Chapter 33

In an instant, Kitai was at his back, and a glance up showed him Crassus hand-signaling frantically, requesting permission to attack. Tavi flashed him the sign to stay in place and turned just as the nearest vord mantis flung itself at him.

There was no time for thought, or for fear. A series of thoughts so rapid that they seemed almost a flowing, single idea within his mind's eye gathered furies of the earth, of fire, of steel, and Tavi's flaming blade split the creature cleanly into two frantically twitching parts in a single diagonal, upward-sweeping stroke.

Another mantis came hard on the heels of the first - metaphorically speaking, anyway, since Tavi wasn't sure that the things actually had feet, much less heels. A flick of his wrist sent a howling column of wind and fire into its center of mass with such violence that the crafting tore two of the creature's long legs from its body.

Tavi checked over his shoulder. Kitai had been rushed by no less than four mantises. One was frantically trying to tear itself from the grasp of a pair of slender young trees, a side product of Tavi's crafting, which had bent in place at a gesture from Kitai and trapped the vord. The other three were struggling to surge forward through tall grass that writhed like serpents and seized their every limb in a thousand soft green fingers - more of Kitai's crafting.

Tavi turned back and left them to her. The sudden, focused, coordinated attack, its strength doubled upon what would appear to be the weaker of the pair to most observers, suggested the appearance of some sort of guiding intellect - perhaps even the Queen herself. The vord had moved with direction and purpose, not with the blind aggression of a creature defending its territory, as the first group of mantis-forms had done.

Or maybe they were getting smarter.

An instinct drew his face up and to one side in time to see a pair of vordknights blurring toward him. They swept past, scythe-limbs positioned to sweep his head from his shoulders as if he'd been a dandelion and they the groundskeepers. He ducked beneath it, his hand seizing the hem of Kitai's mail shirt with a jerk, warning her, and she dropped into a low crouch that took her safely beneath the passing scythes.

He turned and pointed his sword. A lance of fire burst from it, swelling to engulf the two vordknights as they passed, burning their wings to shriveled, blackened strands. The two crashed to the ground with horrible force, their chitin-armor snapping and cracking audibly, even over the noise. His head whipped around toward the city as he rose again, and saw more vord rushing over the fallen rubble, hundreds of mantis-forms and thousands of the wax spiders with their eerie, semitransparent bodies, all of them trilling the new wail of alarm.

The real attack, the one he had dreaded, the one that had truly compelled him to come forward all but alone, came in the instant after he turned to see the enemy numbers, the river of deadly foes rushing his way, while his eyes were still widening.

He heard it, a rippling set of crackling snaps, as if a thousand mule skinners had begun popping their whips in rhythm.

"Kitai!" he called.

There wasn't time for anything more. He raised his arms and called to the wind, and it answered him with a howl, spinning into a sudden, hysterically powerful circle around him and Kitai. The vord-wasps began to hammer into that whirling shield, their chitin-stings like tiny scalpels and arrowheads at the same time. They collided with the nearly solid air in half a dozen angry swarms, each striking from a slightly different direction, their arrow-straight flight suddenly becoming a wild spin as they were thrown aside.

By some chance of fate or pure luck, a few of the wasps made it through. Tavi dispatched them with swift, sure movements of his sword, using its fire to brush them out of the air just as he had the vordknights.

The stream slackened for a breath, and Tavi looked up through the open roof of the whirling column of wind and flashed signals to Crassus. Six targets, attack them.

Crassus dropped a swift gesture of affirmation toward Tavi and began signaling his men. A pair of seconds later, the first caged lightning bolt was loosed, and flashed across the sky from the cloud above Tavi and Kitai to the city. A large green-and-black lump, where a patch of the croach high upon a wall seemed to bulge with some half-formed hulk of armor, suddenly exploded into white light and fury. Fragments went flying in every direction, and the half shape that was left seemed to gout fire for several seconds before settling into a more conventional bonfire.

And the stream of deadly arrow-wasps from that horrible hive abruptly vanished.

