Princeps' Fury

Chapter 19

Amara and Bernard watched from a position of perfect concealment as the Vord annihilated the remnants of the Ceresian rear guard. The doomed legionares took their stand in the ruins of a nameless village beside the causeway. They locked shields, faced the foe, and fought with desperate determination to slow the oncoming enemy, to give the holders still trying to flee for the safety of the city's walls a chance to escape.

Four-legged creatures that looked something like the deadly predator-lizards of the southwestern swamps near Kalare dominated the enemy numbers. Long, low to the ground, swift, and powerful, their bodies were covered with the same dark chitin as the other Vord Amara had seen-with the addition of raised, serrated ridges down the lengths of their spines and flanks. As Amara watched, one of them snapped its jaws closed on the thigh of a legionare. In a flash, it had wrapped its body around the man, the motion bonelessly swift-and then it simply writhed, its body gliding in constant motion like a serpent circling its way up a tree branch.

The ridges ripped through steel and flesh alike, and the legionare screamed as he died.

The Ceresian cohort, more than three hundred men, were overrun by the Vord. Their lines held for ten seconds, then fifteen, then twenty. Then they seemed to sag and collapse inward, and the black tide of Vord swarmed over the men, rending and ripping, barely slowing down before they continued in pursuit of the band of refugees the legionares had given their lives to protect.

They had died for nothing.

The Vord caught the holders within two minutes.

Amara couldn't watch the holders, most of them very old or very young, die. She closed her eyes.

But she could still hear them screaming.

With so much chaos, so much confusion, so much destruction in the lands of Ceres, it had been inevitable, she told herself, desperate to distract herself with a flow of simple fact and calm deduction. Some of the steadholts had received word in time to avoid the oncoming terror. Many had not. Of those that hadn't, the majority had reacted by taking to the causeways to flee for the shelter of their High Lord's Legions-and rushed directly into the waiting talons and mandibles of the Vord.

Lord Cereus had spent his legionares' lives in an effort to shield the refugees for as long as possible, sending out his small cavalry forces in an effort to guide fleeing holders off the causeways and around the worst areas of danger, but there simply had not been enough time or enough men. The slow, the foolish, or the merely unlucky perished by the hundreds upon the roads of Ceres over those few desperate days.

There was nothing she and Bernard could have done. The Vord were simply too many. Any action on their part would have accomplished nothing but to reveal their presence and seal their own fates along with those of the slain refugees. Their mission was more important than that. It could save hundreds of thousands of lives. She could not afford to let compassion for those who were directly in front of her blind her to the fact that she had a greater responsibility to the whole of the Realm. Doing her job was the proper thing to do, the logical thing to do.

Still, she wept for the brave legionares and the poor holders, and logic was no comfort whatsoever.

She wept, but she did so in silence. In the hours that followed, the Vord overran their position in greater and greater numbers, some of them passing within yards of where she and her husband lay hidden by veil and stealth and furycrafted cloth. The enemy was gathering for the attack that would certainly fall soon upon the single Aleran strongpoint that remained to challenge them.

Ceres itself.

She had not spoken to her husband for four days.

That was, Amara thought, the worst part of the entire arrangement. Speech was a luxury that could not be afforded, not when the enemy could literally lurk beneath virtually any fallen leaf. They could move in nearly perfect silence, and complete invisibility-but the sound of voices, even in whispers, would betray the presence of Alerans more surely than nearly anything else they could do.

Legion scouts had long since developed a fairly complex series of hand gestures, capable of signaling critical information in the field, but it was by no means a substitute for speech. There was no signal language gesture for "I can't bear to look at this anymore," or, "someone is going to pay."

In the four days since they had entered occupied territory, they had discovered the scenes of multiple massacres of holders and legionares alike-and instances where the Vord had met less success, as well. Twice, wide swaths of woodland had been burned black, down to the very soil, and the charred remains of Vord armor and bits of tree trunk were all that remained, evidence of the fury of the Knights and lords of Ceres. In other instances, the destruction had been more limited and prosaic, but no less brutal-groups of desperate holders, some of them gifted strongly enough to make a fight of it, had unleashed all the crafting at their command, and left Vord crushed and broken on the earth, among the bodies of Aleran dead. In still other places, a lone Vord would be found dead, destroyed by what was doubtless a rogue fury, running wild and uncontrolled after the death of the Aleran who had previously guided it. And in still other places, the slaughter would be, not of Alerans, but of deer, or wild boar, or other animals of the forest, destroyed as remorselessly and ruthlessly as if they had been thinking foes of the Vord, not harmless beasts of the wild. In some places, even some of the plants had been systematically destroyed.

