Chapter 50
"They're forming up again," Amara reported, staring out at the taken holders. A score of them held long, rough spears of raw wood, crude points hacked into them with knives and sickles and swords. "Looks like they're using the legionares shields, too."
Bernard grunted and came up to the front of the cave to stand beside her. "They'll use the shields to cover the spears from our archers. That volley must have been worse than they expected." The rain came down in steady, heavy drops outside the cave. Flashes of green-tinged lightning continued to dance through the clouds veiling the summit of Garados, and the air had grown steadily thicker and more oppressive, a sense of old, slow malice permeating every sight and sound. "And the furystorm is about to break, if I'm any judge. We'll have windmanes coming down on us in half an hour."
"Half an hour," Amara mused. "Do you think it will matter to us by then?"
"Maybe not," Bernard said. "Maybe so. Nothing is written in stone."
A wry smile twisted Amara's mouth. "We might survive the vord to be killed by windmanes. That's your encouragement? Your reassurance?"
Bernard grinned, staring out at the enemy, defiance in his eyes. "With any luck, even if we don't take them, the furystorm will finish what we started."
"That really isn't any better," Amara said. She laid a hand on his shoulder. "Could we wait here? Let the furystorm take them?"
Bernard shook his head. "Looks to me like they know it's coming, too. They've got to take the cave before the storm breaks."
Amara nodded. "Then it's time."
Bernard looked over his shoulder, and said, "Prepare to charge."
Behind him, waiting in ranks, was every legionare still able to stand and wield a blade. Twoscore swords hissed from their sheaths with steely whispers that promised blood.
"Doroga," Bernard called. "Give us twenty strides before you move."
The Marat chieftain lay astride Walker's broad back, the cave's ceiling forcing his chest to the gargant's fur. He nodded at Bernard, and said something in a low voice to Walker. The gargant's great claws gouged the floor of the cave, and his chest rumbled an angry threat for the enemy outside.
Bernard nodded sharply and glanced at the archers. The Knights Flora each held an arrow to the bowstring. "Wait until the last moment to shoot," he told them quietly. "Clear as many of those spears from Walker's path as you can." He fit a string to his own bow and glanced at Amara. "Ready, love?"
She felt frightened, but not so much as she had thought she would be. Perhaps there had simply been too much fear over the past hours for it to overwhelm her now. Her hand felt steady as she drew her sword from its scabbard. Really, she felt more sad than afraid. Sad that so many good men and women had lost their lives. Sad that she could do nothing better for Bernard or his men. Sad that she would have no more nights with her new husband, no more silent moments of warmth or desire.
That was behind her now. Her sword was cold and heavy and bright in her hand.
"I'm ready," she said.
Bernard nodded, closed his eyes, and took a long breath, then opened them. In his left hand, he held his great bow, arrow to the string. With his right, he drew his sword, lifted it, and roared, "Legionares! At the double, forward march!"
Bernard stepped forward into a slow jog, and every legionare behind him started out in that same step, so that their boots struck the ground in unison. Amara followed apace, struggling to keep her steps even with Bernard's. Once the legionares were all clear of the cave mouth, Bernard lifted a hand and slashed it to his left.
Amara and the Knights Flora immediately peeled away, to the left of the column's advance, making their way up a low slope that would allow them to shoot over the heads of the column almost until they engaged the taken.
Once they were clear of the column's path, Bernard lifted his hand and roared, "Legionares! Charge!"
Every Aleran throat opened in a roar of, "Calderon for Alera!" The legionares surged forward in a wave of steel, and their boots were a muffled thunder upon the rain-soaked earth as they followed the Count of Calderon into battle. At the same time, Walker emerged from the cave mouth, the bloodied gargant's battle roar joining that of the legionares as it accelerated into a lumbering run, deceptively swift for all its apparent clumsiness, his claws biting into the earth. Walker began to gain on the legionares at once, gathering momentum while Doroga whirled his long-handled cudgel over his head, howling.
An unearthly yowl rolled out from the stand of trees, and the taken moved in abrupt, silent, and perfect concert. They formed into a loose half circle, shields in the front rank, while those holding spears set them to receive the charge, making the taken shieldwall bristle with the crude weapons.
Amara beckoned Cirrus as she ran, struggling to exert the bare minimum of effort necessary for the fury to bend light and let her see the enemy. She had only one duty in this battle-to find the vord queen and point her out to Bernard.
Beside her, the Knights Flora raised their bows. Arrows flashed out through the rain, striking eyes and throats with unerring precision, and over the next ten seconds half a dozen of the spearmen fell despite the use of the Legion shields. The taken moved at once, others picking up the spears and moving into the place of the fallen-but the disruption was enough to create an opening in the fence of rude spears, allowing the legionares to drive their charge home.
Shield met shield with a deafening metallic thunder, and the legionares hewed at the crude spears with their vicious, heavy blades, further widening the opening and disrupting the formation of the taken.
"Shift left!" Bernard cried. "Shift left, left, left!"
The legionares immediately moved together, a sudden lateral dash of no more than twenty feet.
And a heartbeat later, Doroga and Walker crashed onto the breach in the thicket of spears.
Amara stared in utter shock for a moment at the gargant's impact. She had never heard a beast so loud, never seen anything so unthinkably strong. Walker's chest slammed into the shieldwall, crushing several of the taken who bore them. His great head swung left and right, slamming more of the taken around like an angry child with his toys, and Doroga leaned far over the saddle-mat with his cudgel, striking down upon the skulls of the taken. The gargant plowed through the ranks of the taken without slowing, leaving a corridor of destruction behind him, halted, whirled, and immediately laid into the ranks of the taken with savage claws.
Before the charge was complete, the legionares roared together and slammed forward in a frenzied, all-out attack, catching the taken between them and the blood-maddened gargant.
Amara bit her lip, sweeping her gaze around the battle, desperate to find the queen, to do something to help Bernard and his men. She could only watch the battle, seeing flashes of it in horrible clarity as she searched for the queen.
