Chapter 35
The windcrafting infused Tavi's senses with the slowed-time alertness of fury-born speed, or he might not have seen what was about to happen.
The Vord turned on one another.
The nearest Cane-form Vord, the one Tavi had wounded, suddenly jerked and was flung viciously forward as the Vord behind it tore into its back with its talons. Its blood splattered the walls of the entry tunnel as it fell into the open space at the center of the hive, and stained Tavi's boots as the newly dead Vord slid to a halt at his heels. In an instant, three more of the Cane-form Vord bounded into the room, and Tavi realized what had happened.
Varg's Hunters had arrived.
The meaning of the odd, lumpy packs each of the Hunters had carried finally became clear to Tavi. The silent Canim had clad themselves in Vord chitin, somehow fastening enough of the green-black material to themselves to pass for true Vord, at least momentarily-and now they were inside the queen's hive beside him.
"Tavar," growled the eldest of the three Hunters.
"Take her!" Tavi cried.
He surged forward with the Hunters at his side, and the Vord queen let out a piercing shriek.
The wall of wax spiders shivered and collapsed toward them, breaking in a wave of flailing legs and dripping fangs. The spiders bounded through the air, raced across the ground, and skittered across the walls and ceiling to attack. Tavi had an instant to be terrified by the sheer number of spiders, then they were upon him.
He struck one spider out of the air as it leapt at his face, his sword moving with the speed and power and deadly sharpness of all the furycraft at his command. He felled the second and third and fourth in less than a second-there were so many of the creatures that even in the dreamlike slow motion of windcrafted alacrity, there was no time to think, ponder, or plan. He could only react, and strive to make his every movement work against the enemy.
The air was full of slashed corpses of the wax spiders, with spraying blood and severed insect limbs, but despite the web of steel Tavi wove with his swords as he strode forward, the Vord began to break through. He felt one slam into his side, and a sharp, loud pinging sound told him that his armor had held against the spider's fangs. Another seized onto his boot, simply clinging, and threw him off his balance.
Then three more dropped onto his helmet and shoulders, and he twisted wildly as venom-dripping fangs flashed by not an inch from his eyes.
Something slammed against his shoulder, a heavy blow that rang with steel on steel, and one of the Hunter's battle chains crushed the spider beneath it. Tavi managed to turn so that his unwanted passengers were more exposed to the Cane, and several more whiplashing flicks of the heavy chain cleaned the spiders from him.
The other two Hunters took up positions on his left and right, oddly curved swords in hand, flinging the heavy spikes that had wreaked such havoc in Aleran encounters with them during the war in the Vale. Tavi regained his momentum, his own blades whirling, killing-and suddenly found himself face-to-face with the Vord queen.
She moved with a horrible, arachnid grace, and at such speed that even from within his windcrafting, Tavi felt his body responding sluggishly by comparison. Her cloak flew one way as she darted to one side, but the move proved to be a feint, and the hem of the garment cracked like a whip as she reversed her move and raked her talons at Tavi's thigh.
Tavi couldn't respond in time to avoid the blow, so he simply drove his blade hard at the queen's throat.
Her speed astounded him, even as white-hot fire enveloped his leg. She managed to get a hand into the way of the blow, pushing the sword's tip down, but not entirely away from herself-the Aleran steel bit into the pale, rigid-looking flesh in a shower of scarlet-and-cerulean sparks. Her skin, then, was still Vord chitin-it merely looked like human flesh. His sword did not plunge deeply through the armor, despite the earthcraft and metalcraft behind it. An inch or two of blade sank into her abdomen and drew a howl of surprise and rage from the queen.
She bounded directly up to the ceiling, the movement so abrupt that it ripped the blade from Tavi's left hand, and began scuttling like a spider toward the entry tunnel.
Before she could get there, a pair of bloodred steel chains, their ends weighted, whipped up from the ground like lariats. One settled around her wrist, the other around a thigh, and with a snarl, the two Hunters hauled the queen from her ceiling and back to the floor of the hive.
