Ehren stared at them for a second, unable to believe his own eyes. “Those,” he heard himself say through a dry mouth, “are quite large.”

Giraldi spat. “Bloody crows. But those things can’t attack us from up there, can they?”

“They don’t have to attack us,” Bernard replied. “They just have to walk up and fall on us.”

“Oh, dear,” Ehren said.

“We have to hold them off,” Bernard breathed. “Slow them down. If we can slow them down...” He gave himself a shake. “Giraldi. Tell Cereus to concentrate his forces on the northern bluff. Set the trees on fire, create spines of stone to wound their feet—whatever he can think of. Kill them if he can, but he is to slow that bulk down.”

“Yes, sir!” Giraldi snapped, and went about carrying out Bernard’s orders.

“Slow them down?” Ehren said, bewildered. “Not kill them?”

“It’ll be worse if they arrive simultaneously. And they’re so heavily armored—and just so crowbegotten big—that I’m not sure if we can kill them,” he replied. “But I think we just have to hold a little longer.”

“Why?” Ehren asked, blinking. “What difference is it going to make if they’re here in half an hour instead of ten minutes?”

“Because, Sir Ehren,” Calderon said, “like your own demise, not everything here is as it seems.”

CHAPTER 50

CHAPTER 49

Gaius Octavian’s host dismounted at the mouth of the Calderon Valley, much to the relief of riders and mounts alike. Fidelias watched the entire process, bemused. How different would the role of cavalry be if horses could talk?

And draw swords.

And eat their riders.

He thought there might be a great deal less running about.

Fidelias shook his head and struggled to focus on the task at hand. Such wandering thoughts might perhaps be natural in the face of exhaustion and near-certain death, but they wouldn’t help accomplish the mission.

The captain came riding in from a nearby patch of woods on his big black, his singulares trailing at a slight distance. Though the trees had been a quarter mile away, he had insisted. It would never do, after all, for the Legions to see their Princeps beholden to the call of nature just as they were.

Fidelias swung down from his own horse and walked over to join the captain.

“. . . know you aren’t used to performing in this role,” Octavian was saying to two young men—a cavalry centurion named Quartus and Sir Callum of the First Aleran’s Knights. Both were the right arms of Maximus and Crassus, respectively, within the First Aleran. “But you’ve been trained well,” Octavian continued. “You’ll do fine.”