often followed the captain into the deadliest portions of the battlefield.
Eighty men slammed their armored hands into their armored chests at the same instant, like a report of mortal thunder.
"Schultz," Tavi called quietly.
A centurion strode out of the ranks, a soldier younger than Tavi himself. Schultz had come a long way since the Elinarch. He'd grown half a foot, for one thing, and added sixty pounds of muscle to the frame of a youth. His face and armor both bore scars, and he had discarded the helmet crest that denoted him as something other than a legionare, but he walked with erect pride and carried his baton beneath his arm in the best tradition of Legion centurions. He snapped off a precise salute to Tavi. "Sir."
"We're leaving," Tavi said.
Schultz blinked. "Sir? Do you want me to round up the command officers for you?"
"We're not waiting that long," Tavi said. "The vord Queen knows where we are, and we're going to be somewhere else as soon as possible. I need runners, Schultz, to go to each cohort's Tribune and bear my personal command to break camp. I want to be on the road in no more than an hour. Anyone who can't be ready to go will be left behind. Understood?"
Schultz looked dazed. "Ah. Yes, sir. Runners to each Tribune, your personal command to break camp, moving in an hour or left behind, sir."
"Good man," Tavi said. He turned to the assembled century of men and raised his voice. "The Legions have a long tradition, boys. You march hard and fast and show up in places where no one expects you - and then you go to work." He grinned. "And you do it all carrying a hundred pounds of gear made by whoever did it for the least coin - but every one of those slives gets paid better than you! It's tradition!"
A growl of laughter went around the group of soldiers.
"This march," Tavi said, "is different."
He let silence sit over the men for a moment.
"In a moment, you're going to go out and give the orders to move out. And you're going to tell the men this: No packs. No tents. No blankets. No spare boots. They don't matter anymore."
The silence thickened.
"We have to move, fast and hard," Tavi said. "There are millions of lives at stake, and the enemy knows where we are. So we're not going to be here. We're going to be in Calderon by tomorrow, a full day before we're expected. And then we're going to find the vord Queen and pay the bitch back for what she did tonight."
Eighty men raised their voices in a sudden, furious roar of approval.
"Schultz will give you your assignments," Tavi said. "Get it done."
Another roar went up, and Schultz began striding down the ranks, striking each man lightly on his armored shoulder with his baton and issuing the name of an Aleran or Canim officer he was to contact. The men went sprinting into the dark, and within minutes trumpeters were sounding the signal to prepare to march.
"Sir," Schultz said, after he'd sent the last of the men off, "we might make Calderon that fast. But the Canim can't, sir, nor their beasts. There's no way."
Tavi showed the legionare his most Canish smile. "Faith, Schultz," he said. "Where there's a will, there is a way. And my will is for us all to be in Calderon by the sunrise after next."
Schultz blinked. "Sir?"
"Get the rest of the 'Crows ready to move out, Schultz," he said. "That's your job. Getting all of us there? That's mine."
Chapter 45~46
Chapter 45
The vord came precisely when Invidia said they would. Sunrise was still four hours away, and once the moon had vanished behind the mountains to the south, the night turned as black as the inside of a coffin.
Amara was on the wall, waiting to see if Invidia had spoken the truth. There was no warning whatsoever. In one moment, the night was completely silent and still. In the next, there was a single flicker of movement at the very edge of the ground illuminated by the wall's furylights, then the gleaming black chitin of the horde exploded from the night, rushing across the ground in the rumble of millions of feet striking the still-scorched earth.
They must have moved slowly and silently until they reached the edge of the lights, Amara thought. No Aleran Legion could possibly have moved stealthily in such vast numbers - but it hadn't done them any good.