Princeps Fury

beat, he drew the short gladius from his belt, impaled the creature still clinging to his mount’s haunches, then hacked the second burning spider-thing from the air before it could reach him.

Before the corpse had hit the ground, Ivarus hurled two more of the black globes into the night behind them, one to the left and the other to the right. Blazing curtains of fire sprang to life in seconds, joining with the inferno of the burning thicket.

Kestus fought his panicked horse to a halt, savagely forced it to turn, and rode back for Ivarus, while the wounded horse continued to scream in agony. He extended his hand. “Come on!”

Ivarus turned and, with a single, clean stroke, ended the horse’s suffering. “We won’t get away from them riding double,” he said.

“You don’t know that!”

“Crows, man, there’s no time! They’ll circle that screen and be on top of us in seconds. Get out of here, Kestus! You’ve got to report this.”

“Report what?” Kestus all but screamed. “Bloody crows and-”

The night went white, and red-hot pain became Kestus’s entire world. He dimly felt himself fall from his horse. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t scream. All he could do was hurt.

He managed to look down.

There was a blackened hole in his chest. It went through the mail, just at his solar plexus, dead center of his body. The links surrounded it had melted together. A firecrafting. He’d been hit with a firecrafting.

He couldn’t breathe.

He couldn’t feel his legs.

Ivarus crouched over him and examined the wound.

His sober face became even grimmer. “Kestus,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do.”

Kestus had to work for it, but he focused his eyes on Ivarus. “Take the horse,” he rasped. “Go.”

Ivarus put a hand on Kestus’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

Kestus nodded. The image of the creature dismembering Tonnar and his mount flashed to mind. He shuddered, licked his lips, and said, “I don’t want those things to kill me.”

Ivarus closed his eyes for a second. Then he pressed his lips together and nodded, once.

“Thank you,” Kestus said, and closed his eyes.

* * *

Sir Ehren ex Cursori rode Kestus’s horse until the beast was all but broken, using every trick he’d ever learned, seen, heard, or read about to shake off pursuit and obscure his trail.

By the time the sun rose, he felt as weak and shaky as his mount-but there was no further sign of pursuit. He stopped beside a small river and leaned against a tree, closing his eyes for a moment.

The Cursor wasn’t sure if his coin would be able to reach Alera Imperia from such a minor tributary-but he had little choice but to try. The First Lord had to be warned. He drew out the chain from around his neck, and with it the silver coin that hung from it. He tossed the coin into the water, and said, “Hear me, little river, and hasten word to thy master.”

For several moments, nothing happened. Ehren was about to give up and start moving again, when the water stirred, and the surface of the water stirred, rose, and formed itself into the image of Gaius Sextus, the First Lord of Alera.

Gaius was a tall, handsome man, who appeared to be in his late forties if one discounted the silver hair. In truth, the First Lord was in his eighties, but like all powerful watercrafters’, his body did not tend to show the effects of age that a normal Aleran’s would. Though his eyes were sunken and weary-looking, they glittered with intelligence and sheer, indomitable will. The water sculpture focused on Ehren, frowned, and spoke.

“Sir Ehren?” Gaius said. “Is that you?” His voice sounded strange, like someone speaking from inside a tunnel.

“Yes, sire,” Ehren replied, bowing his head. “I have urgent news.”

The First Lord gestured with one hand. “Report.”

Ehren took a deep breath. “Sire. The Vord are here, in the wilds to the southwest of the Waste of Kalare.”

Gaius’s expression suddenly stiffened, tension gathering in his shoulders. He leaned forward slightly, eyes intent. “Are you certain of this?”

“Completely. And there’s more.”

Ehren took a deep breath.

“Sire,” he said quietly. “They’ve learned furycrafting.”

CHAPTER 1

On his previous voyages, it had taken Tavi several days to recover from his seasickness-but those voyages had never taken him out into the ocean deeps. There was, he learned, a vast difference between staying within a long day’s sail of land and daring the deep blue sea. He could not believe how high the waves could roll, out in the empty ocean. It often seemed that the Slive was sailing up the side of a great blue mountain, only to sled down its far side once it had reached the summit. The wind and the expertise of Demos’s crew of scoundrels kept the sails constantly taut, and the Slive rapidly took the lead position in the fleet.

By Tavi’s order, Demos kept his ship even with the Trueblood, the flagship of the Canim leader, Varg. Demos’s crew chafed under the order, Tavi knew. Though the Trueblood was almost unbelievably graceful for a vessel her size, compared to the nimble Slive she moved like a river barge. Demos’s men longed to show the Canim what their ship could do, and give the vast, black ship a view of their stern.

Tavi was tempted to allow it. Anything to end the voyage a little sooner.

The greatly increased activity of the waves had increased his motion sickness proportionately, and though it had, mercifully, abated somewhat since those first few horrible days, it hadn’t ever gone away completely, and eating food remained a dubious proposition, at best. He could keep down a little bread, and weak broth, but not much more. He had a constant headache, now, which grew more irritating by the day.

“Little brother,” growled the grizzled old Cane. “You Alerans are a short-lived race. Have you grown old and feeble enough to need naps in midlesson?”

From her position in the hammock slung from the rafters of the little cabin, Kitai let out a little silver peal of laughter.

Tavi shook himself out of his reverie and glanced at Gradash. The Cane was something almost unheard of amongst the warrior caste-elderly. Tavi knew that Gradash was over nine centuries old, as Alerans counted them, and age had shrunken the Cane to the paltry size of barely seven and a half feet. His strength was a frail shadow of what it had been when he was a warrior in his prime. Tavi judged that he probably was no more than three or four times as strong as a human being. His fur was almost completely silver, with only bits of the solid, night-dark fur that marked him as a member of Varg’s extended bloodline as surely as the distinctive pattern of notches cut into his ears or the decorations upon the hilt of his sword.

“Your pardon, elder brother,” Tavi replied, speaking as Gradash had, in Canish. “My mind wandered. I have no excuse.”

“He is so sick he can barely get out of his bunk,” Kitai said, her Canish accent better than Tavi’s, “but he has no excuse.”

“Survival makes no allowances for illness,” Gradash growled, his voice stern. Then he added, in thickly accented Aleran, “I admit, however, that he should no longer embarrass himself while attempting to speak our tongue. The idea of a language exchange was a sound one.”

For Gradash, the comment was high praise. “It made sense,” Tavi replied. “At least for my people. Legionares with nothing to do for two months can become distressingly bored. And should your people and mine find ourselves at odds again, I would have it be for the proper reasons and not because we did not speak one another’s tongues.”