The battle was brief, elemental, and savage.
The vord warrior forms slowed for a few steps upon seeing the Canim ready to meet them, but then hurtled forward with shrill wails and whistles. Horrible scything limbs plunged at the wolf-warriors with the kind of power that would leave Aleran legionares screaming or dead without extraordinary skill or luck.
Against the battle line of Canim in full armor, it was... insufficiently impressive.
Varg simply struck the scythes from his opponents' limbs as they swept toward him, his red steel blade flashing in the strobes of blue-white light from the powers leashed above them. A third strike took the head from the vord, and a heavy kick both crumpled the black chitin of its armored torso and sent it sprawling back to die on the ground, thrashing uselessly. Varg's sword whipped one way and struck a supporting limb from one vord, then reversed itself and removed a scythe from the vord on the other side, which had been wetted in Canim blood, saving a stunned warrior's life.
Varg let out a roar of rage and what seemed to Fidelias like pure, joyous enthusiasm, struck down a second vord, and covered the fallen warrior as he rose and retrieved his weapon. Varg then broke to his right, while the recovered Cane went to his left. Both darted through the line of battle, and the Canim in the second rank followed them, so that the vord on either side of the hole Varg had created found themselves surrounded by warriors, cut down from the front and from behind.
The gap in the vord line widened, as each fallen vord's opponent pushed through and went after the flanks and rear of another foe, so that the battlefield in front of Fidelias and the rest of the command group seemed to break into two halves and part to the left and right, like two curtains opening onto a stage - one littered with the bodies of broken vord warrior forms. The battle raged off into the mist to the left and right, and out of their immediate view.
At some point, the vord shrieks turned to a new, urgent pitch - a retreat? - and Maximus's cavalry horns began to sound the charge, already receding into greater distance.
"Ah, they've broken," said the Princeps, his teeth bared in a wolfish smile. He clenched one hand into a fist. "Max is after them. They're running. By the great furies, they're running!"
He never turned or raised his voice above simple conversational volume - nor could he, as the image of the calm, controlled Princeps of the Realm - but Fidelias judged that Valiar Marcus would be more than happy to do it for him. "They're running, boys!" he bawled out in a training-ground bellow. "Varg and Antillar were too much for 'em!"
A thunder of cheers and Canim roars bellowed out for several seconds before Fidelias passed a cutoff signal back through the line to the cohorts, where Aleran centurions and Canim huntmasters began snarling and growling orderly quiet back into the ranks.
Moments later, the first returning Canim began to appear, walking back toward the ranks in the same arching battle line in which they'd begun the fight. Several were walking only with assistance - but there were no breaks in the line. On the flanks, the Aleran cavalry was returning to its original position in the order of battle. Antillar Maximus came riding in a moment ahead of Varg and saluted the Princeps, slamming his fist into his armor, over his heart.
Varg rolled to halt in front of them and nodded to the Princeps as well. "Not much of a fight."
"It seems that they do have a breaking point, if the will of their Queen isn't driving them," the Princeps said. "Your warriors found it."
Varg let out a pleased growling sound of agreement.
"I hope you will do us the honor of allowing our healers to treat your wounded. There's no sense in having them out of action when we can put them back into top condition."
"That would please me," Varg replied. "I will request it of them."
Octavian inclined his head to the Canim leader and returned Antillar's salute. "Let's have it."
"A few of them managed to get out of the close fight," Antillar Maximus said. "None of them made it out of the fog. The scouts reported other vord like these falling back to the city. They went right up the wall. They're inside now, maybe a thousand."
"And those are just the ones we saw," Octavian said. "We can't leave them in a fortress at our backs, growing a supply of croach to feed reinforcements they move into the area. This one will be up to us, I believe. Signal the Prime Cohort and the Battlecrows. I want them to be the first through the gates. Both cavalry elements are to take up positions around the city, to catch any others who try to run."
Antillar blinked. "Those gates aren't exactly made of paper and glue, Calderon," the Tribune said. "The High Lords were probably reinforcing them for months, this winter. You know how to run the figures. Any idea of the kind of power it will take to bring them down?"
The Princeps considered Antillar's words. Fidelias eyed Antillar and Varg alike, but he didn't think either of them could see how nervous Octavian was. Then the Princeps nodded, and said, "A considerable amount of force."
"I don't think we have it," Max said.
"I think you're wrong, Max," Octavian said calmly.
The Ambassador's eyes narrowed in anticipation, all but glowing green, and her smile somehow made Fidelias take more note of the points of her canine teeth than any of the others.
The Princeps grinned at her in reply, almost unsettlingly boyish, and said, "Let's find out."
Chapter 32
Tavi wondered if he was about to make a very large, very humiliating, potentially fatal mistake.
He frowned, and spoke to that doubting part of himself in a firm tone of thought: If you didn't want to take the big chances, you shouldn't have started screaming about who your father was. You could have moved quietly across the Realm and disappeared among the Marat, if you had wanted to. You decided to fight for your birthright. Well, now it's time to fight. It's time to see if you can do what you have to do. So quit whining and bring down that gate.
"Warmaster Varg will have operational command while I deal with the gate," Tavi said.
The Legion command staff had been briefed on Tavi's intention the day before. They hadn't liked it then. Today, though, they simply saluted. Good. Varg's part in the opening skirmish of the battle (itself but a skirmish for what was to come), had convinced them of the Cane's ability.
"Tribune Antillus!" Tavi called.
After several signals were exchanged, Crassus came cruising down to the ground and landed beside Tavi's horse. They exchanged salutes, and Tavi said, "I'll be moving forward with the Prime and the Battlecrows. I want you and the Pisces hovering over my shoulders."