The officer recovered his balance and control of his horse, his face chagrined. “Aye. Aye. We’ll get back to work.”

Durias grunted and said nothing. The officer saluted and turned to ride away. Durias turned to Fidelias, a belligerent gleam in his eyes. “Well?”

Fidelias pursed his lips and nodded. “Not bad.”

From the head of the column, not far away, trumpets began to blow assembly. The water break was over.

Men and Canim began to return to the causeway, walking in pairs of one Cane to one Aleran, moving wearily. They assembled into a column.

“We’re going to get there exhausted,” Durias said quietly. “On open ground. No fortifications.”

Fidelias took a slow breath, and said, “If the Princeps must sacrifice us all to give him a chance to take down the Queen, he should do it. I would. In a heartbeat.”

“Yes,” Durias said, even more quietly. “I suppose that’s what is bothering me.”

“First Spear,” Fidelias said. “Shut up and lead.”

Durias let out a snort of bitter amusement. “True enough.” The two exchanged a salute, and Durias turned to ride back toward the Free Aleran’s section of the column.

The second trumpet signal came—the normal cavalry call to mount up. Fidelias stopped to watch the nearest legionares. Each of them carried a pair of long, wide canvas straps, cut from the cloth of their tents. A loop in the cloth had been tied in one end. The legionares stepped behind their Canim partner and slipped their boots into the loops. Then they passed the straps to the Cane before them.

After that, there was a bit of scrambling as the Canim slid the straps over their own shoulders, wrapped their other ends about their paw-hands, and crouched as their Aleran partners clambered up onto their backs, the straps becoming makeshift stirrups, the Alerans taking on the role of human back-packs. Men occasionally fell. Canim occasionally were kicked in inconvenient (and unarmored) places. Several tails, particularly, seemed to be put in harm’s way in service to the Princeps’ novel concept in transportation.

Other legionares, Fidelias knew, were now mounting up behind taurg cavalry riders, and doing just as much complaining. But when the trumpet sounded again, the Canim began to work up to their loping overland pace, then even faster, running without difficulty as the Aleran partners bid the furies of the causeway to help them. Not a single Aleran was touching the causeway with his own feet. The Canim’s greater natural speed meant that they could use the causeway to move almost as swiftly as a good horse. Within minutes, the entire column was on the move again, miles vanishing beneath Canim feet. They were making faster progress than any Legion would have made marching alone.

Fidelias began to guide his horse back toward the front of the column as they marched, trying very hard not to think about what the Free Aleran Tribune and its First Spear had said about their prospects for surviving another day.

“Shut up, old man,” he breathed to himself. “Shut up and face it head-on.”

He pursed his lips and thought about a different portion of the previous conversation. Then he barked a short laugh to himself.

Whatever might happen in the next day or so, one thing remained true: Fidelias did feel like a new man—and it would not be long before the scales of his life were finally balanced.

Soon, he told himself.

Soon.

Isana sat at the silently entombed Araris’s feet, her hands folded in her lap, watching the vord Queen command her brood. The Queen stood in the alcove, staring up at the green-lighted ceiling, her eyes seemingly unfocused and far away. The light of sunset added the barest hint of yellow to the croach that grew near the entrance to the hive.

“The defenses at the final position are quite cohesive,” the Queen said abruptly. “They are very nearly as formidable as those in Shuar, and the counter-strikes far more effective.”

Isana frowned, and asked, “Shuar?”

“The hive of a subspecies of the Canim. A particularly tenacious strain of the breed. Their fortifications had withstood siege for more than a year when I left Canea.”

“Perhaps they withstand it still.”

The vord Queen looked down at Isana, and said, “Unlikely, Grandmother. The presence of Shuaran Canim in your son’s expeditionary force would suggest that they are refugees, cooperating because they have no other choice.” She turned her face back up to the ceiling. “Though it is far too late, at this point. A unified resistance might have stopped us several years ago, but you were all quite busy exhibiting the most glaring weakness of individuality: self-interest.”

“You see self-identity as a weakness?” Isana asked.

“Obviously.”

“Then one cannot help but wonder why you have one.”

The Queen looked at Isana. The vord’s alien eyes were narrowed. She was silent for a long moment before she looked back up, and answered, “I am defective.” Green light flowed down over her upturned face for a time before she said, “I ran a poisoned sword through your son’s intestinal tract yesterday evening.”

Isana felt her breath stop.

“He seemed well on the way to death when I left him.”

Her heart pounded very hard, and she licked her lips. “And yet, you do not say that he is dead.”

“No.”

“Why did you not kill him, then?” Isana asked.

“The risk-benefit ratio was far too high.”

“In other words,” Isana said, “he ran you off.”

“He and approximately forty thousand troops. Yes.” She flexed her hands, finger by finger, black nails sliding out like claws, then retracting. “It doesn’t matter. By the time they arrive, the fortress called Garrison will be gone, the Alerans there scattered to the winds. They fight upon the walls as if anchored to them. Do they expect me to simply permit them the advantage?”

Isana folded her arms over her chest. “What are you doing to defeat them?”

“You are familiar with the fortress?”

“Somewhat,” Isana said. Technically, that wasn’t actually a lie. Her knowledge of the new defenses was positively sketchy compared to that of many others.

“You know, then, that it straddles a natural choke point—a steep cut in a stone shelf. There are no practical routes to move large bodies of troops from this continent to the next except through the fortress.”

“Yes,” Isana said.

“Practically impassable is not the same thing as impassable,” the vord Queen said. “My children think little of vertical land barriers. They have already overcome them in significant numbers on both the north and south sides of the fortress. They will approach and enfold the fortress from either side, and as they do, my juggernauts will pound the walls to rubble. And then, Grandmother, I will be free to concentrate upon Octavi—”

There was the howl of a windstream, practically at the entrance to the hive, and the Queen’s black faceted gaze snapped to it. Dozens and dozens of wax spiders seemed to come from nowhere, flowing out of the croach upon the ceiling, floor, and walls.

Invidia entered, striding fast. A nervous spider leapt at her, fangs extended, and she swatted it out of the air without slowing pace. “Stop the flanking maneuver. Do it now.”

The Queen let out a feline hiss, lips peeling back from her teeth. There was a blur of motion, and suddenly Invidia’s shoulders were pressed against the back wall of the hive, seven feet off the ground. The vord Queen held her by the throat with one hand, and Invidia’s heels waved and drummed against the wall.

“Where have you been?” snarled the vord Queen.

Invidia kept choking, her face going redder. The vord Queen tilted her head to one side, staring at her, and hissed again, more quietly. “The fortress. Why were you at the fortress?”

Invidia’s eyes rolled back into her head, and her face turned purple.