Princeps' fury (48 page)

The woods ahead of them shivered, then a trio of the enormous, froglike Vord came into sight, not twenty yards away. They padded by on broad, flapping feet, their movements sinuous and awkward at the same time.

Tavi tensed, and found his own hand moving toward his sword. They weren’t yet halfway into the
croach
-covered area around the Vord’s tunnel. If they were seen now, they might never have a chance to strike down the queen—or of escaping the Vord’s domain alive. Should one of the frog-Vord notice them, it could mean their lives.

But none of the three even glanced toward Tavi and his companions.

Tavi let out a shuddering breath and closed his eyes in relief—just for a second. He could sense the same reaction from the others.

Kitai waited until the Vord had passed from sight, then glanced back at Tavi, nodded, and started forward again. They all followed her, their pace deliberate and steady, avoiding thin patches of the
croach
that might be more easily broken than other places.

It was during one such detour that Tavi came across a broken section of
croach
. Three parallel claw marks, perhaps an inch apart, had been raked through the thin sections of
croach
at the base of a fallen tree. The marks were oozing fresh, brightly glowing green liquid, and Tavi stared at it in horror.

The wax spiders would already be on the way. His group would shortly be discovered, and they hadn’t even been responsible for the alarm that would surely be raised. It wasn’t so much the thought of being killed that bothered Tavi—though it certainly did. He just hated the idea of dying because some
other
fool had made a mistake. He stared at the damaged
croach
, thinking furiously, and motioned the others back.

Everyone obeyed, except for Varg. The scarred old Cane came forward, his strides exaggerated but confident upon the broad shoes, and froze when he saw what Tavi was staring at. The Cane’s eyes narrowed instantly, and began flickering at the trees all around them, his lips peeling back from his fangs.

Tavi began to back up, only to realize that it was too late.

One of the wax spiders had come, gliding across the ground toward them. It had too many legs to be a real spider, of course, but that was the closest thing Tavi could think of in form and movement. Its body was covered in a translucent white chitin, and it was about as big as a medium-sized dog, perhaps thirty-five or forty pounds in weight, though its long limbs made it look larger. A number of glossy eyes glittered greenly on its head, just above the bases of a pair of thick, thorn-shaped mandibles, fangs that Tavi knew bore a swift-acting, dangerous poison.

Tavi dropped his hand to his sword without thinking.

Varg’s huge paw-hand closed over his. “Wait,” the Cane rumbled. “And do not move.”

Tavi blinked at the Cane, then back to the spider. The creature was barely a dozen feet away. It would be sure to notice them around the damaged
croach
and raise the alarm. As Tavi watched, the spider abruptly oriented on them, turning its entire body on its many legs, and began bobbing up and down in agitation, a precursor to the whistling shrieks with which it would warn the rest of the Vord.

Before it could make a sound, something exploded out of the darkness beneath the thick branches of the fallen pine, a dark-furred blur that moved in perfect silence and hit the wax spider like a stone from an old Romanic war engine. The spider was driven across six feet of
croach
, its legs flailing helplessly as its attacker ripped savagely at the joint of its head and body.

Before Tavi could fully register that the attack was happening, the creature ripped the spider’s head from its body, and the rest of it collapsed to the surface of the
croach
, its legs twitching and flailing.

Tavi blinked. The animal that had dispatched the wax spider crouched atop its corpse. Its fur was dark, and it had a long, sinuous body. Its limbs were powerful, solid, spreading into clawed paws like those of a mountain lion. Its head, though, was more like that of a wolf, or a bear, with a broad muzzle full of sharp and—obviously—wickedly effective teeth upon what looked like incredibly powerful jaws.

Tavi recognized a deadly predator when he saw it—and even if that one weighed no more than the wax spider, it had dispatched the Vord as easily as it might have a rabbit.

The beast turned its glittering yellow eyes toward Tavi and Varg, and silently bared its impressive, green-spattered fangs.

“Do not make eye contact,” Varg rumbled quietly. “Back away slowly. Do not lift your hands.”

Tavi glanced at the Cane, then they both began backing away. Tavi glanced back, and saw the other Canim looking on, weapons actually drawn and in their hands. The Hunters hadn’t drawn when the Vord had come close to them—but this creature, it seemed, merited more of their respect.

Once Tavi and Varg had reached the Hunters, they all continued backing away, until the site of the kill was a good fifty or sixty yards off, before the Hunters seemed to relax, putting their weapons away.

“Smart enough to set a trap for the Vord,” Tavi mused. “It had clawed open the
croach
specifically to attract a wax spider.”

Varg flicked his ears in assent. “It does not surprise me. They are wise enough to use such ruses.”

“They are mad,” Anag said. The golden-furred Cane crouched, watching in the direction of the small hunter, his body language tense, wary.

“Mad?” Tavi asked.

“Brave to the point of insanity,” said the eldest of the Hunters. Tavi turned to blink at the Cane, who had been silent since he had spoken to Varg on the roof of Lararl’s headquarters. “It will fight anything to protect its territory, or its kill. It fights without hesitation, without fear, without reservation.”

Tavi lifted his eyebrows. “But it is so small.”

