Jim Butcher - Cursors's Fury

Tavi glanced at the fish. “I’ve spoken to the other centurions. They agree that you know what you’re doing, Schultz, and that your century is still the best disciplined. So you’re senior centurion until I tell you you’re not. Do you hear me, soldier?”

“Yes, sir,” Schultz responded at once.

“Good,” Tavi said.

A roar went up from the legionares on the last wall, and every man in the spearhead cohort looked suddenly tense. Canim horns blared, and heavy drums rolled, and the screaming roar of combat came down to the town as the rest of the Legion battled the Canim on the bridge.

Tavi listened for two minutes before seeing the signal on the wall, a blue banner lifted beside the Legion’s standard.

“Good call, Captain,” Max observed, his voice amused. He walked forward from the rear of the cohort, buckling on the much-longer sword preferred by duelists and mounted legionares. “They did what you thought they would. They’re hitting us with their raiders.”

Tavi exhaled very slowly, and nodded. “You ready?”

“Born ready, ‘ Max replied cheerfully, drawing a round of quiet chuckles from the waiting Legion. The only three Knights Terra in the Legion came with him, their armor clanking, their vicious, oversized weapons weighing heavy on their shoulders.

Tavi nodded to the Knights and raised his voice. “Tribune Antillus?”

“Ready when you give the word, sir,” called Crassus from the rear of the cohort, where he waited with his Knights Aeris-and the Legions’ engineers, including their new recruits, the dancers from the Pavilion, now dressed in the armor of slain or incapacitated legionares.

“All right, then,” Tavi said. “Keep the men in this courtyard, but let them get some food and rest. Once we start pushing, there won’t be time for anything else.”

Maximus nodded to Schultz, who began giving orders for his inexperienced cohort to fall out for food and remain nearby.

“Captain,” Max said, under the cover of the noise. “Sit down. We have some time to wait through, and you haven’t rested.”

“No,” Tavi said. “I need to be on the wall with the First Spear until it’s time to move. I’ll come back and get you then.”

“Captain,” Max said, in exactly the same tone of voice. This time, though, he put a hand on Tavi’s shoulder, and his fingers clamped down on it like steel bands. “You aren’t going to do anything up there that he can’t. You let yourself get too tired, and it will slow down your wits. And since we’re betting it all on your wits, sir, I think it best that you make sure they’re ready to perform.” Max met his eyes. “Please, Calderon.”

Tavi closed his eyes for a second, and that horrible fatigue threatened him again. Part of him wanted to snarl at Max to shut up and follow orders. The rest realized that the big Antillan was right. He was asking these men to risk their lives carrying out a course of action he had planned. He owed it to them to give them his very best effort when they put everything on the line.

“All right,” Tavi said. “I’ll sit down. But just for a minute.”

“A minute,” Max said, nodding. “That’s fine.”

Tavi slipped out of his helmet, sat down with his back against the stone columns at the base of the Elinarch, and closed his eyes. He’d never be able to get any sleep, but at least he could take a few moments of quiet to order his thoughts, to go over the possibilities, all the things that could go wrong with his plan.

Try as he might, he couldn’t think of anything else he might do, and after a few moments of effort, he shook his head and opened his eyes.

Gloomy daylight greeted his gaze, the veiled sun barely visible through the overcast above the land. Tavi blinked up at it in confusion for a second. A muscle cramp seized his neck and set off a series of similar painful contractions in the muscles between his shoulder blades. He labored to his feet and bent, trying to stretch the muscles, until the cramps eased.

“Sir,” said Schultz from behind him.

“Centurion,” Tavi mumbled, turning. “How long was I asleep?”

“Hours, sir,” Schultz replied. “Tribune Antillar said to leave you be.”

Tavi muttered something about Max-under his breath. It wouldn’t do for a Legion’s captain to call one of his Tribunes names in front of the men, after all.

“Oh,” Schultz said. He swallowed, then hurried to one side and picked up a plate covered with a soft napkin and a tankard that lay nearby. “He told me to give you these first thing, sir.”

Tavi ground his teeth, but managed to keep from snatching the plates from Schultz’s hands. “Thank you.”

“Welcome, sir,” Schultz said. Then he hastily backed away as though he expected Tavi to rip his head off.

Tavi suffocated a grumpy snarl, wolfed down the food and drank the water in the tankard. By the-time he finished, the lingering after-spasms of the muscle cramps had vanished.

“Can you form words yet, sir?” Max asked, striding up to Tavi. He nodded to Schultz, and the acting centurion bellowed for the cohort to fall in. Le-gionares began to rise from where they’d dropped into sleep on the ground or sat awaiting their turn to fight.

“Don’t make me hurt you, Max,” Tavi said. He cocked his head, frowning up the slope of the bridge, where the sound of battle continued. “Our status?”

“Valiar Marcus did it,” Max said. “He held them.”

Tavi gave Max a look.

“But you knew that, “ Max said. “Since we’re all standing here.”

“Max…”

Max gave him an easy grin. “Just trying to lighten things up a little, sir. You’re always so grumpy in the morning.” He nodded toward the walls. “The raiders have been attacking all morning. Our Knights Flora started going through arrows like water, and the First Spear caught them flat-footed between assaults and pushed them back to the second wall about an hour ago.”

“Losses?” Tavi asked.

“Heavy,” Max said, his expression sobering. “Without proper gates, someone has to meet the Canim on foot as they come through, and even their raiders are hard to kill for any legionare. And those ritualists came up a while ago, started throwing these smoking censers at our people. The smoke was poison. Killed a lot of men. Not quick.”

“What happened?” Tavi asked.

“Our Knights Flora started dropping any ritualist that stuck his nose out, and the wind changed after sunrise. It would blow back onto the Canim if they tried it now. No smoke since then.”

A cart rumbled up, drawn by a pair of harried horses led by a young boy. He turned the cart around, and Tavi could see light shining on the blood that lay inside. The boy called out, and legionares came running from the bridge, bearing their injured comrades to the cart. They were clearly desperate, and loaded men as swiftly as they possibly could. When the cart was filled, the boy called to the horses, leading them back to the healers as fast as they could run.

Tavi watched, sickened, as another cart passed the first. There were more, coming along behind them, to pick up wounded and bring them back to the healers.

Tavi tried to swallow. “How many?”

“Uh. Around eleven hundred dead, I think,” Max said, his tone quiet, neutral. “About the same number of men out of action. Foss and his boys look like something the crows have been at. It’s all they can do just to save men who are bleeding out.”

Tavi watched as more of the legionares following his orders were loaded onto the half dozen carts for the wounded.

The dead were stacked like cordwood into the last of the carts. It was the largest of the carts in service, with a high-railed bed, and it required the patient, enormous strength of a team of oxen to pull.