After the initial shock of the gargant's charge, the taken moved together into a counterattack. Within a minute, several with spears had spread out to either side of Walker, and thrust the weapons at the gargant while Doroga attempted to parry them away with his great club. The others focused on the legionares, and though the men fought with undeniable skill and courage, the numbers against them were simply too great, and their momentum began to falter.
She watched as Bernard ducked the swing of an axe wielded by an old grey-haired man, and the legionare beside him struck a killing blow upon his attacker with a downsweep of his sword. Seconds later, a child, a girl of no more than ten or twelve summers, hauled a legionares leg out from beneath him and twisted with savage power, breaking it. The legionare screamed as other taken hauled him away and fell upon him with mindless savagery. An ancient crone thrust a wooden spear into Walker's shoulder and the gargant whirled with a scream of pain, swatting at the spear and shattering its shaft.
And then Amara saw a flicker of motion, behind Doroga and Walker, something darting out of the shadow of the trees, covered by the folds of a dark cloak and hood.
"There!" she cried to the archers, pointing. "There!"
Moving swiftly, two Knights touched their last arrows, bound with oiled cloths just beneath the heads, so the embers in the small firepots on their belts set the arrows aflame. They drew and loosed, sending twin streaks of fire hissing through the rain. One arrow struck the shape directly, shattering as if it had impacted upon a heavy breastplate. The other arrow missed striking anything solid, but lodged in the folds of the vord queen's cloak.
That was the signal. Bernard's head whipped around to trace the flight of the fire arrows, and he roared commands to his legionares, who wheeled and surged toward the vord queen with desperate power. Doroga whipped his head around as the vord queen leapt at him. He threw himself to one side, rolled off the gargant's back, and landed in a heavy crouch. The vord queen whirled and rushed him, only to alter her course when Walker threw himself into the queen's path.
"Swords!" Amara snapped to the Knights with her. "With me!" They drew steel and sprinted forward, circling the chaos of the melee to head for the queen. Amara sprinted ahead of the Knights, swifter than they on foot, sidestepping a clumsy grab from one of the taken and striking it down as she flew past it. She saw the queen leap again, claws flashing in an effort to put out one of the gargant's eyes. Walker turned his head into the leap, gashing the queen with his tusks, and sending her bouncing across the earth not ten yards from Amara.
The Cursor shouted a wordless battle cry, sword raised, and called to Cirrus for swiftness enough to challenge the queen. The queen whirled to face Amara, claws spread, and let out another shriek. Half a dozen taken peeled away from the fight to charge Amara, but the Knights with her intercepted them, swords raised, and kept them from moving forward.
Amara swept her sword in a feinting cut, then reversed direction and drove her blade in a thrust aimed for the queen's eyes. The queen swatted the blade away, but not before it bit into the creature's face, tearing the hood away and giving Amara a full look at the vord queen's features for the first time.
It looked human.
It almost looked familiar.
Though its skin was green-black, shining and hard, the creature's face looked almost Aleran, but for slightly canted eyes like the Marat. Curly black hair writhed in a mussed wreath around the vord queen's head. Fangs dimpled full feminine lips. But for the fangs, the shade of its skin, and its luminous eyes, the vord queen could have been a young and lovely Aleran girl.
The queen recoiled, and a trickle of a thick, greenish fluid oozed from the cut across her cheekbone. The queen touched her cheek and stared at the blood on her fingers, raw and somehow childlike amazement on her face. "You harmed me."
"That makes us even," Amara said, her voice grim. She shouted and closed again, her sword whipping fast and hard at the queen.
The vord queen darted away from the blow and came back toward Amara with a counterattack of blinding speed that the Cursor barely avoided.
The queen shrieked as they fought, and Amara heard and felt the sudden presence of more taken at her back, breaking off from the melee to assist the queen. She ruthlessly suppressed a sudden urge to call Cirrus and sail above the battle to engage the queen in classic flying passes, and stayed focused on her enemy. She exchanged another rapid series of attack and counter with the vord queen, all too aware that the taken were closing on her with every second that passed.
"Countess!" called one of the Knights, and she turned in time to see one of them struck down by a swing of a worn woodsman's axe. Not a heartbeat later, a taken fist slammed against the neck of a second Knight, and he dropped into a limp heap.
The third Knight panicked. Half a dozen taken closed on him, and in obvious desperation he looked back at the outstretched branches of a nearby oak. He made a sharp gesture and one of those branches bent and stretched down enough for him to seize it in one hand. The branch sprang back, hauling him out and away from the hands and weapons of the taken.
But the instant he gestured, at least a dozen taken faces whirled toward the desperate Knight. Amara could almost feel a sudden, alien pressure against her eyelashes as the taken holders focused on the Knight.
Every branch of that tree, and every branch of every tree within twenty yards began to whip and thrash madly, bending and smashing and wrenching.
Seconds later, what was left of the doomed man pattered down from branch and bough in a grisly rain. None of the remains could ever have been identified as belonging to a human being.
The vord queen smiled at Amara then, as two dozen taken flung themselves toward her back.
And Amara smiled at the queen as Doroga spun in a running circle to gather terrible momentum into his war cudgel and struck.
The queen turned at the last second, and while unable to avoid the blow entirely, she slipped enough of it to survive the terrible impact of the war club, though it threw her across twenty feet of muddy ground. She rolled and came to rest crouched oddly, her weight upon her toes and her left hand. The other hung uselessly. The queen hissed and whirled to retreat-only to see Walker crash into the ranks of the taken. To one hand, Doroga closed in, his cudgel held ready, cold fury in the barbarian's eyes. To the other Amara waited, cold and bitter blade in hand, already stained with the queen's blood. And as the queen turned toward the last quarter, Bernard's legionares cut the last taken from their lord's path, and the Count of Calderon, his men holding back the taken behind him, drove his sword into the soft earth and raised the great black bow.