Tavi swatted several more wasps down, and noted that Kitai had manipulated the spinning force of the winds Tavi held around them, directing several thousand arrow-wasps into the vord still trapped in the grasses. Tavi doubted that the poison coating the wasps' stingers would prove dangerous to the mantis-forms, but their stingers punched through vord chitin with great effectiveness, and each drew its individual trickle of blood. In very short order, no mantis-forms remained standing. Kitai turned her attention to the spiders and mantis-forms rushing from the city, and the vord arrow-wasps sliced and cut into their own kind, helpless before the vast winds.

Thunder rolled overhead, accompanied by blinding-bright flashes of light. Three, four, five, six. Each time Crassus brought one of the captured bolts forth, he destroyed another hive - and after the sixth, the flow of arrow-wasps rushing into the wind shield abruptly ceased, just as the mass of the enemy body came rushing toward Tavi and Kitai.

"I think that went well," Kitai called.

"I'll take it," Tavi said. Then they both leapt upward, and the whirling shield compressed and gathered beneath them, lifting them both up into the skies and out of the reach of the vord below.

Either Crassus had been passing information by hand signal back to the command group, or else Varg had had his fill of waiting. Drums sounded, and the Legion came into sight. Varg had placed Tavi's leading cohorts in the center and flanked them with the taurg cavalry, while a fresh group of warriors stood ready to support any weak points in the line.

"Sir?" Crassus shouted toward him, gesturing at what lightning remained. "What do we do with the rest of it?"

Tavi pointed a finger at the collapsed section of wall, where the vord were pouring out.

Crassus nodded and over the next several minutes dumped all the energy they'd captured from the morning's thunderstorm into the relatively narrow opening. Lightning bolts blew craters in the earth and left the smoldering wreckage of vord forms lying on the blasted ground.

The Legion closed in, with taurga simply crushing down vord that had spread out to the sides of the opening. Their riders never needed to lift their weapons. The Battlecrows and the Prime plugged the hole in the wall and began methodically slaughtering the vord. They were aided by a thin line of Varg's warriors armed with balests, the heavy, steel-bowed, shoulder-fired weapons of the Canim. The warriors' height allowed them to shoot over the Aleran lines without striking an allied legionare, and when one of the steel projectiles struck a vord, the creature fell, screaming, or simply expired outright.

The mantis-form vord were dangerous opponents: So were the most experienced and decorated cohorts in the First Aleran. Tavi watched as their centurions assessed the threat of the mantis-form scythes. The weapons really weren't terribly different from the long-handled sickle-swords used by the Canim militia during the last battles against Nasaug's forces in the Vale, but if adjustments weren't made, they could take a toll on the cohorts.

Centurions all along the line came to similar conclusions at almost the same moment. At their roaring orders, the first rank dropped to fight in a low, defensive crouch while the second shifted to their spears, their shields held high and tilted up, to deflect or reduce the effect of any downward-plunging scythes toward themselves or their fighting partners in the first rank. The spearmen made long thrusts over the front rank's shoulders and helmets to discourage the vord from pressing in too close, and any vord that seemed to gain an advantage was swiftly introduced to a heavy steel balest bolt.

Tavi watched the leading cohorts take light casualties. "Light" casualties, he thought. Only someone who has never cleaned the lifeblood from a fallen legionare's armor thinks that "light" casualties are insignificant.

Men died, fighting at his command far below. But, he thought to himself, not nearly as many of them as if they had walked into the deadly hailstorm of arrow-wasps.

After half of a desperate hour, horns sounded again, and, with a roar, the warrior Canim went pounding toward the gap in the walls. Cohorts hastily re-formed their lines, opening gaps enough for the warriors to come through. Done in the heat of combat, the maneuver wasn't as smooth as it might have been. Dozens of Canim wound up bowling straight through the ranks of a cohort, and dozens more who all kept to the narrow lanes between them wound up stumbling into one another in the narrow spaces. Still, the Canim hit the vord lines like an avalanche of dark red and blue steel. They hammered a salient into the mass of the enemy, and with a roar, fresh legionares, brought up from the Free Aleran, came marching to relieve their brother soldiers.

"Bloody crows," Crassus called to Tavi. The young Antillan was staring at him. "I've never seen anyone do that much in one morning."

"I've been practicing," Tavi called back. He winked at Crassus.

The other man chuckled wearily and shook his head. "I was beginning to wonder if you had it in you, Your Highness."

"Today was nothing, Tribune," Tavi responded. "Nothing." He inhaled deeply through his nose and nodded. "Nothing but a good start. The real test comes in a few more days."

