After half of a desperate hour, horns sounded again, and, with a roar, the warrior Canim went pounding toward the gap in the walls. Cohorts hastily re-formed their lines, opening gaps enough for the warriors to come through. Done in the heat of combat, the maneuver wasn’t as smooth as it might have been. Dozens of Canim wound up bowling straight through the ranks of a cohort, and dozens more who all kept to the narrow lanes between them wound up stumbling into one another in the narrow spaces. Still, the Canim hit the vord lines like an avalanche of dark red and blue steel. They hammered a salient into the mass of the enemy, and with a roar, fresh legionares, brought up from the Free Aleran, came marching to relieve their brother soldiers.

“Bloody crows,” Crassus called to Tavi. The young Antillan was staring at him. “I’ve never seen anyone do that much in one morning.”

“I’ve been practicing,” Tavi called back. He winked at Crassus.

The other man chuckled wearily and shook his head. “I was beginning to wonder if you had it in you, Your Highness.”

“Today was nothing, Tribune,” Tavi responded. “Nothing.” He inhaled deeply through his nose and nodded. “Nothing but a good start. The real test comes in a few more days.”

Crassus’s expression sobered, and he nodded. “Orders, sir?”

“The vord will have turned Riva into a larder for the dead,” Tavi replied. “You’ll probably find it in the citadel, but they could have put it anywhere. Take a fire team into the city, find the larder, and burn it.”

“Sir? Our dead, too?”

“None of them wanted to feed the vord,” Tavi replied. “Yes. We can’t leave them a food supply here.”

“The croach,” Crassus said.

“Aye,” Tavi said. “As we head for Calderon, I want sweeps out five miles on either side to spot any patches of croach that are forming. We’re going to burn it out between here and the Valley. All of it. But start with Riva. Move.”

Crassus banged out a rapid salute. “Yes, sir.”

“Crassus,” Tavi added. He hesitated, then said, “Be careful, all right? They like to leave surprises. And there might be more of those arrow-wasp nests.”

“If there are, I’ll burn them out, too, sir.” Crassus started signaling to the other Pisces in the air around him, and they all streaked back down toward the Legion lines.

Tavi watched the fight at the wall for another moment or two, but it was over. The vord were beginning to break, and the Aleran ranks moved forward with a steady, professional rhythm that silently declared their expectation of victory.

“Aleran?” Kitai asked quietly.

“I’m all right,” Tavi said.

She shook her head. “You succeeded today.”

“Hmmm?” He glanced at her. “Oh. The furycrafting.”

“Yes. Does this not make you happy?”