First Lord's Fury (Page 21)

Marcus nodded. "They’re talking to us, eh?"

The old Cursor’s mouth twitched at one corner. "It was that or fight us. They didn’t seem eager to do that if they could avoid it." He, too, stared to the south, though Marcus knew his watery eyes were nearsighted. "Octavian wishes to speak with you."

Marcus nodded. Then he squinted at the other man, and said, "You been giving me looks, Magnus. What’s wrong with you? I steal your favorite boots or something?"

Magnus shrugged his shoulders. "Between the time you retired from the Antillan Legions and the time you came back to service with the First Aleran, no one recalls where you were."

The First Spear felt his stomach begin to burn. Acid made a belch rise up through his throat. He covered it with a rough snort. "And that’s got your knickers in a twist? One old soldier goes back to life on a steadholt. It ain’t surprising that he don’t stand out, Magnus."

"It’s perfectly reasonable," Magnus acknowledged. "But not many old soldiers are named to the House of the Valiant. There are – were, when we left – five such men in the entire Realm. Each of them is currently a Citizen. Three Steadholders and a Count. None of them went back to life as a freeman."

"I did," the First Spear said easily. "Wasn’t hard."

"There were many veterans who helped found the First Aleran," the Cursor continued in a calm voice. "Many of them from Antillan Legions. Every one of them recalls you, at least by reputation. None of them had heard anything about what happened to you after you retired." He shrugged. "It’s unusual."

Marcus barked out a laugh. "You been sucking down too much leviathan liver oil." He let his voice grow more serious. "And we’ve got plenty enemies enough without you looking for more where there ain’t none."

The old Cursor regarded Marcus with mild, watery eyes. "Yes," he said politely. "Where there ain’t none."

Marcus felt his throat constrict. He knew. Knew something. Or thought he did.

Marcus doubted that the old Cursor had worked out that he was, in fact, Fidelias ex Cursori, accomplice to Attis and Invidia Aquitaine, traitor to the Crown. Certainly, he wasn’t aware that Marcus had, at the end, turned on High Lady Aquitaine, assassinating her with a poisoned balest bolt – or coming damned close to it, at any rate. And he had no way of knowing how much more the name of Valiar Marcus, First Spear of the First Aleran Legion, had come to mean to a weary, jaded old killer named Fidelias.

But the knowledge was in Magnus’s eyes. He might not have all of his facts lined up – yet – but it was plain in his manner, his actions, his words.

He knew enough.

For an instant, Fidelias felt a mad impulse to try something he’d rarely found useful in his lifetime: He thought about telling the old Cursor the truth. Whatever happened, afterward, at least the uncertainty would be gone.

His mouth opened. Fidelias noted, with a bemused sort of detachment, that he hadn’t actually decided to speak. But some part of him – the Marcus in him, likely – had proceeded without his approval.

He said, "Magnus, we should talk," then the vord exploded out of the gathering shadows.

There were three of them, low to the ground and moving fast. They were long beasts, six legs on lean, sinuous bodies, with slender, lashing tails stretched out behind them. They were covered in fine scales of black chitin, shining and glossy, reflecting the bloody light of the failing sun. Fidelias had an instant to observe that they moved like garim, the great lizards of the southern swamps, then he was in motion.

His gladius would be all but useless. So he reached out through Vamma, his earth fury, drawing power from the adamant bones of the old mountain beneath him. He seized a thick, heavy wooden pole, laid ready to be planted in the earth as part of the palisade.

Fidelias whirled on the nearest vord and swung the heavy pole up and down in a vertical arc, like a man wielding an axe. The length of wood must have weighed eighty pounds, but he swung it as lightly as a child would a walking stick and struck the leading vord with grisly, shattering power. Green-brown blood sprayed out everywhere, spattering Fidelias and Magnus alike.

The pole snapped in half, one end suddenly a mass of shards and splinters. Fidelias turned to the next vord and drove that end forward like a spear tip. The shock of impact lanced viciously up through his arms and shoulders, and even with Vamma’s influence to buttress him, Fidelias was knocked back from his feet as the pole shattered beneath the strain. He hit the ground hard. The stricken vord thrashed wildly, dying, with several shards of wood too large and wickedly pointed to be properly called "splinters" protruding from the back of its skull.

Then the third vord was on him.

Its teeth hit his calf, snapping down with terrifying force. He heard his leg break, but such was the power of the thing’s jaws that sensation vanished completely. Its tail lashed forward, and Fidelias struggled, his fury-enhanced strength letting him slam the vord around before it could settle a grip on him with its claws or tail, and preventing it from bracing itself firmly with all of its six claw-tipped legs. It had incredible physical power. If it was able to plant its feet, it would simply rip Fidelias’s leg off at the knee.

The vord’s long, slender tail suddenly whipped around his thigh, and Fidelias saw, in an instant of frozen horror, that hundreds of sharp, tiny ridges, like the teeth of a serrated knife, had suddenly extended along its length. The vord would simply lash its tail free, cutting the muscles of his thigh from the bone in one long spiral, like carving the meat from a ham.

Magnus let out a shriek and swept his gladius down. Though the old man’s arms were lean, they were backed by the power of his own earthcrafting, and the famous sword of the Legions severed the vord’s tail at its base.

The vord released Fidelias and whirled on Magnus with unnerving speed and precision, and the old Cursor went down under its weight.

Fidelias pushed himself back up and saw Magnus holding the vord’s jaws away from his face with both hands. Magnus wasn’t as strong an earthcrafter as Fidelias was. He was unable to dislodge the vord, and the thing had managed to begin raking at him with its claws as it struggled to clamp the incredible power of its jaws over Magnus’s face.

For an instant, Magnus’s eyes met his.

Fidelias saw the branches of logic in his mind, unfolding as calmly and cleanly as if he’d been performing a theoretical exercise.

The situation was ideal. The vord was already badly wounded. The nearest legionares were already taking up their weapons and charging forward – but they would never arrive in time to save Magnus. Fidelias himself was badly wounded. The shock was keeping him from feeling it, but he knew that even with the attentions of a Legion healer, he’d be off his feet for a few days.