They had also found several pockets of the glowing green croach, growing and spreading, tended by no more than a handful of the spiderlike Keepers. Whatever the substance was, it seemed to feed upon the very stuff of Alera itself. The Keepers seemed to pack the living and the dead, plant and animal alike, beneath the surface of the croach with equal amounts of indifference. Standing several yards from the edge of one such growth, Amara fancied she could actually hear the stuff spreading, rustling leaves, here and there, as it oozed slowly outward.

They did not dare linger long near the croach. It quickly became clear that the area served as some kind of deposit of food or supplies for the enemy. Individiual Vord, or fast-moving groups would stream rapidly into a pocket of croach and thrust their heads and jaws into the stuff, wallowing like pigs at a trough, gulping down the foul-smelling sludge beneath the waxy surface in seconds before turning to race off about their business again.

At first, Amara dared to hope that their haste indicated desperation-but after the incident had repeated itself several times with precisely regular intervals, it became clear that the Vord as a whole were moving at the direction of an unseen choreographer on a scale more massive than she could have imagined. Though they rarely made sounds, and though they never spoke, the Vord knew where to move, when to strike, where to go to find food, to reinforce weak points. They made the communications and discipline of the Legions look crude and childish by comparison.

It was madness, all of it, sheer insanity, there in Ceres, within the Amaranth Vale itself, the longest-settled, gentlest, most-tamed heart of the Realm. Yet it was her duty to see it, to take it all in-and so she did. She looked, and she took notes, writing down everything that she saw, and comparing her notes with Bernard's, to make sure that she had not missed anything her husband had observed, and vice versa.

Sleep was difficult. They had to rest in turns, for only a few hours at a time, when they thought they could afford to stop for a bit and catch what rest they could. What Amara had seen tended to replay itself before her eyes if she lay still too long, and a single outcry during a dream could have had dire consequences. She didn't dare allow herself to sleep too deeply-and yet the constant tension, the wearing strain of unrelenting caution and stress and worry had taken a toll.

She knew it had, because even if she felt that she had somehow gone numb, herself, she could see the pressure wearing on Bernard, on his face and on the set of his shoulders. His own eyes, which had grown steadily more care-worn over the past few years, were positively haunted, even if they maintained their constant, cool green vigil around them-when she saw him at all, at any rate. Most of the time, he was as invisible to her as she was to him, and they kept track of one another only by the shared knowledge of where they had intended to move and by the faint sounds of their passage.

But not speaking to Bernard, especially after watching the Vord catch that last group of refugees, was the worst of it.

The worst by far.

She intertwined her fingers with his and clutched his hand tightly. He squeezed back, a little less gently than she would have expected, and she knew that he was every bit as disturbed and furious and outraged as she was.

But they only had to last a little longer. If the First Lord was right, the battle for Ceres would draw the Vord's furycrafters into the open and allow Bernard and Amara to get a look at them. Once that was done, they could leave this nightmare and report upon what they had learned.

They leaned against one another in the darkness, while the Vord gathered to assault Ceres.

It took the foe less than a day to concentrate their forces and launch the assault upon the city.

Amara and Bernard were less than a mile and a half away from Ceres' walls, looking out over the broad valley from an abandoned steadholt running along the top of a low ridge. They crouched in the ruins of an old brick storage building that had collapsed when a particularly large old tree had toppled onto it. In normal circumstances, the Steadholder probably would have taken the opportunity to replace the old storehouse with a newer building-it had been old enough that time had been taking bites out of it in any case. Instead, the old building had just been left to lie in pieces, with the ancient tree still sprawling in the wreckage, and it provided a perfect hiding place. Bernard was able to use the branches and leaves of the tree, along with the grass still growing around the storehouse, to surround them with a woodcrafted veil, and Amara had layered it with her own subtle windcrafting, to hide the heat of their bodies from the Vord, as well as their scents. Bernard was also able to settle his earth fury into the foundation of the building beneath them, hiding them from any possible observation by means of earthcrafting. With the added security of their color-shifting cloaks, they were as well hidden as it was possible to be.

Half an hour after night fell, the Vord surged forward in silence and perfect unison.

For several moments, nothing happened-and then, without warning, Ceres blazed into light.

Amara found herself holding her breath. Had this been a normal engagement, the Legions would have engaged with arrows and flame, their archers and their Knights striking with their heaviest ranged salvos from the walls as the enemy closed in. The idea would have been to break enemy morale in the opening charge, to force him to pay heavily in the first moments of the attack on the city, to stamp heavily into the minds of the opposing soldiers and commanders that if they wanted Ceres, they would have to buy it dearly.

