Princeps’ Fury

“Nothing ridiculous about it,” he said. “If you leave at once, odds are excellent that you’ll make it back to the First Lord. If you stay with me, you’ll double your risk of being found and killed before you can get the information back.”

“But you-”

“Have worked alone before, love. I’ll be harder to locate alone in any case. You won’t be doing anything but improving my odds of getting out.”

Amara frowned at the darkness. “And you’re quite sure that you’re not doing this simply to protect your poor little helpless wife?”

He let out a quick, amused chuckle. “Don’t let her hear you refer to her like that. She’ll call up a windstorm that rips the hide right off you.”

“Bernard, I’m serious.”

His fingers stroked over hers, the motion somehow reassuring. “So am I. If we’re going to take on additional risk, I want to be crowbegotten sure that what we learn gets back to Gaius.” He paused meditatively, then added, “And if it makes my poor little helpless wife a little more likely to come out of it in one piece, that’s a happy coincidence.”

She reached out in the dark and found his face, cupping his cheek with the fingers of her free hand. “Maddening man.”

“I am what I am, Countess,” he replied, and kissed her palm gently. “We’d best get moving. There’s not much air in here.”

Amara sighed. “Back to quiet again. I miss talking to you.”

“Patience, love. We’ll have plenty of time for that when the work is done.”

She leaned over and kissed his mouth, lingering for a moment, mouth moving slowly and intently on his.

Bernard let out a growling exhale. “There are some things I miss, too.”

“Such as?”

“We’ll discuss them when we’re finished,” he said. “At length.”

Amara found herself smiling into the dark. “Good. Anything to make you more determined to get home.”

His fingers squeezed hers. Then she felt the earth begin to tremble again, and the light of the gloom-shrouded night bloomed like a darkling sunrise above them. They rose slowly and emerged into the cold, sleeting evening. Without needing to signal one another, they brought up the concealing furycraftings again, their furies winding layers of veils around them even as their cloaks changed their hues, darkening to become one with the night.

Bernard signaled that he would take the lead, then started out into the night, the sound of rattling sleet blanketing the few sounds he made as he moved. Amara wasn’t sure of their direction, in the gloom, but she knew that Bernard had a nearly supernatural facility with fieldcraft. He would lead them to the south, in the direction the Vord had taken the Aleran prisoners-and away from their friends and allies, who were retreating from the Vord.

Amara shivered against the cold and the sleet, and fervently hoped that she had been right in her assessment of their abilities-and that she had not just committed herself and her husband to cold and pitiless deaths at the hands of their inhuman foes.

CHAPTER 23

“There’s frozen ground back in Alera, too, soldier,” Valiar Marcus barked. “Without a palisade, we’ll be easy meat for the first gang of Shuarans to come along. So put your back into it and dig, or I’ll have you at a whipping post until your balls freeze and drop off.”

The startled legionare, one of the Free Aleran troopers, started up from where he sat, his face showing chagrin that quickly turned to sullen anger. The spear of legionares working on that section of the palisade wall turned darkening faces toward him.

Bloody crows, Marcus thought. It was perhaps unwise to threaten a fanatical former slave with a lashing. He had no desire to fight eight men by himself, but neither could the First Spear back down from any show of open insubordination.

Marcus turned to square his shoulders and face the men, keeping them all within his field of vision. “You know how the Legions maintain discipline, legionare, or ought to.”

The recalcitrant legionare, perhaps bolstered by the support of his fellows, drawled, “And maybe it’s time that changed, centurion.”

Marcus took one step forward, called up strength from the earth, and struck the man with a backhanded blow. The legionare was flung from his feet and crashed into the stack of loose poles that the Legions had brought with them from Alera. The man and the material spilled into a disorderly sprawl. The legionare moaned once and lay in a senseless puddle.

Marcus regarded the man distantly for a moment, and said, “I disagree.” He turned his gaze to the other legionares, who stood stunned and staring, and said in a quiet voice, “You’ll have to work a bit harder to get your section put up in time, gentlemen.”