The Canim looked at each other, amusement in their body language. “Aleran,” Varg said, “do not be deceived by its size. I’ve seen one kill a full-grown, armed warrior. It gutted the fool while it tore his throat out, and was gone before the body hit the ground. Even if you fought and killed one, it would do everything in its power to take you with it. I’ve never heard of one being slain without leaving scars.”

“Look,” Kitai said quietly.

Tavi looked up, and saw three more wax spiders approaching the area. The hunting beast was nowhere to be seen, nor was the body of the dead spider. Instead of raising an outcry, though, the worker Vord simply went about repairing the damaged
croach
, then beat a hasty retreat.

Twice more, Kitai signaled them to halt, and twice more, enemy Vord passed by. Once, they were more of the frog-things they had already seen. The second group was farther away, larger, and more indistinct. Neither encounter resulted in an outcry.

Tavi was sure they were getting close when they encountered the first active wax spiders, gliding silently through the glowing green pines in a row that stretched out into the distance to the north, like a line of ants trundling back and forth from their nest to a fallen fruit tree, each bearing a swollen bellyful of glowing green
croach
with it, partially visible through their translucent bodies.

It wasn’t hard to imagine where they were going—to spread the gelatinous substance over the bodies of the dead. It wouldn’t matter to the spiders whether the corpses were of their own kind or of the Shuaran warriors who had already engaged them. To the Vord, any dead flesh was simply food to be covered and consumed by the
croach
.

At a nod from Tavi, Kitai adjusted their course, and they began following the wax spiders’ back trail, searching for their point of origin. As they did, they saw other Vord, traveling in a solid file on the far side of the spiders, also heading to the north. These creatures, though, were far larger. Many were the tall, lean, Cane-shaped forms they had seen at the fortifications. Most were the thin-limbed frog-things. Others were larger than either of the first—much larger, nearly the size of a gargant, but scuttling along like crabs or lobsters. They must be the warrior forms his uncle had described from the Vord incursion into the Calderon Valley, but they were too far away to be seen any more distinctly. He proceeded with caution.

A shape rose through the trees in front of them, something that looked like an enormous tumor on the smooth surface of the
croach
. It was the size of a small building, and Tavi recognized it at once. Whirls and loops of the eerie wax substance had been piled up to form the building. He had seen two others like it—once in the Wax Forest, back near Calderon, and once in the labyrinth of caverns beneath Alera Imperia.

In the
croach
all around it were hundreds of smaller shapes, almost identical to the structure in form, but on a much-reduced scale, perhaps the size of a large pitcher of beer. The nearest of the lumpy shapes was no more than thirty feet away, and Tavi stared intently at it.

Something inside the lump of
croach
stirred fitfully, a movement of shadows against the green luminescence, and went still again. A small portion of green-black chitin pressed wetly against a surface as translucent as murky green glass.

He signaled the others to hold their position and, to his considerable surprise, they complied—even Kitai. That had been the part he was most concerned about, the most unpredictable part of the plan. He’d had a number of different contingencies thought out, if they’d been necessary, but it looked like the basic shape of the past couple of days had carried some momentum. They’d listened to him without question.

One worry down, he supposed.

He moved slowly forward, studying the nearest alien blister, or egg, or whatever it was, fascinated, comparing it to the far larger hive structure in the near distance. Each of the smaller shapes contained a Vord of some kind, perhaps taking sustenance from the
croach
that surrounded the blister. He thought he could see the vague shape of one of the frog-form Vord, in miniature, in the nearest hive. A few feet away, a second blister of
croach
contained a half-sized version of a wax spider. The queen, it seemed, was already working on creating more of her kind.

Tavi continued slowly forward. Each hive occupied a circle of
croach
perhaps five feet across, and he could see the glowing substance inside the waxy covering flowing up into the hive—nourishment for the infant Vord within. Tavi counted the hives nearby, and did some math in his head. Presuming this queen had only been busy creating more of her kind here since the Vord had broken out a few days ago, it meant that she could create hundreds of Vord every day—perhaps more. What’s more, they could come forth with a great deal less fuss and bother than their Aleran counterparts—and fully armed and ready for battle, to boot.

Bloody crows. No wonder the Vord had wiped out the Canim. His imagination painted him landscapes of conquered territories, glowing with
croach
and covered in hives that spawned fresh nightmares by the thousands. Once these . . . hatcheries were planted and maturing, fresh Vord would emerge by the company, ready to replace those that had been slain by the Canim. Once they were given a chance to establish themselves, it would be all but impossible to be rid of them.

He suddenly found the silence of the
croach
-covered pine forest oppressive and heavy—far too much so.

What mother, Tavi thought, ever left her children unguarded if there was any choice in the matter?

No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than the
croach
itself stirred, and half a dozen of the Cane-form Vord rose silently around him, huge and menacing. Eight feet tall, and lean like the Canim, the Vord’s arms were tipped with long, vicious talons, and their beaklike muzzles were serrated and terrifying.

“You are right, of course,” said a quiet, alien voice from somewhere nearby—the Vord queen, Tavi was certain. “I would not leave my children unprotected.” A dark shape, eyes glowing with a green-white light of their own, appeared behind the hulking shapes of the Cane-form Vord. Tavi thought he saw a faint glitter of light on sharp white teeth. “Kill him.”