But against the Vord, such warfare of the mind was pointless, as were many of the rote techniques and tactics of the Legion-as too many of Ceres' legionares had already learned.

No arrows flew from Ceres' walls. No fire leapt out from the battlements. The city, still pitted and battle-scarred from the siege against the Legions of High Lord Kalarus, stood brilliantly lit, silent, and apparently vulnerable as the black tide washed forward.

Amara found her fingers searching for Bernard's. She grasped her husband's hand and squeezed tight as the wave of Vord crashed against the walls of Ceres.

Not a sound or motion came from the brilliantly lit city. Not a sword was lifted in resistance, not a legionare stood against the enemy.

The Vord swarmed against the walls, their claws sinking into the stone, climbing up it like enormous black insects. They disdained the tactics of armies, attacking gates and towers, simply scaling the walls wherever they reached them instead. The Vord blackened the land to the south, covering the fields of the broad valley around Ceres like one enormous shadow. For a moment, it looked as though the city would fall without any resistance whatsoever.

Amara knew better. Gaius Sextus commanded her defenses, and the First Lord had planned to make a fight of it.

The first Vord to climb began to crest the walls and mount the battlements.

From deeper and higher within the city, trumpets sounded, sudden and sharp and clear. Amara felt the instantaneous, massive stirring of windcrafting in the air, felt the hairs on her neck and at the base of her scalp begin to stir and rise of their own accord. The air itself seemed to dance and glitter with a hundred thousand flickering pinpoints of silver-white light, a host of miniature stars erupting into brilliant, brief life in the air and upon the trees across the whole of the Ceresian valley.

And then, with a roar that shook the city to the stones of its foundation, lightning leapt up from the city's walls to the Aleran skies, great, savage spears of scarlet and azure flame, twisting into the shapes of eagles leaping into flight, the colors and symbols of the House of Gaius. That sheet of thunder and power shattered the leading wave of Vord, tearing them from the walls by the hundreds, charring them to black powder in the air, and scattering them back over the stunned forms of their fellows following in their wake.

Once the echoes of that titanic stroke of thunder had rolled once over the land, they were followed by a chorus of smaller flashes that rained down from the skies above-by the hundreds. Strokes of lightning crashed down among the Vord, shattering and smashing dozens at a time. There, fiery gold hornet shapes of Rhodes fell to earth, and there, blazing green lightning shaped like the twin bulls of Placida sent Vord sailing fifty feet into the air. Crimson falcons of Aquitaine fell like fiery rain, each stroke tiny by comparison to the others, but striking with deadly precision and in terrible waves.

Amara stared in raw terror at the power being unleashed before her, and wished that she and her husband had found a rather safer distance from which to observe the battle. This was not the admittedly deadly power of a century of Knights attached to a Legion, or even that of multiple Legions' Knights working in concert-it was the concentrated furycraft of the lords of Alera, and it literally tore the earth asunder beneath the feet of the Vord as they advanced. The light was blinding, and she had to lift her hand to shield her eyes against it. Debris-and not all of it earth and stone, either-began to rain down all around them, cast out to the abandoned steadholt by the power of the furycraft unleashed upon the Vord. The sound was deafening, even where they crouched, and Amara desperately shifted some of Cirrus's effort into shielding their ears from the terrible din. Amara had never seen or imagined such sheer, awe-inspiring power unleashed-save once-and she suddenly wanted nothing in the world so much as to be in a very deep hole, hiding quietly until the entire business was concluded.

She did not know for how long that horrible storm of power and death raged. She knew it could not have been as long as it felt. It seemed that she crouched there for hours while lightning fell from a crystal-clear sky, raking the valley in a curtain of raw destruction.

When the silence came, Amara thought at first that her ears had simply burst under the sound. It took her a moment to realize that the flashes of light had died away, that the ground had ceased its shaking. Her eyes, dazzled by the flashes of light, could see nothing but the furylamps upon the walls of Ceres as night reclaimed the land. For a long minute, there was no sound at all-and then, once more, trumpets cried out from within the city, sharp and clear, and the gates of Ceres swung open wide-as did a dozen more openings in the wall, portals furycrafted open, the stone itself simply flowing aside like water, creating neat, new arches.

Cavalry thundered forth from the city-thousands of horses in columns, their hooves a vast pounding upon the lightning-scoured earth. The united alae of every Legion the First Lord had been able to gather took the field together, flying the colors of every city south of the Shieldwall. Fully half of their number, Amara saw, bore colors of Placidan green. The rumors they had heard about Lord Placida mounting an entire Legion had not, it seemed, been exaggerated.

