyone at all, sir, given my orders. I was confident they would do their job. And they did."

The Senator gave him a flat look for several seconds, then waved a hand, as if brushing away a tendril of smoke or an annoying insect. "The infantry cohort you sent to the opposite bluff. How did they arrive so quickly?"

"That was our mounted infantry cohort, sir," Tavi said. "The one I mentioned at the meeting."

"Ah," Arnos said. "I suppose that today, the concept appears to have been proven somewhat useful."

"That's why we put them together, sir," Tavi replied. "Increased tactical options."

Arnos grimaced. "I disapprove of such... unconventional stratagems, Captain. Alera's Legions have kept her safe and growing for more than a thousand years. Their methods have stood the test of time and proven themselves over and over again. I'm not opposed to intelligent innovation, mind you, but it's an incredible arrogance to declare the proven methods of a thousand years insufficient, then to employ untested theories of combat when any weakness in those theories will cost men their lives."

Tavi had to force himself not to retort that his "untested" theories had helped them survive for more than two years, and that his own forces had taken but seven casualties today, none of them fatal, while the Guard's Legions had lost nearly seven percent of their total numbers. "Yes, sir," he said.

"In addition, this violation of your orders is a serious matter. The chain of command must be preserved at all costs. If officers begin to lose their discipline, begin picking and choosing which orders they will obey, it is only a matter of time until such behavior spreads to the ranks-and then we have no Legion. Only a mob of brigands. Do you understand?"

"I understand, sir," Tavi said.

"That said..." Arnos shook his head and sighed. "Your display of initiative saved men's lives today, Captain. So I'm going to overlook your disobedience." His eyes hardened. "Once."

Tavi nodded. "Yes, sir."

Arnos picked up another piece of paper from the desk, folded it in thirds, and held it out. Tavi took it.

"Your orders," the Senator said.

"Yes, sir."

"Dismissed."

Tavi saluted and turned on a heel to march out. Just as he reached the door, Arnos said, "Captain."

Tavi turned. "Sir."

Arnos said, "Captain Nalus asked me to thank you for sending your Tribune Medica and the First Aleran's healers up to assist with the wounded. They saved a good many lives that might otherwise have been lost."

"No thanks are necessary, sir." He paused for a beat and added, "After all, we're all on the same side here."

Arnos flipped over the next page on his stack with rather more force than necessary. "That will be all, Captain."

"Yes, sir," Tavi said, and left the office. Araris fell into step behind him as Tavi stalked from the home and back out toward the horses.

"What's that?" Araris asked quietly, as they mounted.

"Our orders," Tavi said. He fought down the sick feeling in his stomach as he unfolded the piece of paper and scanned over it. His horse danced restlessly in place as he did. "Oh," he said. "Oh. Great furies."

Araris frowned and tilted his head slightly.

"He's putting us in charge of the civilians," Tavi said quietly. "The First Aleran is to march them to a field just east of here. And..."

His voice broke, and he couldn't recover it. He shook his head and passed the paper over to the singulare. He didn't watch Araris read it. He couldn't take his eyes from the families huddling together on the stones of the square, pale, silent, and terrified.

Araris's voice emerged soft with shock and disbelief as he read the last few words of the orders aloud. "There," he said, "to be executed."