Princeps' Fury
Chapter 13~14
Chapter 13
Amara held the arrow nocked firmly against the bowstring, and kept enough steady pressure against it to ensure a swift and certain draw, but not too much to tire her arm. It had been a surprisingly difficult skill to learn, at least until she'd developed enough of the proper musculature to use the bow her husband had made for her. She took a slow step forward and put her foot down silently, her eyes focused into the middle distance, at nothing, the way she'd been trained. The forest was almost silent in the stillness just before dawn, but Cirrus, her wind fury, carried every tiny sound to her ears as clearly as if it'd been a voice speaking from directly beside her.
Trees creaked in tiny breaths of wind. Sleeping birds stirred, their feathers rustling. Something scuttled among the higher branches of a tree, probably a squirrel getting an early start on the day, or a night rodent of some kind crawling back to its nest. Something rustled, perhaps a deer making its way through the brush-
C and perhaps not.
Amara focused Cirrus on the sound and located a second rustling, that of cloth on cloth. Not a deer, then, but her target.
She pivoted toward the sound, in perfect silence, moving slowly to keep it, focusing on maintaining her own invisibility. Learning to master the use of the furycrafted cloth had been simpler than she had expected-certainly easier than employing a windcrafted veil. All she had to do was maintain a low level of concentration, focusing on the colors of her surroundings, drawing them in from what she saw, and the cloth would absorb and mimic them, rendering her into little more than a blur of background color. Granted, the original designer of the cloth, an expensive clothier in Aquitaine, had nearly shrieked the skies down when she'd heard how her invention, designed as the absolute pinnacle of wealthy fashion, was to be used.
The thought made Amara smile. Just a little.
She couldn't see anything where her ears told her something should be, but that didn't matter. She drew the bow in a slow, practiced motion, and loosed the arrow.
The arrow flew, swift and straight, and from the empty air appeared a form of blurred color that eventually resolved itself into the shape of her husband. The blunted wooden arrow hadn't been a deadly threat, but as he cast back his own color-shifting cloak and rubbed at his ribs, wincing, Amara found her own side twinging in sympathy.
"Ouch," she murmured, parting her cloak and revealing herself. "Sorry."
He looked around for a moment until he spotted her and shook his head. "Don't be. Well done. What did you think?"
"I had to use Cirrus to track the sound of your movement. I never saw you, not even when I knew where you where."
"Nor I, you, even tracking you with earthcraft. I'd say the cloaks work then," Bernard said, his wince of pain broadening into a grin. "Aquitainus Invidia may not have given a crow's feather about the Realm, but it seems that her fashion sense is going to be of service."
Amara laughed and shook her head. "When that seamstress heard we wanted her to break those gowns down and refashion them into traveling cloaks, I thought she was going to start foaming at the mouth-the more so when one was to be made for you."
Bernard made his way quietly through the brush, as always seeming to pass through it with hardly a branch or leaf disturbed by his presence, despite his size. "I'm sure a liberal dosing of silver and gold eased the symptoms."
"That will be up to Gaius's accountants," Amara said smugly. "I had a letter of credit with the Crown's seal upon it. All she could do was pray that I wasn't some sort of confidence artist watercrafted into the semblance of Calderonus Amara."
Bernard paused for a moment, blinking. "My."
She tilted her head. "What is it?"
"That's... the name of my House."
Amara wrinkled up her nose at him and laughed. "Well, yes, my lord. So it would seem. Your letters are all signed His Excellency, Count Calderonus Bernard, remember?"
He didn't smile in reply. His expression was, instead, very thoughtful. He fell into a pensive silence as they walked back to their camp, after the final tests of their new equipment. Amara walked beside him without saying anything. It never helped Bernard to prod at him while he was forming thoughts. It sometimes took her husband time to properly forge the things in his head into words, but it was-at least usually-worth the wait.
"It's always been a job," Bernard said at last. "My rank. The way being a Steadholder was. Something I did for my livelihood."
"Yes," Amara said, nodding.
He gestured vaguely toward the northeast, toward Riva, and their home in Calderon. "And it's been a place. Garrison. The town, the fortress, the people who lived there. The problems to be solved and so on. Do you follow?"
"I think so."
"Calderonus Bernard was just that fellow who was supposed to make sure everyone had somewhere to go during furystorms," Bernard rumbled. "And who made sure that men with more time on their hands than sense didn't bother people trying to work for a living, and who was trying to build up a lasting peace with his neighbors to the east rather than occasionally being eaten by them."
Amara laughed at that and slipped her fingers between his.
"But Calderonus Amara..." He shook his head. "I've... never heard it said aloud. Did you realize that?"
Amara frowned and thought about it. "No. I suppose it's because for so long we were..." Her cheeks flushed. "Improper."
"Illicit lovers," Bernard said, not without a certain amount of satisfaction. "Frequent illicit lovers."
Amara's cheeks grew warmer. "Yes. Well. Your people, whom we spent most of our time together among, hardly wished to throw that in your face. So they just called me your lady."
"Exactly. So now there's this new person, you see. Calderonus Amara."
She looked obliquely up at him. "Who is she?" she asked quietly.
"A temptress who seduces married men in their bedrolls in the depths of the night where all the stars can see, apparently."
She laughed again. "I was cold. As I recall, the rest was your idea."
"I don't recall it that way at all," he said gravely, his eyes shining. His fingers tightened gently in hers. "She is also the wife of that Calderonus fellow. The founder of House Calderonus. Something that... something that could last a good long while. Something that could stand, and grow. That could do a lot of people a lot of good."
Amara felt herself quail a little inside, but steeled herself against it. "For that to happen, a House needs children, Bernard," she said quietly. "And I'm not... We haven't..." She shrugged. "At this point, I'm not sure it's going to happen."
"Or it might," Bernard said. "Some things can't be hurried along."
"But what if I can't?" she asked, without malice or grief in the tone. After a second, she felt startled to realize that she didn't feel any, either. Or at least, not nearly so much as she had in the past. "I'm not trying to gather sympathy, love. It's a rational question. If I can't provide you with an heir, what will you do?"
"We adopt," Bernard said promptly.
She arched an eyebrow. "Bernard, the laws regarding Citizenship-"
"Oh, to the crows with those codes," Bernard spat, grinning. "I've read them. They're mostly an excuse for Citizens not to give up their money and status to anyone but their own children. Great furies know, if it was all based upon blood, all those bastard children, like Antillar Maximus, should certainly be inheriting Citizenship."
"Adopt the bastard of a Citizen," Amara mused.
"They'd have every bit as much potential for strong furycraft as a child born of us would," Bernard said. "And crows, there are enough of them, the way some Citizens carry on. Why not provide some kind of positive direction for a few of them? I'd bet every sword in my armory that nearly every one of those mercenary Knights of the Aquitaines is a bastard child of a Citizen."
"Suppose we manage to get away with it?" she asked him. "Then what?"
He arched an eyebrow at her. "We raise them."
"Raise them."
"Yes. You'll be a good mother."
"Ah. It's that simple, is it?"
He laughed, a warm, booming laugh that rolled through the trees. "Raising a child isn't complicated, love. It isn't easy, but it isn't complicated, either."
She tilted her head, looking up at him. "How's it done, then?"
He shrugged. "You just love them more than air and water and light. From there, everything else comes naturally."
He stopped and tugged gently on her hand, turning her to face him. He touched her cheek, very lightly, with the blunt fingertips of one hand.
"Understand me," he said quietly, his eyes earnest. "I haven't given up on the idea of your bearing my children, and I never will."
She smiled quietly. "Depending on what nature has to say," she replied, "we may have to agree to disagree on that issue."
"Then let me tell you exactly where I'm drawing the line, Calderonus Amara," he rumbled. "I'm building a future. You're going to be in it. And we're going to be happy. I'm not willing to compromise on that."
She blinked up at him several times. "Love," she said in a near whisper, "in the next few days, we're going to begin a mission for the Crown that, in all probability, will kill us both."
Bernard snorted. "Heard that before. And so have you." He leaned down and kissed her mouth, and she was suddenly overwhelmed with the enormous, warm, gentle power behind that kiss, and the touch of his hand. She felt herself melt against him, returning the kiss measure for measure, slow and intent as the light began to change from wan grey to morning gold.
It ended a time later, and she felt a little dizzy.
"I love you," she said quietly.
"I love you," he said. "No compromises."
The last ridgeline between them and their eventual area of operation was at the top of a long slope, and Amara's horse reached it several moments before Bernard's. The poor beast labored mightily under Bernard's sheer size, and over the course of many miles, it had added up to a steep toll in fatigue.
