“Tripling the number of Vord and queens each time,” Lararl said.
“Maybe not,” Tavi said. He began picking up the black and white stones from the map of Maraul. “Here is where concentrations of Vord massed for the attack,” he said, laying them out again, in more or less separate lines opposing one another at the edge of the range. “According to your reports, Warmaster, the Vord attacked Maraul here, first.” He moved one black stone at the northernmost end of the line forward. “Then here.” He moved adjacent stones on either side of the center. “Then here, twenty miles farther on each time.” He moved the next two stones in succession. “And so on. Each time they advanced, they rippled forward in this same pattern.”
Varg narrowed his eyes and studied the map, his tail lashing. “Orders,” he said. “That explains the delay. The queen’s orders were being relayed up and down their lines.”
Tavi nodded calmly. “It took me a while to realize it. In Alera, orders are relayed by furycraft. Separate Legions can move in concord, almost simultaneously. Not as flawlessly as the Vord move, but much faster than word carried by a mounted rider.”
“But the Vord in Maraul did not move in unison,” Lararl said.
“Exactly. They’re moving by some form of relayed command, not by the guidance of dozens of queens working together over distances.” Tavi tapped the centermost stone with his finger. “Word had to be taken to each successive element along the lines. The queen had to trigger the attack.”
Varg growled in interest. “Theories are air and wasted effort until proven. What other evidence supports this theory?”
“Maraul’s major counterattack targeted the northernmost element of the enemy lines,” Lararl replied. He paced over to the table and crouched at Tavi’s side, openly interested. “Look at the region. It makes no sense to focus a major attack there. There is nothing of strategic value anywhere nearby, and no way to defend it efficiently had it ever been taken.” He glanced up at Tavi. “The queen?”
Tavi nodded. “I think that someone in Maraul deduced the queen’s existence. I think they waited for her northernmost element to advance again, and hit her with everything they had.” Tavi moved several white stones into the northern edge of the Vord lines. He swept up the black stone and dropped it back out at the edge of the range. “They crushed the elements in the north of the Vord line, taking heavy losses. But after that, they spent almost three weeks pushing the rest of the Vord back-the only time it’s been done, as far as your records show, Warmaster.”
Tavi took up the other black stones, and a pair of the whites, until they were in their original positions again, the forces of Maraul reduced, but in control of the map.
“Three weeks later, the Vord advanced again, with heavier forces.” He gestured at the sand table. “They repeated the same pattern, the same battle, over the next year-periods of fierce fighting at the enemy’s origination point, followed by rapid assaults from Maraul’s warriors that drove the Vord back.”
Lararl growled quietly. “Until the Vord ground them away.”
Tavi nodded.
“Warmaster,” Tavi said, turning to Lararl, “according to your scouts’ reports, the Vord fought in undisciplined wave assaults when they attacked Maraul-and yet the horde at the fortifications moves in an extremely ordered fashion.”
“True,” Lararl said, tilting his head slightly to one side.
“My theory,” Tavi said slowly, “is that, for whatever reason, they were short of queens. I think maybe they only had the original and the two daughter-queens she produced.”
“Sterile?” Lararl growled.
Tavi shrugged. “They’re operating at a disadvantage for no reason, otherwise.”
Varg flicked his ears in assent. “The attack on the fortifications is disciplined. Therefore, a queen must be present.”
“There must also be one with the flanking force in our rear,” Lararl said. He looked at Tavi. “Could a single queen control the entire horde before my walls?”
Tavi spread his hands. “Evidence suggests that she could-but that her ability to control it does indeed have a limited range-somewhere under twenty miles, perhaps even less.”
Lararl nodded. “Then we must kill these queens.”
“And do what?” Tavi asked him, in a calm voice. “Kill millions more of the Vord in less than three weeks? Because that’s how long it would take the original queen to produce a new daughter, if the battles in Maraul were any indication.”
Lararl drummed his claws on the stone edge of the sand table. It was a peculiar sound, an almost insectile series of clicks, and Tavi suppressed a shiver.
“What would you have us do, then?” Lararl asked.
“Run,” Tavi said simply. “Get as many of your people away from the Vord as you can.”
“And go where? All of Canea is overrun.”
“To Alera,” Tavi said calmly.
Lararl let out a barking cough, a bitter sound. “You would have my folk abandon their home to become slaves in the demon lands?”
“I’ve got enough problems relating to slavery already,” Tavi replied drily. “No.” He took a deep breath. “I would have your people and Varg’s stand with us against the Vord.”
The room became deadly silent.
“They aren’t going to stop with Canea,” Tavi said. The quiet words fell like lead weights, simple and heavy. “We must stand together-or die separately.”
The silence stretched.
Lararl turned his head to Varg.
The black-furred Cane stared at the sand table for a moment. Then he looked up at Lararl. “It would be an interesting fight, would it not?”
The golden-furred Cane turned his gaze to Tavi, his eyes narrowed. “He is truly gadara to you?”
Varg flicked his ears in assent. “We have shed blood together and exchanged blades.”
Lararl’s ears quivered upright in startled surprise.
“His word is good,” Varg said.
“And you must understand that we’re going to have to trust one another,” Tavi said. “Information has to be limited. If I’m wrong about the queens, or if there are other Vord who can see into minds, they could counter us easily. We’ve got to have the initiative, or none of us are going to live out the week.”
Varg and Lararl digested that for a quiet moment. Then Varg twitched his ears in consent.
“You have many ships,” Lararl said slowly. “But not enough for all of Shuar.”
“Let me worry about that.”
Lararl glanced at Varg, who flattened his ears in a gesture that was roughly the equivalent of an Aleran shrug. “Aleran sorcery is far more useful than that of the ritualists, in my experience. They do more than kill with it.”
Lararl grunted, then gestured at the sand map of Shuar. “If I divert enough warriors to crush the queen in our interior and safeguard my people, the Vord at the fortifications will surely overwhelm the defenses.”
“We aren’t going to send your warriors against the queen,” Tavi said.
Varg growled. “Your Legions and my forces do not have sufficient supplies to carry out such a campaign, Tavar.”
“We aren’t going to send them out to kill the queen, either,” Tavi said. “We’re going to do it ourselves.”
“Oh,” Kitai said abruptly, her eyes glittering with sudden understanding. “Interesting.”
“Ourselves?” Varg asked.
Tavi nodded. “My people here, and yours, together with any Hunters you can find, are going to hunt and kill the queen. Once that is done, and the Vord lose cohesion, all the civilians in Shuar”-Tavi turned to stare hard at Lararl-“every one of them,” he said with emphasis, “should have a fighting chance to reach the coast.”
Lararl returned Tavi’s stare. Then he tilted his head fractionally to one side. “Yes. All of them.”