Princeps' fury (67 page)

Amara glided in close to the lead wind coach, opened the door, and slipped inside. She sat quietly for a moment, her head bowed.

“Bloody crows,” Gram breathed, looking down. “Did the Vord do that?”

“No,” Bernard said. Amara felt him take her hand in his and squeeze gently. “No. I’ve seen something like this before. At Kalare.”

“Gaius,” Gram whispered. He shook his head, then bowed it. “That arrogant old . . .” His voice cracked, and he broke off his sentence.

Amara shook her head. “No. I don’t think so.” She lifted her head and looked out the window at the destruction. “He would never do . . . this, unless the city was all but taken in any case.”

Her husband took a deep breath, thinking. “They’d take the causeway north, into the Redhill Heights, until they reached the crossroads. From there, they could turn east toward Aquitaine or northeast to Riva.”

The crossroads, then, would be the natural rendezvous point for anyone in the region who was fleeing the Vord-ridden south.

She nodded to her husband and stepped out of the coach, once again willing Cirrus to bear up her weight. Then she signaled to the other fliers in their group to follow her, and took the point position again, to lead her own band of survivors north.

Within half an hour, a hundred Knights Aeris plunged down upon them in a swirling mass of cold air, from such an altitude that their armor was coated with frost. The lead Knight—no, Amara corrected herself, the Placidan Lord who was obviously in command of the unit, flashed her an angry signal, to which she knew no countersign. Shouting at one another amidst so many roaring windstreams would have been an exercise in futility, so instead she simply lifted her head to bare her uncollared throat and lifted her hands into the air. The Placidan scowled at her, but flashed a standard signal at her to land, then signaled a hover, and spun his finger to encompass the rest of her group. She nodded, signaling her own folk to remain in place, and descended toward the ground with the Placidan Lord.

They landed on the causeway, and the lord never took his eyes off her the whole way down. He stopped ten feet from her and faced her silently, one hand on his sword.

The lord, who looked about Amara’s age, but who could have been twenty years older, if he had watercrafting enough, gave her a tired smile. He needed a shave. “Crows, lady. I can barely remember it myself. Marius Quintias, at your service.”

“Quintias,” Amara said, bowing slightly. “I am Countess Calderonus Amara. The people with me are the Knights and Citizens my husband and I rescued from the Vord. They’re tired, cold, and hungry. Is there a haven for them nearby?”

“Aye,” he said, nodding as he swept his gaze around. There was a faint, but undeniable note of pride in his voice. “For the moment, at least.”

For the first time, Amara looked at her surroundings.

A battle had been fought there, on the causeway beneath the Redhill Heights. The earth was torn with furycraft and the tread of thousands of feet. Black patches marked where firecrafting had scorched the ground. Broken weapons lay strewn about the ground, here and there, along with spent arrows, broken shields, and cloven helms.

And there were dead Vord.

There were thousands upon thousands of dead Vord. They carpeted the earth for hundreds of yards behind her.

“I wouldn’t go walking this countryside alone for the time being, Countess,” Quintias said. “But if you’ll come to the camp, you can sleep safe, at least, once your people have cleared inspection.”

“Inspection?” Amara asked.

“No one comes into the camp unless we’re sure that they aren’t taken or working with the Vord, lady,” Quintias said without rancor. “We’ve had taken trying to slip in and cause trouble since about an hour after the battle.”

“I see,” she said quietly. “It’s imperative, sir, that I speak to the First Lord at once. I have information he will need.”

Quintias nodded sharply. “Then let’s get moving.”

They took to the air again, and Quintias and a dozen of his Knights escorted them ahead, flying low and slow, the effort laborious. They would be exhausted when they landed—which was, she suspected, the point. If they had been intent on causing mischief, their fliers, at least would be in no condition to do so.

It took them little time to reach the camp—a camp set up behind the interlocked palisades of no fewer than
nine
Aleran Legions. Half a dozen of them were flying the blue-and-white banners of Antillus, which was, Amara would have sworn, an obvious impossibility.

Beyond the neat white tents of the Legion camps was a small sea of humanity numbering in the tens of thousands if not the hundreds. Armored
legionares
of one of the Placidan Legions were waiting, and Legion healers were coming forward to help (and presumably to verify the humanity of) the most recent arrivals.

Quintias beckoned Amara, and she followed him through the Placidan camp, to a single Legion camp standing behind the front line. The red-and-blue banners of the First Lord flew over it, and she found herself hurrying her steps as she passed through the Crown Legion’s camp, toward its commander’s tent. It was awash in activity, with couriers and officers alike coming and going.

“I’ll tell the First Lord you’re here,” Quintias said, and entered the tent. He came out only a few moments later, and beckoned Amara. She followed him inside.

A crowd of officers stood around a sand table in the center of the room, their quiet discussion buzzing. “Very well then, gentlemen,” said a quiet, cultured baritone. “We know what needs to be done. Let’s be about it.”

The officers saluted with the kind of precision and discipline Amara knew never would have been seen during peacetime, a rattle of fists striking armor, and then began to disperse.