Tavi slashed another pair of spiders from the air as he charged the downed queen. The two Hunters had kept the chains tight, taking the queen's balance from her each time she tried to regain her feet. Spiders were swarming over them, but the two Hunters, in their Vord-hide armor, ignored them and hauled with all their enormous strength on the chains.
Tavi slammed a leaping spider from the air with his left fist, killing it, whirled his longer blade over his head, reaching up to take it in a two-handed grip, and began the downward stroke that would kill the Vord queen.
She shrieked again and twisted in desperation, and her hood fell back revealing-
Kitai's terrified face.
Tavi held back his strike for a startled instant, and in that hesitation, the Vord queen twisted her shoulders and ripped her own trapped arm from its socket.
The Hunter who had been holding the other end of the chain stumbled backward at the sudden lack of resistance and fell.
The spiders swarmed over him, burying him completely.
The queen rolled, scuttling sideways like a crab, and seized the other chain in her remaining hand. With a twist of her hips and shoulders, she ripped the chain from the grip of the other Hunter, lashing it at Tavi as she did.
Tavi had to fling himself back to avoid the chain, and the queen turned to fling herself at the hive's exit.
There was a flash of light and a roar of superheated air, somewhere beyond the hive, lighting the walls to near transparency for an instant as a sphere of white-hot light appeared at ground level outside. Bits and pieces of heat-shriveled Vord armor and anatomy flew in through the hallway, and close behind them came another enormous form-Varg, his sword in hand, his black-and-crimson armor liberally smeared with the ichor. The Canim Warmaster slammed one foot down on the ground, then the other, settling his weight with the immovable mass of a mountain, and raised his sword to a high guard over his head.
"Come, creature," he snarled. "Come through me if you can."
The Vord queen let out a shriek and blurred toward Varg.
Tavi cried out and charged-realizing, as he did, that his wounded leg was no longer responding to the commands of his mind.
The Vord whirled the chain at Varg, who caught it with the blade of his sword. The queen screamed her frustration and tried to rip the sword from the Cane's grasp, but Varg set his body against the pull and, with a sudden surge of motion, dragged the queen across ten feet of floor and into range of his blade. He struck with a brutally swift economy of motion, and Tavi knew that it would have cut through a tree as thick as his own thigh in a single stroke.
The Vord queen dropped the chain and swept her arm into the path of the blow. Varg's sword pierced her armored skin, hacking almost to the bone, just as another firecrafted explosion illuminated and shook the walls of the hive. She reeled back from Varg, just in time for the Hunter whose chain she had taken to send a throwing spike into the back of one of her knees. The armored hide must have been less strong there, because the spike sank into it, while the raw power behind the heavy bar of steel sent one of her legs flying upward, taking her hips with it, so that her shoulder blades crashed to the floor.
She used the rebound of the impact to roll backward and to her feet, and as she did she drew the spike from her leg and sent it flying back to the Hunter who had thrown it. He dodged, but she'd either anticipated him or gotten lucky. The spike hit him in the throat, and a fountain of dark Canim blood clouded the air as he fell and was buried under more spiders.
Varg bellowed in rage and threw his weapon at the queen. It spun and tumbled through the air, and she leapt back and away from it-
�C and into Tavi's two-handed swing. His sword struck her across the nape of the neck, and a fountain of blue-and-red sparks exploded from her flesh. The blade cut swift and true, never slowing, and the queen's head-Tavi's mind screamed silent horror at him, horror he couldn't allow himself to feel, as he saw Kitai's face, her mouth open in silent shock-tumbled away and went rolling across the floor.
The Vord's behavior changed in an instant. Wax spiders let out chirping squeals of alarm and raced aimlessly around the hive. Outside, Tavi could hear an entire chorus of alien shrieks that went up at the same time, the sound deafening.
The third Hunter appeared from behind Tavi, recovered Varg's sword, and tossed it to him.
Varg turned to the downed queen, and with four swift, heavy blows, dismembered the body. He glanced at Tavi and found the Aleran staring at him.
"Best to be sure," Varg rumbled.