Crassus's expression sobered, and he nodded. "Orders, sir?"

"The vord will have turned Riva into a larder for the dead," Tavi replied. "You'll probably find it in the citadel, but they could have put it anywhere. Take a fire team into the city, find the larder, and burn it."

"Sir? Our dead, too?"

"None of them wanted to feed the vord," Tavi replied. "Yes. We can't leave them a food supply here."

"The croach," Crassus said.

"Aye," Tavi said. "As we head for Calderon, I want sweeps out five miles on either side to spot any patches of croach that are forming. We're going to burn it out between here and the Valley. All of it. But start with Riva. Move."

Crassus banged out a rapid salute. "Yes, sir."

"Crassus," Tavi added. He hesitated, then said, "Be careful, all right? They like to leave surprises. And there might be more of those arrow-wasp nests."

"If there are, I'll burn them out, too, sir." Crassus started signaling to the other Pisces in the air around him, and they all streaked back down toward the Legion lines.

Tavi watched the fight at the wall for another moment or two, but it was over. The vord were beginning to break, and the Aleran ranks moved forward with a steady, professional rhythm that silently declared their expectation of victory.

"Aleran?" Kitai asked quietly.

"I'm all right," Tavi said.

She shook her head. "You succeeded today."

"Hmmm?" He glanced at her. "Oh. The furycrafting."

"Yes. Does this not make you happy?"

He nodded. "Oh, yes. I suppose. But now... Now it's all on my shoulders. There's no escaping that."

"It always was, my Aleran," Kitai said. "You were just too stupid to realize it."

Tavi snorted out a laugh and smiled at her.

Kitai nodded in satisfaction. "Come. You need to get back to your wagon and rest. Varg has things well in hand."

"I should stay," Tavi said. "Watch. Who knows, there might be something here, some clue as to their weakness."

Kitai looked at him with what looked like enormous patience that was nonetheless clearly being tried. "Aleran," she said between her teeth, "you should rest. In your wagon. Your enclosed, covered wagon. While nearly everyone else is busy with the battle."

Tavi blinked at her owlishly, then his eyes widened. "Oh," he said. A sudden smile lifted his mouth. "Oh."

And Kitai was suddenly pressed against him. There was a limited amount of sensuality available, given all the steel that was between them, but her kiss was so searing that Tavi felt in danger of having the armor melt from his back. She drew back from him, green eyes bright behind heavy lids. "You were smart today. You were strong. It suits you." Her eyes smoldered brighter. "I like the way it looks on you."

They kissed again, slow and heated. Then he smiled, and said, his lips brushing hers, "Race you there."

Kitai's eyes danced. Then she elbowed him aside, sending him into a brief, tumbling spin as she kicked out her own windstream behind her and dived for the camp.

Tavi laughed and sent himself rushing after her.

Chapter 34

Isana had all but fallen asleep when she was awakened by a trilling vord cry she had never heard before. The ululating wail rose and fell so swiftly that it almost seemed a chattering sound. Odder still, it rang through the quiet green light of the hive with ear-piercing intensity.

Isana sat on the floor at Araris's feet, leaning back against the cushionlike warmth of the croach. Both the wall and the floor sank gently beneath her as she sat reclined, essentially forming a couch under her. In point of fact, it was actually quite comfortable as long as one did not dwell upon the fact that it might at any time engulf and dissolve one's flesh.

Isana opened her eyes only enough to be able to see, and remained silent and still.

The Queen came out of her little sunken bower-alcove in a darting motion that reminded Isana of a spider, rushing out of its funnel-shaped web to seize helpless prey. She crouched at the side of a shallow pool of water - or what Isana assumed was water - on the opposite side of the hive. Her rigid-looking lips peeled back from black chitin teeth, and she let out a furious hissing sound, staring down at the pool.

The Queen was looking at a watercrafted image, Isana thought. Which meant that the pool wasn't simply a water-filled dimple in the floor. It was connected, somehow, to the water system of the surrounding area, where furies would be able to bring images and sounds.

Quiet footsteps sounded, and Invidia entered. She made some irritated gesture at one of the walls, and the ear-tearing wail ended. "What has happened?"