“He wanted to hear from you first thing,” Quintias told her. “Go ahead.”

Amara nodded her thanks to the man and walked forward to speak to the First Lord—and stopped in her tracks in shock.

Aquitainus Attis turned to her, his expression calm and confident beneath the shining steel circlet of the First Lord that he wore upon his brow, and nodded. “Countess Amara, welcome. We have much to discuss.”

Isana walked into the command tent at the temporary camp and was unsurprised to find it empty except for Lord Aquitaine. The tall, leonine lord stood over the sand table, staring down at it as if reading a poem he could not quite comprehend.

“Your brother’s wife is quite resourceful,” he said quietly. “Not only did she arrange the escape of more than three hundred Knights and Citizens who would have been enslaved by Vord, and destroy their capability of adding any more to their tally, on the way here she also managed to compile a surprisingly complete estimate of the spread of the
croach
from the reports of the various hostages and her own observations.”

“The only part of that which surprises me is hearing that she shared it with you,” Isana replied in a level tone.

Aquitaine smiled without looking up from the map sculpted into the sand on the table in front of him. “Honestly, Isana. The time for our petty squabbles is past.”

“Petty,” Isana said quietly. “My pardon, Lord Aquitaine. I labored under the misconception that the death of hundreds of my friends and neighbors in Calderon was not a petty matter.”

Aquitaine looked up at Isana and regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, the steel coronet at his brow gleaming in the light of the tent’s furylamps. Then he said, “Let us suppose for a moment that what happened at Calderon had gone differently—that the Marat had wiped out the population of the valley, just as they did in Septimus’s day. That I had positioned myself to stop the horde and won the favor of the Senate and various other parties.”

“And if it had happened that way?” Isana asked.

“It might have saved
millions
of lives,” Aquitaine said, his voice quiet and hard, and it gained in intensity as he spoke. “A stronger First Lord might have prevented Kalare’s rebellion, or been able to end it with something other than a cataclysm that left a quarter of the Realm in chaos and anarchy that became an ideal breeding ground for the crowbegotten Vord.”

“And you believed that you were the proper person to choose who would live and who would die.”

“You saw where Gaius’s constant games and manipulations took us. You can see it in the smoking ruin where Alera Imperia used to stand. You can see it in Kalare and the Amaranth Vale. You saw it the night they murdered Septimus.” Aquitaine folded his hands behind his back. “Why not someone else? And if it is to be someone else, why not me?”

“If he comes back,” he said, with quiet emphasis on the first word, “then . . . we will see. Until that day, I will do as I think best for the Realm.” His eyes flicked back up to her, and became hard and cold as agates. “And I will expect your support.”

Isana lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes.

“Division in the Realm has all but killed us,” Aquitaine continued in a deadly quiet voice. “I will not permit it to happen again.”

“Why tell me this now?” Isana asked him.

“Because I would rather we were forthright with one another. It will save time later.” He spread his hands. “I have a certain amount of respect for you. I would rather have your support over the next few months. But make no mistake, I cannot tolerate your antagonism. I’ll kill you first. Even if I must cross Raucus to do it.”

Isana wondered if Aquitaine expected her to cringe in fear. “Do you honestly think you could handle him?” she asked.

“In a duel, one of us would die,” Aquitaine replied, “and the other would not win. Neither would the Realm.”

“Why?” Isana asked. “Why would you say this to me? I have no Legions to offer you, no cities, no wealth. Why do you need my support?”

“Because Raucus has made it clear to me that he came south for your sake. And Phrygia follows him. Lord and Lady Placida have made it clear that if I am wise, I will treat you with all deference. The heir presumptive to Ceres seems to think you can do no wrong. And, of course, the people love you—one of their own, risen up to wed the Princeps and provide the Realm its desperately needed heir. You have far more power than you realize.”

He leaned forward slightly. “But a third of the Realm is
dead
, Isana. What’s left is going to die, too, unless we stop stabbing one another’s backs and work together.”

“If you say so,” Isana said stiffly. “You are more an authority than I in matters of treachery.”

He sighed, and settled down on a camp stool. He spread his hands, and asked, wearily, “What do you think Septimus would have wished you to do?”

Aquitaine arched an eyebrow. “It’s easy to argue against morality by the numbers—as long as the numbers are small. Millions of people—people we Citizens of the Realm were expected to protect—are
dead
, Isana. The time for difficult decisions is here. And making no decision at all may prove just as disastrous.”

Isana turned her face away, absorbing that for a moment. A bitter taste filled her mouth.

What would Septimus have wished her to do, indeed.

“The Realm needs its leaders to stand together,” she said quietly. “I will work with you—until my son returns. I will promise you nothing more than that.”

Aquitaine studied her profile for a moment, then nodded once. “We understand one another. That is a reasonable beginning.” He frowned for a moment, then said, “May I ask you something?”

Aquitaine waved a hand in a vague gesture of negation. “Because he reminds me of Septimus. And what the Realm needs at the moment is Septimus.”