Jim Butcher - Captain's Fury

The Princeps dismounted, and walked up to face the Cane-who towered over him by a good three feet.

The Cane drew a heavy sword from his belt.

The Princeps mirrored him.

The Cane reversed his grip on the weapon. The Princeps did the same. Then, moving slowly, almost ritually, they exchanged weapons, and stepped away from one another. The Cane slipped the Legion gladius through his belt as a man might a dagger. The Princeps had to slide the massive Canim weapon through a loop attached to his horse's saddle.

The Princeps mounted, and the two faced one another for a moment, probably talking. Then the Princeps tilted his head slightly to one side. The Cane casually lifted one fist to its chest in an Aleran salute, and tilted his head more deeply to one side. Then he turned and strode away.

Horns blared, and within a minute the Canim army was on the move.

And they followed the enormous Cane back to Mastings, away from the ruins on the hilltop.

Legionares stared; and then, as the Princeps rode back to the walls, still bearing Arnos's body, the entire hilltop erupted into cheering, the blowing of horns, the beating of drums.

"He did it," Kellus shouted, pounding on Marcus's back. "Bloody crows and great furies, he did it!"

Marcus endured the buffeting without complaining or knocking a few teeth from the young officer's mouth-but just barely. "Yes, sir," he agreed. "He seems to have formed a habit."

The jubilation continued as the Princeps rode back up the hill, and Marcus excused himself, leaving his senior centurion in charge of the cohort. He didn't have much time. The Princeps would call for a council immediately.

Marcus made his way to the healers' tents and found most of them asleep, simply stretched out on the ground, too exhausted to walk back to their bedrolls. He looked around until he found Foss and shook the Tribune's shoulder.

"I should kill you," Foss said blearily. He opened his eyes, blinked them a few times, and said, "Oh. Marcus."

"I'd like to see her," Marcus said quietly.

"Her?" Foss mumbled. Then he winced, and said, "Oh, right. I… I'm sorry, Marcus. We did everything we could for her, but…"

"It happens," he replied wearily. "I just want to… say good-bye."

"Sure," Foss said, his usual gruff tone gentle. He jerked his head at some hanging curtains at the rear of the tent. "Back there."

Marcus made his way back to the curtains and parted them. Six bodies lay behind them, covered in bloody shrouds. He began lifting shrouds, revealing dead, pale faces with grey lips. Five were fallen legionares . One was an elderly woman.

None of them was Lady Aquitaine.

Marcus's blood ran cold.

He strode back out to Foss, cuffed the man's shoulder to wake him up, and said, "Where?"

"Back there ," Foss protested, waving at the curtains. "She was the last we worked on. She's right back there."

"No," Marcus snarled. "She isn't."

Foss blinked at him. Then he rose, groaning, and shambled back to look for himself.

"Huh," he said, after looking around. "I don't understand it. She was right there." He nodded at an empty space at the end of the row of bodies. "Seven of them."

"Now there are six," Marcus said.

"Seven minus one, yeah," Foss said testily. "Look, we've been asleep for a while, Marcus. Sometimes family or friends come for domestics or followers who are killed rather than sending them to a mass Legion grave. You know that."

Marcus shook his head. The surge of fear had faded rather rapidly, as his exhaustion finally caught up with him. He knew he should be stealing a fast horse and running for his life, but he was just too tired.

Besides, he'd do it again in a heartbeat. And he was finished with running.

He exchanged a few more words with Foss, and then marched out of the healers' tent and toward the command tent. In the end, what difference did it make if he died for this choice or one of the many others that could come back to haunt him?

As long as he was still alive, there was a job to do, a Realm to defend-and a captain to serve.

All in all, Tavi supposed, it could have been worse.

It took him another three hours to gather up the surviving commanders of the three Legions, hash out exactly what resources were left to them, and get them positioned where he wanted them to be. He set up the watch, arranged for water to be carted in from the wells that hadn't been poisoned, and ordered everyone who wasn't engaged in one of those two tasks to get some sleep.

He suspected it was that last order, more than any of the others, that won him the approval of the officers of the Senatorial Guard.

Then they buried the dead, honoring the fallen, and the First Spear called the roll for the entire Legion, marking the names of the dead on his lists, in half a day of quiet tribute. The wake that night was subdued. There was little alcohol to be had, and too many of their brothers were missing to allow sober legionares to forget that lack. For the most part, the camp turned in early.

The next two days were a mess, adjusting the formations of the battered Legions, caring for the wounded, and setting up a proper camp. The First Aleran had taken a terrible beating-almost as bad as at the battle of the Elinarch. Even so, they were in better shape than either of the Senatorial Guard Legions, even though they'd both come in marching heavily overstrength.

The captain of the First Senatorial had been killed in the fighting, and the next-most-senior officer was the Tribune Auxiliarus, whose cavalry had been responsible for the attacks on several steadholts. The man hadn't returned from his most recent patrol-or if he had, he'd somehow learned which way the wind was blowing, and elected not to remain. None of the officers below him seemed willing to risk his possible wrath by taking the command that was rightfully his, and thus tacitly support any charges that might be brought against him.

Nalus suggested that Tavi assign him to be the joint commander of both Guard Legions, and Tavi found it an excellent solution. There were just enough survivors of the two Legions to make a single full-strength Legion in any case, and Nalus immediately folded the two Guard Legions together, "until reinforcements made dividing them practical again."

Kitai and her kinsmen, meanwhile, set out to hunt down the guilty Tribune and his murderers. She'd won the coin toss, that time.

The weather had turned strange. The sky was covered with a pall of grey, and flecks of something that looked like snow but wasn't began to fall from the sky. It took Tavi an hour or two to realize what was falling-ash. Ashes from some enormous fire that could only be explained by the presence of a volcano. Since it also explained the great red light on the night of the duel, as well as the shuddering in the earth, he felt confident in his guess. After a day or so, it slackened, then stopped, and the next day the sky was brighter. Still, it was strange, and it worried nearly everyone.

After two days of reorganizing, repairing, and rearming, the First Aleran, beaten down to seventeen combat-capable cohorts, almost looked like proper soldiers again. The ruins had been neatly cleared of debris and many of the trees that had grown up through it, and the engineers had been hard at work on buildings, repairing their walls and roofs where they could, and converting them to open space where they couldn't. Every hale legionare helped them, including Tavi himself, at least for part of the day, carrying away rubble and clearing ground. It was best to keep the men busy. It would improve morale and discourage thoughts of any rash adventures toward the town of Mastings, still filled with the foes who had mauled them so badly.