Jim Butcher - Cursors's Fury

“It wasn’t insane,” Marcus said. “I knew them. I knew what I could do. I had advantages.”

Tavi nodded. “So do I.”

The old soldier’s eyes narrowed. “This isn’t a gang of angry Marat we’re talking about, kid. This isn’t a Lord’s personal soldiery, or an outlaw Legion. We’re going up against the Canim. You don’t know them. You’ve never seen anything like them.”

“You’re wrong,” Tavi said.

The First Spear lifted a lip from his teeth in a sneer. “You think you know them? You trying to tell me you’ve fought them, kid?”

Tavi met his gaze steadily. “Fought them, side by side with legionares and alone. I’ve seen them kill legionares I knew by name, and felt their blood hit my face. I’ve seen Canim killed. I killed one alone.”

Marcus narrowed his eyes in suspicion.

“More than that,” Tavi said. “I’ve spoken to Canim. I learned to play Indus from a Cane. Learned about their society. I even speak a little of their language, First Spear. Do you understand any Canish, Valiar Marcus? Do you know anything about their homeland? Their leaders?”

Marcus was silent for a moment before he said, “No. Every Cane I ever saw was too busy trying to kill me to give me any schooling.”

“They aren’t monsters. They aren’t anything like us, but they aren’t mindless killing machines, either. You know the difference between their raiders and their regulars, I take it?”

The First Spear grunted. “Raiders are bad enough. I never faced their regulars, but I know men who have. They’re worse. Bigger, stronger, better fighters. You don’t take them down without Knights and casualties.”

“The raiders are their conscripts. They’re not even their active military. The regulars you’ve heard about are their soldiery. Specifically, they come from an entire social class of hereditary soldiering bloodlines. Their warrior caste.”

He grunted. “Like our Citizens?”

“Something like,” Tavi agreed. “But there’s another caste that’s usually at odds with them. The ritualists. Like the ones who called this cloud cover down. Like the ones who struck the captain.”

“Hngh,” Marcus said. “They have furycraft?”

“I don’t think so,” Tavi said. “Or at least, not like Alerans use it. But they have some kind of power that lets them do similar things. Three years ago, they threw a series of storms at the coasts. The First Lord himself had to assist in stopping them. Fantus told Cyril that these clouds overhead were definitely not a windcrafting. However they do it, it works.”

The First Spear pursed his lips. “Sounds like these ritualist dogs are dangerous. Kalarus would never have made a bargain with them if he didn’t think he could crush them later.”

“I think the Canim betrayed him.”

“Why?”

“Because the scout I followed found Lady Antillus’s trail,” Tavi said. “We found her camp. The two of us couldn’t have captured her alone. I’d have gone for the kill, but what I learned was too important to chance losing.”

Marcus shook his head and blew out a breath. “All right, kid. I’m listening.”

“I got close enough to listen in on a watercrafted conversation she was having with her brother. It turns out that he made a pact with the Canim.”

“ What ?” Marcus snarled.

“Kalarus offered a Cane named Sari, a ritualist, a bargain. Kalarus wanted this cloud cover, to help paralyze the Crown’s communications and Legions. Then he wanted the Canim to hit the coastline and draw off Aleran troops from the theater between Ceres and Kalare. He thought they would cripple Ceresian crops and prevent the local militias from being called up to help the Crown against him.”

The First Spear scowled in thought. “Might have worked.”

“Except instead of several hundred Canim, Sari showed up with tens of thousands.”

“How’s he going to feed that many mouths?” Marcus said. “Armies march on their stomachs, and landing here, they can’t possibly reach one of the major cities before they start starving. He couldn’t have brought more than a few weeks’ supplies with him on the ships, and we won’t let him seize enough to feed an army that large. They’ll have to fall back to the ships before summer is out. ‘

“No,” Tavi said. “They won’t.”

“Why?”

“Because when I scouted out the Canim, I got close enough to Founderport to see their ships in the harbor.”

“At night?” Marcus said. “You expect me to believe you waltzed into an occupied town?”

“Didn’t have to,” Tavi said, “what with how the whole harbor was lit up. They’d set their ships on fire. I could see them from maybe six miles out.”

Marcus blinked. “That’s crazy. How do they expect to leave?”

“I don’t think they do,” Tavi said quietly. “I think they mean to take land and keep it.”

“An invasion,” Marcus said quietly.

“The timing for it is fairly good, you have to admit,” Tavi said. “Right when we’re at one another’s throats.”

Marcus grunted. “That idiot Kalarus told them just when to arrive, didn’t he.”

Tavi nodded. “He showed Sari a weakness, and Sari came after it.”

“Sounds like you know him.”

“I do,” Tavi said. “Some. He’s a backstabbing little slive. Cowardly, ambitious, clever.”

“Dangerous.”

“Very. And he doesn’t like the warrior caste.”

“Seems like that’d be something of a failing in a military leader.”

Tavi nodded. “Not just a failing. A weakness. Something we can exploit.”

Marcus folded his arms, listening.

“If there are as many of them as Ehren said, we can’t beat them,” Tavi said. “We both know that.”

Marcus’s face turned grim, and he nodded.

“But I don’t think they’re going to be very cohesive. The warriors with him know that Sari would cheerfully throw their lives away for no purpose. They’re cut off from the support of the rest of their caste, and if I’m guessing correctly, they’re probably only there because Sari threatened them into it. He’d never surround himself with that many warriors if he didn’t have the means to control them. I think they’d rather be anywhere but here under Sari’s leadership.”

“Why do you think that?” the First Spear asked.

“Because it explains the burning ships. Sari knew that if he came ashore with the warriors, he’d never be able to stop them from abandoning him and sailing back home. He burned the ships because he wanted to trap the warriors here. He wanted them to have no options except to fight, and win.”

Marcus frowned and chewed over the thought. “That’s one crow of a motivation, “ he finally admitted. “But I don’t see how that plays to us.”

“Because they aren’t a united force,” he said. “They’re not used to operating against us in numbers this large. They don’t trust their leaders. They don’t like the current chain of command. They’re bound to be angry at Sari for trapping them here. With that many fractures in the foundation, anything they build on it will be unstable. I think that if we can force them to react to a series of things, quickly, they’re going to have real trouble maintaining solid positions.”

Marcus narrowed his eyes. “Draw them out. Then we hit them in concentration.”

“That’s the core of it, yes. “

“You might have noticed we have plenty of fish in this bunch. Nothing says we’ll be able to maintain the kind of discipline we’d need to do it.”

“Maybe not,” Tavi said. “But we aren’t exactly spoiled for choice.”

The First Spear grunted. “Assuming we pull it off, we’ll cut them up pretty good. But it won’t kill them all.”