“Five months,” snarled a rumbling voice, as Ehren entered the tent. “Five months we’ve been sitting here. We should have been moving south against the vord weeks ago!”
“You’re a brilliant tactician, Raucus,” replied a deeper, quieter voice. “But long-term thinking was never your strongest suit. We can’t know what surprises the vord have in store for us on ground they’ve had time to prepare.”
“There’s never been evidence of any defenses,” Antillus Raucus, High Lord Antillus retorted, as Ehren brushed aside the second tent flap and entered the tent proper. Raucus faced the Princeps across a double-sized sand table in the center of the tent that bore a map of all Alera upon it. He was a big, brawny man with a craggy face long used to winter winds, and he wore the scars of a soldier upon his face and hands, the reminders of nicks and cuts that had been so numerous and frequent that not even his considerable skills at furycraft could smooth them away. “In all of our history, this is the most powerful force ever assembled. We should take this army, ram it right down their throats, and kill that bitch of a Queen. Now. Today.”
The First Lord was a leonine man, tall and lean, with dark golden hair and black, opaque eyes beneath the simple, undecorated steel band of his coronet, the traditional crown of a First Lord at war. Dressed in his own colors of scarlet and black, still, Aquitainus Attis—Gaius Aquitainus Attis, Ehren supposed, since Sextus had legally adopted the man in his last letter—faced Raucus’s insistent statement with total calm. In that, at least, he actually was like Sextus, Ehren thought.
The First Lord shook his head. “The vord are obviously alien to us, but just as obviously intelligent. We have prepared defenses because it is an intelligent measure that even fools realize increases our ability to defend and control our land. We would be fools ourselves to assume that the vord cannot reach the same conclusion.”
“When Gaius led our forces against the vord, you advised him to attack,” Raucus pointed out. “Not retreat. It was the correct course of action.”
“Given how many vord came to the final assault on Alera Imperia, apparently not,” the First Lord replied. “We had no idea how many of them were out there. If he’d taken my counsel, our assault would have been enveloped and destroyed—and the vord were expecting us to do so.”
“We know their numbers now,” Raucus said.
“We think we do,” Aquitaine shot back, heat touching his voice for the first time. “This is our last chance, Raucus. If these Legions fall, there is nothing left to stop the vord. I will not waste the blood of a single legionare if I cannot be sure to make the enemy pay a premium for it.” He folded his hands behind his back, took a breath, and released it again, reassuming his air of complete calm. “They will come to us, and soon, and their Queen will be compelled to accompany them and coordinate the attack.”
Raucus scowled, his shaggy brows lowering. “You think you can mouse-trap her.”
“A defensive battle,” Aquitaine replied, nodding. “Draw them to us, endure the assault, wait for our moment, and counterattack with everything we have.”
Raucus grunted. “She’s operating with furycraft now. And on a scale equal to anyone alive. And she’s still got a guard of the Alerans she took before Count and Countess Calderon ruined that part of her operation.”
Not even Antillus Raucus, Ehren noted, was willing to point out openly to the new Princeps that his wife was among those who had been compelled to take up arms with the vord.
“That’s unfortunate,” Aquitaine said, his voice hard. “But we’ll have to go through them.”
Raucus studied him for a few seconds. “You figure on taking her yourself, Attis?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Aquitaine said. “I’m a Princeps. It’s going to be me, and you, and Lord and Lady Placida and every other High Lord and Lord and Count who can raise a weapon and the entire Legion Aeris and every other Legion I can arrange to be there besides.”
Raucus lifted his eyebrows. “For one vord.”
“For the vord,” Aquitaine replied. “Kill her, and the rest of them are little more than animals.”
“Bloody dangerous animals.”
“Then I’m sure hunting fashions will become all the rage,” Aquitaine replied. He turned around and nodded. “Sir Ehren. Have the reports come in?”
“Yes, sire,” Ehren replied.
Aquitaine turned to the sand tables and swept a hand in invitation. “Show me.”
Ehren calmly walked to the tables and took up a bucket of green sand. Raucus winced when he did. The green sand marked the spread of the croach across Alera. They’d run through several buckets already.
Ehren dipped a hand into the bucket and carefully poured green sand over the model of a walled city on the sand table that represented Parcia. It vanished into a mound of emerald grains. It seemed, to Ehren, an inadequate way to represent the ending of hundreds of thousands of Parcian lives, both the city’s population and the vast number of refugees who had sought safety there. But there could be no doubt. The Cursors and aerial spies were certain: Parcia had fallen to the vord.
The tent was silent.
“When?” Aquitaine asked quietly.
“Two days ago,” Ehren said. “The Parcian fleet was continuing the evacuation right up until the very end. If they stayed near the coastlines, they could have employed much smaller vessels as well and loaded all of the ships very heavily. They may have taken as many as seventy or even eighty thousand people around the cape to Rhodes.”
Aquitaine nodded. “Did Parcia unleash the great furies beneath the city on the enemy?”
“Bloody crows, Attis,” Raucus said quietly, reproof in his voice. “Half the refugees in the entire south were at Parcia.”
The First Lord faced him squarely. “No amount of grieving will change what has happened. But prompt action based upon rational thought could save lives in the near future. I need to know how badly the enemy was hurt by the attack.”
Raucus scowled and folded his heavy arms, muttering beneath his breath.
Aquitaine put a hand on the other man’s shoulder for a moment, then turned to face Ehren. “Sir Ehren?”
Ehren shook his head. “There was nothing to indicate that he did so, Your Highness. From what we have heard from the survivors, High Lord Parcius was assassinated. The vord didn’t assault and breach the walls until after he had fallen.” He shrugged. “The reports indicate widespread incidents with wild furies in the aftermath, but that was to be expected given the number of deaths.”
“Yes,” Aquitaine said. He folded his arms and studied the map in silence.
Ehren let his eyes drift over it as well.
Alera was a land of vast stretches of sparsely settled or uninhabited wilderness between the enormous cities of the High Lords. Furycrafted roads between the great cities, and a great many waterways, provided lifelines of trade and created a natural support structure for smaller cities, towns, and villages that spread out into the countryside around them. Steadholts, farming hamlets, were scattered into the areas between the towns and cities, each supporting between thirty and three hundred or so people.
All that had changed.
The green sand covered the core of Alera, sweeping most thickly up from the uninhabited wasteland that had once been the city of Kalare, through the rich, productive lands of the Amaranth Vale, over the gutted corpse of the city of Ceres, and up to the smoldering slopes of the volcano that now loomed over what had once been Alera Imperia. Strands, like the branches of some alien tree, spread out from that vast central trunk, swelling into larger areas that surrounded several of the other great cities—cities that had settled in to fight until the bitter end and were stubbornly withstanding months of siege. Forcia, Attica, Rhodes, and Aquitaine had all been besieged and currently fought the invaders at their gates. The rolling plains around Placida had fared better, and the croach had not managed to close within twenty miles or so of the city’s walls—but even so, the stubborn Placidans had lost ground slowly and inexorably, and would be in the same position as the others in a matter of weeks.