Princeps' fury (2 page)

Like accepting cheers one didn’t deserve, it was also what one did.

Those men lying wounded had become so in service to him. They had suffered their pains for him. He could lose an hour of sleep, or two, or ten, if it meant easing that pain for a few moments for the cost of nothing more than a few kind words.

Sir Carlus was the last of those Raucus visited. The young man was still fairly groggy. His injuries had been more extensive than he had known, and the watercrafting that had healed them had left him exhausted and disoriented. Neck injuries could be that way. Something to do with the brain, Raucus had been told.

“Thank you, my lord,” Carlus said, when Raucus sat down on one edge of his bunk. “We couldn’t have held without you.”

“We all fight together, lad,” Raucus replied roughly. “No thanks need be given. We’re the best. It’s how we do our work. How we do our duty. Next time, it could be the Third saving me.”

“Yes, my lord,” Carlus said. “Sir? Is it true what they say? That you challenged the First Lord to the
juris macto
?”

Raucus snorted out a quiet laugh. “That was a while ago, lad. Aye, true enough.”

Carlus’s dulled eyes glittered for a minute. “You’d have won, I wager.”

“Don’t be daft, boy,” Raucus said, rising and giving the young Knight a squeeze on the shoulder. “Gaius Sextus is the First Lord. He would have handed me my head. And still would. Think about what happened to Kalarus Brencis, eh?”

Carlus didn’t look happy to hear that answer, but he said, “Yes, my lord.”

“Get some rest, soldier,” Raucus said. “Well done.”

At last, Raucus turned to leave the tent. There. Duty done. At last he could get a few hours of rest. The increased pressure on the Shieldwall, of late, had left him wishing that he had demanded that Crassus serve his first Legion hitch at home. Great furies knew, the boy could make himself useful now. As could Maximus. The two of them, it seemed, had at least learned to coexist without attempting to murder one another.

Raucus snorted at his own train of thought. He sounded, to himself, like an old man, tired and aching and wishing for younger shoulders to bear his burdens. Though he supposed he would rather grow old than not.

Still. It would be nice to have the help.

There were just so
many
of the crowbegotten savages. And he’d been fighting them for so bloody long.

He walked toward the stairway leading down into the fortifications within the Shieldwall itself, where a heated chamber and a cot waited for him. He’d gone perhaps ten paces when a scream of wind, the windstream of an incoming Knight Aeris, howled in the distance.

Raucus paused, and a moment later, a Knight Aeris soared in, escorted by one of the Third Aleran’s Knights who had been flying patrol. Night had fallen, but the snow always made that a minor inconvenience, particularly when the moon was out. All the same, it wasn’t until the man had landed that Raucus spotted the insignia of the First Antillan upon his breastplate.

The man hurried to Raucus, panting, and slammed his fist to his heart in a hasty salute. “My lord,” he gasped.

Raucus returned the salute. “Report.”

“Message from Captain Tyreus, my lord,” the Knight panted. “His position is under heavy attack, and he urgently requests reinforcements. We’ve never seen so many Icemen in one place, my lord.”

Raucus looked at the man for a moment and nodded. Then, without another word, he summoned his wind furies, took to the air, and headed west, toward the First Antillan’s position, a hundred miles down the wall, at the best speed he could manage for the distance.

His men needed him. Rest would have to wait.

It was what one did.

“And I don’t care how hungover you are, Hagan!” said Captain Demos, in a perfectly conversational voice that nonetheless carried the length of the ship and up and down the dock. “You get those lines coiled properly, or I’ll have you scraping barnacles all the way across the Run!”

Gaius Octavian watched the surly, bleary-eyed sailor turn back to his work, this time performing more to the liking of the
Slive
’s captain. The ships had begun leaving the harbor at Mastings on the morning tide, just after dawn. It was near to midmorning, and the harbor and the sea beyond looked like a forest of masts and billowing sails, rolling over the waves to the horizon. Hundreds of ships, the largest fleet Alera had ever seen, were now sailing for open sea.

The only ship still in port, in fact, was the
Slive
. It looked stained, old, and worn. It wasn’t. Its captain simply chose to forgo the usual painting and piping. Its sails were patched and dirty, its lines dark with smears of tar. The carved female figure on the prow, so often made to resemble benevolent female-form furies and revered ancestors on other ships, looked more like a young riverfront doxy than anything else.

If one didn’t know what to look for, the sheer amount of sail she could hang and the long, lean, dangerous lines of the
Slive
might go completely overlooked. She was too small to be matched squarely against a proper warship, but she was swift and nimble on the open sea, and her captain was a dangerously competent man.