As the cavalry took the field, flights of Knights Aeris winged up from the city behind them-Knights flying in formations around groups of Citizens who had taken the field against the Vord threat. As the cavalry surged forward, the aerial troops raced ahead of them, striking and disrupting the already-stunned Vord in the field. Amara saw more bolts of lightning and spheres of flame begin to blossom, illuminating the black armor segments of the Vord in stark, violent flashes. Then the cavalry reached them. Amara could only distantly hear the sound of their unit trumpets and drums, and could see little of them in the darkness, but she could not imagine that the battle could be going well for the heavily stricken Vord, caught in the open farmlands of the valley around Ceres, where they would find no refuge against the rage of the Aleran cavalry, nowhere to hide from the Knights Aeris and the furycraft of the Citizens they escorted.

After days of seeing the terror the Vord had visited upon the holders of Ceres, Amara felt only a surge of vicious satisfaction at the sight. Even if the Vord's furycrafters went into action-assuming they had survived that titanic assault at all-it might well be too late to turn the tide of this battle. The First Lord, it seemed, had broken the back of the enemy's advance.

And then, Amara watched the stars on the southern horizon began to go black, one by one.

It took her husband a moment longer to notice it, but she felt him suddenly go tense as he, too, saw it.

The darkness, whatever it was, kept swallowing the stars, more and more quickly-and a low, heavy thrumming sound filled the air.

Oh great furies, Amara thought. Aerial troops. There must be thousands of them. Tens of thousands. Bloody crows, they blot out the stars.

The creatures that had assaulted the city, their ground troops-the Vord had sacrificed them willingly, thrown them into the jaws of the Aleran's trap in order to draw out their Citizens and furycrafters, to goad the Alerans into revealing the positions of their most potent weapons.

The counterstroke fell with inhuman ferocity.

Amara could see very little from where she sat. But flashes of light erupted in the night sky, each revealing dark figures. All of them looked human, though she could hardly bring herself to believe that was possible. Surely the Vord could not have taken so many Knights Aeris. And certainly, it was not solely the Vord who were using firecrafting in the night skies.

The dull thud and pop of firecraftings echoed across the valley, and the calls of the cavalry's horns became more harried, disorganized, and desperate. Once, the roar of multiple windstreams deafened them and kicked up clouds of dust as several Knights Aeris went streaking over their position in a long, arching curve, perhaps seeking to flank some enemy element back in the main area of the fray.

And then from the walls of the city, a small group of heavily armored Knights Aeris leapt skyward, and, as they did, the sword of a single man at the center of the group kindled into brilliant golden light. That sword blazed brighter and brighter as the group of Knights streaked toward the battle, trailing streaks of fire behind it, like a living comet.

Not a single eye in the entire Ceresian valley could help but see that light, soaring toward the combat, and no one who saw it mistook it for anything other than precisely what it was-a naked challenge, a statement of raw defiance. She drew in a sharp breath, identifying the flickering golden flame as the banner colors of the High Lord of Rhodes.

The old man was a schemer, a man of dangerous ambition, and only the fact that his city neighbored that of the Aquitaines had prevented him from being a more serious threat to the Realm than Kalarus had been. As it was, Aquitaine had made it his first order of business to gain and maintain a solid margin of advantage and control over his predatory neighbor-but even so, Rhodes was widely known as a crafter of particular skill among the Citizenry.

Amara wondered if the man's arrogance had blinded him to the fact that Gaius was sacrificing him like a piece in a ludus game, hoping to draw out one of the Vord's major weapons in turn.

From somewhere to the south, on the ground or in the skies, Amara could not tell, came a piercing sound-a shriek that blended the sound of tearing metal and agonized lions, a sound that tore at her ears and ripped at her frayed nerves, that filled her with an insane desire to leap to her feet, screaming in mindless, instinctive response.

Amara had heard that sound before, and the memory filled her with icy terror.

It was the war cry of a Vord queen.

High Lord Rhodes and his personal bodyguards-Counts and Lords themselves, they had to be-streaked into the air to the south, a golden globe of light, that was suddenly surrounded by flickering, swift-moving black forms, like mosquitoes and moths gathering by the thousands around the flame of a candle in a forest at night.

A globe of sickly green-white light suddenly surged up from the earth to meet him.

Light flashed, sparks exploding in a cloud so thick that for a moment it obscured every single form in the southern sky, so bright that every broken stone, every dead branch and fallen leaf of the ruin around them cast a crisp-edged black shadow. A detonation rolled across the valley, so loud that it slapped against Amara's chest like a physical blow.

