He frowned at her for a moment, then her meaning sunk in. “Ah,” he said.
“He should be given the choice,” Kitai said. “If nothing else, you owe him that.”
Tavi leaned over and kissed her hair gently. “I think,” he said, “you may be right.”
Tavi walked carefully over the ice to the execution party. They were gathering up their tools and preparing to return to the ship. As he approached, they saluted.
“Leave us,” Tavi said. The men saluted again and hurried to return to the ship.
There were a number of allowable variants for crucifixion, ranging from the practical to the downright sadistic. Which one was used was mostly determined by how much anguish the authorities felt the offender had earned. Many were designed to contain and circumvent specific furycrafting talents.
For Fidelias, they had used steel wire.
He hung upon the crossed spars, his feet dangling two feet above the ground. His arms had been bound to the outthrust arms of the cross with dozens of circles of steel wire. More wire bound his waist to the trunk of the cross. That much steel would virtually neutralize his woodcrafting. Being suspended from the earth would prevent him from employing earthcrafting. He was dressed only in his tunic. His armor, weapons, and helmet had been taken from him.
Fidelias was obviously in pain, his face pale. His eyes and cheeks looked sunken, and the grey in his hair and stubbled face was more prominent than at any other time Tavi had seen him.
He looked old.
And weary.
Tavi stopped in front of the cross and stared up at him for a moment.
Fidelias met his eyes. After a time, he said, “You should go. You should catch up to the fleet before the next stop.”
“I will,” Tavi said quietly. “After you answer one question.”
The old Cursor sighed. “What question?”
“How do you want to be remembered?”
Fidelias let out a dry, croaking laugh. “What the crows does it matter what I want? I know what I will be remembered for.”
“Answer the question, Cursor.”
Fidelias was silent for a moment, his eyes closed. The wind gusted around them, cold and uncaring.
“I never wanted a civil war. I never wanted anyone to die.”
“I believe you,” Tavi said quietly. “Answer the question.”
Fidelias’s head remained bowed. “I would like to be remembered as a man who tried to serve the Realm to the best of his ability. Who dedicated his life to Alera, even if not to her lord.”
Tavi nodded slowly. Then he drew his sword.
Fidelias did not look up.
Tavi stepped around to the back of the crossed poles and struck three times.
Fidelias abruptly dropped to the ground, cut free from the coils of wire by Tavi’s blade. Tavi took a step and stood over Fidelias, staring down at him.
“Get up,” he said quietly. “You are condemned to die, Fidelias ex Cursori. But we are at war. Therefore, when you die, you will do so usefully. If you truly are a servant of the Realm, I have a better death for you than this one.”
Fidelias stared up at him for a moment, and his features twisted into something like pain. Then he nodded in a single jerky spasm.
Tavi extended his hand, and Fidelias took it.
CHAPTER 25
The fleet reached Phrygia in the false light of predawn, when the eastern sky had just begun to turn from black to blue. Starlight and moonlight on the snow made it easy to see, and Antillus Crassus and a handful of Knights Pisces had flown ahead to bring official word of the fleet to Phrygius Cyricus, Lord Phrygius’s second son and seneschal of the city while his father was in the field.
“Times are changing,” Fidelias said. “I don’t think anyone’s ever outrun the wall’s grapevine without flying.”
“What makes you say that?” Tavi asked him.
The Cursor gestured up at the wall, where a surprisingly sparse number of faces looked out from the battlements. “If they’d gotten wind of something like this, the whole city would have turned out.”
Tavi glanced back behind him, at the seemingly endless river of masts and sails gliding over the ice. It had been an impressive sight when he’d first taken it in, even to someone who had sailed with a veritable armada over the deeps. To the folk and
legionares
of Phrygia, most of whom had never seen a tall ship, much less the open sea, it must be awe-inspiring, scarcely believable.
He glanced aside at Fidelias, who stood beside him in the tunic, breeches, and cloak of a civilian. He was unarmed. Two Knights Ferrous stood within sword reach of him, their weapons sheathed, their hands hovering near the hilts. Maximus stood on Tavi’s other side and kept track of Fidelias’s movements with an oblique eye.
