“Go to him,” Tavi said. “We need woodcrafters. I want every Knight Flora, every Citizen with woodcrafting, and every professional woodworker in Antillus to report to this camp by dawn.”
“Sir?” Marcus said. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“Really?” Octavian said, that smile flickering to life again, if briefly. “Because I’m quite certain that you don’t.”
“Woodcrafters.”
“Yes,” said the captain.
Marcus lifted an eyebrow warily as his fist rose to his heart in salute. “What do you want me to tell Vanorius when he asks why you need them?”
“Operational security,” the captain said. “And if that doesn’t work, inform him that disobeying a lawful order of the Crown in time of war is considered treason.” His eyes hardened. “I am not making a request.”
“Yes, sir,” Marcus said.
Outside the tent, a sentry called a challenge, and a rumbling basso voice replied in snarling tones. A second later, one of the sentries leaned into the tent, and said, “Pair of messengers from the Canim, Captain.”
Octavian nodded and beckoned with one hand. “Show them in, please.”
Marcus wasn’t familiar with the two Canim who entered the tent a moment later, stooping slightly to keep their ears from brushing the ceiling. One, a dark-furred brute, was dressed in battered old warrior-caste armor that was missing two or three pieces. The other, a lean and golden-furred individual with beady eyes, wore the riveted-steel jacket that had become the main armor for the now-veteran Canim militia.
Marcus felt a little shock of realization go through him. Varg would never send a warrior on courier duty at all, much less one who presented such a slip-shod appearance as this one. And the golden-furred Cane was, most likely, a Shuaran, the only Canim any Aleran had ever seen with that shade of fur. The Shuaran Canim had not come to Alera with Sarl’s invasion force. They had never left Canea. They could therefore never have become members of Nasaug’s war-trained militia—and it would have been as good as asking to be torn to pieces for a nonmilitia Cane to falsely claim membership in those ranks. Canim pride was ferocious, jealous, and bloodily decisive.
Perhaps a shoddily armored warrior could have been sent on a message run. Perhaps the golden-furred Cane had been in the ranks all along, and Alerans had simply never noted his presence. Either of those things was remotely possible.
But both of them?
Marcus scratched at his nose with a fingertip, and when he lowered his hand again, it came to rest within an inch of his sword’s hilt. He flicked a glance at Octavian, hoping to warn him.
There was no need. The captain had evidently reached the same conclusions as Marcus, and though he remained outwardly calm, he surreptitiously hooked a thumb through his belt, which placed it in close proximity to the handle of the dagger sheathed at the small of his back.
“Good morning,” Octavian said politely, tilting his head very slightly to one side in a salute of superior to subordinate. “Did you gentlemen have something for me?”
The armored Cane shuffled forward a few steps, reaching into a pouch at his side.
His paw-hand emerged clenching a stone knife. The armored Cane roared, in Canish, “One people!”
And slashed at the captain’s throat.
Marcus felt his heart leap into his mouth. The captain was a capable opponent when he employed his metalcrafting, but that ability would do him no good against a stone weapon. Without the forewarning of his metalcrafting of the weapon’s approach, he would be forced to pit his raw physical ability against the Cane’s—and without furycraft to aid them, no Aleran could match the power of a Cane, and only the fastest could match their speed.
Octavian jerked his head back and the slash missed by a hair. He dropped back, taking a pair of spinning steps as he drew the dagger from his belt and flung it. The weapon tumbled one and a half times and sank into an unarmored portion of the Cane’s thigh. The Cane howled in sudden pain, stumbling.
“Sir!” Marcus shouted, drawing and lofting his gladius in a single motion. He didn’t stop to see if Octavian caught it. He charged the second Cane, who had produced a slender wooden tube. As Marcus approached, the Cane lifted the tube to his mouth and exhaled, and a little flash of color and steel flew out the end. Marcus ducked his head and felt the missile ping against the good Aleran steel of his helmet. Then he called out to his earth fury as he barreled into the would-be assassin.
The Cane was viciously strong, but inexperienced. The two of them went to the ground hard, and instead of immediately attempting to escape, the Cane started thrashing his limbs in a useless attempt to sink claws or fangs into Marcus. There was no time to capture the opponent. He had to remove the gold-furred Cane from the fight and go to Octavian’s aid. Marcus seized one of the Cane’s wrists in a bone-pulverizing grip, then slammed his other fist down onto the Cane’s head, shattering his foe’s skull with the power of the fury-enhanced strike.
Marcus looked back up to see the captain break the Cane’s crude stone blade with a swift move of his gladius and go on to deliver four lightning-fast slashes to the armored Cane. Any two of them would probably have been fatal, but the captain was nothing if not thorough. He struck until he was sure the attacker was completely incapacitated, and whirled toward Marcus and the second Cane, sword lifted in his hand to strike.
The two men faced one another as the armored Cane toppled slowly and limply to the ground behind the captain, and Marcus had a startling realization: Octavian’s reasoning had been identical to his own. He had struck to dispatch his opponent swiftly and immediately so that he could go to the other man’s aid.
Octavian’s eyes scanned Marcus and the Cane with the broken head. Then he turned back to his own dead opponent, scowling. “Crows,” he growled. “Bloody crows.”
The sentries burst in. Without hesitation, they both plunged swords into the Cane Marcus had downed. Like captain, like legionare, Marcus supposed. When they approached the second downed Cane, the captain waved a hand at them. “Finished.” He looked up. “Marcus. Are you hurt?”
“I’ll manage,” Marcus said, panting. He was in shape enough to keep pace with the Legion, but he had been on a ship for months, and there had been no real way to remain in proper Legion condition.
And face it. You’re getting old.
Octavian wiped Marcus’s gladius clean of blood on the dark fur of the dead Cane, then offered the weapon back to him, hilt first. Marcus nodded his thanks, inspected the weapon for stains or damage, found it serviceable, and slid it back into its sheath.
Octavian glanced at Marcus, and said, simply, “Thank you.” Then he strode from the tent, rigid with anger, or perhaps in simple reaction to the attempt on his life.
The three legionares stared after him. “What happened?” asked one of the sentries. “I thought we were supposed to be allies.”
Marcus grunted and sent them on their way to follow the captain with a slap on an armored shoulder. “So did I, soldier. So did I.”
CHAPTER 8
“For goodness sake, my lady,” Veradis said in a tranquil tone. “You must calm yourself.”
Isana cast a mildly irritated glance over her shoulder at the younger woman as she paced back and forth across her quarters, the largest room in Riva’s finest inn. “How can I relax, knowing the kind of men I’m about to be dealing with?”
“Not every man in the Senate is some kind of masterful schemer, exerting all his energies to acquire more power and influence at the expense of all others.”