Tavi whipped his sword through another spider that had leapt at him, dispatching it. Though they no longer came at them in an enormous wave with a single purpose, the spiders were naturally aggressive, and it was probably a bad idea to stay in the hive any longer than was absolutely necessary.
"Come on!" Tavi called, heading for the exit, and the two Canim came behind him.
Outside the hive, Tavi found a low set of earthworks around the entrance, doubtless earthcrafted by Max and Durias to serve as a fortification. The two Alerans were behind it, bloodied weapons in hand. Max's sword was wreathed in flame, and dead Vord were piled over the top of the little rampart. Kitai stood between them, her own sword stained as well, while Anag, his axe in hand, his blue-and-black armor covered with ichor, stood behind them, where he must have used his greater height and longer reach to good advantage.
The eerie, green-lighted world of the Vord was in chaos. All manner of nightmarish creatures filled the fey twilight, racing about in what seemed like sheer, unreasoning madness. One Cane-form Vord was clawing and biting a nearby pine tree, while one of the toad-shaped Vord repeatedly bounded forward into the side of the hive, righted itself, and tried again. Wax spiders glided calmly, bounded in tremendous agitation, or fought madly with one another, a seemingly endless number of legs flailing.
"Come on!" Tavi cried. "We're leaving!"
"Aleran!" Kitai said sharply. "Your leg."
Tavi looked at her blankly for an instant before he understood what she was talking about and looked down. His leg, where the Vord queen had torn at him with her claws, was bleeding-not fatally, but if it wasn't stopped, that could change. He'd been drawing upon enough metalcrafting that he hadn't even noticed the pain of the injury, which seemed as much a part of the background as the howls and shrieks of the disoriented Vord.
"Got it," Maximus said. He slammed the tip of his sword into the earth, jerked a flask from his belt, and passed it to Kitai. "Pour this over my hands as I close it," he told her.
While the others warded off any Vord who approached, Tavi felt Max's hands clamp down on his leg. As Kitai slowly emptied the flask over the wound, the big Antillan's grip burned like fire for an instant, then two, then for a hideous little collection of seconds. Tavi ground his teeth and concentrated on keeping his sword in his hand, until Max released him.
"There," the Antillan said. "Good enough."
Kitai glanced to Tavi, a feral smile stretching her mouth, and gave him a hot, swift kiss. "Lead on."
Tavi oriented himself and set out at the mile-devouring trot of the Legions toward the ruined steadholt where they had left their taurga. The others followed in his wake.
"What was that?" Tavi demanded. "What the bloody crows did you think you were doing?"
He could hear Kitai's grin again. "Why, whatever do you mean, Aleran?"
"The attack!" Tavi snapped. "The disguises! That wasn't something you threw together at the last minute."
"Naturally not," Kitai agreed. "The Hunters in Canea have been using suits of Vord chitin since six months into the invasion. There were several available. We just had to fit them."
He turned to give her an exasperated look. "That's not what I mean and you know it! Why didn't you tell me?"
Behind Kitai, Max's mouth spread into a wide grin. "Couldn't be helped, Your Highness."
"And what is that supposed to mean?"
"Operational security," Kitai said smugly.
Tavi blinked. "What?"
"There is no lying to a being who can read your thoughts, Aleran," Kitai said. "The only way we could be sure that she wouldn't expect the attack was to make sure that you could not expect an attack."
"You... You, it... How did... You can't just-"
"Why else would we have let you approach the hive by yourself without so much as a comment about what a foolish idea it was?"
Tavi stared at her helplessly, and nearly killed himself tripping over an outthrust root.
"Do not look so astonished, Aleran," Kitai said. "It was not difficult to anticipate what kind of strategy you would favor. You have something of a history of successfully negotiating with your enemies. Even making friends of them." Her green eyes sparkled. "In some cases, very close friends."
Tavi shook his head. "You used me."
"Yes."
"You used me," Tavi said.
Her smile widened. "And it worked. You are a marvelous stalking cow."
"Horse," Tavi corrected wearily. "Stalking horse."
Kitai tilted her head. "What idiot would so endanger a perfectly good horse?"
Max and Durias both burst out in laughter.