“Are you absolutely sure about this?” rumbled Antillar Maximus. The Tribune was of a height with Tavi, though more heavily muscled, and his armor and equipment were so scratched and dented by use that they would never have passed muster on a parade ground. Not that anyone in the First Aleran Legion gave a bloody crow’s feather about that.

“Whether I’m sure or not,” Tavi replied quietly, “his ship is the only left in port.”

Maximus grimaced. “Point,” he growled. “But he’s a bloody pirate, Tavi. You have a title to think about now. A Princeps of Alera shouldn’t have a vessel like that as his flagship. It’s . . . dubious.”

“So’s my title,” Tavi replied. “Do you know of a more competent captain? Or a faster ship?”

Max snorted out another breath and looked at the third person on the dock. “Practicality over all. This is your fault.”

The young woman spoke with perfect assurance. “Yes it is,” she said calmly. Kitai still wore her long white hair in the fashion of the Horse clan of the Marat people, shaved to the scalp along the sides and left long in a swath over the center of her skull, like the mane of one of the Horse clan’s totem mounts. She was dressed in leather riding breeches, a loose white tunic, and duelist’s belt bearing two swords. If the cool of the mid-autumn morning disturbed her in her light dress, she showed no signs of it. Her green eyes, upturned at the corners, as were all of her people’s, roamed over the ship alertly, like a cat’s, distant and interested at the same time. “Alerans have a great many foolish ideas in their heads. Pound on their skulls often enough, and some of them are bound to fall out eventually.”

“Captain?” Tavi called, grinning. “Will your ship be fit to sail at any point today?”

Demos came over to the ship’s railing and leaned his forearms on it, staring down at them. “Oh, aye, Your Highness,” he replied. “Whether or not you’ll be on it when it does is another matter entirely.”

“What?” Max said. “Demos, you’ve been paid half the amount of your contract, up front. I gave it to you myself.”

“Yes,” Demos replied. “I’ll be glad to cross the sea with the fleet. I’ll be glad to take you and the pretty barbarian girl.” Demos pointed a finger at Tavi. “But His Royal Highness there doesn’t set foot aboard my ship until he settles up with me.”

Tavi reached the top of the gangplank and spread his hands. “Well?” Demos, a lean man, slightly taller than average, dressed in a black tunic and breeches, turned to lean one elbow on the rail and study Tavi. His free hand, Tavi noted, just happened to fall within an inch or two of the hilt of his sword. “You destroyed some of my property.”

Demos blinked his eyes, slowly. Then he looked away. He was quiet for a moment, before murmuring, “I didn’t make the sea. I just sail on it.”

“Here’s the problem,” Tavi said. “If I give you those chains, knowing what you’re going to do with them, I become a part of whatever those chains are used for. I become a slaver. And I am no slaver, Demos. And never will be.”

“I think someone’s told me that once or twice before,” Tavi said, grinning. “I’ll replace your chains if you’ll make me a promise.”

Tavi unslung the heavy courier’s bag from its strap over one shoulder and tossed it to Demos. The captain caught it, grunted under the weight, and gave Tavi a suspicious look as he opened the bag.

Demos stared for a long, silent moment. Then, link by link, he drew a set of slaver’s chains out of the bag.

Every link was made of gold.

Demos ran his fingertips over the chains for an astonished minute. It was the fortune of a mercenary’s lifetime, and much, much more. Then he looked up at Tavi, his brow furrowed in a confused frown.

“You don’t have to accept them,” Tavi said. “My Knights Aeris will fly me out to one of the other ships. You’ll join the fleet. And you can take up slaving again at the end of your contract.

“I’ll need skilled captains, Demos. I’ll need men whose word I can trust.” Tavi grinned and put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “And men who have the fortitude to bear up under extreme prosperity. What say you?”

Demos dropped the chains back into the bag and slung it over one shoulder, then inclined his head more deeply than Tavi had seen him make the gesture before. “Welcome aboard the
Slive
, my lord.”

“That’s the glamorous life of a Cursor,” Tavi replied. “But with any luck, we won’t be gone long. We sail Varg and his people back home, make some polite noises to keep diplomatic channels open, then come right back. Two months or so.”

Max grunted. “Gives Gaius time to gather support in the Senate, declare you his heir all legal and official.”

“And puts me somewhere that is both beyond the reach of potential assassins and of unquestionable importance to the Realm,” Tavi said. “I am particularly fond of the former.”

The sailors began casting off mooring lines, and Kitai took Tavi’s hand firmly. “Come,” she said. “Before you splatter your breakfast all over your armor.”

As the ship pushed away from the dock and began to rock with the motion of the sea, Tavi felt his stomach slowly begin to roil, and he hurried to his cabin to relieve himself of his armor and make sure that he had plenty of water and an empty bucket or two available. He was a terrible sailor, and life on a ship was pure torment.