Princeps’ Fury

Ehren scrambled back, pulling the door shut, and flung his back against the rear wall of the coach. One of the vordknight’s vicious scythes slammed through the wood of the door where he’d been crouching an instant before. The eerie, featureless face appeared at the side window, not six inches from Ehren’s own, staring in at him through the glass.

Ehren was never sure precisely when he had drawn the knife, but in the same instant he saw that face, his right arm snapped forward, to shatter the window and bury his knife to the hilt in the vordknight’s glittering eye.

It screamed, a wailing shriek that sounded like tearing metal and the snarls of a wounded dog. Green-brown blood sputtered from the wound in a miniature fountain.

Ehren let go of the knife, braced his back, screamed for strength again, and lashed out with the heel of his boot, kicking at the scythe still transfixing the door. It snapped and broke cleanly, like the edge of a horse’s hoof, and the vordknight vanished from sight, falling away from the racing coach.

Gaius looked up from where he knelt over the wounded Knight and gave Ehren a sharp nod of approval.

And then he heard a piercing trumpet, a clarion call that carried even over the roar of wind and the shouts and cries of battle.

“Ah,” Gaius said, glancing up briefly. “Excellent.”

From outside the coach came a flash of light and a deafening racket of thunder-and another, and another. Interspaced within the head-rattling thunderclaps were smaller flashes of light, accompanied by hollow, heavy booms, and Ehren turned to see a vordknight, its wings burned completely away, its body twisted and cracked by fire, plummet past the coach’s window. The coach banked smoothly to the right and began to gain altitude again-smoothly, this time, instead of with the sharp panic of combat.

A moment later, there was a knock on the coach’s door. Ehren didn’t remember actually deciding to draw another knife, but he was just as glad that his fingers had preempted him.

“Stay your hand,” Gaius said calmly. “Let him in please, Sir Ehren.”

Ehren swallowed and opened the coach door, to find an elderly man dressed in very fine but rather outdated armor, riding a windstream parallel to the coach. He had shorn his head, but the stubble of his beard was mostly silver, and his eyes were sunken with fatigue-but shone with bitter rage.

“Your Grace,” Ehren stammered. He stepped back from the door, nodding to the High Lord Cereus to enter.

“Sire,” Cereus said with a nod, closing the door behind him.

“Your Grace,” Gaius replied. “A moment.” He closed his eyes briefly, then lifted his hand from the wounded Knight. The man lay there pale and still, but his chest was still moving, and he was no longer bleeding. “Thank you.”

“No thanks are necessary, sire. Whatever those other jackals want to pretend, Sextus, you are the First Lord of Alera and my lord. I only did my duty.”

“Thank you all the same,” Gaius replied quietly. “I’m sorry about Vereus. He was a fine young man.”

The High Lord glanced out the coach’s window at the coming darkness. “Veradis?”

“Safe,” Gaius said. “And will be so while I have breath in my body.”

Cereus bowed his head. He took a deep breath, and said, “Thank you.”

“No thanks are necessary,” Gaius said, smiling faintly. “Whatever those jackals want to pretend, I am your lord. Duty flows uphill and down.” He frowned again and looked out the window. “I’ll have our Legions in position to support Ceres in another week. What can you tell me about the Vord advance?”

Cereus looked up wearily. “That it is accelerating, despite everything we can do.”

“Accelerating?” Ehren blurted. “What do you mean?”

The old High Lord shook his head and spoke without any inflection. “I mean, Sir Ehren, my lord, that my city does not have a week.

“The Vord will be upon us in two days.”

CHAPTER 13

Amara held the arrow nocked firmly against the bowstring, and kept enough steady pressure against it to ensure a swift and certain draw, but not too much to tire her arm. It had been a surprisingly difficult skill to learn, at least until she’d developed enough of the proper musculature to use the bow her husband had made for her. She took a slow step forward and put her foot down silently, her eyes focused into the middle distance, at nothing, the way she’d been trained. The forest was almost silent in the stillness just before dawn, but Cirrus, her wind fury, carried every tiny sound to her ears as clearly as if it’d been a voice speaking from directly beside her.

Trees creaked in tiny breaths of wind. Sleeping birds stirred, their feathers rustling. Something scuttled among the higher branches of a tree, probably a squirrel getting an early start on the day, or a night rodent of some kind crawling back to its nest. Something rustled, perhaps a deer making its way through the brush-

– and perhaps not.

Amara focused Cirrus on the sound and located a second rustling, that of cloth on cloth. Not a deer, then, but her target.