A Cane-form Vord exploded from a copse of small pines ten feet away, bounding forward to the attack. Varg met the attacker in midleap, the speed and power behind the blow astonishing, and the attacking Vord fell to the croach in two pieces.
"Tavar," Varg growled, still on guard, his eyes scanning the trees around them. "Now is not the time."
Tavi stared at the still-twitching Vord for a second, his heart racing with surprise at the sheer speed of the attack. He nodded at Varg and grunted his agreement. "But we're going to talk about this," he said, glowering at Kitai.
She smiled, unperturbed, and said nothing as they continued making their way out of the confusion and anarchy that covered the landscape every bit as thoroughly as the croach.
Chapter 36
Amara returned to the Slaver Market that night, once dark had settled on the occupied city. Furylamps burned in the streets, but infrequently: The only Aleran lights remaining had been burning since they had last been put in place by Ceres' former residents. They wouldn't last more than a day or two more, at most. For the moment, though, they created broad swaths of shadow, which made it simple for Amara to move unseen.
The greenish light of the glowing croach within the city was bright enough, cast up on nearby buildings, that Amara had no trouble avoiding the various bits of wreckage on the ground in the alleyways leading up to the Slave Market. Twice, a Vord keeper prowled by, long legs scything in a rippling motion, the translucent shell of the spiderlike being glowing from within with the dim light of the glob of croach it carried inside whatever passed for its belly. Once she saw one of the creatures begin to vomit up blobs of croach, smoothing it over the sill of a window, where the waxy substance evidently began to take root and grow.
Ceres was still habitable by human beings, technically speaking. But the Vord clearly intended to change that.
Amara hurried her pace.
She came in from a different direction than Rook had shown her. The former chief of Kalarus's Bloodcrows had obviously worked out a way to strongly influence Brencis's focus-a young man, alone in an alien world, suddenly granted both physical gratification and emotional reassurance, in the form of someone he was familiar with, hardly had a chance against a manipulator of Rook's skills. All the same, Amara knew that Rook's hold on Brencis was made of whispers and cobwebs. If he ever realized they were there, it would be a simple matter to brush them away-and if he had done so in the intervening hours, Rook might already have been forced to betray Amara.
And if not... well, it never hurt to be cautious.
The Slave Market was lit by furylamps and a glowing mound of croach, bulging up like a cyst from the paving stones and covered with spiderlike keepers. A few more Vord were in evidence than had been there during the day. Were the creatures predominantly nocturnal? Or was there some other explanation for their increased presence.
The "recruiting" operation maintained the same pace she had seen before. Half a dozen dazed Alerans, newly collared, lay on the auction platform. A number of sleepy-eyed slaves were draped over them, whispering and... and other things, in the light of the dancing furylamps. Amara shivered and looked away.
Brencis sat at a small table beside the platform, drinking from a dark bottle. He set it carelessly aside and began wolfing down food. Rook sat on the bench beside him, her hair mussed, her clothes in attractive disarray. A fresh bruise decorated one cheek-a testament to Brencis's attentions, Amara wondered, or evidence of Rook's discovery and coerced treachery?
Amara saw the glittering eyes of a vordknight, crouched upon the roof she had used earlier that day to spy upon the courtyard. A coincidence? Or had the collared Rook been forced to inform them of what she knew of Amara's presence and movements.
Amara grimaced. There was no help for it. She'd simply have to press on and hope for the best.
Veiled behind layers of windcrafting, blending with the weirdly lit night in her furycrafted cloak, Amara stalked silently forward.
Murdering a powerful furycrafter like Kalarus Brencis-and surviving the experience-was a dubious proposition at best. His innate gifts at watercrafting meant that only a sudden and massively traumatic injury had a real chance of killing him; a slash that opened anything less than a major artery would be rapidly repaired. She had to be swift. His skills at windcrafting would grant him deadly swift reaction speed to any attack, and the raw strength granted by his earthcrafting meant that if there was any sort of struggle, he would literally tear Amara limb from limb. Worse, if she struck, missed, and, sensibly, tried to flee, he would probably kill her before she had covered more than a few yards. His firecrafting would make that simple.