For a second, she could see nothing.

She blinked her dazzled eyes several times-and when she could see again, her stomach wrenched sharply, turning a slow circle within her belly.

A dying golden star was falling in slow, fading majesty toward the ground far below.

Amara watched, unable to move, unable to look away.

A High Lord had fallen.

Rhodes, a High Lord of Alera, surrounded by Citizens, prepared, on his guard, determined, and doing battle with all the might of the Realm around him, had fallen to the Vord queen, fallen in the instant of their meeting.

The golden light died away before the body reached the earth.

The Vord queen shrieked again, and that time Amara did let out a cry, the sound torn from her chest by a surge of involuntary terror. Green lightning suddenly filled the southern sky, spreading in a webwork that was miles across, centered upon the sphere of green-white light, upon the Vord queen, at last revealing the frantic battle being fought to the south.

The sky was filled with winged, humanoid Vord, the green lightning gleaming off the shining black plates of their chitin.

Not thousands of them.

Not tens of thousands.

Hundreds of thousands.

The Aleran forces who faced them were outnumbered, so laughably outnumbered that the very thought of giving battle was as ridiculous as that of a man with a shovel attempting to stem the ocean's tide.

The lightning faded to darkness.

The roar of approaching windstreams began to rise. Cavalry trumpets sounded the retreat, and panicked horn calls within the city began to echo them.

Amara watched numbly as the rout began-then she shook herself, focusing her mind to the task at hand. Gaius had sent one of his strongest assets out to die for that precise reason, to reveal the source of the Vord's power and give her a chance to find it.

She did not dare delay. The Vord would be overhead soon, and it would be madness to lower their veils for long-but she could not get a clear look from that distance, even with Cirrus's help, without lowering the concealing furycraftings.

She touched Bernard's wrist, and he nodded once. An instant later, the faint blurring of shadow and shape that was his woodcrafted veil was gone. She lowered her own veil as well, then held up her hands, and willed Cirrus to bring the green sphere into closer view.

The night sky blurred, then her eyes almost seemed to rush forward as her wind fury bent the light to let her see more clearly. The green sphere leapt up into crystalline clarity, and Amara focused upon High Lord Rhodes's killer.

Her breath caught in her throat, and for an instant it seemed her heart forgot to keep beating.

At the center of the sphere was a cloaked figure, skin smooth and dark, black cloth billowing about her, green-white eyes gleaming from within the depths of a heavy hood-the Vord queen.

She was the only Vord there.

Around her was a score of heavily armored Knights Aeris-Alerans, every one of them. All of them wore armor that looked like some kind of bizarre imitation of Legion lorica, made from the black chitin of the Vord, and they bore weapons of the same material. To a man, they were young-no, Amara corrected herself. They were young-looking.

Citizens.

The Vord queen was attended by Citizens of her own.

As Amara stared, horrified, she saw several of the Vord shaped like Knights Aeris streak by in the background. Each of them bore the limp form of a fallen Knight Aeris or Citizen. Though some were clearly wounded, none was obviously dead, and Amara realized with a sick heart that they were being captured.

The Vord would add them to their arsenal, just as they had the Citizens surrounding the queen.

One more person rode a windstream within the Vord queen's sphere.

At first Amara thought she was naked. Then she realized that the beautiful woman was covered with the dark chitin-armor as well, as close-fitting as a second skin. Her dark hair was long, flying out wildly in a cloud as she hovered there, a slender sword of Aleran steel in her hands. Her skin was pale, her expression cold and confident. Upon her chest, between the woman's breasts, rested... something, a gleaming lump the size of Amara's doubled fists. Amara stared for several seconds before she realized that the object was alive, like some kind of burrowing insect or tick, its head thrust beneath the surface of the woman's flesh.

Invidia Aquitaine flicked her sword to one side, clearing the blood of the late High Lord of Rhodes from its blade.

The light of the green sphere faded, leaving Amara and Bernard in darkness.

Chapter 20

Ehren stood atop the highest tower of the citadel of Ceres, watching as the High Lord of Rhodes fell, and the battle turned against the Aleran forces. Horns frantically sounded retreat, and Knights Aeris and Citizens came racing back toward the city upon roaring gales of wind.

"Your opinion, Cursor?" the First Lord murmured.

Ehren swallowed. "Frankly, sire, I believe I'm entirely too terrified to offer you a useful opinion for the time being."

"I see," Gaius said, mild disapproval in his tone. "When you've regained control of yourself, I should appreciate it if you would please let me know."

"Very good, sire."

