Princeps' fury (37 page)

Tavi nodded to the next table. “Maraul. They held out for nearly a year. But by then they were cut off from Shuar, surrounded. Then . . .” Tavi shrugged. “Shuar was the only range left.”

Tavi shot her a quick smile. “Yes,” he replied. The smile faded. “Though at the moment, I’d be thrilled at the prospect of having the Canim as a long-term worry.”

Kitai regarded him with calm, serious eyes. “Crassus says that there are as many as eighty or ninety thousand Vord already in central Shuar.”

Tavi frowned at the news. Eighty or ninety thousand. Fighting that many Vord on open ground would be little more than suicide for the Aleran Legions. Their only chance would be to fight beside Nasaug’s troops—and that was hardly a proposition that his men would enjoy. Two years of war had made for plenty of hard feelings on both sides.

For just a moment, staring at the sand tables, at the enormous number of black stones, and the relatively few white ones opposing them, Tavi felt at a complete loss. Only a few years ago, he had been nothing but a shepherd. No, not even that. His uncle had been the shepherd. Tavi had been an
apprentice
shepherd.

Oh, of course, now he had a title: His Royal Highness, Gaius Octavian, Princeps of the Realm, heir apparent to the Crown of Alera.

With that and a sharp knife, he could slice bread.

How was he supposed to deal with this situation? How was he supposed to make the choices before him—choices that would send Alerans and Canim alike to their deaths? Was he merely arrogant, to think that he was the best person to decide? Or was he quietly, calmly insane?

“This is different,” Tavi said quietly. “It’s bigger. It’s more complex. If the Vord aren’t stopped . . .” He shook his head. “It’s the end. Of everything. The Canim. My people. Yours. Nothing will be left.”

He felt Kitai’s hand touch his chin and lift his head, turning him quite firmly toward her. She leaned into him, pulling him down, and kissed his mouth. It was a long, slow, heavy kiss, and when she finally drew her mouth from his, her eyes were huge, their green darkened to mere rings of emerald.

“Aleran,” she said quietly. “True power has nothing to do with furies.” She pressed her thumb firmly to the center of his forehead. “Strong, stupid enemies are easily defeated. Intelligent foes are always dangerous. You have grown in strength. Do not permit yourself to grow in stupidity.” Her hand moved to caress his cheek. “You are one of the most dangerous men I know.”

Tavi turned his eyes to the sand tables again. “I’m afraid,” he said, after a moment. “Afraid that I’ll fail to stop them. That people depending on me to protect them will die.”

She nodded slowly. “I understand it,” Kitai said. “Before, there was always someone else, someone above you, who could intervene. Who could shield you. Your mother and your uncle. Maestro Killian. Gaius Sextus.”

“You would be a fool to feel any other way,” Kitai said. She twined her fingers in his. “There are many things at which I am skilled. I ride well. I climb well. I steal well. I fight and dance and love well. My instincts are second to none.” She picked up one of the stacks of paper and glanced over it. “But this . . . no. Making sense of a hundred little pieces of information. It is not for me.

“That is
your
gift, Aleran.” She offered him the stack of papers. “Knowledge is your weapon.” Her eyes glittered. “Kill them with it.”

Tavi took a deep breath and accepted the papers in silence.

“Maraul,” he blurted, three hours later.

Kitai looked up from where she had sat down with several handfuls of white and black stones, after carrying word back to the roof. She had been playing some kind of game involving scratches marked on the stone with one of her knives, and where the stones sat upon intersections of the lines. She looked at him levelly for a moment, then rolled her eyes, and said, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Maraul,” Tavi said again. “It was right in front of me. That’s the point to focus on. Why did they hold out for a year against the Vord when their neighbors fell in three or four months? What was different?”

Kitai tilted her head. “Their armies were more capable? They seem to have the respect of the Narashans.”

Tavi shook his head. “By the time they were attacked, the Vord had spread to three other ranges. Superior-quality troops can make up for a world of difference in numbers, but even the best troops get tired, wounded, disorganized. The Vord would have worn them down.”

“Better tactical positioning?” Kitai offered.

Tavi shook his head and gestured at the appropriate sand table. “It’s a swamp. There are few natural defensive points, and even those are fairly weak.”

“What was it, then?”

“Exactly,” Tavi said. “What?” He seized the stack of documents next to the model-Maraul table and began reading.

It took him another two hours to turn up a reasonable theory—and even that had only been possible because of the report, precise in its detail, from one of Lararl’s Hunters to the Warmaster. Shuaran Hunters, it seemed, had been tasked to observe the fighting in Maraul, to gather intelligence on both their neighbors and the invaders. Somehow that knowledge made Tavi feel a bit more comfortable than he had been before.

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.”

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.”

“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.

“I’ve got enough problems relating to slavery already,” Tavi replied drily. “No.” He took a deep breath. “I would have your people and Varg’s stand with us against the Vord.”