First Lord's Fury (Codex Alera 6)

"Not when they're ridiculous," Kitai sniffed.

The two sentences came out one after the other, so close together that they might have been uttered by actors following a script or spoken by the same person. Fidelias peered at their identically colored eyes as if for the first time, feeling somewhat stupid. "The way Marat operate in tandem with their clan animals. It's more than just their custom, isn't it?"

"There's a bond," the Princeps said, nodding. "I scarcely understand it myself - and she honestly gives me no help whatsoever when I try."

"That is because knowledge given freely to another is not really knowledge at all, Aleran," Kitai replied. "It is rumor. One must learn for oneself."

"And this bond... it allows her to furycraft as you do," Fidelias said.

"Apparently," the Princeps said.

Kitai rode for a moment, frowning. Then she said, "He's stronger. Better focused. But I can manage more things simultaneously."

The Princeps lifted his eyebrows. "You think so?"

Kitai shrugged her shoulders.

Fidelias frowned. "Ambassador... did you just ride up to the city gates under a veil and try to craft them down?"

Kitai shot Fidelias an annoyed scowl - and said nothing.

The Princeps looked back and forth between the pair of them, his expression unreadable. Then he said, "That was thoughtful of you, Kitai."

"We want the gates down," she said. "What matter who brings them down or when?"

Octavian nodded. "Most considerate," the Princeps said.

Kitai's scowl darkened. "Do not say it."

"Say what? It's the thought that counts?"

She slapped his leg lightly with the ends of her reins.

A Marat with furycraft in the same general vicinity as the Princeps of the Realm. A Princeps who had never demonstrated his skills beyond the most basic, rudimentary uses of the craft - except when he had apparently executed furycraftings so large that they could hardly be recognized as such. Fidelias himself, a proven and confessed traitor to the Crown, an assassin for the Princeps' enemies, riding openly at the Princeps' left hand, under an assumed face and a sentence of death, willingly staying where he was. Meanwhile, in the host behind them, following the Princeps' banner were thousands of the finest troops of Alera's oldest enemies - never mind another enemy, Ambassador Kitai, who quite clearly shared a great deal more than affection with Octavian. And all of them were about to assault an Aleran city overrun by a foe no one had even heard of ten years ago.

The world had become a very strange place.

Fidelias smiled to himself.

Strange, yes. But for some reason, he no longer felt like a man too old to face it.

***

It was not long before horns began to blow, and Aleran scouts appeared in the mists ahead, woodcrafted veils unraveling around them as they approached the column. The Princeps pointed at one of the men, and said, "Scout, report!"

"They're coming, sir!" the man reported. "Skirmish line, maybe a cohort's worth, coming at us hard, sir! And they're ugly, big as they were in Canea, not those swamp-lizard things. Looks like they've got a hell of a reach on them, too."

Octavian grunted. "Looks like the Queen changed them to better handle a shieldwall."

Fidelias nodded. "Like you said she might. I'm impressed."

The Princeps coughed. "It was a guess. I wasn't certain about it. Just seemed reasonable."

Fidelias frowned, and said quietly, "Piece of advice, sir?"

"Hmm?"

"Next time, just nod. People like it better when the Princeps seems to know something they don't."

The Princeps made a quiet, snorting sound and raised a hand, signaling the trumpeter waiting nearby. "Sound advance to the Canim. Let's see what these vord think about meeting a few thousand Narashan warriors instead of a Legion shieldwall."

"And see if the Canim will be willing to take your orders, eh?" Fidelias murmured, beneath the clear notes of the signal trumpet.

Octavian grinned, and responded, quietly, "Nonsense. I have no doubts whatsoever in the solidity of our alliance."

"Excellent, sir," Fidelias said. "That's more like what I was talking about."

The shrill, brassy cries of vord warriors came drifting through the mist, different than any Fidelias had heard before but unmistakable. He had to keep himself from shuddering. For the sake of the rest of the Legion, he was still playing the part of Valiar Marcus, relegated to the role of advisor to the young captain by advancing age. Valiar Marcus would not show fear before the enemy. No matter how bloody terrifying they were to anyone with half a mind.

A double column of Canim warriors, several hundred strong, came rolling up to the front of the host, led by Varg himself. Their loping pace was swift, and Varg stopped to confer briefly with the Princeps. He nodded to Octavian, then gave a few orders in the snarling tongue of the wolf-warriors, and his troops fell into a curved double line that arched out in front of the rest of the host like a legionare's shield.

Fidelias could clearly see only the nearest of the Canim, at the center of the line - Varg and the warriors closest to him. The lean, powerful bodies of the Canim moved in a fashion that was both completely nonuniform and fluidly coordinated, each armored warrior occupying precisely enough space to move and use his weaponry, with his companions on either side maintaining a precise distance, seemingly without any conscious effort.

The Canim were soldiers, sure enough, clearly moving in coordinated discipline, but their methods and tactics were utterly alien to those used by Aleran legionares. Fidelias didn't even want to think of the pure shocking power of a Canim shieldwall. If they used such infantry tactics, an Aleran Legion would not be able to survive the clash of close combat.

Then again, the few times Alerans had clashed with Canim of the warrior caste, the battle had never gone in their favor in any case. At best they had attained a draw, during several brief clashes during the two years of combat around the Elinarch and in the Vale. In the worst cases, the warrior caste had handed the Alerans their heads.

The vord shrieked their alien cries again, this time from closer, and Fidelias felt his heart laboring harder. He straightened his back and forced his expression to Marcus's closed, prebattle discipline. He heard the Princeps giving rapid orders beside him - sending the scouts back out to the army's flanks and front, and ordering Maximus's cavalry to come up to anchor both ends of the Canim lines, to be ready to help if needed.

One Canim element to one Aleran, Fidelias noted. Even when fighting together, the Princeps was showing caution against his allies, who would see it as a reassurance and a mark of respect. The Princeps had been the first to understand the way the wolf-warriors thought, and he had applied that knowledge ably to both the battlefield and the conference table with undeniable success. Rarely had Octavian attained an overwhelming victory against the Canim, and yet at day's end, he had always managed to hold the most vital terrain or gain another mile of ground - and now his former enemies let out a howl and engaged the vord as they appeared out of the mist.