The First Lord clasped his hands behind his back and paced back and forth along the battlements atop the tower, his steps measured, his expression thoughtful. Thirty feet away, only ten or twelve yards overhead, a pair of Knights Aeris flew past, carrying a wounded companion between them. The young man was screaming in sheer agony, his breastplate pocked in several places by dents around horizontal slits, puncture marks that leaked scarlet. Gaius glanced up at the passing trio, then back out to the battle-though it was less a battle than a full-fledged rout, Ehren thought-without pausing his steps.

"Cursor," Gaius said. "Give me the roof, please."

"Sire?"

Gaius stopped in his tracks and gave Ehren a steady look, one eyebrow quirked in displeasure.

"As you wish, sire," Ehren said hurriedly, and padded to the stairs from the tower's roof. He went down them and took a moment to steady his breathing, then began the familiar, comforting ritual of checking each of his knives. It helped him begin to push aside the images of the battle and sort through his thoughts.

Foremost among them was that there really were a great many vordknights coming toward the city. Ehren imagined that they would be no less deadly and terrifying while hacking their way through the halls of Ceres than they had been in the skies above it. He had no desire whatsoever to discover whether or not his estimation was an accurate one.

It was not so much that Ehren was afraid to fight, as such. Oh, the thought and act alike of genuine mortal combat terrified him. It should terrify anyone who wasn't an idiot or a lunatic. And though he knew he was well trained and far more capable than most would guess by looking at him, he was also well aware of his limitations and, being neither a moron nor a madman, he much preferred the idea of avoiding a fight altogether.

That being the case, it seemed wise to leave the city. The vordknights, it was thought, could not match Aleran fliers in terms of sheer speed, except in short bursts of effort. Surely, the First Lord would summon his coach, and they would fall back to the next fortified position before much more time had passed. He couldn't remember the name of the position at the moment-a large town about fifty miles to the northeast on the causeway leading toward Alera Imperia.

They all lead to Alera Imperia, genius, Ehren said to himself. He put the last of his knives away, shook his head, and suddenly realized what they needed, at the moment, more than anything else. It was obvious, and the First Lord would likely have realized it already, but at least Ehren's brain was in motion again. He turned to go back up the stairs, and paused at the sound of voices on the roof of the tower.

"... beside the point," Gaius's mellow baritone murmured. "It must be done."

A woman's voice, one Ehren had never heard before, answered him. "There will be lasting repercussions."

"Worse than the instability already unleashed, and what is likely to be added to it if you do not do as I ask?"

"That depends upon one's point of view, child," replied the woman's voice, amused.

Ehren blinked. Child? Child? Who could speak to the First Lord like that?

Gaius replied with wry amusement in his own voice. "Behold my own."

"Mmmm," she murmured, a pensive sound. "Some of your folk are among them."

"Nonetheless."

"I have no preference," she said. "Not of my own accord. Though I admit that I have grown... accustomed to you and yours, child."

"I ask for no exemptions," Gaius responded. "Only prevailing conditions."

She laughed, a gently mocking sound. "You, child? Seeking to prevail? Surely not."

"Time presses," Gaius said, his tone polite, but thick with an underlying urgency.

"With you and yours, it seldom does otherwise." She paused for a moment, then said, "It is entirely possible that we may never speak again."

"I have made my wishes known."

"Your father would be... what is the phrase?"

"Rolling in his grave," Gaius supplied.

"Yes. Were such a thing possible."

"But you will honor them?"

Ehren blinked again, not so much at the words the First Lord had used as at the intonation.

It had been a question. Not a command.

To whom would the First Lord speak like that?

"It has never before been done this way. But I believe so."

The First Lord's voice dropped to a lower register, relief evident in it. "Thank you."

"Gratitude?" the woman asked, her tone quietly merry. "What is the world coming to?"

Ehren, burning with curiosity, eased up the last few stairs and opened the door as silently as he possibly could, peering around it.

Gaius stood where he had before. A woman stood beside him, facing him, his equal in height. Her skin was a deep bronze, her hair silver, threaded with rare strands of scarlet and gold, though her face was younger than Ehren's own, strong and beautiful in a way he had never seen before. She wore a simple gown and shawl of what Ehren first thought was homespun, but at a startled second glance he realized that the clothing was made purely of what looked like opaque grey mist, as thick and swirling as any storm cloud, but holding its solid shape as if it were cloth.

The woman turned her head abruptly to one side, her eyes flicking toward him. They were brilliant gold. As Ehren watched, they flickered to silver-metallic silver, not simply grey-and a heartbeat later became sky blue, then green and faceted, like a masterfully cut emerald, then dark and glossy as obsidian.

