Isana reached out a hand and seized upon the water in the little pool. She bade it leap up toward the Queen, but the vord was far too swift. She sensed the column of water speeding toward her and took a single step back as it washed by. As it went past her, the Queen stretched out a hand and Isana felt her rip control of the water from her as easily as Isana might have torn it from a child. The Queen sent it crashing into Araris, where it promptly began freezing on his armor, drawing even more pain from the battered man.

The Queen turned to look at Isana, and said, “Grandmother, you have one chance to live. Agree to govern the postconflict Alerans and to assist me in my current efforts, and I will spare your life and your mate’s.”

Isana straightened where she sat. She faced the vord Queen. And, very slowly, she shook her head.

“So be it,” said the vord Queen.

Isana closed her eyes, and it was just then that trumpets began to blare, high and clear, from somewhere outside. Their voices were not the braying deepness of the Canim horns, nor the higher silver sound of the navy’s bugles. These were genuine trumpets played by real Legion musicians, and their high-pitched, clarion call sent a shiver down Isana’s spine.

The vord Queen’s head whipped around to one side, and she hissed, “No. No, he cannot be here. Not yet.”

The trumpets called again. The ground rumbled under the weight of many feet. The mantis warriors outside began to screech a warning—and all of those sounds proclaimed a single, unmistakable fact:

Gaius Octavian had come to do battle with the vord Queen.

“Kill them,” the Queen snarled. “Kill them all.”

The Queen crouched, then leapt skyward, clawing her way up through the holes in the hive’s ceiling that had held the blade-beasts, and with a shriek passed out into the countryside.

Six blade-beasts turned toward Isana, Araris, and the wounded survivors of the failed assassination.

CHAPTER 52

CHAPTER 51

Tavi and Kitai waited with the aerial contingent of the attack. Sir Callum and the other members of the First Aleran’s Knights Pisces were restless. They couldn’t lift off until the ground forces had begun their assault, for fear that the hollow roar of two dozen windstreams would alert the vord to their presence.

Then someone, probably Fidelias, let out a bellowed command to move out, and the host was on the march. It took them less than half an hour to reach the ruined steadholt, then, at another signal, the trumpets sounded the charge, and Aleran and Canim cavalry went roaring down onto the steadholt while the infantry marched at double speed in their wake.