The gap in the vord line widened, as each fallen vord’s opponent pushed through and went after the flanks and rear of another foe, so that the battlefield in front of Fidelias and the rest of the command group seemed to break into two halves and part to the left and right, like two curtains opening onto a stage—one littered with the bodies of broken vord warrior forms. The battle raged off into the mist to the left and right, and out of their immediate view.

At some point, the vord shrieks turned to a new, urgent pitch—a retreat?—and Maximus’s cavalry horns began to sound the charge, already receding into greater distance.

“Ah, they’ve broken,” said the Princeps, his teeth bared in a wolfish smile. He clenched one hand into a fist. “Max is after them. They’re running. By the great furies, they’re running!”

He never turned or raised his voice above simple conversational volume—nor could he, as the image of the calm, controlled Princeps of the Realm—but Fidelias judged that Valiar Marcus would be more than happy to do it for him. “They’re running, boys!” he bawled out in a training-ground bellow. “Varg and Antillar were too much for ’em!”

A thunder of cheers and Canim roars bellowed out for several seconds before Fidelias passed a cutoff signal back through the line to the cohorts, where Aleran centurions and Canim huntmasters began snarling and growling orderly quiet back into the ranks.

Moments later, the first returning Canim began to appear, walking back toward the ranks in the same arching battle line in which they’d begun the fight. Several were walking only with assistance—but there were no breaks in the line. On the flanks, the Aleran cavalry was returning to its original position in the order of battle. Antillar Maximus came riding in a moment ahead of Varg and saluted the Princeps, slamming his fist into his armor, over his heart.

Varg rolled to halt in front of them and nodded to the Princeps as well. “Not much of a fight.”

“It seems that they do have a breaking point, if the will of their Queen isn’t driving them,” the Princeps said. “Your warriors found it.”

Varg let out a pleased growling sound of agreement.

“I hope you will do us the honor of allowing our healers to treat your wounded. There’s no sense in having them out of action when we can put them back into top condition.”

“That would please me,” Varg replied. “I will request it of them.”

Octavian inclined his head to the Canim leader and returned Antillar’s salute. “Let’s have it.”

“A few of them managed to get out of the close fight,” Antillar Maximus said. “None of them made it out of the fog. The scouts reported other vord like these falling back to the city. They went right up the wall. They’re inside now, maybe a thousand.”

“And those are just the ones we saw,” Octavian said. “We can’t leave them in a fortress at our backs, growing a supply of croach to feed reinforcements they move into the area. This one will be up to us, I believe. Signal the Prime Cohort and the Battlecrows. I want them to be the first through the gates. Both cavalry elements are to take up positions around the city, to catch any others who try to run.”

Antillar blinked. “Those gates aren’t exactly made of paper and glue, Calderon,” the Tribune said. “The High Lords were probably reinforcing them for months, this winter. You know how to run the figures. Any idea of the kind of power it will take to bring them down?”

The Princeps considered Antillar’s words. Fidelias eyed Antillar and Varg alike, but he didn’t think either of them could see how nervous Octavian was. Then the Princeps nodded, and said, “A considerable amount of force.”

“I don’t think we have it,” Max said.

“I think you’re wrong, Max,” Octavian said calmly.

The Ambassador’s eyes narrowed in anticipation, all but glowing green, and her smile somehow made Fidelias take more note of the points of her canine teeth than any of the others.

The Princeps grinned at her in reply, almost unsettlingly boyish, and said, “Let’s find out.”

Tavi wondered if he was about to make a very large, very humiliating, potentially fatal mistake.

He frowned, and spoke to that doubting part of himself in a firm tone of thought: If you didn’t want to take the big chances, you shouldn’t have started screaming about who your father was. You could have moved quietly across the Realm and disappeared among the Marat, if you had wanted to. You decided to fight for your birthright. Well, now it’s time to fight. It’s time to see if you can do what you have to do. So quit whining and bring down that gate.

“Warmaster Varg will have operational command while I deal with the gate,” Tavi said.

The Legion command staff had been briefed on Tavi’s intention the day before. They hadn’t liked it then. Today, though, they simply saluted. Good. Varg’s part in the opening skirmish of the battle (itself but a skirmish for what was to come), had convinced them of the Cane’s ability.

“Tribune Antillus!” Tavi called.

After several signals were exchanged, Crassus came cruising down to the ground and landed beside Tavi’s horse. They exchanged salutes, and Tavi said, “I’ll be moving forward with the Prime and the Battlecrows. I want you and the Pisces hovering over my shoulders.”

“Aye, sir,” Crassus said. “We’ll be there.”

“On your way,” Tavi said.

Crassus took off, and there was nothing left but for Tavi to break down a defensive structure prepared for decades if not centuries to resist precisely what he was about to attempt. He glanced over his shoulder, at Fidelias. Valiar Marcus would have been waiting stolidly, his expression hard and sober. Though his features hadn’t changed whatsoever, Tavi could feel the differences in the man, the more flexible, somehow leonine nature of him. To any casual observer, Fidelias would have appeared exactly like Valiar Marcus. But Tavi could sense that the man was aware, somehow, of his fear.

His perfectly reasonable fear. His very well-advised fear. His quite mature and wise fear, even.

Shut up and get to work, he thought firmly.

Acteon, the long-legged black stallion Tavi rode, tossed his head and shook his mane. The horse had been his, and in the care of the First Aleran Legion, since shortly after he had been forced to take command—a gift from Hashat, the Marat clan-head of the Horse. The Marat stallion had greater agility and endurance than any Aleran horse Tavi had ever seen, but he wasn’t a supernatural beast.

He wouldn’t save Tavi from anything he didn’t handle himself.

“Standard-bearer,” Tavi said quietly. “Let’s go.”

Hoofbeats came up beside him, and Tavi looked aside at the dappled grey mare Kitai rode. His eyes went up to her rider, and he smiled faintly at Kitai, who was wearing her Legion-issue mail. It didn’t offer the same protection as the heavier steel plates of his own lorica, but though she was more than strong enough to wear the heavier armor, she disdained it, preferring the greater flexibility of the mail.

“I suppose you’re going to ignore me if I tell you to wait here,” he said.

She arched an eyebrow at him and settled her grip on the standard. The misty wisps of faint scarlet, drifting outward from the standard like strands of seaweed, seemed to whisper to the mists around them, gathering them closer. Kitai had not picked up the royal standard of the Princeps, the plunging eagle, scarlet upon blue. Instead, she bore the original standard of the First Aleran. It had once been a blue-and-scarlet eagle, wings spread as if in flight, its background also scarlet and blue, halved, contrasting the colors of the eagle. The first battle the Legion faced had left the eagle burned black, and the First Aleran’s “battlecrow” had never been replaced.