Gaius turned as well, and the woman was abruptly gone. There was no flicker of a veil coming up, no blur of motion as of a windcrafter's drawing upon a fury for additional speed, nothing. One instant she was standing, regarding Ehren calmly, and the next she was simply... not.

Which was clearly impossible.

"Cursor," Gaius said, nodding calmly. "Something to report?"

"Sire?" Ehren blinked and recovered himself. "Ah. Yes, sire. Pardon me, I did not mean to interrupt."

Gaius lifted both eyebrows and asked, a hard little edge on his words, "Interrupt?"

"Your conversation..."

Gaius narrowed his eyes. "Conversation?"

Ehren coughed. "I was thinking, sire, that the vordknights depend upon wings for flight. Like birds. Birds depend upon using the air. They won't fly in a storm."

"I'd been thinking the same thing," Gaius replied with an approving nod. "What else?"

"I would also advise cutting the causeway behind us periodically as we retreat. Every mile or so should be sufficient to ensure that the enemy can't use it."

Gaius winced, but blew out a sigh. "Yes. I suppose that would be for the best."

A cold wind suddenly washed across the tower from the north, a chill blast that felt as if it must have begun at the Shieldwall and come to Ceres without crossing the intervening space between. The First Lord turned into the wind and closed his eyes for a moment, stretching out his hand with his fingers spread. Ehren saw him murmur something under his breath, then nod once. Ehren went to the tower's edge beside the First Lord, and saw the wind as it crossed the city below, and spread out into the fields beyond. Almost at once, it seemed, fog began to rise from streams and ponds.

In the air above the fields, Ehren saw that the disastrous rout had somehow been arrested, and it did not take long to see why. A second bright star of light, the glowing blade of a High Lord, had risen into the skies, and around that brilliant core of light, the battered Aleran forces had rallied. The bright scarlet of the star identified the High Lord of Aquitaine, and he had gathered what fliers remained into a cohesive force that had moved together in close formation, the sheer power of its combined windstreams sending vordknights scattering wildly through the air-a Legion shieldwall, taken to the skies.

Scarlet lightning flashed through the night, raking Vord from the air and slowing the advance of the oncoming tide. The fleeing cavalry began to emerge from beneath the shadow of the Vord, running for their lives, and only the courage and power of the few men who remained aloft and fighting the Vord sheltered them from being destroyed en masse.

The First Lord lifted his face to the evening sky and closed his eyes. He did not speak or move, but his expression became strained.

The vordknights began to reach the walls of the city, mostly the strays who had been blown that way by the disrupting gale of the Aleran aerial rear guard. The Legions defending Ceres had moved back into position after the first massive salvo of furycraft had taken them from the walls. Knights Flora and Ignus began hammering the Vord from the air with fire and arrow.

One vordknight streaked toward the tower where Ehren and the First Lord stood, only to be struck by half a dozen arrows loosed from the bows of the Knights Flora of the Crown Guard positioned on the neighboring towers. It dropped instantly, smashing into the battlements with a brittle, crackling sound, one of its wings still buzzing uselessly as it fell toward the courtyard fifty feet below.

The cold wind from the north grew colder yet, and Ehren shivered, his cloak suddenly inadequate against it. He turned to look over his shoulder, to the north, and saw the stars change from sharp, clear pinpoints of light to murky, blurry spots of silver in the night sky.

Gaius nodded once, and said, "Let's begin, then, shall we?" He turned his palms to the sky and lifted them in a single, sharp gesture.

The low-lying fog that had formed on the ground, somehow untouched by the wind, suddenly leapt skyward. It boiled up over the walls of Ceres and swallowed the tower in a sudden rush of warmer air. The fog passed them, and Ehren saw it lifting away into the sky like some enormous blanket.

Gaius sighed and lowered his arms, his shoulders slumping wearily. "Let's see if this works."

Ehren swallowed. "Sire? You don't think it's going to work?"

"The theory is sound. But we've no way of being sure, have we?"

"Ah," the young Cursor said. "What will we do if it doesn't?"

Gaius arched an eyebrow and said, calmly, "I expect we will die, Sir Ehren. Don't you?"

Thunder rumbled through the greyness overhead.

Ehren shivered, but before he had time to respond, he felt the first ice-cold raindrops begin to fall. They came one by one at first, then began to fall more and more thickly. He walked over to stand beside Gaius, who stared out at a battlefield that had been almost entirely occluded by rain. The burning sword of High Lord Aquitaine was leaving a plume of steam behind it, even as the Aleran fliers began to turn back toward the city, losing altitude as they came.