Tavi studied him for another reason. Fidelias looked different than Valiar Marcus. Oh, his features hadn’t changed, though Tavi supposed they might do so gradually, should Fidelias wish to reassume his former appearance. It was something subtler than that, and much deeper. The way he spoke was part of it. Marcus had always sounded like an intelligent man, but one who had been given little education, a hard-nosed and capable soldier. Fidelias’s voice was smoother and more mellifluous, his inflections elegant and precise. Marcus had always held himself with parade-ground rigidity, and moved like a man carrying the extra weight of Legion armor, even when he wasn’t wearing any. Fidelias looked like a man coming near to the end of an exceptionally vigorous middle age, his movements both energetic and contained.
Then Tavi hit on it, the real thing that separated Valiar Marcus from Fidelias ex Cursori.
Fidelias was smiling.
Oh, it wasn’t a grin. In fact, one could hardly tell it was a smile at all. But Tavi could definitely see it in some subtle shift of the muscles in his face, in the scarcely noticeable deepening of the lines at the corners of his eyes. He looked . . . content. He looked like a man who had made his peace.
Tavi had no intention, however, of removing the guards tasked with watching him. For that matter, Tavi himself would be watching the man like a hawk. Fidelias ex Cursori had lived a lifetime in an exceptionally dangerous, treacherous line of work. It had made him into an exceptionally dangerous—and treacherous—individual.
“Our next step,” Tavi told him, “is to gather whatever information Cyricus has that we don’t. We’ll use it to plan our next movement.”
“That would seem logical,” Fidelias said.
Tavi nodded. “I’d like you to be present.”
Fidelias arched an eyebrow and glanced up at him. “Is that an order?”
“No,” Tavi said. “It would be meaningless. What would I do if you refused? Put you to death?”
Fidelias’s eyes wrinkled at their corners. “Ah, true.”
“It is a request. You have more field experience than Magnus, and you may have some insight into the thinking behind the current leadership of the main Aleran forces. I would value your advice.”
Fidelias pursed his lips. “But would you trust it?”
Tavi smiled. “Naturally not.”
The older man let out a quick bark of a laugh. He shook his head, and said, “It would be my pleasure, Your Highness.”
Phrygius Cyricus, Seneschal of Phrygia and commander of its defending Legions, was sixteen years old. He was an almost painfully thin young man, dressed in the white-and-green livery of the House of Phrygius, and his dark hair was untidy enough to merit an assault from some kind of elite barbering strike force. His dark eyes peered out from behind his hair as he bowed to Tavi.
“Y-your Highness,” Cyricus said. “W-welcome to Phrygia.”
Tavi, accompanied by Maestro Magnus, Fidelias, and Kitai, stepped over the threshold of the High Lord’s citadel and into the cramped courtyard beyond. “Master Phrygius,” he replied, bowing slightly in return. “I’m sorry I couldn’t arrange to arrive at a more convenient hour.”
“Th-that’s all r-right,” Cyricus replied, and Tavi realized that the boy was not stammering in nervousness. He simply had a stammer. “If y-you would come w-with me, m-my lord father’s staff has prepared a r-report of the latest news from the f-front.”
Tavi lifted his eyebrows, impressed. “Straight to business, eh?”
“Th-there’s f-food and wine waiting for you and your . . .” Cyricus paused and swallowed, glancing past Tavi to the hulking form of Varg, who had entered the courtyard last. “G-guests.”
“That is well,” Varg said. “I am hungry.”
Cyricus swallowed again. Then the boy lifted his chin and marched over to face Varg, meeting his gaze. “Y-you are w-welcomed as a guest, sir. B-but if you hurt anyone under my lord f-father’s p-protection, I will kill you myself.”
Varg’s ears quivered. He bowed from the waist to the youth. “It will be as you say in your house, young Master.” Then he glanced at Tavi, and rumbled, in Canish, “Does the pup remind you of anyone, Tavar?”
Tavi answered him in kind. “As I recall, I had a knife to your throat at the time.”
“It did give you a certain credibility,” Varg admitted.
Tavi carefully kept himself from smiling, and said, “Master Cyricus, I assure you that Warmaster Varg has had extensive experience as a guest of Aleran Citizens and that he has always displayed admirable courtesy.”
