Princeps' fury (29 page)

Amara stared in raw terror at the power being unleashed before her, and wished that she and her husband had found a rather safer distance from which to observe the battle. This was not the admittedly deadly power of a century of Knights attached to a Legion, or even that of multiple Legions’ Knights working in concert—it was the concentrated furycraft of the lords of Alera, and it literally tore the earth asunder beneath the feet of the Vord as they advanced. The light was blinding, and she had to lift her hand to shield her eyes against it. Debris—and not all of it earth and stone, either—began to rain down all around them, cast out to the abandoned steadholt by the power of the furycraft unleashed upon the Vord. The sound was deafening, even where they crouched, and Amara desperately shifted some of Cirrus’s effort into shielding their ears from the terrible din. Amara had never seen or imagined such sheer, awe-inspiring power unleashed—save once—and she suddenly wanted nothing in the world so much as to be in a very deep hole, hiding quietly until the entire business was concluded.

She did not know for how long that horrible storm of power and death raged. She knew it could not have been as long as it felt. It seemed that she crouched there for hours while lightning fell from a crystal-clear sky, raking the valley in a curtain of raw destruction.

When the silence came, Amara thought at first that her ears had simply burst under the sound. It took her a moment to realize that the flashes of light had died away, that the ground had ceased its shaking. Her eyes, dazzled by the flashes of light, could see nothing but the furylamps upon the walls of Ceres as night reclaimed the land. For a long minute, there was no sound at all—and then, once more, trumpets cried out from within the city, sharp and clear, and the gates of Ceres swung open wide—as did a dozen more openings in the wall, portals furycrafted open, the stone itself simply flowing aside like water, creating neat, new arches.

Cavalry thundered forth from the city—thousands of horses in columns, their hooves a vast pounding upon the lightning-scoured earth. The united alae of every Legion the First Lord had been able to gather took the field together, flying the colors of every city south of the Shieldwall. Fully half of their number, Amara saw, bore colors of Placidan green. The rumors they had heard about Lord Placida mounting an entire Legion had not, it seemed, been exaggerated.

As the cavalry took the field, flights of Knights Aeris winged up from the city behind them—Knights flying in formations around groups of Citizens who had taken the field against the Vord threat. As the cavalry surged forward, the aerial troops raced ahead of them, striking and disrupting the already-stunned Vord in the field. Amara saw more bolts of lightning and spheres of flame begin to blossom, illuminating the black armor segments of the Vord in stark, violent flashes. Then the cavalry reached them. Amara could only distantly hear the sound of their unit trumpets and drums, and could see little of them in the darkness, but she could not imagine that the battle could be going well for the heavily stricken Vord, caught in the open farmlands of the valley around Ceres, where they would find no refuge against the rage of the Aleran cavalry, nowhere to hide from the Knights Aeris and the furycraft of the Citizens they escorted.

After days of seeing the terror the Vord had visited upon the holders of Ceres, Amara felt only a surge of vicious satisfaction at the sight. Even if the Vord’s furycrafters went into action—assuming they had survived that titanic assault at all—it might well be too late to turn the tide of this battle. The First Lord, it seemed, had broken the back of the enemy’s advance.

Oh great furies,
Amara thought.
Aerial troops. There must be thousands of them. Tens of thousands. Bloody crows, they blot out the stars.

The creatures that had assaulted the city, their ground troops—the Vord had sacrificed them willingly, thrown them into the jaws of the Aleran’s trap in order to draw out their Citizens and furycrafters, to goad the Alerans into revealing the positions of their most potent weapons.

The counterstroke fell with inhuman ferocity.

Amara could see very little from where she sat. But flashes of light erupted in the night sky, each revealing dark figures. All of them looked human, though she could hardly bring herself to believe that was possible. Surely the Vord could not have taken so many Knights Aeris. And certainly, it was not solely the Vord who were using firecrafting in the night skies.

The dull thud and pop of firecraftings echoed across the valley, and the calls of the cavalry’s horns became more harried, disorganized, and desperate. Once, the roar of multiple windstreams deafened them and kicked up clouds of dust as several Knights Aeris went streaking over their position in a long, arching curve, perhaps seeking to flank some enemy element back in the main area of the fray.

And then from the walls of the city, a small group of heavily armored Knights Aeris leapt skyward, and, as they did, the sword of a single man at the center of the group kindled into brilliant golden light. That sword blazed brighter and brighter as the group of Knights streaked toward the battle, trailing streaks of fire behind it, like a living comet.

Not a single eye in the entire Ceresian valley could help but see that light, soaring toward the combat, and no one who saw it mistook it for anything other than precisely what it was—a naked challenge, a statement of raw defiance. She drew in a sharp breath, identifying the flickering golden flame as the banner colors of the High Lord of Rhodes.

The old man was a schemer, a man of dangerous ambition, and only the fact that his city neighbored that of the Aquitaines had prevented him from being a more serious threat to the Realm than Kalarus had been. As it was, Aquitaine had made it his first order of business to gain and maintain a solid margin of advantage and control over his predatory neighbor—but even so, Rhodes was widely known as a crafter of particular skill among the Citizenry.