Amara crested the rise and stared down at the broad valley, several miles south of the city of Ceres. The wind was from the north, chill without being unpleasant-even the depths of winter were seldom harsh, there in the sheltered southern reaches of the Realm. She turned her face into the wind and closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying it. Ceres lay several leagues north of their current position, at the end of the furycrafted causeway that ran through the valley below. From there, she and Bernard would be able to wait for the Vord to pass by, then slip among them.
The wind suddenly felt a little colder. She shivered and turned her head to survey the valley below her.
The sky to the south was smudged with a dark haze.
Amara drew in a sharp breath, lifted her hands, and called to Cirrus. Her fury shimmered into the space between her hands, bending light, letting her see into the far distance much more clearly than she could have on her own.
Dozens and dozens of plumes of smoke rose into the sky, far to the south-and crows, so many of them that from where she stood they almost seemed like clouds of black smoke themselves, wheeled and swirled over the valley.
Amara turned her gaze to the causeway, and with Cirrus's help, she could now see, as she had not before, that the furycrafted road was crowded with people, traveling with as much haste as they could manage-holders, mostly, men, women, and children, many of them half-dressed, barefoot, some of them carrying unlikely bits of household paraphernalia, though most carried nothing. Some of the holders were doing their best to herd livestock. Some drove carts-many loaded with what looked like wounded legionares.
"It's too soon," Amara breathed. "Days too soon."
She was hardly aware of Bernard's presence until he rumbled, "Amara. What is it?"
She shook her head and wordlessly leaned over, reaching out to let him see through the sightcrafting Cirrus had provided.
"Crows," Bernard breathed.
"How could this have happened?" Amara asked.
Bernard was silent for a second, then let out a sharp, bitter bark of laughter. "Of course."
She arched an eyebrow at him.
"We were told that they're furycrafting now, correct?"
"Yes."
He gestured at the road below. "They're using the causeways."
A chill went through Amara's belly. Of course. The explanation was utterly simple, and yet she had never even considered it. The furycrafted roads of Alera, whose construction allowed Alerans to travel swiftly and almost tirelessly across the countryside, were a staple of life, practically a feature of the landscape. They were also the single most reliable advantage Alera had in defending the Realm against the foes that so often outnumbered her. The causeways allowed the Legions to march a hundred leagues in a single day-more, if the need was dire. They meant that the Legions would always be able to field a maximum amount of force to ideal positions.
Of course, none of those enemies had used furycraft.
If Bernard was right, and the Vord could make use of the causeways, Amara wondered, then what else could they do? Could they intercept messages sent by water fury through the rivers of the Realm? Could they tamper with the weather? Could they, bloody crows, rouse the sleeping wrath of one or more of the Great Furies, as Gaius had done with Kalus, the previous year?
Amara stared at the fleeing holders and the rising smoke and the circling crows, and in her heart became abruptly certain of a simple, undeniable fact.
Alera could never survive what was coming.
Perhaps if they had acted sooner, in accord, instead of bickering and infighting, something could have been done. Perhaps if more people had heeded their warnings, and had been willing to back their belief with resources enough to create some kind of sentinel organization, it might have been nipped in the bud.
But instead... Amara knew-not feared, not suspected, but knew-that they were too late.
The Vord had come, and Alera was going to fall.
"What are we going to do?" Amara whispered.
"The mission," Bernard replied. "If they're using the causeway, they've got their crafters with them. In fact, it should make them easier to find. We just follow the road."
Amara began to reply, when her horse suddenly threw back its ears and danced sideways for several steps with several harsh breaths of apprehension. Amara steadied the animal only with difficulty, keeping the reins tight and speaking quietly. Bernard's mount reacted in much the same way, though he had far more skill at calming the beast. A touch of his hand, a brush of earthcraft, and a murmur of his rumbling voice calmed his mount almost immediately.
Amara swept her gaze left and right, to see what had startled the horses so.
She smelled it before she saw it-putrescence and rotting meat. Then a breath later, she saw the grass lion emerge from the shadows beneath a stand of scraggly pine trees.
The beast was eight or nine feet long, its golden hide dappled with greenish stripes that would blend perfectly with the tall grasses of the Amaranth Vale. A powerful creature, far more heavily muscled than anything resembling a common house cat, the grass lion's upper fangs curved down like daggers from its upper jaws, thrusting past its lower lip, even when its mouth was closed.
Or, more accurately put, a living grass lion's fangs would do so. This grass lion no longer had a lower lip. It had been ripped or gnawed away. Flies buzzed around it. Patches of fur had fallen away to reveal swelling, rotted flesh beneath, pulsing with the movements of infestations of maggots or other insects. One of its eyes was filmy and white. The other was missing from its socket. Dark fluid had run from its nostrils and both its ears, staining the fine fur surrounding them.
And yet it moved.
"Taken," Amara breathed.
One of the more hideous tactics employed by the Vord was their ability to send small, scuttling creatures among their enemies. The takers would burrow into their targets, killing them and taking control of their corpses, directing them as a man might a puppet. Amara and Bernard had been forced to fight and destroy the remains of scores of taken holders, years before in the Calderon Valley, during the first Vord outbreak-the one that had been stopped before it could become too large to contain. The taken holders had been oblivious to pain, swift, strong beyond reason-but not overly bright.
The grass lion stopped and stared at them for the space of a breath. Then two.
Then, moving with a speed that a living beast could not have bested, it turned and bounded into the trees.
"A scout!" Bernard hissed, kicking his horse into motion after it. "We have to stop it."
Amara blinked for a second, but then slapped her mount's neck with the reins, left and right, and sent it after Bernard's mount. "Why?" she called.
"We've killed one Vord queen," Bernard shouted back. "I'd rather whichever one was commanding this force didn't learn that we were in the area, and set out to actively hunt us down."
Amara lifted a hand to shield her face as branches slapped against her. "Useless," she spat. "I'm going high!"
"Go!"
Amara seized her bow and quiver. She slipped her feet from the stirrups, lifted them to the saddle, then smoothly rose, and all as part of the same motion, leapt into the air. At her silent bidding, Cirrus rushed into the space beneath her, catching her up and sweeping her skyward. Her wind fury brushed aside tree branches from her path until she shot up into the open air over the ridge and wheeled south, to follow the path of the fleeing Vord scout. She spotted Bernard at once, and focused ahead of him until she caught a flash of racing motion perhaps thirty or forty yards in front of him.
The taken grass lion was not running the way a true grass lion would. Such a beast, running through the trees and brush, would have been all but invisible, even to Amara, moving with lithe, silent grace through its natural habitat. Possessed by the Vord, though, the grass lion simply ran in a straight line. It smashed through thickets, heedless of brambles and thorns. It tore through brush, shouldered aside saplings, and altered course only to avoid the trees and boulders it could not plow aside or leap across.
For all that it lacked grace, it was fast, though. A true grass lion was not a cross-country runner, even if it could move very swiftly over short distances. Taken by the Vord, it ran at its best speed, tirelessly, and it was steadily leaving Bernard's horse behind.
Stopping the scout was up to Amara. Bernard was right in that-their mission was already dangerous enough. Should the Vord learn that they were in the area and dispatch even a relatively small portion of their forces to hunting Bernard and Amara down, that mission would become impossible. As Amara had demonstrated to Bernard only that morning, if the Vord knew more or less where they were located, no amount of stealth would provide protection for long.
Amara gained a little more altitude, the better to look ahead, and saw that the fleeing Vord's straight-line path crossed a clearing in the woods, up ahead. That would be the best place to strike. She was a fair hand with a bow, for someone without any appreciable skill at woodcrafting, but hitting a target racing among the trees while she herself rode a gale-force wind was out of the question.
Of course, one would have to be mad or desperate to stand in the path of a fleeing grass lion armed only with a medium-weight hunting bow-much less that of a Vord-possessed grass lion. Amara supposed she qualified as at least one of those things, though she did not care to examine too closely which one. She poured on the speed, flashing ahead to the clearing, and touched down in the open grass.
She had little time. She drew two arrows from her quiver, thrusting one into the earth at her feet and setting the other to her string. She took a deep breath to steady herself, raised her bow, and the Vord scout came crashing out of the brush.
She called upon Cirrus to borrow from the wind fury's swiftness, and time seemed to slow, giving her ages and ages to aim the arrow.
The possessed lion ran with its half-rotted tongue hanging out. Its ears, which would normally have been stiff and upright, flopped and wriggled like wilted leaves of lettuce. There was some kind of greenish mold or lichen growing on its fangs. Its shoulder struck the edge of a windfall as it came into the clearing and a small shower of woodchips exploded into the air with the sheer power of the impact, ripping the insensate flesh with no noticeable effect whatsoever.
