“Cyril would have,” Tavi said.
Magnus said nothing, though Tavi fancied he could hear disapproval in his silence.
Tavi took a sip of bitter, bracing tea. “Foss says Valiar Marcus will be on his feet soon. He’s acting Tribune Tactica. Make sure he knows I want him to take charge of the town’s defenses and get any unarmed civilians over the bridge and onto the north side of the river.”
“Yes, sir,” Magnus said quietly.
Tavi frowned and looked at him. “I’m still not sure we shouldn’t hand the Legion to Marcus.”
“You’re the next in the chain of command,” Magnus replied quietly. “The First Spear is the senior centurion, and career soldier, but he isn’t an officer.”
“Neither am I,” Tavi said wryly.
Magnus paused for a reflective moment, then said, “I’m not sure I trust him.”
Tavi paused with the cup near his lips. “Why not?”
Magnus shrugged. “All those officers, many of them powerful furycrafters, dead. He just happened to live through it?”
“He happened to be outside the tent at the time.”
“Quite fortunate,” Magnus said. “Don’t you think?”
Tavi glanced at his torn knuckles. He hadn’t had time to clean them or bandage them properly. “So was I.”
Magnus shook his head. “Luck isn’t usually so common. Valiar Marcus was meant to die at that meeting. But he survived.”
“So did I,” Tavi said quietly. And after a moment, he added, in a neutral voice, “And so did you.”
Magnus blinked at him. “I was still talking to the town’s militia tribune.”
“Quite fortunate,” Tavi said. “Don’t you think?”
Magnus stared for a second, then gave Tavi an approving smile. “That’s a smart way to think, sir. It’s what you need in this business.”
Tavi grunted. “I’m still not sure I’m ready.”
“You’re as ready as any Third Subtribune Logistica would be,” Magnus said. “And better able than most, believe me. The Legion has enough veterans to know its business. You just need to look calm, confident, and intelligent and try not to lead anyone into any ambushes.”
Tavi glanced around him, at the ruins of the tent. His mouth twisted bitterly. It was just then that the crows flooded by overhead, a raucously cawing mass of the carrion birds, thousands of them, sweeping over the Tiber and the Elinarch toward the southwest. They flew by for a solid two minutes, at least, and when a ripple of scarlet lightning went through the clouds overhead, Tavi could see them, wings and beaks and tail feathers of solid black against the red, moving together in a nearly solid mass that almost seemed to be a creature in its own right.
Then they were gone, and neither one of the Cursors on the storm-wracked ground spoke. The crows always knew when a battle was brewing. They knew how to find and feast upon those who would fall.
Magnus sighed after a few seconds more. “You need to shave, sir.”
“I’m busy,” Tavi said.
“Did you ever see Captain Miles unshaven?” Magnus asked quietly. “Or Cyril? It’s what legionares will expect. It’s reassuring. You need to give them that. Take care of your hands, too.”
Tavi stared at him for a second, then let out a slow breath. “All right.”
“For the record, I strongly disagree with your decision regarding Antillus Crassus. He should be imprisoned with the other suspects.”
“You weren’t there,” Tavi said. “You didn’t see his eyes.”
“Everyone can be lied to. Even you.”
“Yes,” Tavi said. “But he wasn’t lying to me tonight.” Tavi shook his head. “Had he been into some kind of plot with his mother, he’d have left with her. He stayed. Confronted me directly. I’m not sure how intelligent he is, but he isn’t a traitor, Magnus.”
“All the same, until we know what further damage his mother might wreak-”
“We don’t know for certain she was involved,” Tavi said quietly. “Until we do, we should be careful with our words.” Magnus didn’t look happy about it, but he nodded. “Besides. Crassus is likely the most powerful furycrafter we have left in the Legion, apart from Maximus, and he’s the one who has been training with the Knights Pisces. He’s the only choice to lead them.”
“He’ll be in a position to ruin anything this Legion attempts to accomplish if you’re wrong, sir.”
“I’m not.”
Magnus pressed his lips together, then shook his head and sighed. He drew a small case out from behind a mound of lightning-tortured earth, and opened it, revealing a small shaving kit and a covered bowl. He opened it to reveal steaming water. “Maximus should be back shortly. You clean up,” he said. “I’ll find you a proper cavalry weapon.”
“I’m going to look, not fight,” Tavi said.
“Of course, sir,” Magnus said, handing him the kit. “I assume you prefer a sword to a mace.”
“Yes,” Tavi said, taking the kit.
Magnus paused, and said, “Sir. I think you should consider appointing a small number of
“Captain Cyril didn’t use any bodyguards.”
“No,” Magnus said, his tone pointed. “He didn’t.”
Chapter 31
Tavi knew that the enemy was near when he saw the first massive, wheeling flights of crows, circling and swooping around columns of black smoke.
The sun rose behind them as they followed the Tiber toward the harbor town of Founderport, almost twenty miles from the Elinarch. Tavi rode with Max at the head of an alae of cavalry, two hundred strong, while the second alae, mostly made up of the more experienced troops, had been broken into eight-man divisions that moved in a loose line through the hills south of the Tiber, marking terrain and, together with the swift-moving scouts, searching for the enemy.
As the sun rose, it lit the gloomy and unnatural cloud cover overhead, and as the ruddy light finally fell through the low, undulating hills around the river, it revealed points of black smoke rolling up in the broad river valley. Tavi nodded to Max, who ordered the column to a halt. He and Tavi walked forward, to the crest of the next hill, and looked down. Max lifted his hands, bending the air between them, and let out a low, pained grunt.
“You should see this,” Max said quietly.
Tavi leaned over as Max held the windcrafting for him to look through. Tavi had never seen it working from so close, and the crafting made the image far more clear and intense than his little curved piece of Romanic glass. He had to force himself not to take a moment simply to admire the marvel of the apparently close view the crafting offered. A few seconds later, as he realized what he was looking at, he had no need to feign an officer’s calm, analytical distance for the sake of his troops. He had to do it to keep his stomach from emptying itself.
Max’s crafting let Tavi see the corpses of steadholts-dozens of them, throughout the fertile valley. Black smoke rose from solid shapes that had once been houses and barns and halls like the ones Tavi grew up in, each inhabited by scores of families. If the Canim had taken them by surprise, there would be few, if any, survivors.
Here and there, Tavi saw small groups on the move, most of them coming toward him. Some were small, slow-moving masses in the distance. Others were larger and moved much more quickly. As he watched, one such swift group fell upon a smaller one, in the distance. It was too far away to make out any real details, even with Max’s windcrafting to help him, but Tavi knew what he had to be looking at.
A Canim raiding party had just slaughtered a group of refugees, fleeing without hope of salvation from the destruction behind them.
A surge of pure, white-hot rage went through him at the sight, a primal fury that brought stars to his eyes and tinged everything he saw with red-and at the same time, it washed through him, coursed through his veins like a river of molten steel while leaving his thoughts sharp, harsh, perfectly clear in a way that had happened only once