The queen turned to the nearest of her foes, Amara, wild eyes staring-and Amara suddenly felt an alien presence against her thoughts, like a blind hand reaching out to touch her face. Time slowed and Amara understood what was happening-earlier, the queen had listened to her thoughts. Now she was attempting to rake through them, though in doing so, she revealed her own to Amara.
Amara could all but see the queen's mind. The queen was simply stunned at what was happening. Though the Alerans had managed to entrap the queen, they had doomed themselves to do so. There was no way they would be able to escape the wrath of the taken around them, no chance that they would survive-and it had never occurred to the queen that her foe's tactics would simply decline to take survival into account.
Sacrifice.
The vord queen's thoughts locked upon the word, found there in Amara's mind.
Sacrifice.
She did not understand. Though the vord queen could comprehend that those facing it were willing to give up their own continuation to destroy hers, she did not understand the thought behind it, beneath it, motivating it. How could they regard their own deaths as a victory, regardless of what happened to their foe? It was not reasonable. It was not a manner of thought that promoted survival. Such deaths could serve no Purpose whatsoever.
It was madness.
And as she gazed upon the vord queen, Amara suddenly found herself entangled in the racing thoughts of the creature. She saw the vord queen tense, saw her leap forward, saw fangs and claws gleaming as the queen came-and Amara felt the queen decide upon her as the weakest target, the most likely path of escape. She felt the queen's detached certainty, the gathering tension as claws swept toward Amara's throat.
There was heavy thrumming sound, a thud of impact, then Bernard's first arrow struck the vord queen beneath the arm and sank to the fletchings in her flesh. The power of the impact threw her to one side and cast her to the ground, and Amara was abruptly freed from the horrible entanglement of her thoughts with the queen's.
She watched as the queen rose again, and Bernard's last arrow hammered into her throat, bloodied head erupting from her armored flesh. Again, the queen was thrown down. Again, she staggered erect, blood pouring from her wounds. She wavered, then those luminous eyes focused on Amara, and the queen flung herself into one last, desperate leap toward the Cursor.
"Amara!" Bernard cried.
Amara lifted her sword, and as the queen leapt upon her, she stood her ground, legs wide and steady. She ignored the deadly talons and claws, though she knew the queen intended to kill until no life remained in her body, and focused instead on the distance between them, on the glimmer of fangs in the queen's shrieking mouth.
And then Amara moved, all at once, a concentrated explosion of every nerve and muscle fiber that moved her sword arm alone. She drove the sturdy legionare's blade forward, and its tip dived into the queen's mouth, into her throat, and on through, parting bone and tissue. There was a horrible sensation of impact, hot pain in her arm, her leg, and a shattering collision with the ground.
Amara lay stunned for a confused moment, unable to understand why she suddenly could not see, and why someone was pouring water into her face. Then a weight was lifted from her, and she remembered the cold rain falling from the sky. Bernard lifted her, helped her sit up, and Amara stared for a moment at the unmoving corpse of the queen beside her, a legionare's blade driven to the hilt into her mouth.
"You did it, love," Bernard said. "You did it."
She leaned wearily against him. Around them, she could see perhaps twenty legionares fighting shield to shield. Doroga, wounded with a dozen small cuts, stood beside Walker. Though the beast shook its tusks defiantly, it hardly seemed able to remain standing, much less to fight, and when it lunged at one of the taken, the thing easily evaded the clumsy, limping motion.
Amara blinked the rain out of her eyes and watched as scores of taken fought to overwhelm the exhausted, outnumbered Alerans.
"We did it," she said, and just speaking the words was exhausting. "We did it."
Thunder rolled again, amidst angry lightning, and the firelit clouds of the furystorm rolled down the mountainside toward the embattled scene.
"Hold me?" Amara asked quietly.
"All right," Bernard said.
And then a storm of fire and deafening sound roared down from the low clouds and charred two dozen of the taken holders to ash and blackened bones.
Amara gasped, leaning weakly against Bernard.
"Close in!" Bernard bellowed. "Close in, stay together, stay low!" Amara was aware of the legionares, struggling to obey Bernard's orders, of Doroga urging Walker in one of the Marat tongues. But mostly she was conscious of another flicker of light in the clouds, an eight-pointed star formed of lightning that danced from point to point so swiftly to make it seem a wheel of sudden fire-a fire that coalesced, flashed down, and charred another, even broader swath of the taken to corpses.
She had to have been imagining it. From the furious sky appeared dozens of forms-Knights Aeris, both flying formation and serving as bearers for open aerial litters. Twice more, lightning tore from the heavens, rending the ranks of the taken, and then another eight Knights Aeris descended low enough to be seen, gathering a final burst of lightning into an eight-pointed star between them, and hurling it down at the taken.
Men in armor, mercenaries she thought, dismounted from the litters and engaged the remaining taken. There was a stunned moment of shock. And then came a roar from the surviving legionares as impossible hope washed over them.
Amara struggled to rise, and Bernard supported her, his sword held still in one hand, as the mercenaries and the legionares, between them, shattered the rest of the taken and put them down. Most of the fighting mercenaries wielded blades with the devastating grace and skill of master metalcrafters.
"Knights," Amara whispered. "They're all Knights. Every one of them."
A man cut down three of the taken in as many strokes, then casually turned and began walking toward Bernard before the last one had fully fallen to the ground. He was a giant of a man, heavily armored, and as he approached he took off his helmet and bore it under one arm. He had dark hair, a beard, an angry scar, not too old on one cheek, and his eyes were calm, detached, passionless.
"You," Bernard said to the man.
"Aldrick ex Gladius," Amara said. "Of the Windwolves. In service to the High Lord Aquitaine. I thought you were dead."
The captain of the mercenaries nodded his head. "That was the idea," he said. He gestured around at the mercenaries now engaged in mopping up the last of the enemy and looking for wounded in need of assistance. "Compliments of Steadholder Isana, Lord Count, Countess Amara."
