Captain's Fury (17 page)

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

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

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

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

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

The captain nodded. "Could have been worse."

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

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

Marcus grunted. "Probably true."

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

"Marcus," the captain said.

"Sir."

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

"Yes, sir."

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

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

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

Chapter 12

Tavi rode into Othos with Araris at his side.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Thank you, Tharis," Tavi said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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