Cursor's Fury (71 page)

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“Calderon . . .”

Tavi’s stratagem had lured maybe half a Legion of Canim to their deaths in the inferno, but the burning buildings lit up the countryside beyond the walls and the enormous numbers of Canim moving toward the river. He couldn’t tell, at a glance, that the enemy had taken any losses at all.

The cold, leaden reality of mathematics pressed relentlessly into his thoughts. He’d known that the Canim army outnumbered the Alerans, but numbers mentioned on paper, on a tactical map, or in a planning session were entirely different than numbers applied to a real, physical, murderous enemy you could see marching toward you. Looking out at thousands of Canim, all in view and moving for the first time, Tavi gained an entirely new perspective on the magnitude of the task they faced.

It made him feel bitterly, poisonously weary.

At least he’d gained a few hours of respite for the men. For whatever it was worth. Except for those who had already died, of course. They now had all the time in the world to rest.

He sat for a moment, watching half of the town he was defending burn. He wondered how many homes and businesses he’d just destroyed. How many hard-earned generations of wealth and knowledge he’d sacrificed. How many irreplaceable family heirlooms and artifacts he’d burned to ashes.

He wasn’t sure precisely when he fell asleep, but something cold on his face woke him. He jerked his head upright, wincing as he found his neck had stiffened as he leaned it against the adobe merlon, and muscles tied themselves into knots. He rubbed at his neck with one hand, blinked his eyes a few times, and heard a little plinking sound. Then again. Cold water struck one cheek.

Raindrops.

Tavi looked up at the sullen clouds, and more rain began to fall—first lightly, but it rapidly built up to a torrent, a storm that brought the pent-up rain from the clouds in sheets so thick that Tavi had to spit water from his mouth every few breaths. His heart lurched in panic, and he hurried to rise to his feet.

“To arms!” he bellowed. “All cohorts to their positions!”

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The sheeting rain hammered down onto the burning town and began strangling the flames. Clouds of steam and smoke billowed up, and, together with the rain, they hid the view of the enemy entirely.

Once more, the Canim horns began to blare.

Shouts sounded through the downpour, muffled by the rain. Boots thudded on stone. Tavi ground his teeth and slammed his fist against the merlon. The veterans on the wall snapped into motion, strapping on shields, stringing bows that would be rendered largely ineffective by the rain. As the fires died, the forms of the men on the wall grew murky.

“Lights!” Tavi shouted down at the men on the bridge below. “Get some lights up here, quick!”

One of the legionares on the wall shouted, and Tavi spun to see black-armored forms, almost invisible against the darkness, rushing forward with incredible speed. Tavi turned to order more men into the makeshift “gate” in the wall, a simple arch barely wide enough for two men to walk through upright—and a tiny fit indeed for a Cane. As he did, he bumped into a veteran hurrying into position with his bow, and both men slipped on the water-slicked adobe battlements.

Otherwise, they would have died with the others.

Even as legionares moved to battle positions, there was a humming sound and then a series of miniature thunderclaps. A spray of blood erupted from a veteran three feet from Tavi, and the man dropped without a sound. Down the wall, the same happened to others. Something slammed through a shield and killed the veteran behind it. One of the archers jerked, then collapsed. Another’s head snapped back so sharply that Tavi clearly heard his neck break. The corpse fell near him, head lolling to one side, eyes open and unblinking. A vaned metal shaft as thick as the circle of Tavi’s thumb and forefinger protruded from the helmet. As Tavi stared, a thin trickle of blood slithered down over one of the legionares sightless eyes, and was almost instantly thinned and washed away by the rain.

Seconds later, Tavi heard that humming, thrumming sound again, and there were screams from the bridge below. Then a horrible bellowing roar, and Nasaug burst through the tiny opening with terrifying ease and agility, curved war sword in his hand. The Cane Battlemaster killed three legionares before any of them had time to react, the massive sword shattering bone even through steel armor, and slicing through exposed flesh with terrible efficiency. He parried another legionares thrusting sword, seized the rim of the man’s shield with one paw, and with a simple, clean motion threw the man twenty feet through the air, over the side of the bridge, to fall screaming to the river below.

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Nasaug batted another pair of legionares aside, then shattered the fury-lamps being brought up to the wall with several swift kicks, plunging the entire area into darkness. By the increasingly frequent bursts of red lightning, Tavi saw more Canim enter behind Nasaug, their long, lean bodies almost seeming to fold in upon themselves as they came through the opening.

