Princeps’ Fury

The lord, who looked about Amara’s age, but who could have been twenty years older, if he had watercrafting enough, gave her a tired smile. He needed a shave. “Crows, lady. I can barely remember it myself. Marius Quintias, at your service.”

“Quintias,” Amara said, bowing slightly. “I am Countess Calderonus Amara. The people with me are the Knights and Citizens my husband and I rescued from the Vord. They’re tired, cold, and hungry. Is there a haven for them nearby?”

“Aye,” he said, nodding as he swept his gaze around. There was a faint, but undeniable note of pride in his voice. “For the moment, at least.”

For the first time, Amara looked at her surroundings.

A battle had been fought there, on the causeway beneath the Redhill Heights. The earth was torn with furycraft and the tread of thousands of feet. Black patches marked where firecrafting had scorched the ground. Broken weapons lay strewn about the ground, here and there, along with spent arrows, broken shields, and cloven helms.

And there were dead Vord.

There were thousands upon thousands of dead Vord. They carpeted the earth for hundreds of yards behind her.

“I wouldn’t go walking this countryside alone for the time being, Countess,” Quintias said. “But if you’ll come to the camp, you can sleep safe, at least, once your people have cleared inspection.”

“Inspection?” Amara asked.

“No one comes into the camp unless we’re sure that they aren’t taken or working with the Vord, lady,” Quintias said without rancor. “We’ve had taken trying to slip in and cause trouble since about an hour after the battle.”

“I see,” she said quietly. “It’s imperative, sir, that I speak to the First Lord at once. I have information he will need.”

Quintias nodded sharply. “Then let’s get moving.”

They took to the air again, and Quintias and a dozen of his Knights escorted them ahead, flying low and slow, the effort laborious. They would be exhausted when they landed-which was, she suspected, the point. If they had been intent on causing mischief, their fliers, at least would be in no condition to do so.

It took them little time to reach the camp-a camp set up behind the interlocked palisades of no fewer than nine Aleran Legions. Half a dozen of them were flying the blue-and-white banners of Antillus, which was, Amara would have sworn, an obvious impossibility.

Beyond the neat white tents of the Legion camps was a small sea of humanity numbering in the tens of thousands if not the hundreds. Armored legionares of one of the Placidan Legions were waiting, and Legion healers were coming forward to help (and presumably to verify the humanity of) the most recent arrivals.

Quintias beckoned Amara, and she followed him through the Placidan camp, to a single Legion camp standing behind the front line. The red-and-blue banners of the First Lord flew over it, and she found herself hurrying her steps as she passed through the Crown Legion’s camp, toward its commander’s tent. It was awash in activity, with couriers and officers alike coming and going.

“I’ll tell the First Lord you’re here,” Quintias said, and entered the tent. He came out only a few moments later, and beckoned Amara. She followed him inside.

A crowd of officers stood around a sand table in the center of the room, their quiet discussion buzzing. “Very well then, gentlemen,” said a quiet, cultured baritone. “We know what needs to be done. Let’s be about it.”

The officers saluted with the kind of precision and discipline Amara knew never would have been seen during peacetime, a rattle of fists striking armor, and then began to disperse.

“He wanted to hear from you first thing,” Quintias told her. “Go ahead.”

Amara nodded her thanks to the man and walked forward to speak to the First Lord-and stopped in her tracks in shock.

Aquitainus Attis turned to her, his expression calm and confident beneath the shining steel circlet of the First Lord that he wore upon his brow, and nodded. “Countess Amara, welcome. We have much to discuss.”

* * *

Isana walked into the command tent at the temporary camp and was unsurprised to find it empty except for Lord Aquitaine. The tall, leonine lord stood over the sand table, staring down at it as if reading a poem he could not quite comprehend.

“Your brother’s wife is quite resourceful,” he said quietly. “Not only did she arrange the escape of more than three hundred Knights and Citizens who would have been enslaved by Vord, and destroy their capability of adding any more to their tally, on the way here she also managed to compile a surprisingly complete estimate of the spread of the croach from the reports of the various hostages and her own observations.”

“The only part of that which surprises me is hearing that she shared it with you,” Isana replied in a level tone.

Aquitaine smiled without looking up from the map sculpted into the sand on the table in front of him. “Honestly, Isana. The time for our petty squabbles is past.”