First Lord's Fury

“No,” he said, as gently as he could.

“I know how a vord queen dies,” she whispered. She lifted her chin, a ghostly shadow of pride falling across her. “I am ready.”

He inclined his head to her, very slightly.

Her rush sent out a spray of water, and she came at him with every ounce of speed and power left in her broken body. Even so badly battered, she was faster than any Aleran, stronger than a grass lion.

Gaius Octavian’s blade met that of the vord Queen in a single, chiming tone. Her sword shattered amidst a rain of blue and scarlet sparks.

He made a single smooth, lightning-swift cut.

And the Vord War was over.

CHAPTER 57

The wind had picked up so sharply that the Knights Aeris Fidelias had borrowed began to run out of work. The conditions were simply too harsh for the vordknights to stay aloft, especially when a mix of cold rain and sleet began sluicing down. The changing conditions had ripped the Canim’s sorcerous mist apart even earlier than that, and Fidelias, from his vantage point on the barn’s roof, had gotten an excellent view of the size of the force attacking them.

There weren’t thirty thousand vord. There were more like fifty thousand.

No simple ditch could have given the Legions any real hope against a force that outnumbered them so badly. Oh, had they been fighting Marat, Icemen, even Canim, there might have been a straw of hope. Legion discipline in the face of overwhelming odds was less a professional practice than it was a form of contagious insanity, especially in a veteran unit like the First. They might be killed to a man, but they would never break. That fact alone was enough to grind the determination out of any rational foe.

But the vord weren’t rational.

So the First Aleran would be killed to a man—and Fidelias with them, if it came to that. Perhaps that was the specter of Valiar Marcus inside his thoughts speaking, but if so, Fidelias had no intention of countermanding him. He wasn’t leaving these men.

The rain came down harder, and harder still, until it was almost like one of the typhoons that sometimes visited the southern coast. Fidelias watched his men fighting grimly on against impossible odds and found himself weeping in silence, his face stony. It was raining. No one would see. But even so, force of habit made him reach for the modest watercrafting talents he possessed, which were at least suitable to stop tears.

His head whipped up abruptly, and he snapped, to the nearest courier, “Bring me the First Lady!”

Isana’s cloak and dress were soaked through by the time she reached the barn’s roof. Thank goodness. It was the closest thing she’d had to a bath in weeks.

The ground continued to quiver and shake at odd intervals. Vast sounds, deep and unearthly, reverberated through the night, passing over the screams and cries and drums and trumpets of battle, the roar of wind, the slap of heavy rain. They reminded Isana of the calls of leviathans in the open sea—only a great deal more expansive. She couldn’t see a hundred yards in the rain, and she had a feeling that she should be glad of it.

She hurried across the roof with Araris and Aldrick trailing behind her, to where Valiar Marcus stood with his command staff. He saluted her as she approached, pointed at the ditch the legionares were defending, and said, without preamble, “My lady, I need you to fill that ditch with water.”

Isana arched an eyebrow. “I see,” she said, and stared thoughtfully at the ditch. Puddles were already collecting in its bottom, thanks to the rain. She closed her eyes, touched upon Rill in her thoughts, and sent the fury out into the land around the steadholt, where it appeared as a barely noticeable ripple in the downpour. It didn’t seem favorable. The steadholt was located upon the local high ground, such as it was, so that any floodwaters would pour around it. Making that much water run uphill would be a terrible strain, possibly beyond her strength.

Instead, on an inspiration, she sent Rill up. The fury flowed into the air above the steadholt, leaping from raindrop to raindrop, and then began to spread out like a wide, unseen umbrella above the steadholt. Ah, much better. She spread Rill’s presence out as widely as she possibly could and murmured to her to begin redirecting the rain as it fell.

For a long moment, nothing happened. Then, all at once, a waterfall appeared out of nowhere, the collected rain of several acres worth of ground all fu

Exhausted men lifted their voices in ragged cheers, and the surge of hope that arose from all of them struck Isana like a cleansing fire. The legionares began pushing harder, their spirits lifted, slamming the vord back into water that grew deeper and deeper as Isana’s crafting continued.

A good start. But she could do more. Once the improvised moat had been filled, she sent Rill down into it and, with another effort of will and a faint circling motion of one hand, the water began to spin. It was not long before it had become a current, circling the steadholt, strong enough to take a mantis from its feet and send it spi

She turned wearily to the First Spear, and said, “Is that sufficient?”

Marcus pursed his lips and watched one luckless vord, which was on its third trip around the steadholt. “Entirely, my lady. Thank you.”

Isana nodded, and said, “Eventually, I think they’ll bridge it, as ants sometimes do. Or simply choke it with enough bodies to create a crossing.”

“Probably,” Marcus said. “But even so, this buys us time, my lady. And—”

A brassy, blaring, groaning horn call sounded out in the rain-lashed dimness. Then another, and another, and another. A few instants later, the ground shook, and the taurg cavalry burst out of the murk, the huge beasts smashing through the vord gathered around the steadholt. Five thousand strong, their blue-armored Canim riders wielding their axes with deadly skill, they simply sliced off a portion of the vord army. It was, Isana thought, oddly like watching a limb hacked off a body. The cavalry drove through the vord in a wedge-shaped formation, cutting out a portion of the enemy. Then they whirled on those mantises who had been isolated from the main body and crushed them. The entire business took less than two minutes, then the taurga were gone, bounding off into the grey haze of rain and storm. Acres of dead and dying vord were left in their wake.

Marcus let out a low whistle and shook his head.

“I take it that was impressive?” Isana said. “Beyond the surface appearance, I mean.”

“In weather like this? Crows, yes, my lady. They took a tithe of the enemy force in a single pass. They won’t gain the advantage of surprise again—see there, at the back, where the rearmost vord are facing out now?—but if the vord stay on that ground, the taurg riders will nibble them to death one bite…”

The air suddenly went silent and still. The ground stopped shaking. The only sound was the patter of rain.

“… at a time,” Marcus finished, his voice loud in the sudden hush, before closing his mouth himself.