The veteran beside Tavi rose and lifted his bow to aim at Nasaug.

“No!” Tavi shouted. “Stay down!”

A buzzing thrum sounded, and another steel bolt ripped through the legionare’s lower back, straight through his armor, until an inch of the bolt’s tip showed through the veteran’s breastplate. The man gasped and fell—and a second later screamed in pure, feeble terror as the savage snarling of Canim rose from the darkness. Legionares fought warriors in the nightmarish murk, broken by flashes of bloody light. Men and Canim screamed in rage, defiance, terror, and pain.

Tavi lay frozen. If he rose, whatever marksmen were releasing those deadly steel bolts would kill him—but the Cane assault had come so swiftly and terribly that Tavi was already cut off from the legionares below. If he descended to the bridge, he’d be facing the Canim alone, with nothing but his
gladius.

Tavi didn’t remember drawing his sword, but his fingers ached from how hard he squeezed the hilt as he desperately tried to think of a way out.

And then the shadowy shape of a black-armored Cane, its eyes reflecting bits of red light in the dimness, started up the steps to the wall. Tavi knew it would spot him in mere seconds.

He had just run out of time.

Chapter 46

Tavi had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and if he did nothing he would simply be killed.

So as the Cane mounted the stairs, Tavi let out a howl of terror and rage
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and threw himself bodily into the armored body of the Cane with every ounce of strength and reckless violence he could summon.

He hit the Cane hard and high on its chest. Though the Cane was far larger, Tavi’s armored weight and momentum were more than enough to overcome the surprised Cane, and then Tavi drove the Cane back and down the stairs to crash heavily to the stone surface of the bridge. Before the Cane could recover, Tavi slammed his helmet repeatedly into the creature’s sensitive nose and muzzle, then raised his sword, gripping the hilt with one hand and halfway up the blade with the other, and rammed it with all his strength down into the Cane’s throat.

Either he missed anything vital or the Cane was simply too tough to know when it should die. It seized Tavi with one desperate arm and flung him away. Tavi slammed against the raised side of the bridge, but his armor took the brunt of the impact, and he came back to his feet as the wounded Cane rose, teeth bared in a horrible snarl.

“Captain!” shouted a voice, and fire blossomed in the night, a sudden sheet of it rising from the stone between Tavi and the wounded Cane. In the light, Tavi just had time to make out the features of his opponent—the grizzled Cane who had brought Tavi the very sword he had just employed—and then Knights Aeris descended around him.

They landed roughly, and before they hit the ground, Nasaug turned and flung one of the steel bars Tavi had examined the previous day. It struck one of the young Knights in a knee with crippling force, throwing his leg out from beneath him so that he fell to the ground.

Crassus landed beside Tavi, and with a grunt of effort flung a streamer of flame at the nearest Cane. It licked out weakly in the heavy rain, but sufficed to force the Cane to pause, and that was enough. Knights Aeris seized Tavi’s arms, and under Crassus’s direction, they rose from the bridge into the night sky. A flash of lightning showed Nasaug, throwing another bar at Crassus, but the young Knight Tribune flicked it deftly aside with his blade, before leading the Knights Aeris up and out of range of hurled weapons.

But not out of range of those deadly steel quarrels.

More thrums sounded from below, and one of the Knights Aeris holding Tavi grunted and fell from the sky, vanishing into the dark below. The single Knight remaining almost dropped him, and everything spun around wildly. Then Crassus was there, taking the place of the fallen Knight, and the weary band of fliers descended to the second defensive position, a hundred yards from the south end of the bridge.

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The next few hours came as one enormous blur of darkness, cold, and desperation. Two entire cohorts had been all but annihilated in the first, stunning assault. The prime cohort had been slain to a man, cut to shreds by the steel quarrels and overwhelmed by the Canim warriors led by Nasaug. Ninth cohort had tried to rush forward in the confusion and stem the breakthrough at the end of the bridge, only to be cut down in the near-total darkness by Nasaug’s troops. Most of a single century had managed to fall back to the next defensive position, but eight in ten of the cohort perished on the bridge. Even the wounded who made it back to the suddenly overwhelmed healers found little help. There were simply not enough hands, and men who would have survived the wounds in other circumstances died waiting their turns.