Jim Butcher - Princeps’ Fury

“Varg!” Tavi called. “There is something you should see.”

The big Cane looked down from the wall, and his ears twitched in mild amusement. “Is there?”

“I do not know,” Nasaug said, the Cane’s resonant voice coming from where Nasaug sat upon his own taurg beside Durias’s mount, along with a spare beast for Varg. “He would tell me nothing.”

Varg grunted. “Only a fool seeks a quarrel with a tavar.” He came down the terraces, slammed the open taurg on the snout when it tried to snap at him, and mounted.

They rode to the single opening in the earthworks that bestrode the road leading out of Molvar. “When are the engineers going to close this up?” Durias asked him.

“They aren’t,” Tavi said.

Durias blinked. “Why build the wall if you’re only going to leave an enormous and obvious weakness in it?”

“Because it means we know where the enemy will concentrate his strength,” Varg growled. “The defenses are thin. The enemy is many. If every spot was as good as any other, the Vord would simply attack at random, and we would have no way to predict where to concentrate our strength against them.”

“Leave them a big, obvious opening to exploit,” Tavi said, “and we can be certain where their main thrust will fall. This is where the Legions will fight.”

Durias nodded, looking around. “That’s why we’re putting up the lower berms inside, then, along the road. They can’t be seen from the outside. When the Vord come through, they’ll be walking into a death trap.”

“It’ll be worse than that,” Tavi said. “You’ve never seen what firecrafters can do in an enclosed area.” He glanced up at Varg, and added, with very mild emphasis, “Neither have you, Warmaster.”

Varg paused a moment, meeting Tavi’s gaze, before he replied just as mildly, “My ritualists will be there as well, gadara . It should be interesting.”

Tavi carefully suppressed a quiver of unquiet at the thought of some of the things he’d seen the Canim ritualists do. He showed Varg his teeth, and said, “That’s for later. My scouts spotted something I think you’d want to know about.” He pointed across the rolling landscape outside the earthworks.

Varg exchanged a look with his son, then the pair of them stood up in their stirrups and peered out across the land. They stared for a long, silent moment.

Nasaug let out an explosive snarl, and lashed his startled taurg into a sudden, ground-shaking gallop that made the other two taurga bawl and rumble in complaint. Half a dozen Shuaran refugees who were just arriving had to throw themselves out of the way before the taurg flattened them. Durias and Varg brought their beasts under control again. Varg growled low in his throat, glanced at Tavi, then dismounted and tossed the reins of his beast to Durias.

Tavi dismounted as well, dodged a sullen kick Durias’s taurg aimed at him, and hurried after Varg, who was striding up the terraces to the top of the earthworks beside the gateway. Tavi came to a stop beside him and watched Nasaug’s progress.

Out on the plain outside the earthworks, a large group of refugees was moving together. Unlike the majority of the Shuarans, though, these Canim were all dark-furred. Among them moved, often with the aid of canes and crutches, warriors in red-and-black armor, and at the heart of the group, a long spear bearing a simple twin pennant of red-and-black cloth stood above the rest of the group.

“My people,” Varg said, his voice very deep and very quiet. “Some of them survived.”

“Ten thousand or so, according to my scouts,” Tavi agreed quietly. “I know that isn’t many.”

Varg was silent for a moment before he growled, “It is everything, gadara . Some of our warriors live among them.” He arched one paw-hand, dark claws spreading fiercely. “We did not fail them entirely.” He turned his eyes to Tavi. “Where were they?”

“Lararl had them near the fortress.”

Varg turned pensively back toward the plain, then narrowed his eyes, a growl shaking his chest. “His ritualists needed blood.”

Tavi said nothing.

Nasaug reached the group a moment later, and all but broke his taurg’s neck hauling it to a halt. The mount snapped at his arm as Nasaug dismounted, but the Cane struck it between the eyes with one enormous fist, staggering the three-quarter-ton mount as easily as if it had been a drunk staying too late at a wine house.

The arriving Narashans let out cries and howls as Nasaug reached them and began striding through them, toward the banner at the heart of the group.

“That was what it meant, back in Lararl’s chambers,” Varg said. “When you told him that everyone was to leave.”

Tavi said nothing.

Varg turned to him, and said, “Lararl would not have given up a military resource in such a desperate situation without cause. You demanded it of him, Tavar.”

“I couldn’t tell you they were near,” Tavi said quietly. “You would have gone to get them, and to crows with the circumstances.”

Varg narrowed his eyes and growled deep in his considerable chest. It made Tavi acutely aware of exactly how large the Cane really was.

Tavi took a steadying breath and turned to meet Varg’s eyes. He cocked an eyebrow at the Cane, daring him to deny the statement, and hoped that Varg’s intense passions on the subject weren’t about to express themselves at his expense.

Varg looked back out at the plain and let his growl rumble away to nothing. After a long moment, he said, “You protected them.”

“And the Shuarans,” Tavi said in a very soft, very nonchallenging voice. “And myself. We’re all standing in the same fire, Varg.”

Varg rumbled out another growl, one containing a tone of agreement. Then he turned from Tavi, strode down the terraces, and out onto the plain, toward the oncoming group of Narashan survivors.

Tavi watched them come. A moment later, Durias climbed the stairs beside him, and asked, “How’d he take it when he realized you didn’t tell him?”

“He didn’t like it,” Tavi said. “He understood it.”

“It’s a strength of their mind-set,” the young centurion said, nodding. “Working through the logic of others dispassionately.” Durias smiled. “Though if they’d come to harm because of it, it wouldn’t have stopped him from gutting you.”

“Don’t I know it,” Tavi said. “But I didn’t have any good choices.”

Durias squinted out at the Narashans for a second, then his eyes widened. “Bloody crows.”

Tavi glanced at him. “What?”

“That banner,” Durias said. “That isn’t a common symbol among them.”

“What does it mean?”

“Warriors rarely use spears,” Durias said. “They gave the Free Aleran a hard time because our standards were mounted on them. They’re considered to be a female’s weapon.”

Tavi lifted his eyebrows. “So?”

“So the spear standard in the colors of the range means a matron of a high warrior bloodline,” the young centurion told him. “And I-”

His voice was suddenly drowned out when ten thousand Canim throats erupted into wordless howls, and though the sounds were not human, Tavi could hear the emotions that drove it-raw celebration, sudden and unexpected joy. He traded a glance with Durias, and the two leaned forward, watching.

As Varg approached, the small sea of singing Canim parted, and Nasaug appeared, walking beside a Canim female as tall and as dark-furred as he, their hands joined. Even as they walked, half a dozen young Canim, one of them scarcely larger than an Aleran child, came bounding out of the crowd and rushed Varg, baying in high-pitched tones. The Warmaster planted his feet, and was shortly inundated in delighted, furry children and wagging tails. A gang wrestling match ensued, in which Varg pinned each of the children to the earth with one hand and nipped at their throats and tummies, to squeals of protest and delight.