Amara wondered if the man’s arrogance had blinded him to the fact that Gaius was sacrificing him like a piece in a
ludus
game, hoping to draw out one of the Vord’s major weapons in turn.

From somewhere to the south, on the ground or in the skies, Amara could not tell, came a piercing sound—a shriek that blended the sound of tearing metal and agonized lions, a sound that tore at her ears and ripped at her frayed nerves, that filled her with an insane desire to leap to her feet, screaming in mindless, instinctive response.

Amara had heard that sound before, and the memory filled her with icy terror.

It was the war cry of a Vord queen.

High Lord Rhodes and his personal bodyguards—Counts and Lords themselves, they had to be—streaked into the air to the south, a golden globe of light, that was suddenly surrounded by flickering, swift-moving black forms, like mosquitoes and moths gathering by the thousands around the flame of a candle in a forest at night.

A globe of sickly green-white light suddenly surged up from the earth to meet him.

Light flashed, sparks exploding in a cloud so thick that for a moment it obscured every single form in the southern sky, so bright that every broken stone, every dead branch and fallen leaf of the ruin around them cast a crisp-edged black shadow. A detonation rolled across the valley, so loud that it slapped against Amara’s chest like a physical blow.

For a second, she could see nothing.

She blinked her dazzled eyes several times—and when she could see again, her stomach wrenched sharply, turning a slow circle within her belly.

Rhodes, a High Lord of Alera, surrounded by Citizens, prepared, on his guard, determined, and doing battle with all the might of the Realm around him, had fallen to the Vord queen, fallen in the instant of their meeting.

The golden light died away before the body reached the earth.

The Vord queen shrieked again, and that time Amara
did
let out a cry, the sound torn from her chest by a surge of involuntary terror. Green lightning suddenly filled the southern sky, spreading in a webwork that was
miles
across, centered upon the sphere of green-white light, upon the Vord queen, at last revealing the frantic battle being fought to the south.

The Aleran forces who faced them were outnumbered, so laughably outnumbered that the very thought of giving battle was as ridiculous as that of a man with a shovel attempting to stem the ocean’s tide.

The lightning faded to darkness.

The roar of approaching windstreams began to rise. Cavalry trumpets sounded the retreat, and panicked horn calls within the city began to echo them.

Amara watched numbly as the rout began—then she shook herself, focusing her mind to the task at hand. Gaius had sent one of his strongest assets out to die for that precise reason, to reveal the source of the Vord’s power and give her a chance to find it.

She did not dare delay. The Vord would be overhead soon, and it would be madness to lower their veils for long—but she could not get a clear look from that distance, even with Cirrus’s help, without lowering the concealing furycraftings.

She touched Bernard’s wrist, and he nodded once. An instant later, the faint blurring of shadow and shape that was his woodcrafted veil was gone. She lowered her own veil as well, then held up her hands, and willed Cirrus to bring the green sphere into closer view.

The night sky blurred, then her eyes almost seemed to rush forward as her wind fury bent the light to let her see more clearly. The green sphere leapt up into crystalline clarity, and Amara focused upon High Lord Rhodes’s killer.

Her breath caught in her throat, and for an instant it seemed her heart forgot to keep beating.

At the center of the sphere was a cloaked figure, skin smooth and dark, black cloth billowing about her, green-white eyes gleaming from within the depths of a heavy hood—the Vord queen.

She was the only Vord there.

Around her was a score of heavily armored Knights Aeris—Alerans, every one of them. All of them wore armor that looked like some kind of bizarre imitation of Legion lorica, made from the black chitin of the Vord, and they bore weapons of the same material. To a man, they were young—no, Amara corrected herself. They were young-
looking
.

Citizens.

The Vord queen was attended by Citizens of her own.

As Amara stared, horrified, she saw several of the Vord shaped like Knights Aeris streak by in the background. Each of them bore the limp form of a fallen Knight Aeris or Citizen. Though some were clearly wounded, none was obviously dead, and Amara realized with a sick heart that they were being captured.

The Vord would add them to their arsenal, just as they had the Citizens surrounding the queen.

One more person rode a windstream within the Vord queen’s sphere.

At first Amara thought she was naked. Then she realized that the beautiful woman was covered with the dark chitin-armor as well, as close-fitting as a second skin. Her dark hair was long, flying out wildly in a cloud as she hovered there, a slender sword of Aleran steel in her hands. Her skin was pale, her expression cold and confident. Upon her chest, between the woman’s breasts, rested . . . something, a gleaming lump the size of Amara’s doubled fists. Amara stared for several seconds before she realized that the object was
alive
, like some kind of burrowing insect or tick, its head thrust beneath the surface of the woman’s flesh.

Invidia Aquitaine flicked her sword to one side, clearing the blood of the late High Lord of Rhodes from its blade.

The light of the green sphere faded, leaving Amara and Bernard in darkness.

CHAPTER 20

Ehren stood atop the highest tower of the citadel of Ceres, watching as the High Lord of Rhodes fell, and the battle turned against the Aleran forces. Horns frantically sounded retreat, and Knights Aeris and Citizens came racing back toward the city upon roaring gales of wind.

“Your opinion, Cursor?” the First Lord murmured.

Ehren swallowed. “Frankly, sire, I believe I’m entirely too terrified to offer you a useful opinion for the time being.”