Amara loosed the arrow. It leapt gracefully over the forty yards between her and the grass lion, struck its skull just over the brow, and glanced off the hard bone to bury itself in the powerful, hunched shoulders.
The Vord scout did not so much as twitch.
Amara snatched up another arrow.
Clods of earth flew up from beneath the lion's feet, propelled by the raw power of its legs. Amara tried not to think of what would happen if a battering ram of four hundred pounds of rotting meat and hard bone slammed into her at the rate the beast was moving. She set another arrow to string as the lion's passage startled a covey of birds from the grass, sending them up in a slow-motion panic of feathers and beating wings and glassy eyes.
She dropped to one knee, drew the arrow to full extension, and held it, waiting, timing each plunge of the taken lion's ruined body, tracking its motion, waiting for the timing to be perfect.
Twenty yards. Fifteen. Ten.
When it was ten feet away, she loosed her arrow and flung herself flat to one side.
The shaft stabbed out and vanished into the lion's open mouth, its broad point plunging into the back of its throat.
The lion's front limbs suddenly went loose, and its jaws and muzzle snapped down, smashing violently into the earth, plowing a shallow furrow as its momentum carried it forward. Its spine and hindquarters twisted and flipped up and over, then came smashing down onto the earth as well, forcing Amara to jerk her knees up to her chest, lest her legs be crushed underneath the beast's descending weight.
The impact ruptured the grass lion's innards, and an explosion of noxious fumes washed over her. Her stomach twisted in revulsion, and she scrambled away as it began to empty itself.
She looked back at the lion several unpleasant seconds later, to see it still twitching, and realized that she could hear... something, making a tinny, wheezing sound of pain. The Vord taker. When one of them inhabited a body, it was usually somewhere inside the skull. The arrow must have wounded the thing.
The job wasn't done. The grass lion had never been the danger-the taker was. It could not be allowed to return to the rest of the Vord.
She looked around until she spotted a stone a little smaller than her head. She took it up, steeled herself against the stench, and walked back over to the still twitching corpse of the grass lion. She lifted the stone and, with all her strength, brought it smashing down on the grass lion's skull.
The wheezing scream of pain stopped.
She looked up to see Bernard plunge from the trees and draw his horse to an abrupt halt, bow in hand. He stared at her for a moment. Then he simply slid his bow back into the holder on his saddle and nudged his horse into a walk again. Her own mount had followed his horse once she had left it, and came following along.
She walked over to meet him and get out of the stench.
He passed her a flask of water. She rinsed and spat the bad taste out of her mouth, then drank deeply.
He studied the grass lion gravely. "Nice shooting."
From him, it was no idle comment. "Thank you," she said.
He clucked to her horse, who docilely came over to his outreached hand. He collected the reins and offered them to Amara. "We'd better get moving. Where there's one scout, there will be more."
"Bernard," she said, staring at the corpse. "I don't want to end up like that. I don't want them to use me against my own people. I'd rather die." She turned her face to him. "If it comes to that, I want you to make sure of it."
"It won't," Bernard said.
"But if it does-"
His eyes hardened. "It won't," he said, with harsh finality, and all but threw the reins at her chest. "No compromises, Countess. Not for anyone. Including the Vord."
Chapter 14
"The art of diplomacy is the art of compromise," Lady Placida said calmly, as the wind coach began its descent to the Shieldwall. "The key here is finding the compromise that will satisfy everyone involved."
"That presumes that everyone involved is willing to compromise," Isana replied. "The Icemen have been at war with Alera for centuries. And I can't imagine that the lords of Antillus or Phrygia will be particularly inclined to be gracious, after generations of combat with the northern tribes."
Aria sighed. "I wasn't presuming. I'd hoped you hadn't realized it. I thought perhaps that a positive attitude on your behalf might put everyone sufficiently off-balance enough to allow you to get something accomplished."
Isana smiled faintly. "What can you tell me about Antillus Raucus?"
"He's a great fighter, probably the most accomplished tactician in Alera, almost unquestionably the most practiced battlecrafter in the Realm. He's won significant battles against-"
Isana shook her head, frowning as the air grew noticeably colder. She drew her cloak tighter around herself. "Not that," she said gently. "That isn't what I need to know. Tell me about him."
Aria closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head in self-recrimination. "Of course. I'm sorry, I've been thinking in military terms for most of the trip. How to make sure I can keep getting food and supplies to my husband and his men, that sort of thing."
"Understandable," Isana said gently. "Raucus?"
Aria folded her hands in her lap and frowned out the window for a moment. "Passionate," she said, finally. "I don't think I've ever known a man more passionate than Raucus. That's partly what makes his firecrafting so strong, I think. He believes furiously in whatever it is he's doing. Or only does whatever it is he believes in most furiously. I suppose it depends upon one's point of view."
"He's loyal to the Realm?" Isana asked.
Aria took a slow breath. "He's... loyal to the concept of loyalty," she said finally.
"I'm not sure I see the distinction."
"Raucus believes that every High Lord does, and should, owe fealty to the First Lord," Aria said. "He can't stand power-seekers like the Aquitaines, Rhodes, and Kalarus, and he will scrupulously adhere to what he sees as the ideal for how a High Lord should behave-but he detests Gaius. He'd rather gouge out his own eyes than show the least amount of voluntary personal respect for the man currently wearing the Crown, as opposed to the respect due the Crown itself."
"Why?" Isana asked. "Not that Gaius hasn't done a number of things to earn enemies in his time-but why Raucus?"
"He and Septimus were close when they were young," Aria said. "Inseparable, really, after a year or so of initial difficulties. After Septimus died, Raucus stopped attending Wintersend, stopped writing to the Citadel, and refused to answer any letters from the First Lord directly."
Isana felt her eyes widen. Septimus had not truly died in battle with the Marat, as the Realm at large had been led to believe. He had been killed during the battle as a result of the actions of a group of Citizens, a conspiracy of crafters powerful enough to neutralize Septimus's furies and leave him vulnerable to the barbarians. In fact, the successful attempt had not been the first but merely the last in a series of half a dozen such incidents. Isana knew that Septimus had believed that he had puzzled out who were the ones behind the conspiracy-and that he had been in the process of gathering evidence when he died.
If Raucus had been close friends with Septimus, it was possible that her late husband had shared what he knew with the then-young lord of Antillus. "Great furies," Isana breathed. "He knows something."
Aria arched a red-gold eyebrow. "Knows something? What do you mean?"
Isana shook her head quickly. "Nothing, nothing." She gave Aria a quick, apologetic smile. "Nothing I can share at the moment."
Aria opened her mouth in a silent "ah" and nodded. She frowned and gathered her own cloak closer to her body. "Always so cold up at the Wall."
Isana looked out the window, to see the Shieldwall, an enormous construction of dark stone, perhaps twenty yards below them. It was early evening, and a circle of lights marked a landing space on the wall. The countryside around, blanketed in snow, glowed with the eerie half-light of winter.
"Tell me this, Aria," Isana said. "In your judgment-is he a good man?"
Aria blinked at Isana. She hesitated for several seconds, as if wrestling with a concept she had never encountered. "I..." She spread her hands helplessly. "I'm not sure how to answer. There have been days when I haven't been proud of the things I've needed to do for the sake of duty."
Isana smiled faintly. "I've had days like that as well," she said quietly. "And it doesn't change anything or make the question invalid. Ask your heart. Is he a good man?"
Lady Placida regarded Isana slowly for a moment, before a rather worn half smile appeared on her mouth, along with a sardonic little chuckle. "For a High Lord. Yes. He's bullheaded and arrogant, his ego is bloated to the size of a mountain, he's headstrong, often inconsiderate, more than occasionally rude, intolerant to anyone he doesn't respect, and short-tempered with anyone who challenges him. And underneath all that-there's more of the same, only better cured." She shook her head. "But beneath that, yes. I sent my own sons to Antillus to train under him when they came of age. That is how much I trust Antillus Raucus."
Isana smiled at her, and said, "Thank you, Aria. That's encouraging. Perhaps we have a chance to make something work out after all."
"Perhaps you didn't listen to most of what I just said," Aria replied, her tone dry.
The coach settled down with a gentle bump, and the winds died down. A second later, a Legion band began playing the Crown Anthem.
Isana grimaced.
"It is traditional," Aria murmured.
"Yes, yes." Isana sighed. "But the tune is ghastly. It sounds like a sick gargant dying. What precisely qualifies it to be the Crown Anthem?"
"Tradition," Aria replied promptly.
"And tradition alone, apparently," Isana said. "Though perhaps my taste in music is simply... uneducated."
