Raucus lifted his eyebrows. “For one vord.”

“For the vord,” Aquitaine replied. “Kill her, and the rest of them are little more than animals.”

“Bloody dangerous animals.”

“Then I’m sure hunting fashions will become all the rage,” Aquitaine replied. He turned around and nodded. “Sir Ehren. Have the reports come in?”

“Yes, sire,” Ehren replied.

Aquitaine turned to the sand tables and swept a hand in invitation. “Show me.”

Ehren calmly walked to the tables and took up a bucket of green sand. Raucus winced when he did. The green sand marked the spread of the croach across Alera. They’d run through several buckets already.

Ehren dipped a hand into the bucket and carefully poured green sand over the model of a walled city on the sand table that represented Parcia. It vanished into a mound of emerald grains. It seemed, to Ehren, an inadequate way to represent the ending of hundreds of thousands of Parcian lives, both the city’s population and the vast number of refugees who had sought safety there. But there could be no doubt. The Cursors and aerial spies were certain: Parcia had fallen to the vord.

The tent was silent.

“When?” Aquitaine asked quietly.

“Two days ago,” Ehren said. “The Parcian fleet was continuing the evacuation right up until the very end. If they stayed near the coastlines, they could have employed much smaller vessels as well and loaded all of the ships very heavily. They may have taken as many as seventy or even eighty thousand people around the cape to Rhodes.”

Aquitaine nodded. “Did Parcia unleash the great furies beneath the city on the enemy?”

“Bloody crows, Attis,” Raucus said quietly, reproof in his voice. “Half the refugees in the entire south were at Parcia.”

The First Lord faced him squarely. “No amount of grieving will change what has happened. But prompt action based upon rational thought could save lives in the near future. I need to know how badly the enemy was hurt by the attack.”

Raucus scowled and folded his heavy arms, muttering beneath his breath.

Aquitaine put a hand on the other man’s shoulder for a moment, then turned to face Ehren. “Sir Ehren?”

Ehren shook his head. “There was nothing to indicate that he did so, Your Highness. From what we have heard from the survivors, High Lord Parcius was assassinated. The vord didn’t assault and breach the walls until after he had fallen.” He shrugged. “The reports indicate widespread incidents with wild furies in the aftermath, but that was to be expected given the number of deaths.”

“Yes,” Aquitaine said. He folded his arms and studied the map in silence.

Ehren let his eyes drift over it as well.

Alera was a land of vast stretches of sparsely settled or uninhabited wilderness between the enormous cities of the High Lords. Furycrafted roads between the great cities, and a great many waterways, provided lifelines of trade and created a natural support structure for smaller cities, towns, and villages that spread out into the countryside around them. Steadholts, farming hamlets, were scattered into the areas between the towns and cities, each supporting between thirty and three hundred or so people.