Captain's Fury (49 page)

Isana stared at him for a moment. "How in the world… ?"

He gave her a weary smile. "Just have to know how to talk to them."

Isana shook her head, and glanced at Araris. She hadn't noticed when the
singulare
had stepped up close to Tavi, naked sword in hand.

Isana closed her eyes and sent her focus down into Rill, and into the water surrounding the Cane. She was immediately startled by how
much
water surrounded Varg. She had seen the Cane's size, of course, but if she hadn't occasionally been called upon to heal wounded livestock, she would never have even contemplated healing a creature so large.

Granted, she had never healed a Cane before. At first, she feared that the wolflike creature would be too different to benefit from the kind of healing she knew, but she rapidly saw that the fear had been groundless. Pain was universal.

She sensed the injuries in Varg as she might have in anyone else. She sent Rill coursing into the Cane's body, closing his wounds, aligning broken bones, easing inflammation and pain. None of the injuries were especially complex or difficult to repair: It was a question of volume. The Cane simply bore so
many
various hurts that she was shocked he had survived so long without any help.

Then there was a hand on her shoulder, shaking her gently, and Isana drew her awareness back into her own body. She looked up, blinking, to find Demos standing over her. "Lady," he said quietly. "We're out of time."

"Oh," she mumbled. "Yes, of course."

Demos regarded Tavi and his grip on Varg for a moment. Then the captain said, "We would have restrained him. If we'd had any chains."

Tavi gave Demos a sour look.

Demos nodded to Araris, then at the pool. "In, all of you." He went to the side of the pool and drew a rope from his belt. He secured one end to a ring on the near side of the pool, the other to a similar ring on the far side. "Everyone get hold of that."

Isana told Tavi, "Varg is unconscious now. I had to do a lot. He'll need help."

Tavi nodded once and glanced at Araris. The
singulare
put his sword away. Each of them went to one side of Varg, dragging one of the Cane's huge arms over their shoulders.

"The rope," Demos said quietly, and Isana shook herself into motion, grabbing on to the rope with both hands. Demos nodded his approval, and said, quietly, "Shouldn't be long."

He closed his eyes and made a gesture with one hand. The hull of the ship, beneath her, suddenly shifted, weirdly fluid, and then simply dropped away, lowering them up to their chins into the waters of the river. As Isana watched, the hull of the ship shifted and then closed over them, leaving a bubble of air trapped against the dome-shaped indentation in the ship's hull.

Then, there was little to do but hold on to the rope in near-total darkness. And wait.

"Tavi," Isana said quietly. "How long have you known?"

There was a moment of silence. To Tavi's credit, he didn't attempt any evasions, even one so minor as asking her what she was talking about. "Almost two years now."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"At first," he said quietly, "because I thought there were things you weren't telling me. It seemed… an appealing bit of symmetry."

Isana felt a stab of anger that came along with the hurt, but she could hardly throw stones at him for keeping secrets. Besides, to a certain degree, he was right. In some ways, she'd had such treatment coming.

"Asked me to turn out the furylamp in your room," Araris said. "Never missed a day out alone, practicing with Kitai." He chuckled. "You didn't think you could actually work out against me, using some of your metalcraft, and I wouldn't notice?"

They fell silent. Heavy boots, too heavy to be any sailor's wear, thumped on the hull above them. Hollow voices, strangely muffled, vibrated through the floorboards. There were shouts, calls, the sounds of things being moved. After several minutes of this, the sounds retreated.

Not long after, the wooden hull of the ship twitched, then parted again, and Isana idly noted the subtle, steady watercrafting worked into the hull that prevented water from rushing in, the work of Demos's witchmen, presumably.

The boards of the hull reached down around them and closed beneath them, lifting them up, until they stood in the witchmen's shallow pool again. Demos stood nearby.

"That went fairly well," he said quietly. "You'll all need to stay here in the
^-
hold until we get moving again. They might come back, and if they do, you'll have to get wet again."

"Are you sure they didn't find anything?" Tavi asked quietly.

Demos shook his head. "That would have been suspicious. They found two hidden compartments holding several ounces of aphrodin, a crate of wine bottles that hadn't been marked by the excisemen, and a bolt of silk cloth from Kalare that's supposed to be embargoed."

Isana blinked. "And you weren't arrested?"

"I had cash." He turned to go. "I'll have something hot sent down to you. Once the other two members of your party arrive, and we're cleared to depart, we'll get moving again. Probably sometime tomorrow morning."

Tavi nodded. "Thank you, Demos."

"It's the job," he said, and left.

Tavi pulled himself out of the pool and sank down against the nearest bulkhead, his feet pulled up, knees against his chest. He lowered his head and was asleep again.

Isana looked at the battered young man and sighed. Then she said, "Am I wrong to be worried, about his furies?"

"There's something wrong with his crafting," Araris said. "I'm not sure what. But I've never seen him actually manifest a fury. Not even last night."

"If he could have," Isana began.