"Oh, no, not at all," Aria said. "I am well versed in several musical traditions, and assure you that the Crown Anthem is perfectly hideous."
Araris, who had sat silent and motionless through most of the trip-asleep, actually, though he'd dozed with that catlike lightness that could have come instantly to waking, had the need arose, opened his eyes as the Knights who had borne the air coach came to the door and opened it. "Ladies," he murmured. "If you will excuse me." He exited the coach first-as he insisted upon doing every time, these days-and a moment later leaned his head back inside and extended his hand to Isana. "Very well, ladies."
Isana took Araris's hand and left the coach, emerging into, not the light of furylamps, but instead raw torchlight atop the wall. It was far dimmer and, somehow, more primal than the tiny, clean, blue-white furylamps inside the wind coach. Red light and shadow lay heavily over everything, and she found herself instinctively becoming more wary of her surroundings.
Standing atop the Shieldwall was, Isana realized, more like standing upon a road or bridge than any building-or more accurately, like standing in the square of a small town. The wall was fifty feet wide, and a number of structures existed atop the Wall, within sight of where the cart had landed, framed by four towers that rose up from the Wall, standard Aleran ramparts rising another twenty feet above the surface of the already-towering Wall. Several knee-high stone walls rose up here and there around them, and Isana realized that they must be guard-walls around stairwells that sank down into the structure of the Wall itself. A moment's estimate showed Isana that the area of the Wall they stood upon could have contained enough structures to comprise a town.
That might, she supposed, do something to explain the number of legionares assembled to meet the coach, despite the late hour. There was the better part of two full cohorts-or, she supposed the Legion's Prime Cohort-turned out in ranks in front of the coach, while at least five times as many legionares were obviously on duty within sight of her position, on guard upon the battlements at the edges of the Wall, at each level of the ramparts, and at lighted positions up and down the length of the Wall, to either horizon, as far as she could see.
Every legionare's breastplate bore the three scarlet diagonal bars of the Legions of Antillus-though upon several helmets and shields, Isana saw a more graphic representation of the heraldic design, evidently painted on by individual legionares: three ragged, bloody wounds, as if torn by the claws of one of the massive northern bears.
A man in the finer breastplate and elaborate helmet of a Tribune stepped forward and saluted. He was tall, clean-cut, and looked every inch the professional soldier. "Your Highness, Your Grace. On behalf of my lord, His Grace, Antillus Raucus, welcome to the Wall. My name is Tribune Garius."
Isana inclined her head to him. The chill in the air made her shiver despite the warmer clothes and heavier cloak she had worn. "Thank you, Tribune."
"May I ask, Tribune," Aria said, "why Lord Antillus is not here to greet us personally?"
"He regrets that his duties prevented him from being here," the man said smoothly.
"Duties?" Aria asked.
Garius stared at her levelly, his gaze unwavering, and gestured toward the southern side of the wall. "See for yourself, Your Grace."
Aria glanced at Isana, who nodded, and the pair of them, accompanied by Garius and the silent Araris, walked to the southern side of the Wall. The first thing Isana noticed was that the temperature rose noticeably-by several degrees, at least-in the few short feet she traveled. The second, was that the ground on the far side of the Wall was brightly lit.
About a hundred men were spread out on the ground below, working by torchlight. They had, apparently, just finished building some kind of low wooden framework to support several score crates-and then, with a chill that had nothing to do with the cold of the season, Isana realized that the boxes weren't crates.
They were coffins.
The men-Legion engineers, she could see now, formed up into ranks, facing the coffins, which she could see had been arranged upon a wooden byre.
"Ah," Aria said quietly. "Now I see."
"They burn the dead here?" Isana asked.
Aria nodded calmly. "The legionares, at any rate. Those who fall against the Icemen are almost always covered in frost. It has become a custom among the Legions to promise one's fellows that no matter what happens, they will never lie cold upon the earth."
A tall, silent form with broad shoulders and a crimson cloak appeared from among the engineers. He put a hand on the shoulder of a grizzled veteran, evidently the leader of the engineering cohort, then stepped forward, and gestured with a hand.
The torches exploded into white-hot, eerily silent fire that opened and spread with an almost tender deliberation from the sources, at each torch, blooming out into spheres until it had enveloped the framework and the coffins below. The tall lord below-Antillus, Isana had no doubt-cupped both his hands and lifted them abruptly to the sky, and in time with the gesture, the white fire gathered and rose in a sudden fountain that dispersed into the air and diffused into the night sky, as if scattering to join the stars themselves.
A moment later, the usual colors and brightness of winter night returned. The ground below the wall was empty of coffins, byre, bodies, and ash. Nor was there snow, or grass, or anything but naked earth. The fire had swept the ground clean.
"Actually," Garius commented idly, "those weren't legionares, Your Grace. We lost nearly two hundred legionares in our last action against the Icemen, and we burned them three days since. Those men were veterans. The Icemen slipped over the Wall in several places two nights ago. Those men fell defending their steadholts and families, before our cavalry and Knights could arrive to help." He spoke in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone. "But they fought and fell as legionares. They deserved to be sent off as legionares."
On the ground below, High Lord Antillus bowed his head, and covered his face with both his hands. He just stood that way for a moment, not moving. Even from there, Isana could feel the echoes of his grief and guilt, and the sympathetic pains that rippled through the men around her who could see him-men who obviously cared about him.
Aria let out a low sigh. "Oh," she whispered. "Oh, Raucus."
The grizzled centurion growled an order, and the engineers below marched out in good order. A moment later, Antillus, too, departed, walking back toward the base of the Wall and out of sight.
"I'll remind him that you've come," Garius murmured.
"Thank you, Garius," Aria murmured.
"Of course, Mother." The young Tribune walked briskly away.
Within a few moments, Antillus Raucus came up one of the staircases Isana had noted before, Garius walking just behind his left shoulder, the grizzled engineering centurion behind his right. The High Lord walked straight over to Isana and bowed politely, first to her, then to Aria.
"Your Highness. Your Grace."
Isana returned the gesture as gracefully as she could. "Your Grace."
Raucus was a large, rawboned man, brawny as a house built from raw timber. His craggy face reminded Isana startlingly of Tavi's young friend Maximus-though it was worn with more years of care and discipline, and sharpened with more bitterness and anger. His hair was dark, shot through with flickers of iron-and his eyes were hollow with weariness and grief. "I regret that I could not be on hand to greet you myself," he said, his voice empty. "I had duties that required my personal attention."
"Of course, Your Grace," Isana said. "I... Please accept my condolences for the suffering of your people."
He nodded, the gesture empty of any real meaning. "Hello, Aria."
"Hello, Raucus."
He gestured at the bare patch of earth and something hot and unpleasant shone in his eyes. "You saw what I just did?"
"Yes," Aria said.
"If my men didn't make it a point to steal their swords and take them home at the end of their service, while I make it a point to look the other way, it would have been the women and children of those steadholts in the fire," he snarled.
Aria pressed her lips together and looked down, saying nothing.
Antillus turned his hard gaze back to Isana, and said, "There's only one kind of peace you can make with the Icemen."
Isana lifted her chin slightly and took a slow breath. "What do you mean?"
"They're animals," Antillus spat. "You don't bargain with animals. You kill them, or you leave them alone. You can talk all you want, First Lady. But the sooner you realize the truth of that, the sooner you can help me and Phrygia do what is necessary to get some real help down to the south."
"Your Grace," Isana said cautiously. "That isn't what the First Lord-"
"The First Lord," Antillus said, scorn seething from every syllable. "He has no idea what life is like up here. He has no idea how many legionares I've buried-most of them sixteen- and seventeen-year-old children. He has no idea what the Icemen are, or what they are capable of. He's never seen it. Never had to wash the blood off him. I have. Every day."
"But-"
"Don't you dare think you can walk in here for half of one hour and tell me about my own domain, Your Highness," Antillus snarled. "I will not be bullied around by Gaius's pet-"
"Raucus," Aria snapped. Her voice was barely more than a whisper, but it shook the air between the three of them with its intensity.
The High Lord closed his mouth and glared at Lady Placida. Then he looked away from her and shook his head.
"Perhaps you could use some rest," Aria suggested.
Raucus grunted. A moment later, he said, to Isana, "Your savage is here. Camped out with my savages. You're to meet in the morning. Garius will show you to your chambers."
He spun, his scarlet cloak flaring out, and stalked away, out of the torchlight.
Isana shivered again and rubbed her arms with her hands.
"Ladies," Garius said, "if you'll follow me, please, I will show you to your rooms."
The art of compromise?
How in the world was she supposed to find a compromise when one side of the conflict, at least, simply did not want to find a peaceful resolution?
