Varg could probably establish his credentials in fairly short order, but Tavi's instincts warned him not to ask the Cane to do so. Varg had agreed to follow and support him until they reached Nasaug-but only so long as Tavi behaved in a fashion appropriate to a leader. Among the Canim warrior caste, leaders did not detail matters of personal precedence to their subordinates. They established such guidelines themselves. It was how one became a leader in the first place.
Tavi had to establish himself, by himself, at once-and when it came to dealing with a Cane, actions undeniably spoke far more than words.
So, without another word, Tavi swung down from his horse and stalked over to the Cane, staring hard at his eyes. Tavi stopped about six feet from the warrior, and said, in the wolf-warrior's own snarling tongue, "Say that again, please. I didn't hear you."
The Free Aleran soldiers stared. Every single Cane in sight turned his head toward Tavi, ears swiveled entirely forward.
The warrior Cane lowered his chin, and a warning growl bubbled in his chest.
Tavi let out a bark of harsh laughter, showing his own teeth in response. "Is that supposed to frighten me?"
The warrior Cane rested one hand on the hilt of his sword. "Do you want your blood to stay where it is sochar-lar?"
Tavi lifted both eyebrows at the unfamiliar word, and glanced at Varg.
"Monkey," Varg supplied, in Aleran. "And male-child."
"He called me monkey boy?" Tavi asked.
Varg nodded.
Tavi nodded his thanks and turned back to the warrior Cane. "Take me to Nasaug," Tavi told him. "Now."
The Cane lifted his lips from his teeth. "Drop your sword and pray that I choose to be merciful, monkey boy."
"Will it take long for you to talk me to death?" Tavi asked. "I can't help but wonder why you, a warrior, are out here leading a group of makers and monkeys, guarding a back road. Badly. Are you too useless for an actual fight?"
The Cane let out a snarl and moved, sword sweeping from its sheath as he leapt at Tavi.
Tavi hadn't expected quite that strong a reaction, but he'd been ready to move since the moment he'd dismounted. He borrowed speed from the wind and slowed everything that happened, drawing his sword to meet the Cane's, pulling strength from the earth and twisting the whole of his body, hips and shoulders and legs, to strike against the Cane's weapon with all the force he could summon.
The Aleran gladius rang against the bloodsteel of the Cane's sword, and shattered it in a scream of tortured metal. The Cane staggered, thrown off-balance, and Tavi bulled forward, low, sword sweeping in a cut aimed at the back of the Cane's armored leg.
The Cane jerked his leg clear of the blow that could have severed tendons and rendered him immobile, and Tavi rammed his shoulder into the Cane's belly with all the power of his body and furycraft, actually lifting the huge wolf-warrior clear of the ground, before slamming him to the earth on his back. The Cane's breath exploded from his lungs in a croaking snarl, and before he could recover, Tavi had seized one broad ear in an iron grip and set the tip of his sword against the Cane's throat.
"I am Rufus Scipio," Tavi said calmly. "Captain of the First Aleran Legion. Defender of the Elinarch. I have faced the massed ranks of your army alone and unarmed. I killed the Bloodspeaker Sari by my own hand. And," he added, "I beat Nasaug at Indus. I have come to speak to Nasaug, and you will take me to him."
The warrior Cane stared at him for several seconds. Then his eyes flicked to one side, and he tilted his head slightly, baring his throat. Tavi released his grip on the Cane's ear, and returned the gesture, more shallowly. The Cane's ears twitched in what Tavi had come to recognize as a motion of surprise.
Tavi lowered the sword and backed away without letting his guard down. Then he sheathed the weapon and nodded to the Cane. "Get up. Let's move."
The Cane growled as he pushed himself up but tilted his head to one side again and gestured to the other Canim there. He turned to the Aleran centurion, and said, in mangled Aleran, "I leave the post in your care, centurion."
The centurion looked from the Cane to Tavi, his face full of questions, but he saluted the Cane, Aleran style, and began giving orders to the other men there. The Cane growled to his countrymen, and the Canim fell into a loose formation around Tavi, who mounted his horse again and pulled it up next to the wagon.
"How is he?" he asked Varg quietly, looking down on Ehren's ashen face.
"Sleeping," Varg replied. The Cane held steady the quill that still protruded from the slit in Ehren's neck, allowing him to breathe.
"Aleran," Kitai said, a note of reprimand in her voice. "If I must drive the wagon, it would be courteous of you to let me handle the fighting."
Varg's ears flicked in amusement.
"Next time," Tavi told her. He glanced at Varg and arched an eyebrow in silent question.
"Your grammar is terrible," Varg said. He glanced up at the warrior Cane, as he signaled his men, and their group and its new escort started down the road. "But you make yourself understood, gadara. Calling him 'useless' may have been more than was necessary to goad him."
Tavi grunted. "It is an insult word to your kind?"
Varg snorted again. "Rear-area duties such as this are often assigned to overly aggressive young warriors, to temper them. They often resent it."
Tavi nodded in understanding. "I'm just glad I didn't have to kill anyone to get through."
"Why?" Varg asked.
Tavi glanced back at the Cane. The question had been delivered in a neutral, almost casual tone, but Tavi sensed that there was more to it than that, in Varg's mind.
"Because it would be a waste of a life that could be better spent elsewhere," he said.
Varg looked at him steadily. "And perhaps because your people do not all enjoy killing for its own sake."
Tavi thought of Navaris's flat, reptilian eyes and suppressed a shiver. "Perhaps."
Varg's chest rumbled in a low, pensive growl. "You begin to understand us, I think, gadara. And perhaps I begin to understand you."
"That," Kitai said in an acerbic tone, "would be remarkable."
They reached Mastings in the midst of the afternoon.
The Canim, Tavi saw at once, had turned the city into a veritable fortress, with multiple ranks of earthworks and palisades surrounding a solidly crafted curtain wall, leading up to full thirty-foot siege walls around the town itself. The outermost wall was lined with both Free Aleran and Canim troops, and at the gate they were challenged by another warrior Cane. The leader of their escort went forward to speak with the sentry, and Tavi paused, looking around.
The conversation between the two Canim became animated, but no louder. The Cane at the gate beckoned an older Aleran man over, and the three of them met in a quiet conference. The man glanced at Tavi and frowned, and Aleran sentries on the wall began to gather in, overlooking the group at the gate.
"We've attracted attention," Kitai noted under her breath.
"That was the idea," Tavi replied.
Ten minutes later, no one had come to speak to them, but a runner had been dispatched toward the city, and a rider had left the gates, riding hard toward the north.
Another half hour passed before a group of horsemen emerged from Mast-ings and made their way through the extra defensive walls until they finally reached the outermost wall. As they did, Tavi squinted at the outer wall, then at all the positions on the inner wall, where thousands of uniformed figures stood on guard.
"Kitai," Tavi breathed quietly. "Look at the guards on the second wall, and farther in, and tell me what you see."