by Jim Butcher
They had little time.
Isana pressed as close to the newly cut hole as she dared. There was little point in stealth anymore, and she called out, "Araris! Araris, hurry!"
Steel rang on steel inside the ship. A man let out a cry of agony.
"Araris!" Isana called.
"Crows take it," Tavi snarled. "I was supposed to be the last off."
A dim shape appeared in the opening, and steel clashed again. Isana saw an explosion of violet sparks raining against azure as the blades of two master metalcrafters clashed, and then a sword's blade, scarlet with blood, plunged through the planks of the hull beside the opening.
Araris appeared, weaponless, and stumbled sprawling from the hole in the hull to fall into the sea. The water around him immediately became stained with streamers of crimson.
Isana stared at him, suddenly unable to focus, to think of the proper course of action. Panic upon the ship and rage within the sea pressed against her from both sides, a paralyzing weight.
Tavi reached out and got one strong arm under one of Araris's. Moving as if in a choreographed performance, Kitai seized Araris's other arm, so that he was suspended between them, his face just out of the water.
"Go!" Tavi shouted. "Go, go, go!"
Just then, a sound surged up from the depths. Isana had never heard anything like it. So deep that it rattled her very bones, rising to a louder whistle or shriek that pressed against her eardrums like a handful of dull needles. The surface of the sea itself shook with it, sending up a fine cloud of spray that only rose a few inches above the waters. The sound hit her, and with it came a timeless, inhuman, unthinking rage, and the sheer volume, the emotional mass of it, left her arms and legs shaking with impotent terror.
And then it happened again, from behind them. And again from ahead. And again, and again, and again, as the leviathans sensed the presence of intruders in their sea.
"Uh," Ehren panted, clearly terrified. "Uh, uh, uh. That can't be good."
Isana felt the leviathans begin to move as they came alert, motions so vast that they made the ship seem like a child's toy bobbing on the surface of a millpond. The other creatures of the sea swirled in frantic response, the smaller fish scattering, while the sharks became more restive and eager, moving in swifter and more erratic patterns.
Isana felt it with terrifying clarity when several of them picked up the scent of Araris's blood in the sea and began slicing toward them.
Men on the doomed ship began to scream.
It was too much. Too painful. Isana knew she should have been doing something, acting, but the agony of all that motion, of all that emotion, had become a precise and inescapable torment that no amount of writhing could lessen. She clutched at her head and heard herself screaming through clenched teeth.
Then a strong hand gripped her own, closing with power that barely avoided crushing bones, and Isana grasped at that pain as an anchor in the overwhelming, fluid world that had overwhelmed her senses.
"Isana!" Tavi called. "Mother!"
That word, from those lips, came as a sudden shock, brighter and warmer and more terrible than all the others, and her eyes snapped open.
"Back to the Slive!" Tavi shouted. "Take us back to the ship! Hurry!"
"Aleran!" Kitai cried. There was the sound of water being thrashed to foam, and then a shark arrowed by them, streaming a cloud of dark fluid behind it. Isana turned to see the Marat girl lift a bloodied dagger to her teeth, and seize the unmoving Araris.
"The ship!" Tavi thundered, his voice ringing with command. "Crows take it, you are the First Lady of Alera, and you will return us to the ship!"
Her son's voice carried pure steel in it, iron control, and Isana grasped at that strength through the contact of their hands. Somehow, it strengthened her, and she was able to push the overwhelming power being unleashed all around her from her thoughts. Reason returned in a cold, focused rush, just as another shark, the largest yet, made a run at the wounded Araris.
Isana called to Rill, sudden rage at the beast giving her strength, and the shark was flung from the water with violent force, arching into the air to land thrashing violently on the deck of the Mactis overhead.
"Hold tight," Isana growled. She could feel the leviathans rushing toward them, the pressure wave of water that surged out ahead of them. The nearest had dived, sinking a mere five hundred feet or so beneath them, and it was rising swiftly toward the ship, rising with nightmarish rage and power, and Isana could all but see what would happen to the ship when the ridge of scaled plates on its back struck the vessel's keel.
