“She was . . . uniquely useful to me,” the Queen said.
Amara flicked some of the blood off the tip of the spear with one finger, and said, “She’s still useful. You can eat her.”
“Her,” said the Queen, her eyes narrowing. “And you.”
Amara lifted her spear in silent invitation and gave the Queen a mocking bow.
Isana clutched Aria’s leg even harder, pouring all her energy into assisting her.
The Queen and the Cursor both called upon windcrafting to give them speed and abruptly rushed toward one another, streaks of motion. At the last instant, Amara flung the stone knife, and the vord Queen had to intercept it with her blade. Amara dropped into a slide and went by her, barely avoiding the sword’s backswing. The Cursor came up onto her feet, rolled beneath another blow as the Queen pursued her, then reversed her facing in midleap and flung the bone spear at the Queen with unearthly speed.
The Queen’s blade snapped out and shattered the bone weapon into hundreds of shards, and the frantic pace stilled again. Amara came to her feet weap onless, wearing only light clothing, not even a plated coat. The vord Queen stared at her with glittering black eyes, and said, “I had a bond with her. Why was such a thing so difficult to notice until it was gone?”
She tilted her head, still staring at Amara, and said, “This isn’t fun any more.”
She flicked her wrist, a distracted motion, and there was a sudden high-pitched, hissing hum. Amara gasped, jerked, and twisted several times, driven back half a pace by some kind of impact.
Isana wasn’t sure what had happened until she saw half a dozen creatures, like unthinkably large wasps, writhing on Amara’s chest, belly, shoulders, arms, and legs. Each of them sported a stinger as long as a woman’s finger, made of serrated and gleaming vord chitin.
Amara looked down at herself, at the enormous wasps, shocked. And then her eyes rolled back in her head, and she toppled to the ground, her back arched into a rigid bow, her limbs thrashing.
“Countess!” Aria cried, her face a mask of blood—but no longer bleeding, at least, no longer blinding her. She took a step forward, and her wounded leg buckled beneath her, nearly throwing her down.
The vord Queen looked over her shoulder and made the exact same gesture. Aria lifted her sword in a vain defensive motion, but there was the hiss-hum of more wasps flashing from some gaping orifice within the
croach
, high up on one wall. Where they struck steel, they hit with a heavy thump—it sounded like a hailstorm as literally hundreds of wasps lashed at Lady Placida. She shielded her eyes, but several of the creatures struck her cheeks, her neck, including one spectacular impact where the wasp’s stinger pierced her left earlobe and all but tore it off her head.
Aria fell to one knee, gasping for breath. The little wounds frothed with poison, and the stream of wasps was merciless and unending. One struck her thigh, below the hem of the skirt of plated leather straps hanging from her belt. Another pierced her boot. Seconds later, the wasps had simply pounded her balance from her, and she toppled as well, letting out a high-pitched moan of agony and despair as her own body began to thrash like Amara’s.
Isana felt her fingers tightening helplessly on the sheathed sword in her hand. Though she had some rudimentary training with such a weapon, she was in no way fit to compare herself to violent professionals such as Amara and Lady Aria—and even if she had been, neither of them had managed to defend herself. Her eyes flicked to the pool of water, but it was simply too far away. She would never be able to use what was in it in time.
The vord Queen’s dark eyes focused on Isana.
She lifted her hand—and then her black eyes widened in surprise.
A gleaming metal hand reached out from behind Isana and gently took the late Invidia’s weapon from her grasp. She twisted her head up to see Araris, stepping clear of the
croach
like a man walking through a field of grain. And yet, it was not Araris, as she had last seen him. Every inch of visible skin gleamed like polished steel. The mail he’d been wearing was gone, and Isana realized with a start that the master metalcrafter had, somehow, incorporated it into his very flesh.
He took two steps forward, each one falling with more sound and force than any being of flesh and blood should have possessed. He flipped the sword through several calm circles, evidently testing its weight and balance. Then Araris Valerian squared off against the vord Queen, and said, quietly, his voice strangely roughened, burred, “You will not touch her.”