"My progenitors have arrived," the Queen murmured softly.

"That's impossible," Invidia said. "The attack is about to begin. You cannot divert your attention now."

"Not impossible, obviously," the Queen said, a very faint tinge of displeasure in her tone.

The creature on Invidia's chest rippled. She closed her eyes, and her cheeks lost all color for a moment.

"I suppose he could have been flown from Antillus in that time," Invidia said, much more quietly. "Where is he?"

"In Riva," the vord Queen said distantly. "Destroying the food stores."

Invidia lifted her eyebrows. Or rather, where her eyebrows should have been, had they not been seared off. Her skin was still a patchwork of burned flesh. The scars, Isana thought, would surely be permanent. Not even a watercrafter of Invidia's skill could remove them now, days after she received the burns. "The larder... but we needed the supply line from Riva to feed the warriors."

The Queen lifted her dark, multifaceted eyes and stared coldly at Invidia.

Invidia folded her arms. "Your anger does not change the fact that the horde cannot possibly find enough food to support active operations."

The Queen's expression darkened more. Then she raised a hand and waved it vaguely at the air. "I will send a portion of the force into sleep. They will not require food. I will mark out the smallest warrior in every group of ten."

Invidia looked slightly ill. "You're feeding them upon their own?"

The Queen went back to staring at the pool. "It is necessary. They are the least useful soldiers at the moment. It will be done before the assault, so that they can maintain their activity levels." Her mouth twitched a tiny bit at one corner. "And after, there will be other sources available."

"You cannot sustain a campaign without supplies," Invidia said.

"I do not need to sustain a campaign," the Queen replied calmly. "All I need to do is break them, here, in this valley. Once the Alerans are broken here, they are broken forever. If I lose every warrior, drone" - she paused to glance at Invidia - "and slave under my command but accomplish that, it will be well worth it."

"I understand," Invidia said, frost edging her words.

The Queen remained calm and remote. "Anger will not change the fact that the most intelligent course of action, in your position, is to go forth and position your fellow slaves in such a fashion as to maximize the cost for the Alerans to neutralize the warriors with furycraft."

Invidia was silent for a long moment before she said, calmly, "Of course." She turned to leave.

"Invidia," the Queen said.

The burn-scarred woman paused.

"You are not replaceable," the Queen said quietly. "I will therefore sacrifice you the most reluctantly. I would prefer it if you took whatever action you could to avoid becoming the victim of chance."

"Since we are being candid," Invidia said, "I must tell you that my motivations for cooperation are somewhat diluted by the fact that I am fully aware that when you no longer have a use for me, you will dispose of me."

The vord Queen tilted her head, her expression pensive. Then she nodded slowly. "Nearly one million freemen have come to me wearing the green," she said. "They are being sheltered and fed, and I will honor the bargain I offered them. It might reduce the amount of disruption if, when the organized Aleran resistance is broken, they are governed by one of their own. Someone who understands reality." She paused, and added, "I suppose it might prevent needless suffering. Preserve lives that would otherwise be lost. If that matters to you."

Invidia narrowed her eyes. "Are you making me that offer?"

The Queen nodded. "I am. Our partnership has been mutually profitable. I see no reason why it should not continue at the conclusion of hostilities. Survive, serve me well, and it will be so."

Invidia was silent for a moment. She looked away from the Queen, and Isana saw her bow her head. There was a flash of emotion from the burned woman, of fear and elated hope and bitter shame.

"Very well," she whispered.

The vord Queen nodded. "Go."

Invidia left the hive.

Several moments later, the vord Queen said, "I know you didn't sleep through that noise, Isana."

"I thought it would be more polite not to disturb you," Isana said.

"You thought you might gain information covertly," the Queen said. "It was a sensible attempt to attain some small measure of advantage." She stared down at the pool for a moment, and murmured, "Your son has grown."

Isana's heart seemed to skip a beat as a sudden pang went through her chest. "I assume you do not mean physically."

"His tactical furycraft is impressive. Less subtle and complex than Sextus's talents, but applied with greater flexibility and intelligence."

Isana swallowed. "You're trying to hurt him."

The Queen looked back at Isana, her expression surprised. "Of course."

Isana carefully did not grind her teeth or show the vord fear or rage. "But you have not succeeded."