She called to Rill again, and they surged forward with such speed that the canvas harness bit into her skin, even through the fabric of her clothing. They shot forward, skimming the surface of the water, and she could hear Ehren's breathless shout of fear blending with Kitai's sudden whoop of excitement. They sailed forward, and Isana banked back toward the Slive. Their passage kicked up a curtain of water ten feet high as they turned, barely avoiding the bulk of another leviathan cruising toward the Mactis.
Isana called out to Rill, to the sea, and as they flashed toward the Slive, the water rose beneath them, building up into a wave that lifted them from the surface of the already-roiling ocean, so that as they reached the ship, and the wave broke upon the watercrafting around it, they simply washed up onto its deck.
Demos was standing there as the furycrafted wave washed over his feet and rocked the Slive hard to its starboard side, and his eyes were wide with shock. The ship righted itself in the water, and Demos stirred, turning back to his men, and bellowing orders that could barely be heard over the bellows of angry leviathans.
Isana turned to Araris at once, crouching over him and laying her hands on his abdomen. There was a gaping wound in his side, just below his lowest ribs. She grasped at the split flesh with her hands, pushing it back together, pressing her attention down through her fingers. The wound was massive and uncomplicated, but if the bleeding wasn't stopped, and soon, he would not live.
"I did not go through that torture at Ceres to let you die now," she heard herself snarl. Then she willed Rill down into the wound, found its edges with the fury's help, and began to bind them together, to contain the blood trying to rush from his body. It was difficult, and Isana felt her strength swiftly fading, but it had to be done. She did not relent in her efforts until she felt the artery mend, felt the pressures of his body begin to stabilize.
After that, she finally relented, slumping, gasping for breath, and weary in every fiber of her being.
She looked up to find Tavi staring at her.
She looked around. Kitai was watching her as well, her canted eyes brilliant in the lowering light. Ehren's face was awed. Demos, too, stood watching her, as did a dozen sailors.
"Bloody crows," one of the men said. "She didn't even use a tub."
Isana blinked and stared down at her bloodied hands, at the unconscious man beneath them.
She hadn't?
She hadn't.
Bloody crows, indeed. That was impossible. Only the most powerful watercrafters in the Realm could…
There was another vast, sea-shaking bellow.
Isana looked up, as did everyone else on the Slive, to see the first leviathan attack the Mactis. It rose from the sea, a mountain of armored flesh and frenzied rage. It lifted the Mactis from the waves, and the crack of timbers snapping as its keel shattered cut through the twilight. Men screamed, falling from the ruined ship, rendered into toys by the distance and by the sheer magnitude of scale. Some of them splashed into the ocean. Some fell upon the bulk of the leviathan, its hide no more forgiving than the rocks of a hostile shore. Half of the ship stayed afloat for a moment-but only until a second leviathan rammed the first, crushing it between them. Men thrashed desperately for life, insects among the angry titans of the sea. Some of them had managed to get a few of the small boats into the sea, but they could not long remain afloat in that maelstrom, and the growing darkness, the surge of fur
ious leviathans slamming into one another in their rage, and the tortured sea swallowed them as the Slive sailed on.
Isana felt the horror in those around them-and the sympathy. She realized that these men, though pirates and scoundrels, though struggling to say alive against a foe who would surely have killed them, had just witnessed one of their own nightmares. None of them desired to see another sailor die the way the men of the Mactis had.
Isana shook her head, struggling to separate her senses from those around her. It was too much, and her head had begun to pound again.
"All right," growled a voice whose tone brooked no dissent. Her son, she thought dully. "Show's over. Ehren, get the cabin door. Kitai."
Isana looked up dully as Kitai, still shirtless, calmly picked her up as she might carry a child. The Marat girl gave Isana a small, encouraging smile, while Tavi picked up Araris.
"It was well-done," Kitai murmured to Isana quietly. "We're back safe. Time to rest now."
Isana began to protest. She'd closed the worst of the wound, but Araris would need more attention-and she didn't even know if any of the others had been injured. She began to tell Kitai to put her down and fetch a healing tub.
