Princeps' Fury (Codex Alera 5)

The doors to the room swung open, and Lararl entered, with Anag trailing in his wake. The burly, golden-haired Cane strode directly over to Tavi. "Well?"

"Did you post the extra guards?" Tavi asked.

Lararl narrowed his eyes, but his ears flicked in assent. "Every doorway in the tower. No Vord skulker is going to get within a hundred feet of you."

Tavi nodded. "I think I've got an idea of what we need to do."

There was a moment of silence.

"Perhaps," Lararl growled, "you would share your thoughts."

"It is annoying when he does that," Kitai said, "is it not?"

Anag's ears quivered in amusement, but the young Cane said nothing.

"Before I explain," Tavi said, "perhaps Varg should be here, too."

Lararl grunted, and glanced at Anag.

Anag vanished, heading for the stairs to the tower's roof. He returned with Varg within moments. The big, black-furred Cane exchanged a Canim-style nod with Lararl, then Tavi, and walked over to stand over the sand table representing Maraul.

Tavi began speaking without preamble. "Our experience with the Vord has taught us that their greatest strength is also their greatest weakness-centralized leadership."

"These queens you spoke of," Lararl rumbled.

Tavi nodded. "The queens command the Vord around them absolutely-they'll take actions that will result in death without hesitation if she commands it."

Varg let out a low growl. "But they do not think on their own."

"Not very well, at any rate," Tavi confirmed. "Without a queen to lead them, the Vord are little more than animals.

"They operate in a specific manner. The queen who escaped Alera came here and established a colony, somewhere out of sight. She produced two more queens, who would then have departed in order to establish their own colonies, and so on."

"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.