Jim Butcher - Princeps’ Fury

Lightning crackled down from the sky to strike the tower, but immediately flashed back upward again, bouncing off like light against a mirror. Vord began to scale the tower, hundreds of them, clawing their way directly up its sides.

Then the figure atop the tower raised both arms above his head, and the earth itself bucked and shook like a stallion at the bite of a horsefly. Ehren was thrown from his feet to the ground, and he lost his visioncrafting-but he could not look away.

The ground rippled like the surface of the sea, shattering buildings like so many toothpicks. The earth split open, great, yawning cracks spreading out for a mile in every direction from the citadel-and then those cracks began to glow with inner, scarlet light. The tremors stopped, and for an instant everything was perfectly silent, motionless.

And then fire like nothing Ehren had ever seen, rock so hot that it had begun to flow like liquid, erupted upward from the ground in a column that was literally miles across. The magma clawed for the sky like a fountain in a city square, and hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of winged forms erupted from the fiery spray, eagles which spread their great wings and streaked through the air, leaving blazing columns of fire in their wakes. The wind rose violently, the superheated air reacting to the eruption, and the fire-eagles swept and spun in great circles, crying out in shrieks made tiny by distance.

Fire filled the skies over Alera Imperia. Cyclones of flame spun away from the city, deadly funnels that seemed to lift everything they touched from the ground, only to incinerate them to ashes.

The ground beneath the city and for miles around began to buckle. Falling walls and buildings added their own gravelly screams to the night’s cacophony. The Vord died by the thousands, the hundreds of thousands, devoured by insatiable flame and ravenous earth.

With a final scream, Alera Imperia collapsed into the earth, lowered like a corpse into its grave and consumed by the fires that raged there.

So died Gaius Sextus, First Lord of Alera, his pyre lighting the Realm for fifty miles in every direction.

Ehren sat numbly, staring at the end of the Realm. The three Legions who had escaped with Aquitaine had nearly reached them. Their outriders came pounding up the causeway on horseback, and one of the weary-looking men drew to a halt as he reached them.

“Gentlemen,” the outrider said, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to get moving or else clear the road. The Legions are coming through.”

“Why?” Ehren asked quietly. “Why run now? Nothing could have lived through that.”

“Aye,” the outrider said in a subdued voice. “But there were some of those things that weren’t close enough to get burned up. They’re coming.”

Ehren felt sick to his stomach again. “So what Gaius did… it was for nothing?”

“Crows no, young man,” the outrider said. “What’s left ain’t half a tithe of their numbers-but we’ve only three exhausted Legions left to us and no strong defensive position. It’s more than enough for them to do for us.” He nodded to them, then kicked his horse up into a canter, riding on down the road.

“Sir Ehren?” asked Sireos wearily. “What do we do?”

Ehren sighed and bowed his head. Then he pushed himself to his feet. “We retreat. Come on.”

Placidus Aria looked down from the Redhill Heights at the embattled Legions below.

Smoke blackened the skies, so thickly that not even the omnipresent crows were at hand. Where the smoke would part for seconds at a time, the sky to the south burned a sullen scarlet. What disaster could have done that to the skies? Only the release of one of the Great Furies, surely. But the only place south of here where one of the Great old Furies might rise was…

“Merciful furies,” she breathed.

Far below, a mass of humanity fled through a nightmare.

The vast majority were freemen, men and women and older children trundling along the road at the steady lope of those propelled by furycraft-dodging the occasional cart or mounted rider. Many of them, though, either did not have the ability to utilize the causeway or else were too young or too old to keep the pace of the panicked flood of refugees. They made their way as best they could at the side of the road, mostly through fields barren for winter. Recent rains had made the ground into little more than mud pits stretching for miles. The unfortunate refugees struggled through them at a snail’s pace.

Behind them, spread out in a broad bar of muscle and steel came three Legions, marching side by side, straddling the road in tight formation. Their march was slow but steady, their engineers moving ahead of them, earthcrafting the mud into more tractable footing as they approached and restoring it to mud as they passed.

Behind the Legions came the Vord.

The front edge of the enemy pursuit was a ragged line, the swift-moving Vord as slowed and separated by the horrible footing as the fleeing Alerans. But the farther back from that front edge one looked, the more coherent and organized the Vord became. The lizard-wolf creatures ran together in ranks, centered around the enormous hulking mass of the Vord warriors, or around the still-larger giants that covered the ground in strides yards long. Overhead swarmed the black-winged form of hundreds of vordknights, clashing and skirmishing with Knights Aeris covering the retreating Legions.

The three bars of Legion steel were badly outnumbered by their pursuers, but the black-and-scarlet banners flying from the center Legion flew bravely in the breeze, and the discipline of the troops held them in good order as the foe closed in on them.

“Bloody crows,” Antillus Raucus breathed. “Crows and bloody furies.”

“Do we attack?” Lady Placida breathed.

Gaius Isana, First Lady of Alera, nudged her horse to stand between Aria’s and Raucus’s. “Of course we do,” she said in a firm voice, ignoring the twinge of discomfort from the still-tender wound in her stomach. “I didn’t go through all of this and march these Legions all the way down from the Wall to stand around and watch things happen.”

High Lord Antillus’s mouth spread into a wolfish smile. “Looks like the boys are going to earn their pay today, then.”

“Look at the banners in the center Legion,” Lady Placida said. “Do you know who that is?”

“An Aleran,” Isana said, her tone steady. She felt Araris’s steady presence at her back, and looked over her shoulder to find him, on his horse, hovering a few feet away from her, his eyes focused on nothing and everything at the same time. “An Aleran in trouble.” She turned to Raucus, and said, “Attack, Captain.”

Raucus nodded sharply. His horse danced a step sideways, evidently picking up on his rider’s excitement. “I recommend we wait, Your Highness,” he said. “Let them advance another mile down that causeway, and I’ll leave those ugly things in pieces.”

Isana felt the confidence flowing from him, and arched an eyebrow. “You’re sure?”

“They’re coming with maybe thirty thousand troops. I’ve got three standing Legions, three Legions of veteran militia, better than a thousand Knights and every bloody Citizen in Antillus. Pieces , Your Highness,” Raucus replied, vicious satisfaction in his voice. “Little ones.”

“As you think best, High Lord Antillus,” Isana said.

He threw back his head and laughed. “Hah! That’s a good one.” He turned his horse and said, “There are preparations to make. If you will excuse me.” He saluted Isana and turned his horse-then hesitated, glancing back at Isana.

“Your Grace?” Isana asked.