Max departed and shut the door, and Tavi sank tiredly back onto his chair. He looked at the maps spread out on his desk—and drew out the one he hadn’t shown the others. Alera had helped him with it. It showed the spread of the vord croach over the face of Alera, like gangrene oozing into the body from an infected wound.

The vord had to number in the hundreds of thousands by now, perhaps even in the millions.

Tavi shook his head ruefully. It said something about the world, he thought, that the vord threat was arguably the second most perplexing problem he had. He wasn’t sure what, but it definitely said something.

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 2

“Gentlemen, Warmaster,” Tavi said. “Thank you for coming.” He looked around his cabin at the gathering of what he’d come to think of as his campaign council. “In the next few hours, your troops will be learning what I’m about to tell you. You’ll need to know it first.”

He paused to take a steadying breath and to make sure that his expression and body language were calm. It wouldn’t do to let them see him nervous, given the gravity of what he was about to explain. And it wouldn’t do to let the Canim see him nervous under any circumstances.

“The vord have already attacked Alera,” Tavi said. “The first assault was beaten back, but not broken. Ceres has fallen. As has Alera Imperia. In the time we’ve been sailing home, other cities may have fallen as well.”

Dead silence settled on the ship’s cabin.

Nasaug turned his dark-furred head to Varg. The Canim Warmaster twitched an ear and kept his blood-colored eyes on Tavi.

“What’s more,” Tavi continued, “the First Lord, my grandfather, Gaius Sextus, was slain while fighting a holding action to give the folk of the capital a chance to escape.”

No one spoke, but an almost-silent chorus of moans of shocked disbelief went up from the Alerans present. Tavi didn’t want to keep his tone brisk and businesslike. He wanted to scream his outrage and grief that the vord had taken his grandfather from him before he’d had a chance to get to know Sextus better. But his anger, no matter how hot it burned, wouldn’t change anything.