The Queen bared her teeth and flung her hand toward Araris, hissing. A sudden storm of wasps leapt through the air in three distinct streams. They hammered into Araris, hundreds of them in the space of seconds, each impact making its own sharply distinct pinging sound—and each and every one of them rebounded from his steely flesh, landing on the floor amidst the remains of his shredded shirt, their legs and stingers thrashing.
The streams of wasps died down and stopped, and Isana could clearly hear her own swift breathing in the silence that followed. The impotent wasps were littered into a pile halfway up Araris’s thighs.
Moving very slowly, very calmly, his living-steel hand drifted up and lightly touched the hilt of his sword, settling the grip one finger at a time. “All right,” he said in a soft, quiet voice. “My turn.”
And suddenly one of the deadliest swordsmen in Alera was rushing across the distance separating him from the vord Queen, his weapon still sheathed.
The Queen let out a shriek of challenge and darted forward to meet him. In the very last instant, before the two reached each other, both of their swords leapt out, little more than blurs of green
croach
light on steel, and a thunderstorm of sparks erupted in the center of the hive.
The chiming sound of steel on steel from within the continual cloud of sparks sounded like twenty swordsmen were fighting, not two. It lasted for two seconds, three, four, then the sparks washed away over the floor, revealing a tableau: Araris stood facing the vord Queen, his sword before him, gripped in both hands. She stood facing him, sword arm extended down and to the side. Her pale cheek was marked by a thin line of green-brown blood.
Her eyes were slightly wide, and they flicked down to the cut on her face in disbelief. Her lip lifted in a snarl, and she made a hissing sound, pointing her sword at him.
Instantly, two of the blade-beasts bounded forward, menacing him with their weapon-limbs. They rushed Araris, unbelievably swift and strong. Blades descended toward the man Isana loved, and her heart flew up into her throat.
But Araris Valerian was their match.
The first two blades to come sweeping at him were shattered entirely in fountains of white and green sparks. Another blade struck his chest and rebounded in another shower of sparks, even as he caught a fourth in a literal steely grip and calmly drove the blade down through the limb of the other vord before him, slamming it through the vord and into the bedrock below, trapping one blade-beast in place with the piercing limb of the second. His sword flashed once, dispatching the trapped beast—and then he spun and drove his left fist forward, through the second beast’s guard and into its head. His metallic fist smashed through the blade-beast’s skull like a warhammer, until he had sunk his arm halfway to the elbow in the creature’s skull. He withdrew his arm with a calm, smooth motion, and the blade-beast collapsed.
He had barely moved his feet.
The vord Queen’s eyes narrowed, and she streaked toward Araris again, her sword flashing. Again, sparks flooded the hive, and Isana had to lift her hand to shield her eyes against them. By the time the two had parted once more, a second cut, almost precisely parallel to the Queen’s first injury, but an inch closer to her throat, also graced her cheek.
“Speed isn’t enough,” Araris said in a gentle voice. “Not by itself. Your technique is sloppy. You haven’t drilled enough.”
The vord Queen’s mouth spread into a very slow smile. Her eyes raked Araris, moving up and down his gleaming form, as she said, “Metal skin. Impressive. Painful?”
“Quite,” said Araris.
The Queen made a quick gesture of her left hand, and the temperature in the hive seemed to drop. Crystals of ice formed upon Araris’s steely skin, first here and there, then in a thick, spreading blanket. Isana felt the surge of agony in Araris, as the torment of the frozen steel began to gouge at him even through a metalcrafter’s insulation against pain.
“And now more so,” the Queen said, and launched another attack.
Araris made his first defensive movement, and there was the peculiar sound of squealing metal. He screamed in sudden agony, a pain so great that it broke through his metalcrafting and left him at its mercy, raking against Isana’s senses like frozen claws. He reeled back before the Queen, howling in pain with every tormented movement. He parried the first two blows, and the third, but missed the fourth, and the Queen’s sword struck his shoulder.
There was a peculiar, hollow sound, and a webwork of cracks abruptly spread over the surface of his metallic skin.
Araris choked on another scream, his eyes wide and round, as the agony drove him down to one knee before the vord Queen.
“You cannot stop me,” the vord Queen said. Her sword kindled to green-white flame as she loomed over Araris. “None of you can stop me.”
