Princeps’ Fury

The torches exploded into white-hot, eerily silent fire that opened and spread with an almost tender deliberation from the sources, at each torch, blooming out into spheres until it had enveloped the framework and the coffins below. The tall lord below-Antillus, Isana had no doubt-cupped both his hands and lifted them abruptly to the sky, and in time with the gesture, the white fire gathered and rose in a sudden fountain that dispersed into the air and diffused into the night sky, as if scattering to join the stars themselves.

A moment later, the usual colors and brightness of winter night returned. The ground below the wall was empty of coffins, byre, bodies, and ash. Nor was there snow, or grass, or anything but naked earth. The fire had swept the ground clean.

“Actually,” Garius commented idly, “those weren’t legionares, Your Grace. We lost nearly two hundred legionares in our last action against the Icemen, and we burned them three days since. Those men were veterans. The Icemen slipped over the Wall in several places two nights ago. Those men fell defending their steadholts and families, before our cavalry and Knights could arrive to help.” He spoke in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone. “But they fought and fell as legionares. They deserved to be sent off as legionares.”

On the ground below, High Lord Antillus bowed his head, and covered his face with both his hands. He just stood that way for a moment, not moving. Even from there, Isana could feel the echoes of his grief and guilt, and the sympathetic pains that rippled through the men around her who could see him-men who obviously cared about him.

Aria let out a low sigh. “Oh,” she whispered. “Oh, Raucus.”

The grizzled centurion growled an order, and the engineers below marched out in good order. A moment later, Antillus, too, departed, walking back toward the base of the Wall and out of sight.

“I’ll remind him that you’ve come,” Garius murmured.

“Thank you, Garius,” Aria murmured.

“Of course, Mother.” The young Tribune walked briskly away.

Within a few moments, Antillus Raucus came up one of the staircases Isana had noted before, Garius walking just behind his left shoulder, the grizzled engineering centurion behind his right. The High Lord walked straight over to Isana and bowed politely, first to her, then to Aria.

“Your Highness. Your Grace.”

Isana returned the gesture as gracefully as she could. “Your Grace.”

Raucus was a large, rawboned man, brawny as a house built from raw timber. His craggy face reminded Isana startlingly of Tavi’s young friend Maximus-though it was worn with more years of care and discipline, and sharpened with more bitterness and anger. His hair was dark, shot through with flickers of iron-and his eyes were hollow with weariness and grief. “I regret that I could not be on hand to greet you myself,” he said, his voice empty. “I had duties that required my personal attention.”

“Of course, Your Grace,” Isana said. “I… Please accept my condolences for the suffering of your people.”

He nodded, the gesture empty of any real meaning. “Hello, Aria.”

“Hello, Raucus.”

He gestured at the bare patch of earth and something hot and unpleasant shone in his eyes. “You saw what I just did?”

“Yes,” Aria said.

“If my men didn’t make it a point to steal their swords and take them home at the end of their service, while I make it a point to look the other way, it would have been the women and children of those steadholts in the fire,” he snarled.

Aria pressed her lips together and looked down, saying nothing.

Antillus turned his hard gaze back to Isana, and said, “There’s only one kind of peace you can make with the Icemen.”

Isana lifted her chin slightly and took a slow breath. “What do you mean?”

“They’re animals,” Antillus spat. “You don’t bargain with animals. You kill them, or you leave them alone. You can talk all you want, First Lady. But the sooner you realize the truth of that, the sooner you can help me and Phrygia do what is necessary to get some real help down to the south.”

“Your Grace,” Isana said cautiously. “That isn’t what the First Lord-”

“The First Lord,” Antillus said, scorn seething from every syllable. “He has no idea what life is like up here. He has no idea how many legionares I’ve buried-most of them sixteen- and seventeen-year-old children. He has no idea what the Icemen are, or what they are capable of. He’s never seen it. Never had to wash the blood off him. I have. Every day.”

“But-”

“Don’t you dare think you can walk in here for half of one hour and tell me about my own domain, Your Highness,” Antillus snarled. “I will not be bullied around by Gaius’s pet-”

“Raucus,” Aria snapped. Her voice was barely more than a whisper, but it shook the air between the three of them with its intensity.

The High Lord closed his mouth and glared at Lady Placida. Then he looked away from her and shook his head.

“Perhaps you could use some rest,” Aria suggested.