Max sighed, but no one spoke.
“Then let’s get to work,” Tavi said. “This is what we’re going to do…”
Chapter 36
Purposeful strides approached, and by the time the tent’s flap was thrown aside, Tavi had his sword in his hand and half-drawn from its scabbard.
“Whoah,” Ehren said, holding up open hands. The tanned, sandy-haired little Cursor looked more amused than threatened, backlit by the cloudy light of full day. “I surrender, Captain Scipio.”
Tavi blinked his eyes several times, glanced blearily around, then put his sword away. “Right. Sorry.”
Ehren closed the tent flap, darkening it again.
Tavi sighed. “On the trunk to your left.”
“Oh,” Ehren said. “Sorry. I forgot. Light.” The little furylamp on the trunk flickered to life.
“You didn’t forget,” Tavi said, half-smiling. “You wanted to see if I’d developed any crafting of my own yet. No.”
Ehren put on an innocent look. “I hardly recognized you with your hair cut so short.”
“I hardly recognized you with a tan,” Tavi replied. “I’m sorry we haven’t been able to talk yet, but…”
“We’re working,” Ehren said. “I get it.”
Tavi had slept in his trousers and with his boots on. He rose, slipped on a tunic, and turned to greet Ehren with a rough hug.
“Good to see you, “ Tavi said.
“Likewise,” Ehren replied. He drew back and looked suspiciously at Tavi, up and down. “Crows, you’ve gotten taller. You’re supposed to stop growing after age twenty or so, Ta-” He shook his head. “Ahem. Scipio. At the Academy, we started off the same height. Now you’re as tall as Max.”
“Making up for lost time, I suppose,” Tavi said. “How are you?”
“Glad to be rid of the islands,” Ehren said. He frowned and glanced away. “Though I wish I’d come back with better news. And given it to someone else.”
“Did you speak to the prisoners?”
Ehren nodded. “They cooperated. I’m fairly sure that the dead man was Kalarus’ agent, and was the brains of the operation. The rest were just… well. There’s always shady business for a legionare to involve himself in.”
“Especially troublemakers.”
“Especially troublemaking veterans,” Ehren agreed.
“Fine,” Tavi said. “Release them and send them back to their century.”
Ehren blinked. “What?”
“That’s an entire spear of veteran legionares, Ehren. I need them.”
“But… Captain…”
Tavi met the Cursor’s eyes, and said, quietly, “This is my decision. Do it.”
Ehren nodded. “All right,” he said quietly. “The First Spear asked me to tell you that the Canim are moving through the second picket]ine now, and they’re making no effort to conceal their presence. He estimates that they’ll be here in an hour or so.”
Tavi scowled. “I told him to wake me when the first pickets reported contact.”
“He said you’d need your sleep more than he in the next day or two. Tribune Antillus agreed.”
Tavi scowled. Max, of course, could rely upon his furycrafting to go for days and days without sleeping. Odds were excellent that Valiar Marcus could do it as well, but Tavi had no such resource-and though he’d needed less sleep and less time to rest in the past two or three years, he had no idea exactly to what extent he could rely upon the nebulous endurance.
Max and the First Spear had probably been correct to let him get as much rest as possible. Great furies knew, he’d need his wits about him today.
“All right,” he said quietly. “Ehren, I know I don’t have any authority to give you a command, but…”
Ehren quirked an eyebrow. “Since when have you let niceties like the law slow you down?”
Tavi grinned. “I don’t mind law. Provided it doesn’t get in the way.”
Ehren snorted. “Seems like yesterday we were dodging bullies in the Academy courtyard. Now it’s an army of Canim.” He gave Tavi a long-suffering look and sighed. “All right. I’m in.”
Tavi nodded. “Thank you.”
Ehren nodded back.
“Tell Magnus to get you a courier’s horse,” Tavi said. “Armor, too. I want you close to me. I may need a messenger today, and I want it to be someone I trust.”
“Of course,” Ehren said.
“And…” Tavi frowned. “If things don’t go well here, Ehren, I want you to go. Take word back to Gaius, yourself. “
Ehren was silent for a minute. Then he said, in a whisper, “You’re a Cursor, Tavi. It’s your duty to go yourself, if it comes to that.”
Tavi reached up and ran his hand over the short, bristling hairs on his head. “Today,” he said quietly, “I’m a legionare.”
Tavi stood atop the city walls on the southern half of the town, on the battlements over the gate. The defenses were neither as tall as those of the fortress of Garrison, back in his home in the Calderon Valley, nor were they built as thick, but for all of that they were obdurate Aleran siege walls, grounded in the bones of the earth itself and all but impervious to any damage not supported by massive furycraft.
Of course, he had no idea if they would withstand whatever strange powers the Canim ritualists seemed to possess. He kept his face calm and confident and his mouth shut. Victory, today, depended far more upon the courage of his men than upon their raw strength, and he would not allow himself to weaken their morale. So though he was acutely afraid of a second bolt of crimson lightning, which might come down precisely where he was standing, he stood there without moving, his breathing steady, hopefully looking utterly indifferent to the oncoming danger.
Around him stood the veterans of the First Spear’s century. Their brother centuries within their cohort waited along the length of the walls, ready to defend them or lend support to their cohort-brothers. In the courtyard behind them waited two more entire cohorts, one with a mixed level of experience, the second composed almost entirely of fish-including what had been Max’s century. In total, nearly a thousand legionares stood in arms and armor, at the ready.
Tavi knew that behind them, placed at key defensive positions, ready to move in to support the defenders of the gate, were another thousand men, and behind that, at the base of the bridge, were three thousand more. The rest maintained a watch on the northern side, while the remaining cavalry waited at the apex of the bridge, ready to respond to any enemy thrust from unexpected quarters.
When the Canim came, the first thing Tavi saw was the crows.
At first, he thought it was a column of black smoke rising from the hills southwest of the town. But instead of drifting with the wind, the darkness rose, widening, stretching out into a line, then Tavi could see that it was the crows he’d been looking at, spinning over the heads of the Canim host like a wagon wheel on its side. He half expected to see the Canim only a moment later, but nearly a quarter of an hour went by while the vast disc of wheeling crows grew larger.
Tavi understood. He had underestimated the number of crows. Four or five times as many of the carrion birds as he guessed whirled over the Canim. Which meant that this was the largest murder of crows he had ever seen-including those that had descended upon the carnage of the Second Battle of Calderon.
A mutter went up and down the wall among the legionares. Tavi got the sense that they had never seen that many of the scavenger birds, either.
Then they heard the drums and droning war horns. The sound of the drums began as a low rumble, hardly audible, but rose quickly to a distant, steady, pulsing crash. The horns screamed mournfully through the din, and the whole was like listening to the cries of some unimaginably vast wolf loping through a thunderstorm.