Isana reached out a hand and seized upon the water in the little pool. She bade it leap up toward the Queen, but the vord was far too swift. She sensed the column of water speeding toward her and took a single step back as it washed by. As it went past her, the Queen stretched out a hand and Isana felt her rip control of the water from her as easily as Isana might have torn it from a child. The Queen sent it crashing into Araris, where it promptly began freezing on his armor, drawing even more pain from the battered man.
The Queen turned to look at Isana, and said, “Grandmother, you have one chance to live. Agree to govern the postconflict Alerans and to assist me in my current efforts, and I will spare your life and your mate’s.”
Isana straightened where she sat. She faced the vord Queen. And, very slowly, she shook her head.
“So be it,” said the vord Queen.
Isana closed her eyes, and it was just then that trumpets began to blare, high and clear, from somewhere outside. Their voices were not the braying deepness of the Canim horns, nor the higher silver sound of the navy’s bugles. These were genuine trumpets played by real Legion musicians, and their high-pitched, clarion call sent a shiver down Isana’s spine.
The vord Queen’s head whipped around to one side, and she hissed, “No. No, he cannot be
here
. Not
yet
.”
The trumpets called again. The ground rumbled under the weight of many feet. The mantis warriors outside began to screech a warning—and all of those sounds proclaimed a single, unmistakable fact:
Gaius Octavian had come to do battle with the vord Queen.
“Kill them,” the Queen snarled. “Kill them all.”
The Queen crouched, then leapt skyward, clawing her way up through the holes in the hive’s ceiling that had held the blade-beasts, and with a shriek passed out into the countryside.
Six blade-beasts turned toward Isana, Araris, and the wounded survivors of the failed assassination.
CHAPTER 51
Tavi and Kitai waited with the aerial contingent of the attack. Sir Callum and the other members of the First Aleran’s Knights Pisces were restless. They couldn’t lift off until the ground forces had begun their assault, for fear that the hollow roar of two dozen windstreams would alert the vord to their presence.
Then someone, probably Fidelias, let out a bellowed command to move out, and the host was on the march. It took them less than half an hour to reach the ruined steadholt, then, at another signal, the trumpets sounded the charge, and Aleran and Canim cavalry went roaring down onto the steadholt while the infantry marched at double speed in their wake.
“Right!” Tavi said. “Let’s go!” He summoned up his windstream and lifted off. He was clumsier about it than most of the Knights Aeris there, but at least he managed it without hurting himself or fouling the efforts of the man beside him. Kitai took up position beside him on his left, while Sir Callum flew on his right, and the other Knights Aeris spread out into a v-shaped wing behind him.
Tavi led them forward, soon overflying the Aleran infantry, the slowest troops on the field. Their goal was the ruined steadholt itself, the nearest target, while their Canim peers, being much faster on their feet, swept to the east and around the steadholt, to strike into the fields of sleeping vord.
The other side included the cavalry, Canim and Aleran alike. The taurga were at least twice the weight of a horse, and they couldn’t outrun one. As Tavi cruised up, the first Aleran cavalrymen were starting through the vord field, sa bers lowering to flash left and right, in almost exactly the same motions and timing as their practice drills. They rushed down the columns of hibernating vord, wreaking havoc. Nearly eight hundred horsemen running at full speed through the field dealt the vord hideous wounds.
But they didn’t hold a candle to the slower taurga.
The Canim beasts were enormously powerful, individually speaking—bigger and stronger than any beast Tavi knew of short of a gargant. But the taurga were omnivores with vicious tempers. Even if they hadn’t been urged by their riders, they would have smashed vord left and right as they ran through them—while upon the beasts’ backs, the Shuaran warrior Canim struck lazy-looking blows with long-handled axes that simply sheared through whatever they hit. They wreaked four or five times the damage the Aleran cavalry had done—which was only reasonable, since there were nearly five thousand of the bloody things.
Shrieks began to go up, here and there, the warning trills of wax spiders who had recognized that something wasn’t right. The mantis warriors in the steadholt began streaking about, a couple of hundred of them at least, as the battle lines of the Aleran Legions closed on the steadholt.