Jim Butcher - Captain's Fury

"I spoke to their First Spears, sir. They're in worse shape than we are. For all practical purposes, we've got the only Knights on the field. The Guard used a different model of helmet than we did, without the crossbars on the crowns, and those hafted scythes went through them like paper. They've got fewer wounded but a lot more dead."

"Orders from the Senator?" Crassus asked.

Marcus shook his head.

"The other captains?"

"No word from them, either, sir."

Crassus drew in a deep breath. "It seems to me we really ought to have some kind of plan."

"If you say so, Captain."

"Send runners to the Senator and the other captains," Crassus said. "Inform them that I've prepared a pavilion for him, his staff, and the other captains, and that it is ready to receive him immediately."

Marcus saluted and turned to go.

"Marcus," Crassus said quietly.

He paused, without turning back.

Crassus dropped his voice, until only the two of them could have heard it. "We aren't getting off this hill, are we?"

Marcus blew out a breath. "Doesn't look like it, sir."

Crassus nodded. "Thank you," he said.

Marcus went on about following his orders, though he was ready to allow the Canim to kill him, if only they promised to let him get a few moments of sleep first.

Troops surged from concealed positions beside the road, a dozen Canim and twice as many men in the worn gear of the Free Aleran Legion. One moment, no one was in sight, and the next a formidable array of weapons was pointed directly at Tavi's chest.

"Well," Tavi said, his tone impatient, as he reined his nag to a halt. "It's about bloody time."

One of the men had begun to speak, but he blinked and simply stared at Tavi, evidently surprised to be so addressed. Tavi studied him for a moment and decided that he was the most advantageous point of attack. If he didn't manage a successful verbal assault with the first pickets around Mastings, it might take him hours or days of waiting to get to Nasaug, and he doubted his mother and Araris would have that long.

"You," Tavi said, pointing at the man, then indicating the wooden baton thrust through his belt. "Centurion, I take it?"

"Yes," said the young man. "Yes, I'm-"

"Don't you people watch the back door as closely as the front? Bloody sloppy."

The man's face turned red. "Now, see here. You are intruders on a Free Aleran causeway, and as such I am placing you under arrest in accordance with general order-"

"I don't have time to listen to you cite phrase and paragraph, centurion,'

Tavi said, his tone striking a fine balance of impatience and authority, all of it absent of malice. "Lead me to Nasaug at once."

One of the Canim, a warrior Cane decked in the dark red-black steel plate of his caste, narrowed his blood-colored eyes and growled in Canish to one of his companions, a raider. "Spit him on your spear. We'll see how much talking he does then."

Tavi turned and stared hard at the Cane who had spoken. Their battered group was not calculated to impress, and consisted of one mounted but unar-mored man on a horse who had seen better days, and one rickety wagon drawn by a pair of shaggy mules, driven by a Marat girl, and carrying an unclad Cane and a wounded traveler. They could hardly have passed as bandits, much less anyone of importance enough to demand an audience with the Canim's leader, and if Tavi allowed the warrior Cane to treat them as petty vagrants, they would doubtless be tossed into a cell to languish through being passed from one officer to the next, up the chain of command, and the entire enterprise of the last several weeks could come to nothing.

Varg could probably establish his credentials in fairly short order, but Tavi's instincts warned him not to ask the Cane to do so. Varg had agreed to follow and support him until they reached Nasaug-but only so long as Tavi behaved in a fashion appropriate to a leader. Among the Canim warrior caste, leaders did not detail matters of personal precedence to their subordinates. They established such guidelines themselves. It was how one became a leader in the first place.

Tavi had to establish himself, by himself, at once-and when it came to dealing with a Cane, actions undeniably spoke far more than words.

So, without another word, Tavi swung down from his horse and stalked over to the Cane, staring hard at his eyes. Tavi stopped about six feet from the warrior, and said, in the wolf-warrior's own snarling tongue, "Say that again, please. I didn't hear you."

The Free Aleran soldiers stared. Every single Cane in sight turned his head toward Tavi, ears swiveled entirely forward.

The warrior Cane lowered his chin, and a warning growl bubbled in his chest.

Tavi let out a bark of harsh laughter, showing his own teeth in response. "Is that supposed to frighten me?"

The warrior Cane rested one hand on the hilt of his sword. "Do you want your blood to stay where it is sochar-lar?"

Tavi lifted both eyebrows at the unfamiliar word, and glanced at Varg.

"Monkey," Varg supplied, in Aleran. "And male-child."

"He called me monkey boy?" Tavi asked.

Varg nodded.

Tavi nodded his thanks and turned back to the warrior Cane. "Take me to Nasaug," Tavi told him. "Now."

The Cane lifted his lips from his teeth. "Drop your sword and pray that I choose to be merciful, monkey boy."

"Will it take long for you to talk me to death?" Tavi asked. "I can't help but wonder why you, a warrior, are out here leading a group of makers and monkeys, guarding a back road. Badly. Are you too useless for an actual fight?"

The Cane let out a snarl and moved, sword sweeping from its sheath as he leapt at Tavi.

Tavi hadn't expected quite that strong a reaction, but he'd been ready to move since the moment he'd dismounted. He borrowed speed from the wind and slowed everything that happened, drawing his sword to meet the Cane's, pulling strength from the earth and twisting the whole of his body, hips and shoulders and legs, to strike against the Cane's weapon with all the force he could summon.

The Aleran gladius rang against the bloodsteel of the Cane's sword, and shattered it in a scream of tortured metal. The Cane staggered, thrown off-balance, and Tavi bulled forward, low, sword sweeping in a cut aimed at the back of the Cane's armored leg.

The Cane jerked his leg clear of the blow that could have severed tendons and rendered him immobile, and Tavi rammed his shoulder into the Cane's belly with all the power of his body and furycraft, actually lifting the huge wolf-warrior clear of the ground, before slamming him to the earth on his back. The Cane's breath exploded from his lungs in a croaking snarl, and before he could recover, Tavi had seized one broad ear in an iron grip and set the tip of his sword against the Cane's throat.

"I am Rufus Scipio," Tavi said calmly. "Captain of the First Aleran Legion. Defender of the Elinarch. I have faced the massed ranks of your army alone and unarmed. I killed the Bloodspeaker Sari by my own hand. And," he added, "I beat Nasaug at Indus . I have come to speak to Nasaug, and you will take me to him."

The warrior Cane stared at him for several seconds. Then his eyes flicked to one side, and he tilted his head slightly, baring his throat. Tavi released his grip on the Cane's ear, and returned the gesture, more shallowly. The Cane's ears twitched in what Tavi had come to recognize as a motion of surprise.

Tavi lowered the sword and backed away without letting his guard down. Then he sheathed the weapon and nodded to the Cane. "Get up. Let's move."

The Cane growled as he pushed himself up but tilted his head to one side again and gestured to the other Canim there. He turned to the Aleran centurion, and said, in mangled Aleran, "I leave the post in your care, centurion."