But somewhere between drawing a breath and using it to speak, she lost the will to keep going and embraced the promise of silence and peace in her exhaustion.
Chapter 27
"Bloody crows," snarled Antillar Maximus. "Right now, the captain's taking it easy, sleeping in his bunk in a nice, comfortable cell back at the fort at the Eli-narch, while we're getting soaked to the skin."
Valiar Marcus stepped down from the block that let him peer over the First Aleran's palisade and view the enemy position at the ford of the river Aepon. The Canim had employed the talents of the Free Aleran Legions. Their earthcrafters weren't the equals of a Legion engineering corps, and the positions they'd erected weren't made of the multilayered stone of a battlecrafted siege wall, but the heavy earthworks they had raised on the far side of the shallow ford were massive enough to provide a formidable defensive position.
"Bet he's eating hot breakfast cakes right now," Maximus continued. The young Tribune glowered up at the steady rain. "Maybe a morning cup of tea. Probably borrowed one of Cyril's books. Cyril's the sort to have a lot of books."
Antillus Crassus stepped down from his own block and glowered at Max. "I'm certain you never complained this much to Captain Scipio."
"Yes he did," Marcus murmured. "Just never in front of anyone. Except me."
Crassus gave Maximus a very direct look. "Tribune, I hereby order you to stop whining."
"That never worked for Scipio," Marcus noted.
"It's a sacred right," Max said. He chinned himself up on the palisade briefly, then dropped back to the ground again. "Looks like they're getting ready to change the guard."
"Signal the engineers," Crassus said.
Marcus turned and flashed a hand signal at the nearest Marat horseman- in this case, horsewoman, he supposed. She nodded, turned, and galloped to the top of the low hill behind them, and repeated the gesture in broader strokes.
"It isn't going to buy us much time, hitting them during their shift change," Max said.
"It doesn't need to," Marcus replied. "They're expecting a shooting match. A few seconds will make the difference." He turned and nodded to the file leaders of the Prime Cohort. They saluted, and murmured orders went down the ranks. The veterans drew their swords in slithering whispers of steel.
Crassus turned and beckoned a runner. The young man hurried over. "Please inform the Honorable Senator that our initial assault is about to begin."
The runner saluted and pelted away.
Marcus stepped up onto the block again and watched the river.
At first, he couldn't see it happening. The change was too slight. His ears, though, picked up on a change in the constant, almost-silent murmur of the water sliding between the banks. The pitch rose, and Marcus leaned forward, watching intently.
The ford was about three feet deep under normal circumstances-slightly deeper, given the steady rain they'd had during the past week. It was not too deep for infantry to ford, but it was more than deep and swift enough to take a man from his feet if he wasn't careful. Trying to cross the ford in the face of the enemy's defenses would be a slow and bloody business, where the balests and bows of the combined Canim and ex-slave forces would be able to take a terrible toll. It would be possible to grind resistance down, eventually, but a conventional assault would require a hefty price in blood.
Which was, Marcus reflected, probably why Amos had given the First Aleran the dubious distinction of leading the attack.
Marcus wasn't sure if the captain would have run the battle the same way, but he was certain that he would have approved of Crassus's immediate response to such a bloody scenario-to change the scenario.
"Sir," Marcus growled.
Crassus drew his blade and nodded to Maximus. The big Antillan gave his half brother a grin, and, with a murmur to the Knights Pisces, drew his sword. They immediately readied their own weapons.
Marcus kept his eyes on the river, struggling to see through the almost-lightless evening and the steady rain. The reeds the scouts had placed earlier that day had been stripped to pure, white wood that would be more easily seen in the dark, but even so, Marcus began to wonder whether or not it would do him any good.
Then he saw a gleam of fresh white on the river. And a second. A moment later, a third.
"That's it," he hissed. "Three rods. The river is running less than a foot deep."
"Now," Crassus snapped.
