Princeps’ Fury

Aria blinked at Isana. She hesitated for several seconds, as if wrestling with a concept she had never encountered. “I…” She spread her hands helplessly. “I’m not sure how to answer. There have been days when I haven’t been proud of the things I’ve needed to do for the sake of duty.”

Isana smiled faintly. “I’ve had days like that as well,” she said quietly. “And it doesn’t change anything or make the question invalid. Ask your heart. Is he a good man?”

Lady Placida regarded Isana slowly for a moment, before a rather worn half smile appeared on her mouth, along with a sardonic little chuckle. “For a High Lord. Yes. He’s bullheaded and arrogant, his ego is bloated to the size of a mountain, he’s headstrong, often inconsiderate, more than occasionally rude, intolerant to anyone he doesn’t respect, and short-tempered with anyone who challenges him. And underneath all that-there’s more of the same, only better cured.” She shook her head. “But beneath that, yes. I sent my own sons to Antillus to train under him when they came of age. That is how much I trust Antillus Raucus.”

Isana smiled at her, and said, “Thank you, Aria. That’s encouraging. Perhaps we have a chance to make something work out after all.”

“Perhaps you didn’t listen to most of what I just said,” Aria replied, her tone dry.

The coach settled down with a gentle bump, and the winds died down. A second later, a Legion band began playing the Crown Anthem.

Isana grimaced.

“It is traditional,” Aria murmured.

“Yes, yes.” Isana sighed. “But the tune is ghastly. It sounds like a sick gargant dying. What precisely qualifies it to be the Crown Anthem?”

“Tradition,” Aria replied promptly.

“And tradition alone, apparently,” Isana said. “Though perhaps my taste in music is simply… uneducated.”

“Oh, no, not at all,” Aria said. “I am well versed in several musical traditions, and assure you that the Crown Anthem is perfectly hideous.”

Araris, who had sat silent and motionless through most of the trip-asleep, actually, though he’d dozed with that catlike lightness that could have come instantly to waking, had the need arose, opened his eyes as the Knights who had borne the air coach came to the door and opened it. “Ladies,” he murmured. “If you will excuse me.” He exited the coach first-as he insisted upon doing every time, these days-and a moment later leaned his head back inside and extended his hand to Isana. “Very well, ladies.”

Isana took Araris’s hand and left the coach, emerging into, not the light of furylamps, but instead raw torchlight atop the wall. It was far dimmer and, somehow, more primal than the tiny, clean, blue-white furylamps inside the wind coach. Red light and shadow lay heavily over everything, and she found herself instinctively becoming more wary of her surroundings.

Standing atop the Shieldwall was, Isana realized, more like standing upon a road or bridge than any building-or more accurately, like standing in the square of a small town. The wall was fifty feet wide, and a number of structures existed atop the Wall, within sight of where the cart had landed, framed by four towers that rose up from the Wall, standard Aleran ramparts rising another twenty feet above the surface of the already- towering Wall. Several knee-high stone walls rose up here and there around them, and Isana realized that they must be guard-walls around stairwells that sank down into the structure of the Wall itself. A moment’s estimate showed Isana that the area of the Wall they stood upon could have contained enough structures to comprise a town.

That might, she supposed, do something to explain the number of legionares assembled to meet the coach, despite the late hour. There was the better part of two full cohorts-or, she supposed the Legion’s Prime Cohort-turned out in ranks in front of the coach, while at least five times as many legionares were obviously on duty within sight of her position, on guard upon the battlements at the edges of the Wall, at each level of the ramparts, and at lighted positions up and down the length of the Wall, to either horizon, as far as she could see.

Every legionare’s breastplate bore the three scarlet diagonal bars of the Legions of Antillus-though upon several helmets and shields, Isana saw a more graphic representation of the heraldic design, evidently painted on by individual legionares: three ragged, bloody wounds, as if torn by the claws of one of the massive northern bears.

A man in the finer breastplate and elaborate helmet of a Tribune stepped forward and saluted. He was tall, clean-cut, and looked every inch the professional soldier. “Your Highness, Your Grace. On behalf of my lord, His Grace, Antillus Raucus, welcome to the Wall. My name is Tribune Garius.”

Isana inclined her head to him. The chill in the air made her shiver despite the warmer clothes and heavier cloak she had worn. “Thank you, Tribune.”

“May I ask, Tribune,” Aria said, “why Lord Antillus is not here to greet us personally?”

“He regrets that his duties prevented him from being here,” the man said smoothly.

“Duties?” Aria asked.

Garius stared at her levelly, his gaze unwavering, and gestured toward the southern side of the wall. “See for yourself, Your Grace.”

Aria glanced at Isana, who nodded, and the pair of them, accompanied by Garius and the silent Araris, walked to the southern side of the Wall. The first thing Isana noticed was that the temperature rose noticeably-by several degrees, at least-in the few short feet she traveled. The second, was that the ground on the far side of the Wall was brightly lit.

About a hundred men were spread out on the ground below, working by torchlight. They had, apparently, just finished building some kind of low wooden framework to support several score crates-and then, with a chill that had nothing to do with the cold of the season, Isana realized that the boxes weren’t crates.

They were coffins.

The men-Legion engineers, she could see now, formed up into ranks, facing the coffins, which she could see had been arranged upon a wooden byre.

“Ah,” Aria said quietly. “Now I see.”

“They burn the dead here?” Isana asked.

Aria nodded calmly. “The legionares, at any rate. Those who fall against the Icemen are almost always covered in frost. It has become a custom among the Legions to promise one’s fellows that no matter what happens, they will never lie cold upon the earth.”

A tall, silent form with broad shoulders and a crimson cloak appeared from among the engineers. He put a hand on the shoulder of a grizzled veteran, evidently the leader of the engineering cohort, then stepped forward, and gestured with a hand.

The torches exploded into white-hot, eerily silent fire that opened and spread with an almost tender deliberation from the sources, at each torch, blooming out into spheres until it had enveloped the framework and the coffins below. The tall lord below-Antillus, Isana had no doubt-cupped both his hands and lifted them abruptly to the sky, and in time with the gesture, the white fire gathered and rose in a sudden fountain that dispersed into the air and diffused into the night sky, as if scattering to join the stars themselves.

A moment later, the usual colors and brightness of winter night returned. The ground below the wall was empty of coffins, byre, bodies, and ash. Nor was there snow, or grass, or anything but naked earth. The fire had swept the ground clean.

“Actually,” Garius commented idly, “those weren’t legionares, Your Grace. We lost nearly two hundred legionares in our last action against the Icemen, and we burned them three days since. Those men were veterans. The Icemen slipped over the Wall in several places two nights ago. Those men fell defending their steadholts and families, before our cavalry and Knights could arrive to help.” He spoke in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone. “But they fought and fell as legionares. They deserved to be sent off as legionares.”

On the ground below, High Lord Antillus bowed his head, and covered his face with both his hands. He just stood that way for a moment, not moving. Even from there, Isana could feel the echoes of his grief and guilt, and the sympathetic pains that rippled through the men around her who could see him-men who obviously cared about him.

Aria let out a low sigh. “Oh,” she whispered. “Oh, Raucus.”