Bernard pursed his lips. "Really? Then she did find help at the capital."
Aldrick nodded once. "We were dispatched here to aid the garrison by whatever means we could. I apologize we were not here sooner, but bad weather slowed us. Though I suppose it meant we had a nice, ripe storm to play with when we did arrive." He glanced up at the skies and mused, "It takes the fun out of things, but it isn't professional to let that kind of resource go to waste."
"I cannot say that I am sorry to have your help, Aldrick," Bernard said. "But neither can I say that I am glad to see you. The last time we met, you all but gutted me on the walls of Garrison."
Aldrick tilted his head to one side, and said, "You've been a soldier. That wasn't personal, Your Excellency. I neither offer you any apology nor take any particular pleasure in what I did. But I need you to tell me if you can live with that, right now. One way or another, it's got to be settled immediately."
Bernard frowned at the man and nodded once. "I can. I would have word of Steadholder Isana."
Aldrick nodded. "Of course, though I have little enough to give you. But first, Your Excellency-"
Bernard slashed a hand at the air. "Bernard. You've saved my men's lives. You don't need to use the title."
Aldrick tilted his head to one side, and his expression changed by some subtle degree. He inclined his head, a minor but significant gesture of respect, and continued, "I suggest that we take shelter in that cave, then. My Knights Aeris stole a great deal of a powerful wind fury's thunder, and it will send windmanes to seek vengeance. With your permission, Count, we'll move into the caves to shelter until the storm is past. My watercrafters can see to your wounded while we are there."
Amara frowned steadily at Aldrick, but when Bernard glanced at her she nodded weakly. "We can sort out our past differences after we've all survived the storm."
"Excellent," Aldrick said, turning away with professional preoccupation. He flipped his hand in a short series of gestures at one of his fellow mercenaries, who spread word to the rest of them. Bernard passed on orders to gather up the Aleran wounded and make for the cave in order to find shelter from the still-coming storm.
"I can walk," Amara told Bernard. She took a step to prove it and almost fell down.
He caught her, and said, "Gently, love. Let me take you. You've hit your head."
"Mmmm," Amara murmured with a sigh. Then she blinked her eyes slowly open and said, "Oh, dear."
"Oh dear?" Bernard asked.
She reached up and touched her throat, where Bernard's ring still hung by its chain. "Oh, dear. We've survived. We're alive. And... and we're wed."
Bernard blinked a few times, then mused, "Why, yes. I suppose that's true. We've lived. And we've married. I suppose now we'll have to stay together. Perhaps even be in love."
"Exactly," Amara repeated, closing her weary eyes with a sigh and leaning against the broad strength of his chest. "This ruins everything."
He walked several steps, carrying her without apparent effort, before he said, "Will you still have me, then?"
She lifted her face to press a kiss against his throat, and murmured, "Forever, my lord, if you will have me."
He answered her with his voice thick with emotion. "Aye, my lady. And honored to."
Chapter 51
Tavi went first, rushing back up the winding stairway. The clash of steel on steel warned them that they were drawing near, and several steps later, the steps went dark and slick with spilled blood. Tavi looked up to see Captain Miles holding the stairs against the Canim. One Cane was down, crumpled lifelessly to the stone stairs, and its blood had formed the stream that stained them. The dead Cane's companions had simply walked over the corpse, digging clawed toes into it to secure their footing on the treacherous, slick stairway.
Miles had been driven slowly down the stairs by the sheer power of his foes, and he had been wounded again; his left leg was soaked in blood from the knee down. As a result, his balance was awkward and precarious on the curl of the stairway, and he had to shuffle his balance clumsily to retreat down another step, while his opponent showered blow after blow down at the wounded captain.
Behind Miles, leaning heavily against a wall, was Maestro Killian. His sword lay several steps below where he stood, and he clutched his cane tightly to his chest. His chest and shoulder were soaked with blood: He'd been wounded as well.
"Tavi?" Killian gasped. "Hurry. Hurry, boy!"
"Fade," Tavi snapped, and pressed his back to the wall to give the scarred slave room to pass.
Fade lifted his eyes to Tavi, then past him, to Miles, widening as they saw the man's injuries, and how obviously he'd been slowed and weakened by them. Fade's eyes narrowed, then he was in motion, darting past Tavi to rush forward to Sir Miles.
"Miles!" Fade barked. "Step out low!"
Captain Miles moved with the kind of instant response that can only come from training and long practice. He feinted high with his blade, then just as Fade reached him, he dropped into a crouch and rolled to his left, bumping awkwardly down several stairs.
Fade did not draw his sword until Miles first dropped, then it sprang from its sheath in a strike that cut the air with a vicious hiss. It struck the Cane's weapon at its weakest point, just above the hilt, and shattered it into shards of scarlet steel that struck sparks from the stone wherever they hit. A second strike removed the Cane's leg at the knee, and as it fell a third blow struck the creature's head from its neck. Fade delivered a kick to the falling body's belly, and it tottered backward, blood spraying in a fountain into the noses and eyes of the next Cane in the line.
Fade advanced, stepping on the fallen Cane to keep his footing, and his blade slithered through the guard of the blinded Cane, opening its belly in an S-shaped cut that spilled blood and worse onto the stairs. The Cane fell, snapping with its jaws and slashing with its blade as it died, but Fade blocked both with almost contemptuous skill, and finished the Cane with a flickering cut to the throat that flowed directly into another step forward and up, coupled with a sweeping stroke aimed at the next Cane in the line.
Tavi ran up to the Maestro, checking Killian's injuries. He'd taken a nasty blow to the slope of muscle between neck and shoulder, and had been fortunate that the blow had cut no deeper than it had. Tavi drew his knife and cut off a section of his cloak, folded it into a pad, and pressed it to the injury. "There," he said. "Hold this there."
Killian did so, though his face was pale with pain. "Tavi. I can't see them," he said, voice tight. "I can't... tell me what is happening."