Amara held the arrow nocked firmly against the bowstring, and kept enough steady pressure against it to ensure a swift and certain draw, but not too much to tire her arm. It had been a surprisingly difficult skill to learn, at least until she'd developed enough of the proper musculature to use the bow her husband had made for her. She took a slow step forward and put her foot down silently, her eyes focused into the middle distance, at nothing, the way she'd been trained. The forest was almost silent in the stillness just before dawn, but Cirrus, her wind fury, carried every tiny sound to her ears as clearly as if it'd been a voice speaking from directly beside her.
Trees creaked in tiny breaths of wind. Sleeping birds stirred, their feathers rustling. Something scuttled among the higher branches of a tree, probably a squirrel getting an early start on the day, or a night rodent of some kind crawling back to its nest. Something rustled, perhaps a deer making its way through the brush-
C and perhaps not.
Amara focused Cirrus on the sound and located a second rustling, that of cloth on cloth. Not a deer, then, but her target.
She pivoted toward the sound, in perfect silence, moving slowly to keep it, focusing on maintaining her own invisibility. Learning to master the use of the furycrafted cloth had been simpler than she had expected-certainly easier than employing a windcrafted veil. All she had to do was maintain a low level of concentration, focusing on the colors of her surroundings, drawing them in from what she saw, and the cloth would absorb and mimic them, rendering her into little more than a blur of background color. Granted, the original designer of the cloth, an expensive clothier in Aquitaine, had nearly shrieked the skies down when she'd heard how her invention, designed as the absolute pinnacle of wealthy fashion, was to be used.
The thought made Amara smile. Just a little.
She couldn't see anything where her ears told her something should be, but that didn't matter. She drew the bow in a slow, practiced motion, and loosed the arrow.
The arrow flew, swift and straight, and from the empty air appeared a form of blurred color that eventually resolved itself into the shape of her husband. The blunted wooden arrow hadn't been a deadly threat, but as he cast back his own color-shifting cloak and rubbed at his ribs, wincing, Amara found her own side twinging in sympathy.
"Ouch," she murmured, parting her cloak and revealing herself. "Sorry."
He looked around for a moment until he spotted her and shook his head. "Don't be. Well done. What did you think?"
"I had to use Cirrus to track the sound of your movement. I never saw you, not even when I knew where you where."
"Nor I, you, even tracking you with earthcraft. I'd say the cloaks work then," Bernard said, his wince of pain broadening into a grin. "Aquitainus Invidia may not have given a crow's feather about the Realm, but it seems that her fashion sense is going to be of service."
Amara laughed and shook her head. "When that seamstress heard we wanted her to break those gowns down and refashion them into traveling cloaks, I thought she was going to start foaming at the mouth-the more so when one was to be made for you."
Bernard made his way quietly through the brush, as always seeming to pass through it with hardly a branch or leaf disturbed by his presence, despite his size. "I'm sure a liberal dosing of silver and gold eased the symptoms."
"That will be up to Gaius's accountants," Amara said smugly. "I had a letter of credit with the Crown's seal upon it. All she could do was pray that I wasn't some sort of confidence artist watercrafted into the semblance of Calderonus Amara."
Bernard paused for a moment, blinking. "My."
She tilted her head. "What is it?"
"That's... the name of my House."
Amara wrinkled up her nose at him and laughed. "Well, yes, my lord. So it would seem. Your letters are all signed His Excellency, Count Calderonus Bernard, remember?"
He didn't smile in reply. His expression was, instead, very thoughtful. He fell into a pensive silence as they walked back to their camp, after the final tests of their new equipment. Amara walked beside him without saying anything. It never helped Bernard to prod at him while he was forming thoughts. It sometimes took her husband time to properly forge the things in his head into words, but it was-at least usually-worth the wait.
"It's always been a job," Bernard said at last. "My rank. The way being a Steadholder was. Something I did for my livelihood."
"Yes," Amara said, nodding.
He gestured vaguely toward the northeast, toward Riva, and their home in Calderon. "And it's been a place. Garrison. The town, the fortress, the people who lived there. The problems to be solved and so on. Do you follow?"
"I think so."
"Calderonus Bernard was just that fellow who was supposed to make sure everyone had somewhere to go during furystorms," Bernard rumbled. "And who made sure that men with more time on their hands than sense didn't bother people trying to work for a living, and who was trying to build up a lasting peace with his neighbors to the east rather than occasionally being eaten by them."
Amara laughed at that and slipped her fingers between his.
"But Calderonus Amara..." He shook his head. "I've... never heard it said aloud. Did you realize that?"
Amara frowned and thought about it. "No. I suppose it's because for so long we were..." Her cheeks flushed. "Improper."
"Illicit lovers," Bernard said, not without a certain amount of satisfaction. "Frequent illicit lovers."
Amara's cheeks grew warmer. "Yes. Well. Your people, whom we spent most of our time together among, hardly wished to throw that in your face. So they just called me your lady."
"Exactly. So now there's this new person, you see. Calderonus Amara."
She looked obliquely up at him. "Who is she?" she asked quietly.
"A temptress who seduces married men in their bedrolls in the depths of the night where all the stars can see, apparently."
She laughed again. "I was cold. As I recall, the rest was your idea."
"I don't recall it that way at all," he said gravely, his eyes shining. His fingers tightened gently in hers. "She is also the wife of that Calderonus fellow. The founder of House Calderonus. Something that... something that could last a good long while. Something that could stand, and grow. That could do a lot of people a lot of good."
Amara felt herself quail a little inside, but steeled herself against it. "For that to happen, a House needs children, Bernard," she said quietly. "And I'm not... We haven't..." She shrugged. "At this point, I'm not sure it's going to happen."
"Or it might," Bernard said. "Some things can't be hurried along."
"But what if I can't?" she asked, without malice or grief in the tone. After a second, she felt startled to realize that she didn't feel any, either. Or at least, not nearly so much as she had in the past. "I'm not trying to gather sympathy, love. It's a rational question. If I can't provide you with an heir, what will you do?"
"We adopt," Bernard said promptly.
She arched an eyebrow. "Bernard, the laws regarding Citizenship-"
"Oh, to the crows with those codes," Bernard spat, grinning. "I've read them. They're mostly an excuse for Citizens not to give up their money and status to anyone but their own children. Great furies know, if it was all based upon blood, all those bastard children, like Antillar Maximus, should certainly be inheriting Citizenship."
"Adopt the bastard of a Citizen," Amara mused.
"They'd have every bit as much potential for strong furycraft as a child born of us would," Bernard said. "And crows, there are enough of them, the way some Citizens carry on. Why not provide some kind of positive direction for a few of them? I'd bet every sword in my armory that nearly every one of those mercenary Knights of the Aquitaines is a bastard child of a Citizen."
"Suppose we manage to get away with it?" she asked him. "Then what?"
He arched an eyebrow at her. "We raise them."
"Raise them."
"Yes. You'll be a good mother."
"Ah. It's that simple, is it?"
He laughed, a warm, booming laugh that rolled through the trees. "Raising a child isn't complicated, love. It isn't easy, but it isn't complicated, either."
She tilted her head, looking up at him. "How's it done, then?"
He shrugged. "You just love them more than air and water and light. From there, everything else comes naturally."
He stopped and tugged gently on her hand, turning her to face him. He touched her cheek, very lightly, with the blunt fingertips of one hand.
"Understand me," he said quietly, his eyes earnest. "I haven't given up on the idea of your bearing my children, and I never will."
She smiled quietly. "Depending on what nature has to say," she replied, "we may have to agree to disagree on that issue."
"Then let me tell you exactly where I'm drawing the line, Calderonus Amara," he rumbled. "I'm building a future. You're going to be in it. And we're going to be happy. I'm not willing to compromise on that."
She blinked up at him several times. "Love," she said in a near whisper, "in the next few days, we're going to begin a mission for the Crown that, in all probability, will kill us both."
Bernard snorted. "Heard that before. And so have you." He leaned down and kissed her mouth, and she was suddenly overwhelmed with the enormous, warm, gentle power behind that kiss, and the touch of his hand. She felt herself melt against him, returning the kiss measure for measure, slow and intent as the light began to change from wan grey to morning gold.
It ended a time later, and she felt a little dizzy.
"I love you," she said quietly.
"I love you," he said. "No compromises."
The last ridgeline between them and their eventual area of operation was at the top of a long slope, and Amara's horse reached it several moments before Bernard's. The poor beast labored mightily under Bernard's sheer size, and over the course of many miles, it had added up to a steep toll in fatigue.
