Cursors's Fury

Around him stood the veterans of the First Spear’s century. Their brother centuries within their cohort waited along the length of the walls, ready to defend them or lend support to their cohort-brothers. In the courtyard behind them waited two more entire cohorts, one with a mixed level of experience, the second composed almost entirely of fish-including what had been Max’s century. In total, nearly a thousand legionares stood in arms and armor, at the ready.

Tavi knew that behind them, placed at key defensive positions, ready to move in to support the defenders of the gate, were another thousand men, and behind that, at the base of the bridge, were three thousand more. The rest maintained a watch on the northern side, while the remaining cavalry waited at the apex of the bridge, ready to respond to any enemy thrust from unexpected quarters.

When the Canim came, the first thing Tavi saw was the crows.

At first, he thought it was a column of black smoke rising from the hills southwest of the town. But instead of drifting with the wind, the darkness rose, widening, stretching out into a line, then Tavi could see that it was the crows he’d been looking at, spinning over the heads of the Canim host like a wagon wheel on its side. He half expected to see the Canim only a moment later, but nearly a quarter of an hour went by while the vast disc of wheeling crows grew larger.

Tavi understood. He had underestimated the number of crows. Four or five times as many of the carrion birds as he guessed whirled over the Canim. Which meant that this was the largest murder of crows he had ever seen-including those that had descended upon the carnage of the Second Battle of Calderon.

A mutter went up and down the wall among the legionares. Tavi got the sense that they had never seen that many of the scavenger birds, either.

Then they heard the drums and droning war horns. The sound of the drums began as a low rumble, hardly audible, but rose quickly to a distant, steady, pulsing crash. The horns screamed mournfully through the din, and the whole was like listening to the cries of some unimaginably vast wolf loping through a thunderstorm.

Tavi could feel the men growing restless behind him, expressed in a thousand uncomfortable shiftings of stance, in mutters, in the rasp of metal on metal as legionares fought their own anxiety by checking and rechecking their arms and armor.

On the open ground nearest the town, horsemen and infantry alike appeared, moving toward the town-the pickets and skirmishers who had been watching for the Canim and harassing them on their way in. They had gathered into groups as they retreated, and came toward the town at a weary trot after a full day and more in the field. Not all of the skirmishers would return. Some had undoubtedly fallen. Others, the most woodcrafty auxiliaries and local volunteers, would remain in the field, hiding from the enemy host, watching its movements, and striking its flanks and rear in hit-and-run missions.

At least, that was the plan. Tavi was well aware of how quickly and lethally reality could deviate from his intentions.

The last of the returning troops reached the shelter of the city’s walls, and the gates rumbled shut behind them. The drums and horns drew nearer, and Tavi wanted to scream with the sheer frustration of waiting. He longed to fight, to kill, to run, to do anything at all, really.

But it was not yet time to act, and his men had to be feeling much the same as he. So Tavi stood facing the enemy, apparently calm, apparently bored, and waited.

The first of the Canim finally stalked into sight over the top of the last hill to hide them from his view. A skirmish line of raiders, spread out before the army, crested the hills in a line half a mile across. Upon sighting the city, and the Aleran defenders upon its walls, they tilted back their heads and let out long, ululating howls. The warbling cries sent the hairs on the back of Tavi’s neck to standing.

A burst of chatter rose up from the cohort of fish in the courtyard behind them, and Tavi heard Schultz telling them to pipe down.

“All right, Marcus,” Tavi said. He was surprised at how calm his own voice sounded. “Raise the standard here.”

Marcus had opposed any move that would identify the captain’s position to the enemy, but Tavi had overruled him, and one of his men lifted the banner of the First Aleran, with its red-and-blue eagle, to fly in the wind at the tip of the wooden shaft from a long battle lance. As the banner first flew into the breeze, Tavi stepped up onto the battlements, where the legionares could all see him. He drew his sword and raised it over his head, and this time a thousand swords did the same, a chorus of steely chimes that rose in defiance of the eerie howls and savage drums.