"He would have," Araris finished, nodding. He wrinkled up his nose and glanced at Varg, before positioning the Cane to lie with his head out of the pool. "Smells like wet dog in here."

He didn't look happy about that, but he nodded. "All right." He began to turn away, but paused. "Shouldn't one of us tell him about… us?"

She felt her cheeks color again. "I… what would we tell him?"

"That we love each other," Araris said in a quiet, firm tone. "That once things are more… settled, that we want to be together."

Chapter 38

Valiar Marcus stared down at the spear in his guts in total shock.

The Canim javelin had slipped through a tiny opening between Marcus's shield and that of the
legionare
beside him, thrown with such force that its black metallic head slammed cleanly through his armor.

Marcus realized, then, that he was standing in the second rank. He didn't remember taking a step back. The impact of the javelin must have knocked him there. That was probably why only about ten inches of steel was in his guts. Javelins hurled by a warrior Cane typically transfixed their targets entirely.

And this
was
the weapon of a warrior Cane, he knew, which meant that the Prime Cohort was engaging some of the foe's elites. They would have to alter their formation and advance, now, because the Canim typically flung their spears immediately before a charge. Marcus managed to take a deep breath, and bellow, "Close formation! Shields up! Second and third ranks to spears!"

Spear leaders began repeating the orders, shouting together, and the ranks of the Prime Cohort shifted and compressed. The
legionares
in the second and third ranks put away their swords and readied the five-foot spears strapped to the back of their tower shields. Those spearheads rose in a thicket of deadly steel thorns, just as the Canim warrior caste exploded from the rain-shrouded shadows and struck the lines.

Marcus sheathed his sword and pulled hard on the spear, but it was pinned in the steel grip of his punctured armor, and he couldn't get it free. Battling
legionares
on the front rank jostled the spear's shaft, shoving it left and right, and Marcus felt it as a horribly invasive, quivering tremor in his belly, and his breath was suddenly gone.

He dropped to one knee, and got his shield up in time to deflect a hastily aimed blow from a black-armored Cane. The
legionares
around him drove the Cane back with spears and brutally stabbing swords.

Someone stepped on the spear shaft, and pain that redefined his concept of the word burned Marcus to his core.

He fell, onto his back, and rain poured into his face. He reached to wipe water from his eyes, and Foss said, "Easy there, Marcus. Try not to move just yet."

And now he was in the healer's tents. He'd been injured, and injuries could be disorienting. Someone must have dragged him from the fight.

It was such an immense effort to move his head that after the first couple of twitches, he didn't bother.

He lay in a healing tub, naked, and the water was stained dark with blood. Foss sat at the head of the tub, his head bowed, his hands resting on Marcus's shoulders.

Marcus's eyes tracked down to his belly and found a gaping wound there, as long as his hand was broad. The wound gaped at the edges, and he could see… whichever parts of his guts were beneath the wound, he supposed.

"Balls," he whispered.

"Try not to talk," Foss growled. "You have to tighten your stomach muscles to do it, and I don't need you bumping my elbow while I work."

"C-cohort," Marcus said. He tried to look around him, but reclined as he was, he could see little more than that the First Aleran's Tribune Medica and his staff had no shortage of work. Battlefield infirmaries were always like this. Men groaned and screamed and wept. Quiet, determined healers fought their own battle with Death himself, to what Marcus was sure would be the usual mixed results.

"Hold still and shut up, or I'll knock you out," Foss said. "That column that hit you out of that ravine was one of three. The other two went right through the Guard and hit us in the flanks. If the Prime Cohort hadn't held, the Canim would have cut us up but good."

Marcus turned his eyes back up to Foss.

The healer glanced at him and frowned. "It isn't pretty in here. Thirty-four of the Prime dead. Twice that many wounded." Foss scowled. "Now shut up and hold still, before you're number thirty-five."

It was too much effort to nod. Marcus closed his eyes. The sobs of the wounded and the murmur of quiet, determined voices continued, until he found himself sitting up in bed, wolfing down a steaming bowl of mashed meal, bland but filling.

He blinked several times at the bowl and looked up and around him. He was back in his tent, and it was morning again—a different morning, he thought. The sun was out. He felt weak as a puppy and twice as hungry.

He moved his blankets and looked at the scar on his abdomen. It hadn't closed neatly—though it would hardly be the first time that had happened to him. The scar marking the injury was as thick as his little finger, raised from his skin—the hallmark of a vicious injury attended to by an overworked and exhausted Legion watercrafter, worn to the point of collapse from saving men's lives as swiftly and as certainly as possible.

The past two days were little but mist in his memory, a few solid points, with many hours of nothingness in between. That happened, sometimes, when a particularly extensive injury required particularly extensive watercrafting to rectify. He'd been close to gone, then.

"Don't," Crassus said, alarmed. The young man came into the tent. "Healer's orders. You're to stay in bed all of today."

That sounded good to Marcus, but he wasn't about to let the young officer know it. "I'm fine, sir. I'll go talk to Foss about it."

"Captain's orders," Crassus said. "Stay in bed."