Amara crested the rise and stared down at the broad valley, several miles south of the city of Ceres. The wind was from the north, chill without being unpleasant-even the depths of winter were seldom harsh, there in the sheltered southern reaches of the Realm. She turned her face into the wind and closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying it. Ceres lay several leagues north of their current position, at the end of the furycrafted causeway that ran through the valley below. From there, she and Bernard would be able to wait for the Vord to pass by, then slip among them.
The wind suddenly felt a little colder. She shivered and turned her head to survey the valley below her.
The sky to the south was smudged with a dark haze.
Amara drew in a sharp breath, lifted her hands, and called to Cirrus. Her fury shimmered into the space between her hands, bending light, letting her see into the far distance much more clearly than she could have on her own.
Dozens and dozens of plumes of smoke rose into the sky, far to the south-and crows, so many of them that from where she stood they almost seemed like clouds of black smoke themselves, wheeled and swirled over the valley.
Amara turned her gaze to the causeway, and with Cirrus's help, she could now see, as she had not before, that the furycrafted road was crowded with people, traveling with as much haste as they could manage-holders, mostly, men, women, and children, many of them half-dressed, barefoot, some of them carrying unlikely bits of household paraphernalia, though most carried nothing. Some of the holders were doing their best to herd livestock. Some drove carts-many loaded with what looked like wounded legionares.
"It's too soon," Amara breathed. "Days too soon."
She was hardly aware of Bernard's presence until he rumbled, "Amara. What is it?"
She shook her head and wordlessly leaned over, reaching out to let him see through the sightcrafting Cirrus had provided.
"Crows," Bernard breathed.
"How could this have happened?" Amara asked.
Bernard was silent for a second, then let out a sharp, bitter bark of laughter. "Of course."
She arched an eyebrow at him.
"We were told that they're furycrafting now, correct?"
"Yes."
He gestured at the road below. "They're using the causeways."
A chill went through Amara's belly. Of course. The explanation was utterly simple, and yet she had never even considered it. The furycrafted roads of Alera, whose construction allowed Alerans to travel swiftly and almost tirelessly across the countryside, were a staple of life, practically a feature of the landscape. They were also the single most reliable advantage Alera had in defending the Realm against the foes that so often outnumbered her. The causeways allowed the Legions to march a hundred leagues in a single day-more, if the need was dire. They meant that the Legions would always be able to field a maximum amount of force to ideal positions.
Of course, none of those enemies had used furycraft.
If Bernard was right, and the Vord could make use of the causeways, Amara wondered, then what else could they do? Could they intercept messages sent by water fury through the rivers of the Realm? Could they tamper with the weather? Could they, bloody crows, rouse the sleeping wrath of one or more of the Great Furies, as Gaius had done with Kalus, the previous year?
Amara stared at the fleeing holders and the rising smoke and the circling crows, and in her heart became abruptly certain of a simple, undeniable fact.
Alera could never survive what was coming.
Perhaps if they had acted sooner, in accord, instead of bickering and infighting, something could have been done. Perhaps if more people had heeded their warnings, and had been willing to back their belief with resources enough to create some kind of sentinel organization, it might have been nipped in the bud.
But instead... Amara knew-not feared, not suspected, but knew-that they were too late.
The Vord had come, and Alera was going to fall.
"What are we going to do?" Amara whispered.
"The mission," Bernard replied. "If they're using the causeway, they've got their crafters with them. In fact, it should make them easier to find. We just follow the road."
Amara began to reply, when her horse suddenly threw back its ears and danced sideways for several steps with several harsh breaths of apprehension. Amara steadied the animal only with difficulty, keeping the reins tight and speaking quietly. Bernard's mount reacted in much the same way, though he had far more skill at calming the beast. A touch of his hand, a brush of earthcraft, and a murmur of his rumbling voice calmed his mount almost immediately.
Amara swept her gaze left and right, to see what had startled the horses so.
She smelled it before she saw it-putrescence and rotting meat. Then a breath later, she saw the grass lion emerge from the shadows beneath a stand of scraggly pine trees.
The beast was eight or nine feet long, its golden hide dappled with greenish stripes that would blend perfectly with the tall grasses of the Amaranth Vale. A powerful creature, far more heavily muscled than anything resembling a common house cat, the grass lion's upper fangs curved down like daggers from its upper jaws, thrusting past its lower lip, even when its mouth was closed.
Or, more accurately put, a living grass lion's fangs would do so. This grass lion no longer had a lower lip. It had been ripped or gnawed away. Flies buzzed around it. Patches of fur had fallen away to reveal swelling, rotted flesh beneath, pulsing with the movements of infestations of maggots or other insects. One of its eyes was filmy and white. The other was missing from its socket. Dark fluid had run from its nostrils and both its ears, staining the fine fur surrounding them.
And yet it moved.
"Taken," Amara breathed.
One of the more hideous tactics employed by the Vord was their ability to send small, scuttling creatures among their enemies. The takers would burrow into their targets, killing them and taking control of their corpses, directing them as a man might a puppet. Amara and Bernard had been forced to fight and destroy the remains of scores of taken holders, years before in the Calderon Valley, during the first Vord outbreak-the one that had been stopped before it could become too large to contain. The taken holders had been oblivious to pain, swift, strong beyond reason-but not overly bright.
The grass lion stopped and stared at them for the space of a breath. Then two.
Then, moving with a speed that a living beast could not have bested, it turned and bounded into the trees.
"A scout!" Bernard hissed, kicking his horse into motion after it. "We have to stop it."
Amara blinked for a second, but then slapped her mount's neck with the reins, left and right, and sent it after Bernard's mount. "Why?" she called.
"We've killed one Vord queen," Bernard shouted back. "I'd rather whichever one was commanding this force didn't learn that we were in the area, and set out to actively hunt us down."
Amara lifted a hand to shield her face as branches slapped against her. "Useless," she spat. "I'm going high!"
"Go!"
Amara seized her bow and quiver. She slipped her feet from the stirrups, lifted them to the saddle, then smoothly rose, and all as part of the same motion, leapt into the air. At her silent bidding, Cirrus rushed into the space beneath her, catching her up and sweeping her skyward. Her wind fury brushed aside tree branches from her path until she shot up into the open air over the ridge and wheeled south, to follow the path of the fleeing Vord scout. She spotted Bernard at once, and focused ahead of him until she caught a flash of racing motion perhaps thirty or forty yards in front of him.
The taken grass lion was not running the way a true grass lion would. Such a beast, running through the trees and brush, would have been all but invisible, even to Amara, moving with lithe, silent grace through its natural habitat. Possessed by the Vord, though, the grass lion simply ran in a straight line. It smashed through thickets, heedless of brambles and thorns. It tore through brush, shouldered aside saplings, and altered course only to avoid the trees and boulders it could not plow aside or leap across.
For all that it lacked grace, it was fast, though. A true grass lion was not a cross-country runner, even if it could move very swiftly over short distances. Taken by the Vord, it ran at its best speed, tirelessly, and it was steadily leaving Bernard's horse behind.
Stopping the scout was up to Amara. Bernard was right in that-their mission was already dangerous enough. Should the Vord learn that they were in the area and dispatch even a relatively small portion of their forces to hunting Bernard and Amara down, that mission would become impossible. As Amara had demonstrated to Bernard only that morning, if the Vord knew more or less where they were located, no amount of stealth would provide protection for long.
Amara gained a little more altitude, the better to look ahead, and saw that the fleeing Vord's straight-line path crossed a clearing in the woods, up ahead. That would be the best place to strike. She was a fair hand with a bow, for someone without any appreciable skill at woodcrafting, but hitting a target racing among the trees while she herself rode a gale-force wind was out of the question.
Of course, one would have to be mad or desperate to stand in the path of a fleeing grass lion armed only with a medium-weight hunting bow-much less that of a Vord-possessed grass lion. Amara supposed she qualified as at least one of those things, though she did not care to examine too closely which one. She poured on the speed, flashing ahead to the clearing, and touched down in the open grass.
She had little time. She drew two arrows from her quiver, thrusting one into the earth at her feet and setting the other to her string. She took a deep breath to steady herself, raised her bow, and the Vord scout came crashing out of the brush.
She called upon Cirrus to borrow from the wind fury's swiftness, and time seemed to slow, giving her ages and ages to aim the arrow.
The possessed lion ran with its half-rotted tongue hanging out. Its ears, which would normally have been stiff and upright, flopped and wriggled like wilted leaves of lettuce. There was some kind of greenish mold or lichen growing on its fangs. Its shoulder struck the edge of a windfall as it came into the clearing and a small shower of woodchips exploded into the air with the sheer power of the impact, ripping the insensate flesh with no noticeable effect whatsoever.
