The Tribune reeled. Durias lifted his sword and shoved it hard against the Tribune's armored chest, forcing the man to the ground.
"Stand up," Durias snarled, "and I will strike off your useless head, Manus."
The Tribune looked up in a fury. "Centurion. I will have your head for thi-"
Durias leaned back and kicked Tribune Manus in the mouth with the heel of one foot. The man's head snapped back in a sudden spray of broken teeth, and he flopped to the ground, unconscious.
Durias glared at him, then at the nearby centurion. "In his cups again?"
The centurion's mouth twisted in distaste, and he nodded.
"Then get him something harder," Durias said. "If he's too drunk to walk, he'll be too drunk to do something this stupid. Now put the crowbegotten lumber back and get those horses back to the stables."
The centurion nodded and immediately began giving orders that were more or less the precise opposite of those he had just uttered. The legionares collected the unconscious Tribune and carried him off.
The blocky Durias, who looked even blockier dressed in armor than he had in a scout's field clothes, turned and walked over to Tavi, putting his sword away as he came. He nodded to Tavi as he approached. "Captain."
"Durias," Tavi said. "Nice to see you again, all things considered."
The Free Aleran centurion twitched his mouth into a faint smile. "I wish I could say the same. We need to get you away from here."
"Not until I speak to Nasaug," Tavi said.
Durias narrowed his eyes, glancing from Tavi to the wagon and its passengers and back. "You're kidding."
"This doesn't seem the appropriate place for levity," Tavi said. "I need to see him."
"You need to be elsewhere," Durias insisted. "Fortunately, in this case the two aren't exclusive. Nasaug's in the field."
Tavi grimaced as Durias confirmed his guess regarding Nasaug's plans. "I see. Lead the way, then."
"Aye." Durias went back to his horse and swung up without bothering to use the stirrups, hauling himself up purely by the muscles in his chest and arms. He nodded to their Cane escort, and said, "Thank you, Sarsh. I'll take them from here."
The Cane tilted his head casually to one side, and growled, "Watch the one on the horse. He's quicker than he looks."
Durias nodded, frowning, and said, "This way."
They followed Durias away from Mastings and toward the north. Once they were well away from the city walls, Tavi urged his horse up alongside the Free Aleran's. "That was quite a reception committee," he said quietly. "What brought that on?"
Durias glanced aside at Tavi, his expression unreadable. "Isn't it obvious?"
"Not to me," Tavi said. "I've been away awhile."
Durias exhaled through his teeth. "Of course you'd say that," he murmured, almost to himself. He glanced back at the wagon. "That's Varg?"
"I'll speak to Nasaug about that," Tavi said quietly.
Durias shrugged. "Fair enough. Then I'll let Nasaug answer your questions as well."
Tavi grunted, but nodded. "One thing more. One of my men is hurt. He needs a healer before we go any farther."
"He can't have one," Durias snapped. He took a deep, steadying breath. "That is, there are none at the city in any case. They're all in the field, and we're already heading their way."
"The ruins?" Tavi guessed.
"Just keep up." Durias nudged his horse into a trot for a few steps, drawing ahead of Tavi.
They traveled for three hours that way, Durias leading them, though Tavi became aware that the countryside on either side of the track they followed was far from empty. Once in a while, he managed to catch vague, flickering glimpses out of the corner of his eyes; movement in a stand of tall grass, or a slightly too-solid shadow among the trees. They were being watched, presumably by Durias's scouts, concealing themselves behind woodcraftings of varying skill.
The track began to show much heavier signs of use as they went. When they rounded a final hilltop and came into view of the ruins on their hill, and the battleground Nasaug had chosen to once more pit his forces against the Legions of Alera, Tavi drew up short for a second, unconsciously stopping his horse. He wished like the crows that Max had been nearby to provide a vision crafting for him, so that he might see the besieged hilltop in greater detail, but a few things were obvious, even from there.
The Legions had been hard-pressed, and their outer palisade wall shattered. They'd taken serious losses while doing so. Tavi could see the gleaming armor of fallen legionares lying in rough groups and singly, as often as not mixed with the dark-furred forms of fallen Canim. Presumably, they'd died while buying time for the engineering cohort to reinforce the walls of the ruins, which now stood at a conspicuously uniform, formidable height.
A sea of Canim surrounded the hilltop, and even a glance showed Tavi that Nasaug had trained his conscripts into disciplined troops and equipped them with uniform weaponry-even with their own armor, if lighter than that of the warrior Canim or Aleran legionares.
Worse, the Canim had brought forth their ritualists again. Streamers of violet fire fell upon the hilltop in what was almost a regular cadence, slamming onto the walls and blasting great gouges from the stones, or from the earth when they struck the ground-and presumably from any Aleran unfortunate enough to be beneath one. Sharp, crackling reports resounded from the hilltop in a steady, hollow-sounding thunder.
"Bloody crows," Tavi whispered.
Kitai stared at the hilltop, her expression closed, but he could feel the sudden surge of fear and anger in her.
Durias looked over his shoulder, and said, harshly, "Keep moving."
They pressed on, passing through several checkpoints, where the Canim sentries seemed to have been expecting them. They waved Durias through without speech, though Tavi could feel their bloody eyes tracking his movements.
As they approached what Tavi recognized as the command area of the Canim force, they came upon a nightmare made flesh.
At the base of a small hillock, the Canim were piling bodies.
There were so many corpses that at first Tavi thought that they had been stacking bags of grain, or sand. Hundreds of dead Alerans lay in the oncoming sunset. The smell was something hideous, and both Tavi's and Durias's horses began to shy away from the stench, nervous at the smell of death. Tavi had to dismount, and moved to the horse's head, holding the bridle and murmuring quietly to soothe the beast.
Tavi wanted to look away from the bodies, but he couldn't. Most of them were legionares. Many of them wore the slightly differently styled armor of the Senatorial Guard, but many others wore the achingly familiar armor of the First Aleran.