Nasaug growled in his throat. "We are willing to face those dangers, Aleran."
"What if you didn't have to?" Tavi asked.
Varg's ears flicked in amusement. "Perhaps you noticed," he growled to Nasaug, "that our young gadara is clever."
Nasaug snapped his jaws pensively. "What do you propose?"
"I'm going to give you the man responsible for those deaths," Tavi said. "I'm going to punish those who carried out his orders. I'm going to see to it that the Free Alerans are not treated as criminals for what they have done-and after that, I'm going to make sure your fleet gets safely over the sea and back to your home."
"And in exchange for all of this?" Nasaug asked, his tone clearly skeptical.
Tavi gestured at the ocean of Canim surrounding the hill. "You surrender."
Nasaug lifted his lips from his teeth. "What?"
"You surrender," Tavi repeated.
"Even if this was possible, I will never surrender to Alerans or their Legions," Nasaug said. "Too many of them are no better than animals."
"You won't be surrendering to Aleran Legions," Tavi replied. "You'll be surrendering to me, personally-a gadara."
Nasaug tilted his head, his ears swiveling forward in concentration. He traded a long look with Varg, then tilted his head to one side. He drew a heavy leather sash from his belt and tossed it to the larger Cane.
Durias's mouth fell open, and he stared at the exchange in pure surprise.
Varg donned the sash, belting it on with practiced movements. "Aleran," he said. "Let us assume that I agree to this proposal. What will you need to make it happen?"
Tavi's heart began to pound in excitement, and he felt a grin try to stretch his lips. He was careful to keep his teeth covered, lest he give the Canim the wrong idea.
"First," he said, "I'll need you to take my wounded man to a healer. I'll need his help."
Varg nodded, and said to Durias, "See to it at once."
Durias glanced at Nasaug, but even as he did his fist was banging out a salute on his chest, and he hurried away.
Varg nodded and turned back to Tavi. "And?"
"Any eyewitnesses to any of the attacks," Tavi said. "I'll need to speak to them."
Varg glanced at Nasaug, who nodded. "It can be done, sar."
Tavi pointed at the besieged ruins. "The attack needs to stop, at least temporarily."
Varg narrowed his eyes but nodded once. "Is midnight time enough for this plan?"
"It should be," Tavi said.
In fact, it should be plenty of time, Tavi thought. By the time midnight got there, he would almost certainly have fulfilled his word to the Cane.
And if he hadn't, he'd be too dead for his failure to bother him overmuch.
Chapter 48
Gaius Sextus fell upon the forward ranks of the legionares coming toward them, and terror like none they had known crashed over them.
The flaming brand in his fist cast out a blinding radiance, and Amara could feel the very edges of the fearcrafting that imbued it. Once before she had borne a flame containing a fury of terror, and she had barely remained conscious during the act. Count Gram's fearcrafting had been formidable, routing thousands of barbarian Marat and their war beasts alike, sending them screaming from the walls of Garrison during Second Calderon.
Beside the horror Alera's First Lord now sent against the Kalaran legionares, Gram's fearcrafting had been a momentary flutter of insecurity.
The men nearest Gaius, those file leaders of whatever luckless century had the fortune to make up the column's center, never got to scream. Their eyes rolled back in their heads, and as a single man, they convulsed and fell to the stony ground.
Then the screams began.
Hundreds of throats opened in terrorized howls, a sudden and deafening cacophony. Ranks and files melted like butter on a hot skillet, and Legion discipline vanished like dew beneath a desert sunrise. Some men fell, clutching at their shoulders and chests, bleeding from the eyes, or frothing at the lips. Some sobbed and staggered to their knees, weapons tumbling from fear-numbed fingers. Some turned their weapons upon those near them, panicked beyond reason or ability to recognize their sword-brethren. Most simply fled, casting aside their swords and shields.
Among those hundreds of afflicted souls, one man alone stood his ground. Though his face was ashen, somehow this man withstood that horrible fear, bracing his shield and raising his sword in wavering defiance.
The First Lord's blade of fire swept down, and no shield or sword in all of Alera could have withstood that molten furnace of a blow. In a flash of light, the legionare's shield shattered into cleaved halves and droplets of molten metal, parted every bit as easily as his armor and the flesh beneath. He fell in a horrible cloud of hissing gasses and the stench of scorched flesh, and Amara could not help but feel pity that the poor man had been so rewarded for his courage, greater than any of the Legion about him.
Even in Gaius's shadow, unable to see the flame, and shielded from the worst of the fearcrafting, it was all that Amara could do to keep moving forward. The terrible light of the First Lord's sword created a nightmare army of shadows that raced in senseless panic over the slopes of the mountainside and flashed back from polished armor and the bright steel of discarded blades. It created a dizzying display of light and blackness, making it difficult to judge distances or to maintain her awareness of their direction or position. She had grown used to tracking their movements, of maintaining her orientation, and she realized in a sudden panic that she was no longer sure of their way.
Not that it would matter, she realized a beat later. The largest threat the poor, howling legionares posed to Amara and her companions was that of a broken ankle to be had from stumbling over the fallen forms of those incapacitated by terror.
Such was the screaming chaos around her that Amara nearly missed precisely the threat she was supposed to be on guard against-a sudden knot of resistance, discipline, and purpose amidst the horror. Several heavily armored men had gathered around another figure, one holding his hand aloft-a Knight Ignus. Blue fire wreathed that single man's fingers, a countercrafting, Amara judged, not strong enough to stretch far from his body against the will of the First Lord, but of sufficient power to enable the men immediately around him, Knights Terra by their outsized weapons, to maintain their reason.
"Bernard!" Amara screamed, pointing with her sword. Her voice was lost in the din of maddened men around them, but she sensed his change in pace and dropped into a crouch as he lifted his bow and loosed an arrow that passed close enough to her scalp to stir her hair. The arrow leapt through the shifting shadows-
– and missed the Knight Ignus by the width of a finger. It flicked past one of the Knights Terra and drew a streak of crimson across his cheekbone. The enemy Knights' mouths opened in cries Amara could not hear through the tumult, and they charged, the Knight Ignus at the center of their group.
Amara tried to shout a warning to the First Lord-but Gaius had his face turned away from the threat, his eyes instead focused upon three other men coming from the opposite direction, their faces blank with the detachment of Knights Ferrous, their swords gleaming.
In the corner of her eye, she saw her husband swipe a hand over his eyes in a gesture of frustration and fear as he reached to his quiver for another arrow, but the enemy Knights were too close, and there was no way he would have the chance to loose it.
Amara drew upon Cirrus and the battlefield slowed to a crawl as she dashed forward. She was upon the leading Knight, a man armed with an enormous axe, before he could bring his weapon to bear properly upon her. She slipped aside from a hasty and badly aimed swing and whipped her sword across the man's face with one hand, while giving the axe's haft a sharp downward slap with the other.