white marble, and Tavi stared at the representation of his father. Septimus's eyes were closed, as though sleeping, and he lay with his hands folded upon his breast, the hilt of his sword beneath them. He wore a rich cloak that draped down over one shoulder, and beneath that was the worked breastplate of a somewhat ostentatious Legion officer rather than the standard-issue lorica Tavi had on.
Slouched at the base of his father's memorial bier was the vord Queen.
She was bleeding from more wounds than Tavi could count, and the water around her, instead of being crystalline, was stained the dark green of a living pond. She slumped in absolute exhaustion. One eye was missing, that side of her once-beautiful face slashed to ribbons by the windmanes' claws.
The other eye, still glittering black, focused upon Tavi. The vord Queen rose, her sword in her hand.
Tavi stopped at the edge of the pool and waited, settling his grip on his own blade.
The two faced one another and said nothing. The silence and stillness stretched. Outside, the storm's wrath was a distant thing, impotent. Light flickered through the crystalline walls.
"I was right," the Queen said, her voice heavy and rough. "There is a strength in the bonds between you."
"Yes," Tavi said simply.
"My daughter who lives in far Canea... she will never understand that."
"No."
"Is it not strange, that though I know her failure to see it is a weakness, though I know that she would kill me upon sight, that I want her to live? To prosper?"
"Not so strange," Tavi said.
The Queen closed her eye and nodded. She opened it again, and there was a tear tracking down her face. "I tried to be what I was meant to be, Father. It was never personal."
"We're beyond that now," Tavi said. "It ends here, and now. You know that."
She was still for a moment, before asking, very quietly, "Will you make me suffer?"
"No," he said, as gently as he could.
"I know how a vord queen dies," she whispered. She lifted her chin, a ghostly shadow of pride falling across her. "I am ready."
He inclined his head to her, very slightly.
Her rush sent out a spray of water, and she came at him with every ounce of speed and power left in her broken body. Even so badly battered, she was faster than any Aleran, stronger than a grass lion.
Gaius Octavian's blade met that of the vord Queen in a single, chiming tone. Her sword shattered amidst a rain of blue and scarlet sparks.
He made a single smooth, lightning-swift cut.
And the Vord War was over.
Chapter 57
Chapter 57
The wind had picked up so sharply that the Knights Aeris Fidelias had borrowed began to run out of work. The conditions were simply too harsh for the vordknights to stay aloft, especially when a mix of cold rain and sleet began sluicing down. The changing conditions had ripped the Canim's sorcerous mist apart even earlier than that, and Fidelias, from his vantage point on the barn's roof, had gotten an excellent view of the size of the force attacking them.
There weren't thirty thousand vord. There were more like fifty thousand.
No simple ditch could have given the Legions any real hope against a force that outnumbered them so badly. Oh, had they been fighting Marat, Icemen, even Canim, there might have been a straw of hope. Legion discipline in the face of overwhelming odds was less a professional practice than it was a form of contagious insanity, especially in a veteran unit like the First. They might be killed to a man, but they would never break. That fact alone was enough to grind the determination out of any rational foe.
But the vord weren't rational.
So the First Aleran would be killed to a man - and Fidelias with them, if it came to that. Perhaps that was the specter of Valiar Marcus inside his thoughts speaking, but if so, Fidelias had no intention of countermanding him. He wasn't leaving these men.
The rain came down harder, and harder still, until it was almost like one of the typhoons that sometimes visited the southern coast. Fidelias watched his men fighting grimly on against impossible odds and found himself weeping in silence, his face stony. It was raining. No one would see. But even so, force of habit made him reach for the modest watercrafting talents he possessed, which were at least suitable to stop tears.
His head whipped up abruptly, and he snapped, to the nearest courier, "Bring me the First