“Yes,” Tavi said, showing his teeth. “And if she’s afraid of me interfering, it means that I can.” He nodded firmly. “Every important fight I’ve ever been in was against someone bigger and stronger than me. This is no different.”

Alera’s gemstone eyes glittered. “If you say so, young Gaius.” And she was gone.

Tavi stalked out of the healer’s tent.

Twenty legionares snapped immediately to attention. Another sixty, within the immediate circle of light, came hustling off the ground, some of them rousing from (fully armored, fully uncomfortable) sleep to do it. Every legionare in sight bore the symbol of First Aleran, the eagle upon the field of scarlet and silver—but the design had been blackened and subtly altered into the shape of a crow. The Battlecrows had been the cohort who had followed Tavi into the horrible business at the end of the Battle of the Elinarch, and ever since they had maintained a reputation for discipline, absolutely deadly efficiency on the battlefield, and reckless disregard for danger. In most Legions, men sought to gain promotion to the Prime Cohort, traditionally the cohort composed of the Legion’s most experienced (and highest-paid) soldiers. In the First Aleran, men strove very nearly as hard to be accepted into the Battlecrows, the cohort that most often followed the captain into the deadliest portions of the battlefield.

Eighty men slammed their armored hands into their armored chests at the same instant, like a report of mortal thunder.

“Schultz,” Tavi called quietly.

A centurion strode out of the ranks, a soldier younger than Tavi himself. Schultz had come a long way since the Elinarch. He’d grown half a foot, for one thing, and added sixty pounds of muscle to the frame of a youth. His face and armor both bore scars, and he had discarded the helmet crest that denoted him as something other than a legionare, but he walked with erect pride and carried his baton beneath his arm in the best tradition of Legion centurions. He snapped off a precise salute to Tavi. “Sir.”

“We’re leaving,” Tavi said.

Schultz blinked. “Sir? Do you want me to round up the command officers for you?”

“We’re not waiting that long,” Tavi said. “The vord Queen knows where we are, and we’re going to be somewhere else as soon as possible. I need runners, Schultz, to go to each cohort’s Tribune and bear my personal command to break camp. I want to be on the road in no more than an hour. Anyone who can’t be ready to go will be left behind. Understood?”

Schultz looked dazed. “Ah. Yes, sir. Runners to each Tribune, your personal command to break camp, moving in an hour or left behind, sir.”