"Fade is fighting," Tavi said. "Miles is hurt, but he's alive. Three Canim are down now."
Killian let out a soft groan. "There are ten more beyond them," he said. "Felt them earlier. One of them tore up Miles's leg when he struck it down. Got his teeth into him before he died, and Miles fell. I had to step in until he could rise. Stupid. Too old to be thinking I can do this nonsense."
"Ten," Tavi breathed. The shock of Fade's arrival to the fight had worn off, and now he fought without any sort of forward movement, his blade clashing with that of the snarling Cane, each striking and parrying with deadly speed.
There was a sudden rush of air sweeping up from the stairway beneath them, then a hollow, deafening boom that shook the stone beneath them.
"Bloody crows," Tavi swore, bracing himself against the wall. "What was that?"
Killian tilted his head, blind eyes focused on nothing. "Firecrafting," he said. "A big one. Maybe in the hall at the top of the stairs."
"The Guard," Tavi said, sudden hope a surge in his chest. "They're coming."
"H-have to hold-" Killian said. "Must-" Then the Maestro sagged and almost fell.
Tavi caught his slight weight with a curse. "Kitai!" he called.
She came up to him immediately, sword in hand, her eyes on the fight a few steps above them. "Is he dead?"
"Not yet," Tavi said. "Take him. Get him back down the stairs, by Max."
Kitai nodded once and slipped the sword through her belt, before picking up Killian at least as easily as Tavi had. "Wait," he told her, and hurriedly cut another strip from his cloak, using it to bind the blood-soaked pad he'd fashioned over the Maestro's injuries. "There," he said. "Go, go."
Kitai nodded, and met his eyes. Her own were worried. "Be cautious, Aleran."
"Don't be gone long," Tavi replied, and she nodded shortly before turning to descend the stairs.
Tavi went to Miles next. The captain had hauled himself up to a sitting position, back against the wall, and lay there panting, his eyes closed. He looked almost violently weary, chest heaving, his face bloodied and horrible with its empty eye socket, and creased with pain despite his crafting. Tavi knelt near him, and Miles's sword arm twitched seemingly of its own volition, blade darting out to touch its tip to Tavi's throat.
Tavi froze, eyes wide, and said, "Sir Miles, it's Tavi."
The wounded captain opened his eye and blinked blearily at Tavi. The sword wavered and dropped. Tavi knelt immediately, examining Miles's injuries. The wounds on his face looked hideous, but they weren't deadly. Some of them had already clotted with blood. His wounded leg was much worse. The Cane's teeth had sunk into the meat of his thigh, just above his knee, and then ripped savagely through his flesh, until it looked like so much raw meat. Tavi jerked his cloak off and used the remaining material to fashion another thick pad and tie it tight.
"Guard?" Miles muttered. His voice was thready and weak. "The Guard got here?"
"Not yet," Tavi said.
"Wh-who, then? That's... that's old battlespeak. Step out low. Haven't heard it in years." He blinked his eye at Tavi, then turned his head almost drunkenly to the battle raging only a few stairs away.
Miles froze. His eye opened wider, and then his lips parted to let out a soft, weak little sound. He started trembling, so violently that Tavi could feel it in his hands as he finished with the bandage on the captain's thigh. "This isn't..." His face twisted into a grotesque grimace. "No, this isn't possible. He's dead. He died with Septimus. They all died with Septimus."
Fade dodged a sweeping blow of the Cane's sword by the width of a blade of grass, then struck out in a pair of blows that maimed the Cane's weapon arm, then struck its muzzle from its skull. The Cane fell toward him in a sudden frenzy of motion, trying to seize him with its remaining paw-hand, but Fade ducked away, retreating down three steps as the Cane fell, and struck a blow that sheared off a portion of its skull and killed it at once. He barely got his blade up fast enough to block the next Cane's sword, and the creature's vicious attack put him on the defensive, driving him down another step.
"Now draw him out," Miles said in a dull voice. "Make him overextend, and take the weapon arm and leg."
The Cane missed a throat slash by a hair, nearly struck Fade with the scything return stroke, and had Fade wobbling on the edge of the next step as the Cane surged forward. In the instant before it struck, Fade recovered his balance, so quickly that Tavi knew it had been a ruse from the outset, ducked under the Cane's blade, then surged inside its guard, struck a crippling blow to its weapon arm, then down to its forward leg in one single circular motion. The Cane fell, but not before Fade's sword had circled around again, using the Cane's own weight to add power to its upswing and all but severing the wolf-warrior's head as it fell.
"Perfect," Miles said quietly. "Perfect. He was always perfect." He blinked his eye several times, and Tavi saw a tear slice down through the blood on Miles's face. "Furies. He's gotten better since that day. But it can't be. It can't be."
"Miles," Tavi said quietly. "You aren't seeing things. It's your brother."
"Araris is dead," Miles snarled.
"He looks fairly lively to me," Tavi said.
Miles shook his head again, weeping, as Fade's sword wove an impenetrable sheet of steel between himself and the next Cane warrior. "See, there," he mumbled, his tone suddenly distant again. "That was Septimus's favorite defense. He learned it from pirates, for fighting on slick decks in rough seas. The Princeps taught it to all of us. Or tried to. Only Aldrick and Araris really understood it. How could I not have seen him?" He turned his eye from Fade to Tavi, his expression bewildered. "How could this be? How can he be here?"
"He came with me," Tavi said quietly. "From Calderon. He'd been a slave in my uncle's steadholt since I was a child. Gaius brought him here when I came."
"Gaius. Why would Gaius..." His voice suddenly trailed off, and his eye widened again. Beneath the blood on his face, Miles's skin went white, and he stared at Tavi. "Great furies," he whispered. "Great bloody furies."
Tavi frowned at Miles. "What is it?"
Miles open his mouth, then hesitated, his expression an anguish of pain, exhaustion, and shock.
