As Max’s complaints grew steadily louder and more outrageous while he tended to the taurga, Tavi gathered the saddles from his beast, Max’s, and Durias’s, next to Max’s, and began brushing them down from the day’s use.
“Well?” he asked Durias quietly, under cover of Max’s noise.
The Free Aleran centurion was a rather short man, with shoulders so wide that he almost looked deformed. His neck was thicker than a lot of women’s waists, his blocky face plain and scarred here and there with the irregular, fine, jagged cuts of a life spent under slavery, where the lash had wrapped around. He had dark, very intelligent eyes, and thick-knuckled, capable hands that immediately set to the task of cleaning and coiling the saddle straps.
“I counted four more supply trains today,” Durias said. “All of them military, all of them escorted, all of them headed the same direction we are. None of them were ones we’ve passed before.”
“That makes eighteen, total,” Tavi said. “How sure are you about the estimates on what a Canim soldier needs for rations?”
“How sure are you about estimating what your legionares need for rations, Captain?” Durias replied, grinning.
“Point taken,” Tavi said. “We passed two maker settlements today closely enough to get a good look at them, and I didn’t see a single male Cane among them.”
“Nor I,” Durias said. “I think your theory is sound, Captain. From all the signs, the Shuaran Canim are at war.”
Tavi liked Durias. The young Free Aleran had met Tavi-rather forcefully-in Tavi’s capacity as the Captain of the First Aleran Legion. The public revelation of his heritage, made since then, was something Durias found too uncomfortable to confront directly, and, as a result, the young man was one of the few people who still referred to Tavi in the same terms he had before Tavi had revealed himself as a scion of the House of Gaius.
“We were expecting something like it,” Tavi said quietly, looking around as he finished the last saddle.
Kitai and Crassus arrived a moment later. Crassus took up conversation with Max, whose complaints only gathered in volume and capacity-and sincerity. Max really couldn’t stand the taurga.
“Anag was polite and revealed very little,” Kitai reported quietly. “But some of the other warriors nearby were less disciplined. They are excited that we are drawing near to the front. They are glad that they might be able to see action and prove themselves in battle.”
“Remind me, Durias,” Tavi said. “Isn’t it Canim practice to place hotheaded young idiots in rear-area positions precisely to avoid having attitudes like that near the actual fighting?”
“Aye, it’s common enough,” Durias said. “The theory is that they’ll grow out of it. Someday.”
“Then how do you explain Anag?” Kitai asked. “He seems sensible.”
Durias shrugged. “Maybe it took.”
Tavi shook his head. “More likely, someone assigned a young but competent subordinate to mitigate the sins of an incompetent senior officer.” He squinted into the glowering winter sky, where occasional snowflakes were already starting to come down. “I’m getting a better picture now. Tarsh had somehow attained too much rank for his level of competence. In an actual war, he was going to get a lot of otherwise-decent soldiers killed-so Warmaster Lararl stuck him in a position where his incompetence wasn’t going to get in the way of the war effort, in charge of a bunch of hotheads who needed time to season. He probably regretted losing a decent junior officer to ride herd on the lot of them, but he couldn’t leave them entirely unattended.”
“That would make sense if the post was in the middle of nowhere,” Durias countered. “But it’s still their only significant port, Captain.”
“True,” Tavi admitted. “Unless… unless Molvar has become the middle of nowhere.”
Durias frowned. “What do you mean?”
Tavi held up his hand for silence as he followed that line of thought to several chilling conclusions.
Kitai’s head snapped around to him, her eyes narrowed and intently focused. “Chala?”
Tavi shook his head.
Durias frowned and looked at the two of them. “What’s wrong?”
“I hope I’m not right,” Tavi said. “But if I am… we’re in trouble.” He looked up at Kitai. “I need to talk to Varg.”
She rose and padded away without a word.
“… and not even she would do that with you, no matter how much money or how many burlap bags were involved!” Max bawled at the peacefully reclining Steaks and New Boots, and kicked the taurg in the side. He might have slammed his foot into a stone for all the reaction the animal showed.
Crassus put a hand on his seething brother’s shoulder, and said, “Honestly, Maximus. You’re really taking this way too personally. You need to look on the bright side.”
“I’ve got blisters and muscle cramps in places not meant for the touch of anything but a beautiful woman,” Max spat back sullenly. “I’ve bitten my tongue so many times in the past three days that I whistle in musical chords when I exhale. And the smell isn’t ever going to come out of my armor, I just know it.” He narrowed his eyes and glared at Steaks and New Boots. “Where, precisely, is the bright side?”
Crassus considered that gravely. Then he offered, “If nothing else, the crowbegotten beast has given you something legitimate to complain about.”
Max’s eyebrows lifted, and his expression became that of a man who is mulling over a new thought.
Kitai returned with Varg a moment after that.
“Aleran,” Varg rumbled. “How do you like Shuar?”
“Cold and flat. And my men don’t care for taurga,” Tavi replied.
“Sane beings do not,” Varg agreed, settling down on his haunches, the posture a casual one among the Canim. He tossed a waterskin to Durias, who caught it casually, opened it, and drank it Canim-fashion, squirting the water into his mouth without touching it to his lips. Durias tossed it back to the Cane with a nod of thanks.
“Varg,” Tavi said, “from what I have seen of the maps of Shuar, the place is essentially a single enormous plateau. A natural fortress.”
Varg drank from the waterskin and nodded. “Yes. Close enough to it. There are three passes into the plateau, all of them heavily fortified. The Shuar’s range has always been all but impregnable.” He yawned, and flicked his ears dismissively. “Not that anyone wants it.”
“That’s what has made them strong,” Tavi said.
“That and the mines in these mountains,” Varg said. “They make arms, armor, and goods of acceptable quality here. Their warriors often make alliances with other battlepacks, lend aid and support in battle.”
“I noticed that Molvar was built with impressive defenses.”
Varg showed his teeth. “Shuarans are lords of the mountains. Narash rules the seas. Shuarans know that they cannot challenge us there. But if there is one thing their warriors know better than any other pack, it is fortifications.”
There was an outcry from the other side of the ring of stones, as four of the young warriors evidently erupted into some kind of personal brawl. Weapons were drawn, and blood followed a moment later. It might have gotten more serious if Anag had not stepped in with a taurg-goad-essentially a long-handled, heavily weighted club with a sharp spur sticking out of one side. Anag knocked half of the brawling foursome unconscious with two efficient swings, dragged another to the ground by one ear, and bludgeoned the last into docility by sheer force of will.