"Yet," said the Queen, "there was a very low order of probability that this attempt would succeed. That was not its purpose."

"A sensible attempt to attain some small measure of advantage," Isana said.

"Precisely." She studied the pool's surface. "Thus far, I estimate my own strength to be the greater by a considerable margin."

"Unless he's holding something back," Isana said, primarily to plant doubt in the Queen's mind.

The Queen smiled. "Always a possibility."

Isana chewed on her lower lip for a moment, then asked, "May I see him?"

"If you wish."

Isana rose carefully. Her dress was beginning to smell almost as untidy as it looked. No, she decided. She was beginning to smell almost as bad as the dress looked. Her hair must look a fright. How many days had it been since she had bathed or changed clothes? There was no way for her to tell.

As she approached the pool, she saw a ghostly image appear deep within it, one that grew brighter and clearer as she drew closer to the Queen. It showed a large field of fallen stones and ruined buildings. There were warrior-vord corpses all over it. The Queen waved a hand, and suddenly the vord sprang back to life and were surrounded by the blurred form of legionares. An instant later, the wall rose up again, colored oddly green, then a slender young man stood before the city gates of Riva.

"This is what he did no more than an hour ago," the Queen murmured. "The image becomes too indistinct to be useful as his Legion closes to battle. These events transpired just prior."

Isana watched in awe as her son, tall and proud, tested his will against the furycrafted fortress and reduced it to rubble. She watched as the enemy came forth to kill him and found only death instead. She watched as the Legions marched up to the city and hammered into the vord. She watched her son cast his defiance into the teeth of the enemy who had all but destroyed Alera - and emerge victorious. Her heart pounded hard with terrified pride, with worry, with hopeful anxiety.

Her child. Septimus's child.

"If only you could see him, my lord," Isana whispered, closing her eyes against sudden tears.

"Was it difficult?" the Queen asked a moment later.

Isana willed her tears away with a simple watercrafting and opened her eyes again. "Was what difficult?"

"Rearing the child without the aid of your mate."

"At times," Isana said. "I had help. My brother. The other folk at his steadholt."

The Queen looked up from the foggy haze that had enveloped the pool's image. "It is a collective effort, then."

"It can be," Isana said. "Was it difficult for you?"

The Queen tilted her head inquisitively.

"Bringing forth this horde without the aid of subordinate queens," Isana clarified.

"Yes."

"Would it not make it easier to use your warriors effectively if you had the help of more queens?"

"Yes."

"And yet you have not created more."

The Queen turned her young-seeming face back to the pool, troubled. "I have tried," she said.

"But you cannot?"

"I can create them." The Queen's face became puzzled, wounded. It was a child's expression. "They all try to kill me."

"Why?" Isana asked.

For a moment, she thought the Queen wasn't going to answer. When she spoke, her voice was very small. "Because I have been changed. Because I do not function in the manner which their instincts tell them I should."

A slow wave of sadness and genuine pain washed out of the vord Queen. Isana had to fight to remind herself of the destruction and death brought by this creature to all of Carna.

"That's why you left Canea and returned here," Isana said suddenly. "Your junior queens turned upon you, so you escaped them."

As she sat beside the pool, the Queen drew her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. "I did not escape them," she replied. "I merely postponed the confrontation."

"I don't understand," Isana said.

"The continent across the sea called Canea has been overrun," the Queen said in a quiet monotone. "But it will take decades, perhaps centuries, for my children to consolidate and fully exploit their new territory - to make it impregnable. Once that is done, and they have a secure base of operations, they will come here to destroy me and everything of my creation. Already their forces have grown to an order of magnitude beyond mine."

The Queen turned her eyes to Isana. "That is why I am here. That is why I must destroy you. I must create my own stronghold if I am to survive. That, too, is a task requiring many years." She rested her chin upon her knees, closed her eyes, and whispered, "I wish to live. I wish for my children to live."

Isana stared down at the monstrous child's genuine sorrow and fear, and fought against the pity the sight and sense of her evoked. She was a monster, nothing less - even if she might also be something more.

The Queen rocked back and forth, a tiny and distressed motion. "I wish to live, Isana. I wish for my children to live."

Isana sighed and turned to walk back to her place beside Araris. "Who doesn't, child," she murmured. "Who doesn't."