"Tavi!" Fade shouted suddenly, and Tavi whipped his eyes upward.
Fade still fought furiously, his plain old blade striking sparks from the bloodsteel of the Canim weapons, but motion on the ceiling drew Tavi's eyes as spindly, many-legged forms glided swiftly and gracefully along the stone.
Wax spiders. Keepers.
Miles gripped his sword, but the wax spiders did not attack them. They simply flowed overhead, moving in an undulating line of a dozen or more, and vanished around the curve of the stairs below them.
The First Lord. Max. The Maestro. They all lay helpless down there. The deadly venom of the wax spiders would finish them. Only Kitai was capable of defending herself, and she did not know that the spiders were coming. She would never be able to defend all the wounded if they caught her unawares. She would be lucky to survive it herself.
"Gaius," Miles hissed. "They're going down for Gaius." He tried to get his leg underneath him and rise-but Tavi suddenly realized that the Cane had savaged Miles's good leg. His other, the one that had never fully healed, that had given him a permanent limp, could not support him entirely on its own. Even had his injuries left his leg functional, Tavi was unsure Miles could have risen on his own. Exhaustion and loss of blood had taken a horrible toll, and Tavi realized that it was everything Miles could do simply to remain conscious.
Tavi pushed Miles back against the wall, and said, "Stay here. I'll go."
"No," Miles growled. "I'm coming with you."
He tried to rise again, but Tavi slammed him back against the wall with ease. "Captain!" He met Miles's eyes, and said, without rancor, "You're no good to anyone in this condition. You'll slow me down."
Miles closed his eyes for a moment, mouth pressed into a bitter line. Then he nodded once, took his sword, and offered its bloody hilt to Tavi.
Tavi took the captain's sword and met his eyes. Miles tried to smile at him, then grasped Tavi's shoulder with one hand, and said, "Go, lad."
Tavi's heart pounded with terror more pure and awful than anything he had felt in all of his life-not fear for himself, though he certainly was afraid. He was terrified not so much by the prospect of his death as by the possibility that he was insufficient to the task. He was the only one who might warn Kitai and defend the wounded from the wax spiders.
The consequences of failure were too horrible to contemplate, and every second that passed counted against him.
Even as those thoughts played through his mind, Tavi laid the sword back along his forearm in case he should slip on the stairs, then flung himself down them with wild abandon.
Chapter 52
Fidelias hated flying.
Granted, shooting up the long shaft in the Deeps had little in common with soaring above the countryside, at least superficially, but cut each of the experiences to the bone and the only real difference was that outdoor flight had a better view. He was still traveling at a terrifying rate of speed, and he had no control whatsoever over either his speed or his course-and, most importantly, his life was utterly dependent upon someone else.
Lady Aquitaine could kill him at any moment, simply by doing nothing at all. Gravity would hammer him to the floor far below, and it was unlikely anyone who found his corpse would be able to identify it, much less trace it to her. He would be helpless to stop her, and he knew perfectly well that she was capable of a calculated murder. If ever he became a liability to her ambitions, she might well decide to remove him.
Of course, he mused, Lady Aquitaine could arguably murder him at any moment, for any reason or none at all, and there would be as little he could do to stop her. He had turned against the Crown and committed himself to the cause of her husband's house, and only their continued satisfaction with his service prevented them from turning him over to the Crown or, more likely, quietly doing away with him. There it was. His reaction to the flight up the long shaft was irrational. He was in no more danger now than at any other given moment.
But he still hated flying.
He glanced aside at Lady Aquitaine as they rose on a column of wind. The dark banner of her hair whipped back and forth like a pennon in the gale, and her silk dress did the same, offering the occasional flash of her pale and shapely legs. Fidelias had long since dispensed with the natural hesitation of most people to treat watercrafters as contemporaries despite the apparent youth of their features. He had dealt with far too many outwardly youthful men and women who possessed the experience and judgment far exceeding what their appearance suggested. Lady Aquitaine was little younger than Fidelias, but her face, form, and figure was that of a young woman in her prime.
Not that Fidelias hadn't seen her legs and a great deal more before now.
She saw him looking and quirked a small smile at him, her eyes sparkling. Then she nodded above them, to where the distant pinpoint of light that marked the end of the shaft had grown steadily nearer, until Fidelias could see the iron bars placed over the opening of the shaft.
They slowed to a halt, just below the bars, and Fidelias counted out to the third from the right, then gave it a twist and a sharp tug. The bar slid from its mounting, and Fidelias pulled himself up through the gap, then leaned down to offer Lady Aquitaine his hand to help guide her through as well.
They emerged into a hallway inside the palace itself, a service corridor that ran from the kitchens to the banquet halls and the royal apartments. Alarm bells rang, and Fidelias knew the sound would be carrying through virtually every hallway in the palace. At this time of night, the service corridor would probably be deserted, but there was always the chance that a guard, responding to the alarm, might use it as a shortcut. Not only that, but within the hour the first few servants would head for the kitchens to begin readying the morning meals. The more quickly they left, the better.
"I still regard this as unwise," Fidelias murmured. He strung his short, heavy bow, laid an arrow to its string, and checked to make sure the rest were at hand. "It's foolish for you to risk being seen with me."
Lady Aquitaine made a clucking sound and waved a hand in airy dismissal. "All you need do is guide me to the disturbance, then depart," she said. She winced, and touched a hand to her forehead.
"Are you well?" Fidelias asked.
"Windcrafting sometimes gives me headaches," she replied. "I had to draw that air all the way from the river and up through the Deeps to lift us. It was extremely heavy."
"Air?" Fidelias asked. "Heavy?"
"When you're trying to move enough it is, dear spy, believe me." She lowered her hand and looked around, frowning. "A service corridor?"
"Aye," Fidelias said, and started down it. "We're close to the royal suites and the stairway down to the meditation chamber. There are several ways down to the Deeps throughout that portion of the palace."