"You knew Rhodes was going to be killed when you sent him out there," Ehren said quietly.

"Did I?" Gaius asked.

"And when this is over, Aquitaine is going to look like the man who created an orderly retreat out of a rout."

"Not to quibble," Gaius murmured, "but Lord Aquitaine is the man who created an orderly retreat out of a rout." He shook his head. "I'll give Attis this; he always understood that the strength of a High Lord-or a First Lord, for that matter-is in the hearts and minds of those who support him."

"The sword," Ehren said. "He's using it to hold a firecrafting together. He's giving them courage."

"Mmmm," Gaius agreed. "Rhodes was powerful, in a personal sense, but he never saw any further than the ends of his own fingertips. No different than Lord Kalarus, really, except that Rhodes was more intelligent and had more dangerous neighbors."

"Far more dangerous," Ehren said. "So much so that Rhodes's life was the price of said neighbor's allegiance."

The First Lord smiled, a wintry expression that meant nothing. "The Citizenry has been blind to the threat the Vord represent, certain they would be easily overcome. That arrogance was as dangerous to us as the Vord. After tonight, it will no longer be an issue." He glanced up at the rumbling sky, where the rain continued to fall more and more thickly, and added, his tone wryly amused, "One way or another."

Then he staggered and fell to one knee.

"Sire!" Ehren said, starting forward.

The First Lord coughed, the sound horrible and hollow, over and over, each one wracking his entire body with clenching motion.

Ehren knelt beside the old man, supporting his weight when Gaius's balance failed again.

After a moment, the fit of coughing passed. The First Lord shuddered and leaned wearily against the young Cursor, his head bowed. His lips looked blue, to Ehren, his face pallid and grey.

"Sire?" Ehren asked quietly.

Gaius shook his head and spoke in a rasp. "Help me up. They mustn't see."

Ehren blinked at the First Lord for a heartbeat, then slipped one of Gaius's arms over his shoulders and rose, helping the older man to his feet.

Gaius leaned against the battlements for a moment, his hands spread across the cold, wet stone. Then he drew in a deep breath and straightened, his features composed, as the Aleran forces returned to Ceres.

Aquitaine's sword burned more and more clearly, until he and the men he had gathered around him, some two hundred or so Citizens and Knights Aeris, sailed over the walls of the city and down into the streets beyond, heading for the rally points where the Legions had already planned to gather before withdrawing. The cavalry was not far behind them, their exhausted horses running hard as they streamed back toward the city.

Aquitaine himself, instead of accompanying his men, soared up to the tower, cutting his windstream with masterful timing, landing like a man who had decided to hop over the last step in a stairway. He nodded once to Ehren, transferred his sword to his left hand, and saluted Gaius, putting his fist to his heart.

Though the fire of Aquitaine's sword was out, the metal still glowed and hissed with every raindrop. His armor, elaborate, beautifully made lorica, was crusted with a thin sheath of ice across the shoulders and upon the bracers that covered his forearms.

"It's working," Aquitaine said shortly. "Their wings can't handle the ice."

"Naturally," the First Lord replied calmly. "We'll fall back to Uvarton, cutting the causeway every mile as we go."

Aquitaine frowned and turned to stare back out toward the south. "Their greatest advantage is their mobility, their flight. We should move forward with every legionare, now, and take them head-on."

"Their greatest advantage is the ability of the Vord queen to coordinate their movements," Gaius countered. "If we march our men out there into the dark and the storm, it will be a hopeless mess. The Vord will have no such disadvantage. We retreat. More of our reinforcements will meet us every day."

"As will theirs," Aquitaine said. "We should hit them now, hard, try to thin them out."

"If need be, I'll ground them again, Your Grace." Gaius's eyes hardened. "We retreat."

Aquitaine frowned steadily at Gaius for a long moment. Then he said, "This is the wrong move."

"Were I a young man," Gaius said, "I would think so as well. If you would be so kind, please notify the other High Lords. Sir Ehren, please take word to the Crown Legion and to the First and Third Imperian."

Ehren and Aquitaine both saluted the First Lord. Aquitaine simply stepped up onto the battlements and dropped off the tower. The roar of his windstream came up to them a beat later. Ehren turned toward the door, but paused, looking back at the First Lord.

"Are you going to be all right, sire?"

The First Lord, his silver hair plastered to his head by the rain, stared down at the valley to the south and shook his head slowly. "None of us are going to be all right." Then he glanced at Ehren and jerked his chin in a sharp gesture toward the door. "On your way."

"Sire," Ehren said, and turned to go back down the stairs and tell the Legion commanders which way to run.