Marcus jerked hard on the rope beside him, stepped down from the block, drew back his leg, and kicked at the palisade. Though it seemed a standard Legion defensive wall from the other side, the engineers had altered a two-hundred-foot section of the fence, and when Marcus kicked down the section immediately in front of him, the others fell as well in a sudden wave, crashing to the earth on the far side.
Cries went up in the other camp, but they were immediately drowned out as Crassus lifted his sword, let out a howling battle cry, and the knights and veterans around him responded in kind. Crassus dropped his blade forward, and the Prime Cohort and Knights Pisces surged forward, with Marcus, Crassus, and Maximus in the first rank.
The First Aleran hit the now-shallow water of the ford and surged toward the opposite bank. Arrows began to fly from the earthworks. In the dark and confusion and splashing water, Marcus knew that only a very skilled or very lucky shot from any Aleran bow would have a chance of downing one of the heavily armored legionares. Most arrows skimmed off of the steel helmets, or slammed harmlessly into the steel-lined wooden shields of the Legion.
Some didn't.
Marcus heard a scream on his right, and felt, more than saw, the sudden drag in the integrity of the cohort's formation as someone else went down and slowed the advance of those behind him. An arrow struck sparks from Maximus's helmet, and another flickered past Marcus's ear with an eerie, fluttering hiss.
They were halfway across before the Canim sharpshooters went to work.
The flat, metallic twang of the odd bows was not loud, but they were near enough now to hear it. Each twang was followed almost instantly by the heavy sound of impact-a thud accompanied by the shriek of torn steel. Marcus saw from the corner of his eye as another file leader went down-as did the two men in tight formation behind him. Men screamed, and the advance grew more sluggish.
"Now, Max," Crassus shouted. The acting captain of the Legion lifted his blade, and it was suddenly wreathed in brilliant flame, a beacon and a signal to every man in the Legion-not to mention to everyone in the enemy lines as well.
At the same time, Maximus stretched out a hand toward the waters remaining between the First Aleran and the shore. He cried out, and a sudden swirl of wind went rushing down the river, spinning and twisting into a miniature waterspout that threw up great, shimmering sheets of water, obscuring the flaming sword and its wielder from ea
sy observation.
"Forward!" Crassus cried. The fire on the blade pulsed and shimmered. "Forward! For Alera!"
As he finished his cry, Crassus unleashed the firecrafting he'd been preparing.
Rage poured through Marcus, more sudden, hotter, and more violent than any he had felt in years. Every other thought was scorched away by the fire of his anger, and he found himself letting out another cry of eagerness to meet the enemy in battle.
The hesitation of the advancing force vanished entirely, as nearly eight hundred throats erupted in a simultaneous bellow of raw hostility. The First Aleran picked up speed, building to a furious charge as they crossed Maximus's windcrafted water screen. Driven by that anger, they thrust themselves into the teeth of the enemy, utterly ignoring the missiles that continued streaking toward them, claiming lives.
The First Aleran took its hits as it emerged from the river, and accepted them as a necessary price to come to grips with their foe. They surged up the earthworks, spearheaded by the First Aleran's Knights Terra. They struck the mixed earth-and-stone defenses with their great hammers, triggering a minor landslide-one that could be climbed, up and over the defensive walls. Marcus, Maximus, and Crassus were the first to set foot on the improvised ramp, advancing up to the makeshift battlements.
There, they met the enemy.
Marcus had been ready to face the Canim again, but the former slaves were another matter entirely. As he gained the wall, a boy of no more than fifteen summers raised a bow, fumbling at an arrow. Marcus had no time to think. His arm lashed out, and the young soldier fell back, blood rushing from his opened throat.
Marcus stared at the boy for a shocked second, a single thundering heartbeat that suddenly stretched, elongated, drawing the rest of the world into a deceptively dreamy languor. The rage still burned in him, but for that instant, it existed outside of himself, a part of the background that was neither more nor less important than the sounds of battle.
The boy's neck was marred by collar scars. Old ones. If he truly had been fifteen years of age, then he must have gained his scars when he was scarcely old enough to walk-and Marcus had few illusions about what sorts of uses a slaver would find for a helpless child.