Magnus looked at him. Then he turned and stared at the three dead vord on the ground around them. One of them, the second to die, was still twitching, its tail fluttering randomly in the low brush.
Magnus wheezed out a laugh.
Marcus joined him.
When the healers came up with reinforcements, they eyed the pair of wounded old men as if they’d gone completely mad.
They could only laugh harder.
CHAPTER 5
Running boots hammered the ground outside the command tent, and Antillar Maximus shouted the password at the sentries stationed there as if he intended to bowl them out of his way with sheer volume. Tavi looked up from his reports immediately, lifting a hand, and Maestro Magnus stopped speaking. The old Cursor gathered together loose pages from the table, resorting to holding the last several down with one hand. An instant later, Maximus flung the tent’s door flap aside, letting in a rush of wind scented heavily with spring rain.
Tavi smiled at Magnus’s forethought. No pages went flying. The old Cursor had been wounded only two days before—but he’d taken only a single night’s rest after Tribune Foss had released him for duty, and though battered and obviously stiff, he had returned to the command tent the next morning.
“Tavi,” Max said, panting, “you need to see this. I’ve had them bring your horse.”
Tavi arched an eyebrow at Max’s use of his first name and rose. “What’s happening?”
“You have to see it,” Max said.
Tavi checked the fittings on his armor to make sure they were tight, slung the baldric of his gladius over his shoulder, and followed Max out to the horses. He swung up, waited for Max and the two legionares currently on guard duty to mount up as well, then gestured for Antillar to lead the way.
In the days since the landing, the Canim and the Alerans had settled down into their camps in good order. Only one sticking point was any cause for concern—the little stream that fed the well in the valley between the two Aleran camps ran so deeply that there was no way to reroute it to within reach of either Legion camp. As a result, all three groups had to use the wells Tavi’s engineers had sunk into the rocky ground in the valley, and a series of shallow pools in the approximate center of the Canim camp had been the results.
So far, they had shared the water without serious incident—which meant that no one had been killed, though one Canim and two Alerans had been injured. Tavi followed Maximus to the southernmost gate of the Canim camp. Two of the warrior-caste guards were on duty there, one in the scarlet and black steel armor of Narash, the other in Shuaran midnight blue and black. The Narashan lifted a paw-hand in greeting, and called, “Open the gate for the Warmaster’s gadara.”
The gate, made from leviathan hide stretched over a frame of enormous leviathan bones, swung open wide, and they entered the Canim fortifications.
“It started about ten minutes ago,” Max said. “I told a legionare to stay with it and write down anything he heard.”
Tavi frowned ahead of them, idly keeping his horse from sidestepping as they entered the Canim camp, and the wolf-warriors’ scent filled the beasts’ nostrils. There was a crowd gathered ahead of them, and more were heading that way. Even mounted on a tall horse, Tavi could barely see anything over the craning heads of the Canim in front of him, most standing to their full eight feet or more to peer ahead.
The press of traffic became too much, and Tavi and his men halted, the air around them full of the snarled vowels and growled consonants of the Canim tongue. Max tried to get them moving through the crowd again, but even his legionare’s bellow could make no headway against the ferocious, roaring buzz of the Canim crowd.
Deep, brassy Canim horns brayed, and a small phalanx of red-armored Canim warriors came marching stolidly through the crowd like men walking against the current of a quick-running stream. Tavi recognized Gradash, the silver-furred huntmaster—a rank of warrior roughly equal to that of centurion—guiding the warriors. He directed them to fan out around the Alerans, then tilted his head slightly to one side, a gesture of respect. Tavi returned it.
“Tavar,” Gradash called. “With your consent, I will take you forward.”
“Thank you, huntmaster,” Tavi replied.
Gradash bared his throat again and began shouting more commands. In short order, gawkers found themselves savagely shoved aside, and the Alerans’ horses began moving forward once more.
They drew near the central watering pool within a moment, and found dozens of Alerans there, mixed in among the Canim to gather around the pool. Tavi saw why, and sucked in a breath through his teeth.
No wonder everyone had come to stare.
A cloaked form stood upon the surface of the water. The cloak was made of rich, grey fabric with a deep hood. Tavi couldn’t see any of the features of whoever was beneath the cloak, except for dark lips and a pale, delicate chin. His heart lurched in his chest, even so.
It was the vord Queen.
The troop of Canim soldiers led Tavi and his party to the far side of the pool, where Varg and Nasaug were standing, together with a grey-furred old Cane wearing sections of vord chitin that had been fashioned into armor. He wore a red mantle and hood over that, the cut of which was identical to the garments worn by Canim ritualists—but this was the first time Tavi had seen such a garment made of anything but the pale, supple leather of human flesh.
The vord Queen never moved. Tavi glanced down the line of pools and saw what seemed to be identical images standing upon each of them. Crowds continued to gather.
“Bloody crows,” Max swore. “That’s a watersending.”
Tavi felt his jaw tighten. Projecting an image through a watercrafting was a relatively difficult use of furycraft. Projecting several of them was impossi—Well, not impossible, clearly… but very, very improbable. Tavi wasn’t sure if Gaius Sextus himself could have managed it.
“She’s just standing there,” Max said, frowning. “Why is she just standing there?”
“Ferus,” Tavi said to one of his guards. “Go back to the camp. Tell Crassus I want every Knight Aeris we have immediately flying reconnaissance out to fifty miles. I want our Knights Terra to patrol out to ten miles and make sure nothing is tunneling toward us. Cavalry is to ride escort, no group smaller than twenty, back before nightfall.”
Ferus slammed his fist to his chest and turned his mount to begin working his way out of the Canim camp.
Max grunted. “You think it’s supposed to be a distraction?”
Tavi gestured at the crowds. “If it isn’t, it’s doing a crowbegotten good job of it. No reason to take chances. Come on.” Tavi nudged his horse forward until he was standing next to Varg and Nasaug.
“Morning,” Varg said, studying the watersending.
“Good morning,” Tavi replied.
“I ordered my fastest ships put out to sea already,” Varg replied. “Borrowed some of your witchmen to go along and keep an eye on the ocean.”
Many of the watercrafters who professionally used their talents to conceal ships from leviathans had grown used to the Canim during the pair of voyages over the past six months. Canim in general were not disposed to admiration of furycrafting, but their ships’ crews had been more than mildly impressed with the skills of the witchmen. “You think they’re coming in by sea?”
Varg’s ears twitched in an ambivalent motion, a Cane gesture that meant more than a shrug but less than “no.” “I think that the Queen had to come back here after she went to Canea. I think she did not use one of our ships. They have carried out operations in all terrain. No reason to take chances.”