Amara loosed the arrow. It leapt gracefully over the forty yards between her and the grass lion, struck its skull just over the brow, and glanced off the hard bone to bury itself in the powerful, hunched shoulders.
The Vord scout did not so much as twitch.
Amara snatched up another arrow.
Clods of earth flew up from beneath the lion's feet, propelled by the raw power of its legs. Amara tried not to think of what would happen if a battering ram of four hundred pounds of rotting meat and hard bone slammed into her at the rate the beast was moving. She set another arrow to string as the lion's passage startled a covey of birds from the grass, sending them up in a slow-motion panic of feathers and beating wings and glassy eyes.
She dropped to one knee, drew the arrow to full extension, and held it, waiting, timing each plunge of the taken lion's ruined body, tracking its motion, waiting for the timing to be perfect.
Twenty yards. Fifteen. Ten.
When it was ten feet away, she loosed her arrow and flung herself flat to one side.
The shaft stabbed out and vanished into the lion's open mouth, its broad point plunging into the back of its throat.
The lion's front limbs suddenly went loose, and its jaws and muzzle snapped down, smashing violently into the earth, plowing a shallow furrow as its momentum carried it forward. Its spine and hindquarters twisted and flipped up and over, then came smashing down onto the earth as well, forcing Amara to jerk her knees up to her chest, lest her legs be crushed underneath the beast's descending weight.
The impact ruptured the grass lion's innards, and an explosion of noxious fumes washed over her. Her stomach twisted in revulsion, and she scrambled away as it began to empty itself.
She looked back at the lion several unpleasant seconds later, to see it still twitching, and realized that she could hear... something, making a tinny, wheezing sound of pain. The Vord taker. When one of them inhabited a body, it was usually somewhere inside the skull. The arrow must have wounded the thing.
The job wasn't done. The grass lion had never been the danger-the taker was. It could not be allowed to return to the rest of the Vord.
She looked around until she spotted a stone a little smaller than her head. She took it up, steeled herself against the stench, and walked back over to the still twitching corpse of the grass lion. She lifted the stone and, with all her strength, brought it smashing down on the grass lion's skull.
The wheezing scream of pain stopped.
She looked up to see Bernard plunge from the trees and draw his horse to an abrupt halt, bow in hand. He stared at her for a moment. Then he simply slid his bow back into the holder on his saddle and nudged his horse into a walk again. Her own mount had followed his horse once she had left it, and came following along.
She walked over to meet him and get out of the stench.
He passed her a flask of water. She rinsed and spat the bad taste out of her mouth, then drank deeply.
He studied the grass lion gravely. "Nice shooting."
From him, it was no idle comment. "Thank you," she said.
He clucked to her horse, who docilely came over to his outreached hand. He collected the reins and offered them to Amara. "We'd better get moving. Where there's one scout, there will be more."
"Bernard," she said, staring at the corpse. "I don't want to end up like that. I don't want them to use me against my own people. I'd rather die." She turned her face to him. "If it comes to that, I want you to make sure of it."
"It won't," Bernard said.
"But if it does-"
His eyes hardened. "It won't," he said, with harsh finality, and all but threw the reins at her chest. "No compromises, Countess. Not for anyone. Including the Vord."
Chapter 14
"The art of diplomacy is the art of compromise," Lady Placida said calmly, as the wind coach began its descent to the Shieldwall. "The key here is finding the compromise that will satisfy everyone involved."
"That presumes that everyone involved is willing to compromise," Isana replied. "The Icemen have been at war with Alera for centuries. And I can't imagine that the lords of Antillus or Phrygia will be particularly inclined to be gracious, after generations of combat with the northern tribes."
Aria sighed. "I wasn't presuming. I'd hoped you hadn't realized it. I thought perhaps that a positive attitude on your behalf might put everyone sufficiently off-balance enough to allow you to get something accomplished."
Isana smiled faintly. "What can you tell me about Antillus Raucus?"
"He's a great fighter, probably the most accomplished tactician in Alera, almost unquestionably the most practiced battlecrafter in the Realm. He's won significant battles against-"
Isana shook her head, frowning as the air grew noticeably colder. She drew her cloak tighter around herself. "Not that," she said gently. "That isn't what I need to know. Tell me about him."
Aria closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head in self-recrimination. "Of course. I'm sorry, I've been thinking in military terms for most of the trip. How to make sure I can keep getting food and supplies to my husband and his men, that sort of thing."
"Understandable," Isana said gently. "Raucus?"
Aria folded her hands in her lap and frowned out the window for a moment. "Passionate," she said, finally. "I don't think I've ever known a man more passionate than Raucus. That's partly what makes his firecrafting so strong, I think. He believes furiously in whatever it is he's doing. Or only does whatever it is he believes in most furiously. I suppose it depends upon one's point of view."
"He's loyal to the Realm?" Isana asked.
Aria took a slow breath. "He's... loyal to the concept of loyalty," she said finally.
"I'm not sure I see the distinction."
"Raucus believes that every High Lord does, and should, owe fealty to the First Lord," Aria said. "He can't stand power-seekers like the Aquitaines, Rhodes, and Kalarus, and he will scrupulously adhere to what he sees as the ideal for how a High Lord should behave-but he detests Gaius. He'd rather gouge out his own eyes than show the least amount of voluntary personal respect for the man currently wearing the Crown, as opposed to the respect due the Crown itself."
"Why?" Isana asked. "Not that Gaius hasn't done a number of things to earn enemies in his time-but why Raucus?"
"He and Septimus were close when they were young," Aria said. "Inseparable, really, after a year or so of initial difficulties. After Septimus died, Raucus stopped attending Wintersend, stopped writing to the Citadel, and refused to answer any letters from the First Lord directly."
Isana felt her eyes widen. Septimus had not truly died in battle with the Marat, as the Realm at large had been led to believe. He had been killed during the battle as a result of the actions of a group of Citizens, a conspiracy of crafters powerful enough to neutralize Septimus's furies and leave him vulnerable to the barbarians. In fact, the successful attempt had not been the first but merely the last in a series of half a dozen such incidents. Isana knew that Septimus had believed that he had puzzled out who were the ones behind the conspiracy-and that he had been in the process of gathering evidence when he died.
If Raucus had been close friends with Septimus, it was possible that her late husband had shared what he knew with the then-young lord of Antillus. "Great furies," Isana breathed. "He knows something."
Aria arched a red-gold eyebrow. "Knows something? What do you mean?"
Isana shook her head quickly. "Nothing, nothing." She gave Aria a quick, apologetic smile. "Nothing I can share at the moment."
Aria opened her mouth in a silent "ah" and nodded. She frowned and gathered her own cloak closer to her body. "Always so cold up at the Wall."
Isana looked out the window, to see the Shieldwall, an enormous construction of dark stone, perhaps twenty yards below them. It was early evening, and a circle of lights marked a landing space on the wall. The countryside around, blanketed in snow, glowed with the eerie half-light of winter.
"Tell me this, Aria," Isana said. "In your judgment-is he a good man?"
Aria blinked at Isana. She hesitated for several seconds, as if wrestling with a concept she had never encountered. "I..." She spread her hands helplessly. "I'm not sure how to answer. There have been days when I haven't been proud of the things I've needed to do for the sake of duty."
Isana smiled faintly. "I've had days like that as well," she said quietly. "And it doesn't change anything or make the question invalid. Ask your heart. Is he a good man?"
Lady Placida regarded Isana slowly for a moment, before a rather worn half smile appeared on her mouth, along with a sardonic little chuckle. "For a High Lord. Yes. He's bullheaded and arrogant, his ego is bloated to the size of a mountain, he's headstrong, often inconsiderate, more than occasionally rude, intolerant to anyone he doesn't respect, and short-tempered with anyone who challenges him. And underneath all that-there's more of the same, only better cured." She shook her head. "But beneath that, yes. I sent my own sons to Antillus to train under him when they came of age. That is how much I trust Antillus Raucus."
Isana smiled at her, and said, "Thank you, Aria. That's encouraging. Perhaps we have a chance to make something work out after all."
"Perhaps you didn't listen to most of what I just said," Aria replied, her tone dry.
The coach settled down with a gentle bump, and the winds died down. A second later, a Legion band began playing the Crown Anthem.
Isana grimaced.
"It is traditional," Aria murmured.
"Yes, yes." Isana sighed. "But the tune is ghastly. It sounds like a sick gargant dying. What precisely qualifies it to be the Crown Anthem?"
"Tradition," Aria replied promptly.
"And tradition alone, apparently," Isana said. "Though perhaps my taste in music is simply... uneducated."
