thundered down the road, forcing legionares to scamper out of its path and other horses to dance nervously in place. She went by within a few feet of Tavi, her harness and coin purse jingling.
“Come on,” Foss growled. “Nothing wrong with your arms, sir.”
He motioned Tavi to help him, and the two of them wrangled a pair of full-body tubs from the wagon and to the ground. It hurt his leg abominably, sore muscles clenching into burning knots, but Tavi ground his teeth and did his best to ignore it. He and Foss dragged the tubs to the side of the causeway as Lady Antillus hauled her steed to a sliding halt and leapt down from the horse’s back with an odd melding of poise and athleticism.
“Water,” Foss grunted. Tavi pulled himself back into the wagon and began wrangling the heavy jugs to the end of the wagon. Wind rose to a thunderous roar, and Commander Fantus and Crassus shot down the road not ten feet above the ground, each man bearing an unmoving form over one shoulder. Lady Antillus, Foss, and four other healers met them, taking the wounded men from the Knights Aeris. They stripped the injured of armor with practiced efficiency and got both men into the tub.
Tavi observed from the bed of the wagon and kept his mouth shut. The men’s injuries were… odd. Both were smeared with blood, and both thrashed wildly, letting out breathless cries of pain. Long strips of the skin on their legs were simply gone, in bands perhaps an inch wide, as though they’d been lashed with red-hot chains.
Once they were in the tubs, Lady Antillus stepped forward and seized one of the wounded Knight’s head. He struggled for a moment more, then eased slowly down into the tub, panting but not screaming, his eyes glazed. She did the same for the second man, then gestured to the healers and settled down to examine the men and confer.
More thundering hoofbeats approached, though this time they were well to the side of the road, away from the danger of spooking a nervous horse or trampling an unlucky legionare. Captain Cyril and the First Spear drew up to the healers. The captain dismounted, followed by Valiar Marcus, and looked around until he spotted Knight Tribune Fantus. “Tribune? Report.”
Fantus grimaced at the two young men in the tub, then saluted Cyril. “We were attacked, sir.”
“Attacked?” Cyril demanded. “By who?”
“By
Crassus just stared at the two wounded men, his face entirely bloodless, his expression nauseated. Tavi felt a spike of sympathy for the young man, despite his enmity for Maximus. Crassus had seen his first blood spilled, and he looked too young to be dealing with such a thing, even to Tavi.
“Sir Crassus,” Cyril said, his voice purposefully pitched loudly enough to shock the young Knight from his motionless stare.
“Sir?” Crassus said. He saluted a beat late, as if just then remembering protocol.
Cyril glanced at the boy, grimaced, and said in a quieter voice, “What happened up there, son?”
Crassus licked his lips, eyes focused into the distance. “I was point man on the air patrol, sir. Bardis and Adrian, there, were my flankers. I wanted to take advantage of the cover, hide us in the edges where we could still watch the ground ahead. I led them up there.”
He shuddered and closed his eyes.
“Go on,” Cyril said, his voice quiet and unyielding.
Crassus blinked his eyes several times. “Something came out of the cloud. Scarlet things. Shapes.”
“Windmanes?”
“No, sir. Definitely not. They were solid, but… amorphous, I think, is the word. They didn’t have a fixed profile. And they had all these legs. Or maybe tentacles. They came out of nowhere and grabbed us with them.”
Cyril frowned. “What happened?”
“They started choking us. Pulling at us. More of them kept coming.” Crassus took a deep breath. “I burned off the one that had me, and tried to help them. I cut at them, and it seemed to hurt them-but it didn’t slow them down. So I started chopping at those leg things until Bardis was free. I think Adrian had an arm free and struck, too. But neither of them could keep themselves up, so I had to catch them before they fell. Sir Fantus helped, or I would have lost one of them.”
Cyril pursed his lips, brows furrowed in consternation. “Lady Antillus? How fare the men?”
The High Lady glanced up from her work. “They’ve been burned. Some sort of acid, I believe. It is potent-it is still dissolving flesh.”
“Will they live?”
“Too soon to tell,” she said, and turned back to the tubs.
Cyril grunted, rubbed at his jaw, and asked Fantus, “Did you get a feel for the crafting behind this overcast?”
“No,” Fantus said. “It isn’t furycrafted.”
More thunder rumbled. Scarlet lightning danced behind veils of clouds. “It’s natural?”
Fantus stared up. “Obviously not. But it isn’t furycraft.”
“What else could it be?” Cyril murmured. He glanced at the wounded Knights. “Acid burns. Never heard of a fury that could do that.”
Fantus squinted up at the overcast sky, and asked, “What else could it be?”
Cyril’s eyes followed the Knight Tribune’s gaze. “Well. If life was simple and predictable, imagine how bored we’d all get.”
“Bored is good,” Fantus said. “I like bored.”
“So do I. But it would appear that fate did not consult with either one of us.” Cyril rubbed at his forehead with one thumb, his face distant, pensive. “We need to know more. Take your best fliers up and be on your guard. Get another look at them if you can. We need to know if they’re going to stay up there in the cover or if they’ll come down here for dinner.”
“Yes, sir,” Fantus said.
“Meanwhile, I want one tier of the air patrol to keep a relatively low ceiling. Say, halfway up. Then a second tier, above them, keeping an eye on the clouds. If there’s trouble, the first tier can come up to help.”
Fantus frowned. “That near the ground it’s going to be tiring on the first tier, Captain. The men will have to take it in shifts. It will severely reduce the number of eyes we’ve got looking out for trouble.”
“We aren’t in hostile territory. Better that than to lose more of our Knights Aeris to these things. We’re spread thin enough as it is. Do it.”
Fantus nodded and saluted again. Then he went to Crassus and stood beside the young Knight, staring down at the men in the tubs.
Tavi glanced back at the tubs and nearly threw up.
One of the men was dead, horribly dead, his body shrunken and wrinkled like a rotten grape, gaping holes burned into the body. The other Knight was breathing in frenzied gasps, his eyes wide and bulging, while the healers worked frantically to save him.
“It would seem that someone is attempting to impede our progress,” the captain said to the First Spear.
“Doesn’t make much sense. The way we’re marching, we’re getting out of Kalarus’s way. Totally out of the theater of this war. He should be happy to see us on the road.”
“Yes,” Cyril said. “But it would seem that someone wants us slow and blind.”
The First Spear grunted. “Which means you want to move fast and find out what the crows is going on out here. Just to spite him.”
Cyril’s teeth flashed in a swift smile. “Take half a glass for the men and the animals to get some water. Then we’re on the march again.”
The First Spear saluted the captain and marched off, beckoning runners and delivering orders.
Cyril stared at the survivor of the attack. He was slowly easing down from his agonized thrashing. He stepped up to stand beside Crassus. The young Knight hadn’t moved. His gaze remained on the sad, withered body of the dead man.
“Sir Crassus,” Cyril said.
“Sir?”
The captain took the young man by his shoulders and gently forced his entire body to turn away from the corpse, and toward the captain. “Sir Crassus, you can do nothing for him. Your brother Knights need your eyes and thoughts to be upon your duty. They are who you should focus upon.”
