“I don’t have so many friends that I can’t be worried about losing one,” Tavi said quietly. He looked at Max, silent and still in his tub. “Or more.”

Alera regarded him steadily.

“I saw Foss die. I saw what was going to happen seconds before it did, and I just wasn’t fast enough. I couldn’t stop the Queen. He died. She killed so many people. And they died for nothing. She escaped. I failed them.”

“She is most formidable. You knew that.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Tavi said quietly, his voice growing harsh. “It was my responsibility. My duty. I know not everyone survives a war, but by the furies, I will not see my men give their lives for nothing.” His throat tightened, and he bowed his head. “I… I wonder. I wonder if I am the right man for this work. If I had… if I had learned more, if I had been given more time to practice, if I had practiced harder…”

“You wonder if it would have made a difference,” Alera said.

“Yes.”

She considered the question gravely. Then she sat down on the floor beside the stool, folding her legs beneath her. “There’s no way to be certain of things that never took place.”

“I know.”

“You agree. Yet you still feel that way about it.”

Tavi nodded. They were both silent for a time.

“Good men,” she said quietly, “must feel as you do. Or they are not good men.”

“I don’t understand.”

Alera smiled. “A good man, almost by definition, would seriously question any decisions he made that led to such terrible consequences for others. Especially if those others trusted him. Would you agree?”

“Yes.”

“Would you agree that you are fallible?”

“I feel it is manifestly obvious.”

“Would you agree that the world is a dangerous and unfair place?”

“Of course.”

“Then there you have it,” Alera said. “Someone must command. But no one who does so is perfect. He will, therefore, make mistakes. And, since the world is dangerous and unfair, it is inevitable that some of those mistakes will eventually have consequences like those today.”

“I can hardly dispute your reasoning,” Tavi said quietly. “But I do not see your point.”

“It is quite obvious, young Gaius,” Alera said, smiling, her eyes wrinkling at the corners. “The logic is indisputable: You are a good man.”

Tavi lifted his eyebrows. “What has that to do with anything?”

“In my experience?” she asked. “A very great deal. Perhaps Kitai will explain it to you later.”

Tavi shook his head. “You saw the battle?”

“Of course.”

“Is the Queen as strong as you believed her to be?”

“Not at all,” Alera said.

“Oh?”

“She is stronger,” the great fury said calmly. “And she handles herself almost as well as you do. Someone has been giving her lessons.”

Tavi nodded ruefully. “I noticed.” He shook his head. “I… I can’t believe anything could be so powerful. So fast.”

“Yes,” Alera said. “I warned you about that.”

“Then you see why I must question my place here,” Tavi said quietly. “If I can’t outwit her, anticipate her, overcome her… why am I attempting to lead these men at all? Can I take them forward with me, knowing that… that…”

“That you quite likely take them to their deaths,” Alera said.

Tavi closed his eyes. “Yes.”

Alera’s voice turned wry. “How many more would have died had you done nothing, young Gaius? How many more would have died had you perished with the Queen’s first strike? Do you not see what this attack means?”

He opened his eyes and frowned up at her.

“She cannot have many Citizens left to her,” Alera said. “Yet she attacked this camp with more than fifty strongly gifted earthcrafters, knowing that it was a suicide mission. She told you she’d only come to weaken you.”

“That… doesn’t make any sense,” Tavi said. “To waste such a valuable resource merely to weaken an opponent? Why would she do such a thing?”

“Indeed, why?” Alera asked.

“Because she thought it was worth the sacrifice,” Tavi murmured. “But that doesn’t make sense. Our losses were…” His lips tightened bitterly. “Light.”

“She didn’t come here to kill you, young Gaius. Not yet. She came here to bleed you.”

“But why?” Tavi asked. “If she’d waited until the Legion was closer, she could have hit us with overwhelming support rather than losing her collared Citizens. It isn’t rational! It’s…”

He suddenly stopped speaking. He blinked twice.

“It isn’t rational,” he said softly. “It’s the kind of mistake a young commander makes when victory is threatened. He forgets to be disciplined. He decides that doing anything is a better idea than doing nothing.” Tavi’s eyes widened. “She was afraid of me.”

Alera inclined her head and said nothing.

A moment later, Tavi snorted. “Well. I think I must have cured her of that mistaken impression.”

“And yet,” Alera said quietly, “she ran. You didn’t.”

“Of course she ran. It prevented us from concentrating forces on her. It allowed her to control the pace of the fight…” His eyes widened.

Defeating the vord Queen was not about simple bloodletting. It was not about tactics, about furycraft, about organization or technique or ranks of shining armor.

It was about minds. It was about wills.

It was about fear.

Tavi felt himself shoot up off the table. “The horde,” he said. “Where is it now?”

Alera considered the matter for a moment, then said, “They are about to attack the second defensive wall of the Valley. I do not think there is a reasonable chance of the Legions holding the wall.”

“They aren’t supposed to,” Tavi said. “The vord have no chance of overcoming Garrison unless they are directed. To control them, the Queen must be within twenty-five or thirty miles—well beyond the second wall. That’s near Bernardholt. I know that region, and there are only so many places where she could set up a defensive position around her hive.”

Alera tilted her head thoughtfully. “You’ll have the advantage of knowing the terrain.”

“Yes,” Tavi said, showing his teeth. “And if she’s afraid of me interfering, it means that I can.” He nodded firmly. “Every important fight I’ve ever been in was against someone bigger and stronger than me. This is no different.”

Alera’s gemstone eyes glittered. “If you say so, young Gaius.” And she was gone.

Tavi stalked out of the healer’s tent.

Twenty legionares snapped immediately to attention. Another sixty, within the immediate circle of light, came hustling off the ground, some of them rousing from (fully armored, fully uncomfortable) sleep to do it. Every legionare in sight bore the symbol of First Aleran, the eagle upon the field of scarlet and silver—but the design had been blackened and subtly altered into the shape of a crow. The Battlecrows had been the cohort who had followed Tavi into the horrible business at the end of the Battle of the Elinarch, and ever since they had maintained a reputation for discipline, absolutely deadly efficiency on the battlefield, and reckless disregard for danger. In most Legions, men sought to gain promotion to the Prime Cohort, traditionally the cohort composed of the Legion’s most experienced (and highest-paid) soldiers. In the First Aleran, men strove very nearly as hard to be accepted into the Battlecrows, the cohort that most 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.”