Varg’s ears twitched in amusement.
Cyricus inclined his head to Tavi. “V-very well, Y-your Highness. This way please.”
The young man and an escort of “honor guards,” all of whom stared warily at Varg, led them into a small reception hall within the citadel. A dozen men were waiting there around a large sand table, presumably the young seneschal’s staff and the commanders of the city’s defenses. As Tavi entered, they offered a crisp salute as a group. Tavi returned the gesture and nodded. “Gentlemen.”
Cyricus made introductions for his people and Tavi did likewise, leaving Fidelias entirely out of the matter. Then he said, “Let’s get an idea of the larger picture so far. Who can summarize the current position of our forces at Riva?”
Canto Cantus, a steely-haired man in Legion armor, glanced at Cyricus, as if for permission. The young man’s nod was barely perceptible but very much there. Cantus didn’t speak until after he’d gained approval. “The short version is that Riva has fallen. Completely. In a single night.”
Tavi stared at Cantus for long seconds, and his heart began pounding harder in his chest. He limited his reaction to digging his fingernails into the heel of his right hand, then forced himself to relax. “Survivors?”
“A great many,” Cantus said. “Princeps Attis realized what was happening in time to evacuate most of the civilians from Riva. But the Legions took a bloody beating covering the retreat of the refugees. They’re still sorting out what’s left.”
“Tell me what happened.”
Cantus gave a cold, concise summary of the tactics used by the vord.
“That isn’t much,” Tavi said.
Cantus shrugged. “Bear in mind that we’re putting this together from garbled watersendings and reports from refugees who were running for their lives and were not trained observers. The reports all seem to conflict with one another.”
Tavi frowned. “All right. They’re retreating. To where?”
“The C-calderon V-valley, Your Highness,” Cyricus said. “A-allow me.” The young man touched a finger to the sand table, and the smooth white grains shifted into ripples that settled into the shapes of mountains and valleys, displaying causeways as flat rectangular strips. A miniature walled city, representative of Riva, appeared and began crumbling almost immediately. Rippling motion along the causeway north and east of Riva showed the position of the refugees. Solid rectangular blocks following in their wake represented the Legions. A series of menacing triangles, representing the spread of the vord, followed after the Legions.
Tavi frowned down at the map for a long moment. “What do we know about enemy numbers?”
“There appear to be quite a few of them,” Cantus replied.
Tavi looked up from the table, arching an eyebrow.
Cantus shook his head. “It’s hard to get within sight of the horde during daylight, even for fliers. There is a constant battle for control of the air with those wasp-men they’ve got. I can spare only a handful of fliers to use for reconnaissance, and they’ve returned reports varying from three hundred thousand to ten times that number. So far, none of them have turned north for Phrygia. They seem to be intent on pursuing Princeps Attis.”
“They don’t dare do anything else,” Tavi said. “If the High Lords get a chance to catch their breath, they can still be very, very dangerous to the vord.”
Fidelias cleared his throat. He pointed a finger toward the far end of the northeastern causeway, the one that ended at Garrison. “Offhand, I’d say your pessimistic scout was the most likely to have been correct in his observations.”
“Why?”
“The geography,” Fidelias said. “Princeps Attis is seeking advantageous ground. Calderon may suit his purposes.”
“Why say that?” Varg rumbled.
Tavi began to ask Cyricus to expand the sand table’s view of the Calderon Valley, only to find that the stuttering young man was already in the process of doing it. Tavi made a mental note to himself: If he survived this war, he simply
had
to offer the young man a job. Initiative like that was uncommon.
“Ah, thank you, Master Cyricus,” Tavi said. “Princeps Attis is leading the vord into a funnel,” Tavi said. “Once they’ve passed the western escarpments and entered the Calderon Valley, they’re going to be forced to crowd in closer and closer. Sea on the north, impassable mountains in the south.”
“Neutralizing the advantage of numbers,” Varg growled.
“In part. But he’s also going there because my uncle has turned the place into a bloody fortress.”
Fidelias glanced up at Tavi, frowning.
“You saw the holders of the Calderon Valley throw up a siege wall in less than half an hour at Second Calderon,” Tavi said. “Now consider that my uncle’s had the next best thing to five years to prepare.”