Lady Aquitaine nodded and kept pace, following slightly behind Fidelias. He led her down the hall a short distance, to an intersection that would allow them to bypass a sentry post-though he suspected that the entire Royal Guard was responding to the alarm bells, there was no point in taking chances. Fidelias took the servant's entrance into a richly appointed sitting room, dim and quiet since Gaius's first wife had died some twenty years before, now opened only for dusting and tidying. Inside the sitting room, a section of the oak paneling over the stone walls swung out to reveal a small passageway.
"I love these," Lady Aquitaine murmured. "Where does this one lead?"
"To Lady Annalisa's old chambers," Fidelias murmured. "This room here used to be Gaius Pentius's study."
"With a direct passage to his mistress's chambers, hmm?" Lady Aquitaine shook her head, smiling. "Palace or not, it's all so petty once you've scratched the surface."
"True enough." They shut the hidden panel behind them and emerged into a large bedroom suite centered around an enormous bed on a slightly elevated section of floor. This room, too, had the look of something that had been largely discarded, and Fidelias crossed to the door, cracked it open very slightly, and peered out into the hallway.
The crash and cry of combat rang out as soon as he had opened the door. Not thirty feet away, the Royal Guard crowded against the doorway leading down to the First Lord's meditation chamber. Fidelias sucked in a quick breath. The metal door had been smashed flat to the floor inside the room by some unthinkably powerful impact. Even as he watched, a guardsman went through the door, weapon at the ready, and stumbled back a breath later, clutching his hands to a long wound across his abdomen. He was hauled to one side, where other wounded were being seen to by a harried-looking healer, who kept trying to craft the worst injuries closed enough to keep the wounded alive until more could be done for them. The other members of the Guard struggled to fight their way through the door, but it was clear that the alarm had found them unprepared, and there didn't seem to be any organization to their efforts.
"Wait here," Lady Aquitaine said, and strode out into the hallway. She walked purposefully over to the nearest guardsman, and said, tone steady and crackling with authority, "Guardsman, who is in charge of this riot?"
The man whipped his head around and blinked at the High Lady. His mouth worked a couple of times, and he said, "This way, Your Grace." He led her over to the healer, and said, "Jens! Jens! Lady Aquitaine!"
The healer looked up sharply, studying Lady Aquitaine for a brief second, before nodding to her and returning to his work. "Your Grace."
"You are the commanding officer here?" she asked.
A spear flew out of the guardroom as though cast by some enormous bow, spitting another one of the guardsmen. The man started screaming.
"Get him over here!" the healer shouted. He glanced up at the High Lady again, and said, "The captain is nowhere to be found. Every regular centurion on duty has been killed, but technically I carry the rank of centurion." The guardsmen brought the impaled man to him, and the healer seized his kit and whipped out a bone saw. He started hacking through the spear's shaft with it. "Crows take it," he snarled, "hold him still!" He grimaced as he cut the spear shaft and slid the weapon out of the wounded guardsman. "If you will excuse me, Your Grace. If I don't give these men all my attention, they'll die."
"If someone doesn't lead them, you're going to have a great deal more of them to tend to," Lady Aquitaine said. She frowned down at the healer, then said, "I'm assuming command until one of your centurions or the captain arrives, healer."
"Yes, fine," the healer said. He looked up at the guardsmen, and said, "Let Lady Aquitaine get things organized, Victus."
"Yes, sir," the guardsman said. "Uh, Your Grace. What are your orders?"
"Report," she said sharply. "Exactly what is happening here?"
"There are four or five Canim holding the first guard station against us," the guardsman said. "They've killed the guards in the room, and about a dozen who have tried to get in, including Centurion Hirus. More of the men are on the way, but our Knights were off duty tonight, and we're still trying to find them."
"Who is down there?"
"We can't be sure," the guardsman replied. "But the First Lord's page came through and warned us of an attack, and Gaius is usually in his meditation chamber at this time of night. The men in the first room went down fighting, so he must have warned them."
"The Canim left some to hold the door against you while the others go after the First Lord," Lady Aquitaine said. "How long have the alarms been sounding?"
"Ten minutes, perhaps, Your Grace. Give us another ten, and our Knights will be here."
"The First Lord doesn't have that long," she said, and spun toward the doorway. She spoke in what seemed a normal tone of voice, but it rang clearly over the sounds of battle and carried the tone of absolute authority. "Guardsmen, clear the doorway at once."
Lady Aquitaine strode to stand in front of the doorway, the guardsmen falling back as she did so. She faced the room, frowned, and raised her left hand, palm up. There was a sullen flash of red light, then a sphere of fire the size of a large grape swelled into life there.
"Your Grace!" the guardsman protested. "A firecrafting could be dangerous for those below."
"A large fire would," Lady Aquitaine replied, and then she hurled the sphere of fire through the doorway.
From where he was standing, Fidelias couldn't see precisely what happened next, but there was a thunderous sound, and wildly dancing light spilled from the room. He saw the sphere flash past the doorway several times, moving in a swift blur and rebounding off every surface within. Lady Aquitaine stood staring at the room for perhaps a minute, then nodded once, decisively. "The room is clear. Gentlemen, to the First Lord at once!"
Something set Fidelias's instincts screaming, and he opened the door enough to look the other way down the hall as the Royal Guard poured forward into the room.
It was the first time he had seen the vord.
A pair of hunchbacked, black shapes were coming down the hall, each one the size of a small horse and covered in chitinous black plates. They had legs like those of an insect, and moved with an awkward, scuttling gait that nonetheless covered ground very swiftly. On the floor beside them, on the walls around them, even on the ceiling above they were accompanied by dozens and dozens of pale forms the size of a wild dog, also covered in chitinous plating, gliding along on eight graceful, insect limbs.
He stared at them for half a second, and began to shout a warning. He clamped down on the urge. There were thirty or forty guardsmen in the hallway and more arriving at every moment. If one of them saw him, odds were good that he would never leave the palace alive. The only rational thing to do was remain silent.
