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"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 attelanced 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 are, somehow, of his fear

His perfectly reasonable fear His very well-advised fear His quite et to work, he thought fired 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 coift 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 fro he didn't handle hio"

Hoofbeats carey mare Kitai rode His eyes went up to her rider, and he sion-issue mail It didn't offer the same protection as the heavier steel plates of his own lorica, but though she was h to wear the heavier arreater flexibility of the nore me if I tell you to wait here," he said

She arched an eyebrow at hirip on the standard Theoutward from the standard like strands of seaweed, see 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

Tavi had carried the standard into an extreerous situation himself had it been only three, almost four years since the Elinarch? It felt like a hundred

Kitai met his eyes and lifted her chin, a se was clear He had triuain at this one Soht went out of hireat deal steadier

"I suppose so," he said

He ether at the sa Acteon's hooves clopped on the ground The track to the nearest of the city's gates was obvious before him, littered here and there with the reht there days before Here a splash of scarlet Aleran blood, non and buzzing with flies There, a gladius, broken six inches from the hilt, the results of hasty construction or shoddy ionare's bloodstained hel a puncture mark shaped much like the profile of a scythe of a nearrior-forht that very day