Jim Butcher - Captain's Fury

"Of course you are," Gaius said, "and should be."

And with those words, a blue-white shaft of lightning roared down from the clear night sky. and gouged a hole the size of a grave in the solid stone not five yards from Brencis's feet.

"I give you one final chance to live," Gaius said, and his voice was no longer gentle. "Choose."

Brencis sobbed, and his sword clattered to the stony ground. He turned and fled, his boots sliding and scuffing over the mountainside, vanishing into the distance.

Amara rose slowly, afterward, and had to help Bernard rise with her.

"Well," Gaius said quietly. "That's a relief." And with that, he dropped without ceremony to the ground. The blazing light around him-and the light of the furylamps on the mountain-vanished in the same moment.

"A relief, sire?" Amara asked.

Gaius's voice, from the darkness, sounded calmly weary. "By all accounts, young Brencis is quite capable at his furycraft-and I have enough to do tonight without putting him down, too."

"Sire?" Amara asked.

"Surely," Bernard said, his voice strained, "after killing so many men, one more…"

Gaius murmured something, and one of the furylamps began to give off a much-reduced amount of light, enough to let Amara dimly see the First Lord as a vague, tall shape, standing over one of the fallen Immortals. "These," he murmured. "These were not men. Men have wills, good Count. Men have choice."

His eyes turned toward Amara for a quiet moment, pausing just long enough to give his last words a subtle weight.

"Kalarus raised these creatures from childhood bound to these accursed collars," Gaius continued. "He took their wills, their choices, away from them. The men they could have been died long before tonight. These were animals.

"What he did was terrible, yet I cannot help but wish he'd done it to more of his legionares . Today would be much simplified." The First Lord's voice tightened, quickened. "Let us count ourselves fortunate that Kalarus had the collars all made from the same batch."

Amara blinked at him. "You mean… the Immortals could have…?"

"Killed me?" Gaius asked. He shrugged a shoulder. "Perhaps. In some ways, I am no more powerful than any other High Lord."

Amara blinked. "But, sire… what I saw a moment ago…"

"One needn't be omnipotent to overcome every foe, provided one can appear that way in the enemy's mind." He smiled faintly. "True, I have the means to have slain them all-but accidents happen, and the weight of numbers could tell against me just as surely as they did against my's-" His voice broke. He closed his eyes, cleared his throat, and rasped, "My son."

Amara faced Gaius, silent, watching his face. Not even his discipline could hide the pain in his features, and Amara suddenly ached for the old man.

Gaius shook his head briskly and strode toward Amara and Bernard. He put one hand on her shoulder, another on Bernards. Bernard let out a hiss of discomfort-then there was a wrenching pop that dragged a muffled curse from his throat.

"There," Gaius murmured. "Try to move it."

Bernard did, rotating his wounded shoulder slowly. "Tender," he said after a moment. "But it will serve, sire."

Gaius nodded and squeezed Amara's shoulder gently. In that simple gesture, relief and energy seemed to flood into her, weariness washed away before it. She shuddered at the pleasant sensation left when her aches and fatigue vanished.

"Look there," Gaius murmured, and nodded to the east.

Amara looked. Dozens, even hundreds of green streamers of light flickered through the sky, rising from the earth in wavering lines, almost like luminous smoke. They were spaced miles apart in a regular grid.

"Kalarus's sentinel craftings," Gaius murmured. "He knows where I am. And I daresay he's deduced my goal. Right now, Kalarus is gathering every Knight under his command and ordering every legionare in his forces to intercept us, so we have little time."

Amara jerked her head in a nod. "What would you have us do?"

Gaius looked back and forth between them. "Guard my back. I should hate to make you walk all this way only to take an arrow in the kidneys when we've all but reached the finish line."

Drums rumbled from farther up the pass. A low moan drifted through the rocks, the faint, basso precursor to a Legion marching song that must shortly follow.

"Sire," Bernard cautioned. "I'm not sure what I can do against numbers like that."

"His forces are spread out in the field, and he has far fewer Knights and legionares at hand than he might," Gaius said. "Which was rather the point of this stealth business, yes?"

"True enough, sire," Bernard said. "But fifty thousand or five thousand makes little difference to me."

"I see your point. You need only concern yourselves with his Knights. The others will not be an obstacle."

Amara drew in her breath suddenly. "I understand."

Gaius nodded, eyes sparkling briefly. "You would."

The marching song of a Kalaran Legion became discernible across the mountainside.

Gaius turned to face upslope, narrowed his eyes, and raised his right hand above his head. There was a flash, and then a rippling tongue of fire licked up from his fingers. He closed his hand on the hilt of a sword made of stationary flame.

Amara recovered her sword and hurried to his side. Bernard followed suit, setting an arrow to his bow.

In the pass above, a second body of troops appeared-several cohorts of legiotiares , marching together in a swift, cohesive formation. The Kalaran Legion pressed forward at a quick step, moving steadily toward Gaius's blazing blade.

"Stay behind me," Gaius cautioned them. "Directly behind me."

And then, with a cry of challenge, the suicidally outnumbered First Lord and his retainers charged the oncoming Legion.

In two years of fighting since the Battle of the Elinarch, Marcus and the First Aleran had never seen the Canim resort to the use of their bizarre sorceries. In the absence of other evidence, they had concluded that the enemy's ability to use them had died with Sari and the majority of his ritualist compatriots.

The conclusion was incorrect.

The first shock of the Canim charge was repelled by the massed ranks of the three Aleran Legions. The palisade wall was a light defensive emplacement, as such things were reckoned, but it was critical that the outer wall hold until the engineers could fortify the partial wall remaining around the ruined town at the crown of the hill.

"Now we know why they didn't fortify the ruin," Crassus murmured.

"Why do our work for us?" Marcus grunted. He raised his voice, and shouted, "Third Cohort, dress those ranks!"

The Canim had withdrawn in good order after their first charge, but a second and larger force of raiders was already in position. In two years, Nasaug had drilled his own conscripts into something that resembled an actual military force, and the mass movements of the raiders, which had originally been slow, confused, almost tidal, had become disciplined and precise.

Their armament had changed as well, Marcus noted. They had taken the handheld scything swords (originally harvesting implements, for goodness' sake) the Canim raiders had used and mounted them on thick wooden shafts, effec-tively changing what had been a close-fighting implement into a weapon with far greater reach, one more suited to assaulting a defended position.

Marcus watched the assault coming and felt his heart pounding in fear as the oncoming Canim let out howls and bellowed battle cries. The raiders smashed into the palisade like a living tide of muscle and steel. The Canim raiders fought with far more skill and tenacity than they had at the Battle of the Elinarch, and the new hafted weaponry proved deadly.