The creatures drew closer, and Fidelias saw the heavy mandibles on the larger beasts, the twitching fangs on the smaller ones. Though it seemed impossible, no one in the hall had seen them yet. Everyone was focused on getting forward through the doorway to aid the First Lord. Lady Aquitaine had her back to the oncoming vord, listening to an appeal from the frantic healer.
The vord drew closer.
Fidelias stared at them, then realized something. He was afraid for the men in the hall. He was afraid for those wounded lying helplessly on the marble floor, for the desperate healer trying to care for them, and afraid for Lady Aquitaine, who had acted with such decisive precision to control the chaos she had found there when she arrived.
One of the pale spiders made a gliding, twenty-foot jump, landing ahead of its fellows on the marble, and only twenty feet from Lady Aquitaine's back. Without pause, it flung itself through the air at her.
To expose himself would be the height of irrationality. Suicide.
Fidelias raised his bow, drew the string tight, and shot the leaping spider out of the air three feet before it touched Lady Aquitaine. The arrow impaled the spider and sank into the wooden paneling of the wall, where the creature writhed in helpless agony.
"Your Grace!" Fidelias thundered. "Behind you!"
Lady Aquitaine turned, her eyes flashing in time with the blade of her sword as she drew and saw the oncoming threat. The guardsmen, once warned, reacted with trained speed, weapons appearing as if by magic, and a cloud of pale spiders flung themselves forward through the air in an alien flood.
Men started screaming, their voices joining with a chorus of shrill, whistling shrieks. Steel tore into the pale spiders. Fangs found naked flesh of throats and calves and anywhere else not protected by armor.
Fidelias had seen many battles. He had seen battlecrafting on both large and minor scales. He had worked closely with units of Knights, pitted himself against other furycrafters of various levels of strength, and he had seen the deadly potency of such crafting.
But he had never seen one of the High Blood of Alera enter into open battle.
Within seconds, he understood the vast chasm of power that yawned between a Knight's power, or his own, and that of someone of the blood and skill of Lady Aquitaine.
As the spiders hurled themselves forward, the hallway dissolved into chaos, but for the area near Lady Aquitaine. Her sword moved like a shaft of light, intercepting one spider after another and striking with lethal precision. Her expression never altered from the serene mask she habitually wore, as she weathered the initial wave of leaping creatures, and the instant she had bought herself a few seconds free of attack, she lifted a hand and cried out, her eyes flashing.
Half the hallway beyond exploded into flame, consuming the vord in blinding heat. A furnace-hot gale exploded through the halls in another rattling detonation, but the crafting had stopped the tide of spiders only briefly. Those that survived the fires flung themselves onward over the smoldering remains of their kin.
And then their larger kin arrived.
One of the warrior vord seized a guardsman, its armor turning aside several blows from the man's heavy sword, and shook him back and forth like a dog with a rat. Fidelias heard the man's neck break, and the vord threw him aside and lunged for the next in line-Lady Aquitaine.
The High Lady dropped the sword as the vord warrior closed, and caught the creature's mandibles in her gloved hands as it tried to close them on her neck.
Lady Aquitaine's mouth quirked into an amused little smile, and the earth shook as she called forth power from it and slowly shoved the creature's jaws back open. It began to struggle frantically, but the High Lady of Aquitaine did not release it, pushing its jaws wider until there was a sickly cracking sound, and the vord began flailing its limbs wildly. Once that happened, she seized one of the mandibles in both hands, spun, and hurled the warrior fifty feet down the hall, into a tall marble pillar, where its armor shattered and it fell like a broken toy, gushing alien fluid, twitching, and dying.
The second warrior flung itself directly at her. Lady Aquitaine saw it coming, and with that same amused little smile, she leapt back and up into the air into graceful flight, a sudden wind rising to support her, just out of reach of the vord warrior.
But for all her power, she did not have eyes in the back of her head. Spiders she had not seen dropped down toward her from the ceiling. Fidelias did not waste his time in thinking. He focused on his task, sending a pair of heavy arrows flashing over the distance between them, tacking one of the spiders to the ceiling before it had fallen six inches, and hammering the other away from Lady Aquitaine a bare foot above her head.
She snapped her head around and saw the results of Fidelias's shooting, then flashed him a fierce, heated smile. Below her, the guardsmen were fighting together now, after the initial shock of the vord attack, and reinforcements were arriving, including two Knights Flora and half a dozen Knights Ferrous, whose archery and swordplay brought the second vord warrior down in short order.
Lady Aquitaine darted over to hover above the wounded guardsmen on the ground, almost casually striking down spiders that approached them with fists of wind and flame. Once more guardsmen arrived, she alighted to the marble floor outside the doorway of the room Fidelias remained within.
"Well done, Fidelias," she said quietly. "Your archery was superb. And thank you."
"Did you think I would not support you when the action began, my lady?"
She tilted her head. Then she said, "You exposed yourself to warn me, Fidelias. And to warn the guard. These men, if they didn't have larger worries at hand, would hunt you down and kill you."
Fidelias nodded. "Yes."
"Then why did you risk yourself for them?"
"Because, my lady," he said quietly, "I turned against Gaius. Not Alera."
She narrowed her eyes and nodded thoughtfully. "I see. It wasn't something I had expected of you, Fidelias."
He inclined his head to her. "Some of those spider creatures got through, my lady. They went on down the stairway."
"There's little to be done for that," she replied. "Best you take your leave now, before the fighting is finished and someone remembers seeing you. Guardsmen are already on the way down to the stairs. We are fortunate to have had your warning. Without it, their attack might have succeeded."
"I don't believe it was meant to succeed," Fidelias said, frowning. "It was meant to delay us."
"If so, it only did so for a few minutes," Lady Aquitaine said.
Fidelias nodded and withdrew from the doorway toward the hidden passage. "But critical minutes, my lady, in a desperate hour," he said. "Great furies grant that we are not now too late."