"Oh, no, not at all," Aria said. "I am well versed in several musical traditions, and assure you that the Crown Anthem is perfectly hideous."
Araris, who had sat silent and motionless through most of the trip-asleep, actually, though he'd dozed with that catlike lightness that could have come instantly to waking, had the need arose, opened his eyes as the Knights who had borne the air coach came to the door and opened it. "Ladies," he murmured. "If you will excuse me." He exited the coach first-as he insisted upon doing every time, these days-and a moment later leaned his head back inside and extended his hand to Isana. "Very well, ladies."
Isana took Araris's hand and left the coach, emerging into, not the light of furylamps, but instead raw torchlight atop the wall. It was far dimmer and, somehow, more primal than the tiny, clean, blue-white furylamps inside the wind coach. Red light and shadow lay heavily over everything, and she found herself instinctively becoming more wary of her surroundings.
Standing atop the Shieldwall was, Isana realized, more like standing upon a road or bridge than any building-or more accurately, like standing in the square of a small town. The wall was fifty feet wide, and a number of structures existed atop the Wall, within sight of where the cart had landed, framed by four towers that rose up from the Wall, standard Aleran ramparts rising another twenty feet above the surface of the already-towering Wall. Several knee-high stone walls rose up here and there around them, and Isana realized that they must be guard-walls around stairwells that sank down into the structure of the Wall itself. A moment's estimate showed Isana that the area of the Wall they stood upon could have contained enough structures to comprise a town.
That might, she supposed, do something to explain the number of legionares assembled to meet the coach, despite the late hour. There was the better part of two full cohorts-or, she supposed the Legion's Prime Cohort-turned out in ranks in front of the coach, while at least five times as many legionares were obviously on duty within sight of her position, on guard upon the battlements at the edges of the Wall, at each level of the ramparts, and at lighted positions up and down the length of the Wall, to either horizon, as far as she could see.
Every legionare's breastplate bore the three scarlet diagonal bars of the Legions of Antillus-though upon several helmets and shields, Isana saw a more graphic representation of the heraldic design, evidently painted on by individual legionares: three ragged, bloody wounds, as if torn by the claws of one of the massive northern bears.
A man in the finer breastplate and elaborate helmet of a Tribune stepped forward and saluted. He was tall, clean-cut, and looked every inch the professional soldier. "Your Highness, Your Grace. On behalf of my lord, His Grace, Antillus Raucus, welcome to the Wall. My name is Tribune Garius."
Isana inclined her head to him. The chill in the air made her shiver despite the warmer clothes and heavier cloak she had worn. "Thank you, Tribune."
"May I ask, Tribune," Aria said, "why Lord Antillus is not here to greet us personally?"
"He regrets that his duties prevented him from being here," the man said smoothly.
"Duties?" Aria asked.
Garius stared at her levelly, his gaze unwavering, and gestured toward the southern side of the wall. "See for yourself, Your Grace."
Aria glanced at Isana, who nodded, and the pair of them, accompanied by Garius and the silent Araris, walked to the southern side of the Wall. The first thing Isana noticed was that the temperature rose noticeably-by several degrees, at least-in the few short feet she traveled. The second, was that the ground on the far side of the Wall was brightly lit.
About a hundred men were spread out on the ground below, working by torchlight. They had, apparently, just finished building some kind of low wooden framework to support several score crates-and then, with a chill that had nothing to do with the cold of the season, Isana realized that the boxes weren't crates.
They were coffins.
The men-Legion engineers, she could see now, formed up into ranks, facing the coffins, which she could see had been arranged upon a wooden byre.
"Ah," Aria said quietly. "Now I see."
"They burn the dead here?" Isana asked.
Aria nodded calmly. "The legionares, at any rate. Those who fall against the Icemen are almost always covered in frost. It has become a custom among the Legions to promise one's fellows that no matter what happens, they will never lie cold upon the earth."
A tall, silent form with broad shoulders and a crimson cloak appeared from among the engineers. He put a hand on the shoulder of a grizzled veteran, evidently the leader of the engineering cohort, then stepped forward, and gestured with a hand.
The torches exploded into white-hot, eerily silent fire that opened and spread with an almost tender deliberation from the sources, at each torch, blooming out into spheres until it had enveloped the framework and the coffins below. The tall lord below-Antillus, Isana had no doubt-cupped both his hands and lifted them abruptly to the sky, and in time with the gesture, the white fire gathered and rose in a sudden fountain that dispersed into the air and diffused into the night sky, as if scattering to join the stars themselves.
A moment later, the usual colors and brightness of winter night returned. The ground below the wall was empty of coffins, byre, bodies, and ash. Nor was there snow, or grass, or anything but naked earth. The fire had swept the ground clean.
"Actually," Garius commented idly, "those weren't legionares, Your Grace. We lost nearly two hundred legionares in our last action against the Icemen, and we burned them three days since. Those men were veterans. The Icemen slipped over the Wall in several places two nights ago. Those men fell defending their steadholts and families, before our cavalry and Knights could arrive to help." He spoke in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone. "But they fought and fell as legionares. They deserved to be sent off as legionares."
On the ground below, High Lord Antillus bowed his head, and covered his face with both his hands. He just stood that way for a moment, not moving. Even from there, Isana could feel the echoes of his grief and guilt, and the sympathetic pains that rippled through the men around her who could see him-men who obviously cared about him.
Aria let out a low sigh. "Oh," she whispered. "Oh, Raucus."
The grizzled centurion growled an order, and the engineers below marched out in good order. A moment later, Antillus, too, departed, walking back toward the base of the Wall and out of sight.
"I'll remind him that you've come," Garius murmured.
"Thank you, Garius," Aria murmured.
"Of course, Mother." The young Tribune walked briskly away.
Within a few moments, Antillus Raucus came up one of the staircases Isana had noted before, Garius walking just behind his left shoulder, the grizzled engineering centurion behind his right. The High Lord walked straight over to Isana and bowed politely, first to her, then to Aria.
"Your Highness. Your Grace."
Isana returned the gesture as gracefully as she could. "Your Grace."
Raucus was a large, rawboned man, brawny as a house built from raw timber. His craggy face reminded Isana startlingly of Tavi's young friend Maximus-though it was worn with more years of care and discipline, and sharpened with more bitterness and anger. His hair was dark, shot through with flickers of iron-and his eyes were hollow with weariness and grief. "I regret that I could not be on hand to greet you myself," he said, his voice empty. "I had duties that required my personal attention."
"Of course, Your Grace," Isana said. "I... Please accept my condolences for the suffering of your people."
He nodded, the gesture empty of any real meaning. "Hello, Aria."
"Hello, Raucus."
He gestured at the bare patch of earth and something hot and unpleasant shone in his eyes. "You saw what I just did?"
"Yes," Aria said.
"If my men didn't make it a point to steal their swords and take them home at the end of their service, while I make it a point to look the other way, it would have been the women and children of those steadholts in the fire," he snarled.
Aria pressed her lips together and looked down, saying nothing.
Antillus turned his hard gaze back to Isana, and said, "There's only one kind of peace you can make with the Icemen."
Isana lifted her chin slightly and took a slow breath. "What do you mean?"
"They're animals," Antillus spat. "You don't bargain with animals. You kill them, or you leave them alone. You can talk all you want, First Lady. But the sooner you realize the truth of that, the sooner you can help me and Phrygia do what is necessary to get some real help down to the south."
"Your Grace," Isana said cautiously. "That isn't what the First Lord-"
"The First Lord," Antillus said, scorn seething from every syllable. "He has no idea what life is like up here. He has no idea how many legionares I've buried-most of them sixteen- and seventeen-year-old children. He has no idea what the Icemen are, or what they are capable of. He's never seen it. Never had to wash the blood off him. I have. Every day."
"But-"
"Don't you dare think you can walk in here for half of one hour and tell me about my own domain, Your Highness," Antillus snarled. "I will not be bullied around by Gaius's pet-"
"Raucus," Aria snapped. Her voice was barely more than a whisper, but it shook the air between the three of them with its intensity.
The High Lord closed his mouth and glared at Lady Placida. Then he looked away from her and shook his head.
"Perhaps you could use some rest," Aria suggested.
Raucus grunted. A moment later, he said, to Isana, "Your savage is here. Camped out with my savages. You're to meet in the morning. Garius will show you to your chambers."
He spun, his scarlet cloak flaring out, and stalked away, out of the torchlight.
Isana shivered again and rubbed her arms with her hands.
"Ladies," Garius said, "if you'll follow me, please, I will show you to your rooms."
The art of compromise?
How in the world was she supposed to find a compromise when one side of the conflict, at least, simply did not want to find a peaceful resolution?
