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 51~52
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.
"Right!" Tavi said. "Let's go!" He summoned up his windstream and lifted off. He was clumsier about it than most of the Knights Aeris there, but at least he managed it without hurting himself or fouling the efforts of the man beside him. Kitai took up position beside him on his left, while Sir Callum flew on his right, and the other Knights Aeris spread out into a v-shaped wing behind him.
Tavi led them forward, soon overflying the Aleran infantry, the slowest troops on the field. Their goal was the ruined steadholt itself, the nearest target, while their Canim peers, being much faster on their feet, swept to the east and around the steadholt, to strike into the fields of sleeping vord.
The other side included the cavalry, Canim and Aleran alike. The taurga were at least twice the weight of a horse, and they couldn't outrun one. As Tavi cruised up, the first Aleran cavalrymen were starting through the vord field, sa bers lowering to flash left and right, in almost exactly the same motions and timing as their practice drills. They rushed down the columns of hibernating vord, wreaking havoc. Nearly eight hundred horsemen running at full speed through the field dealt the vord hideous wounds.
But they didn't hold a candle to the slower taurga.
The Canim beasts were enormously powerful, individually speaking - bigger and stronger than any beast Tavi knew of short of a gargant. But the taurga were omnivores with vicious tempers. Even if they hadn't been urged by their riders, they would have smashed vord left and right as they ran through them - while upon the beasts' backs, the Shuaran warrior Canim struck lazy-looking blows with long-handled axes that simply sheared through whatever they hit. They wreaked four or five times the damage the Aleran cavalry had done - which was only reasonable, since there were nearly five thousand of the bloody things.
Shrieks began to go up, here and there, the warning trills of wax spiders who had recognized that something wasn't right. The mantis warriors in the steadholt began streaking about, a couple of hundred of them at least, as the battle lines of the Aleran Legions closed on the steadholt.
Then a single alien voice rose over the noise of battle, a bone-chilling shriek that made Tavi feel cold to the bottom of his belly. For a second, he felt as if he had simply forgotten how to think, as if such civilized frippery as logic and the ability to form words had become deadweight he needed to cast off. His flight faltered a bit.
Beside him and below him, Tavi saw exactly the same reaction from all of the host, from Alerans, Canim, and their beasts alike - sudden hesitation, flashes of panic, wildly rolling eyes. Even Kitai shuddered. Worse, the sleeping vord seemed to have heard that voice and responded to it. Starting with the nearest vord, the mantis warriors slowly began to stir.
Tavi had heard cries like that before, and knew what they meant: The vord Queen had taken the field.
"See!" Kitai hissed, pointing. "There she goes!"
A shadowy form, hardly visible behind a windcrafted veil, burst through the thick stone wall of the barn as though it had been made from rotten wood. It shot off along the ground, visible only through the disturbance its violent windstream raised from the ground. As it passed over the hibernating vord, it screamed again, and more of the warriors began to stir.
The Aleran command sent out signals by trumpet, but not signals to re-form the ranks or to retreat. The trumpets rang out in pure, clear defiance of the sleeping swarm: attack, attack, attack.
"Go high!" Tavi snarled, and flung himself after the Queen. He dived for the ground to pick up speed and pulled himself out of the dive only seven or eight feet above the earth. He dodged around two Narashan warriors and half a dozen joyously destructive taurga before streaking out ahead of the entire host, closing distance on the fleeing, shrieking disturbance. As he went, even more warriors began to stir, and once a reaching scythe-limb came near to ripping his belly open more or less by pure providence. He batted it aside with his sword, closing to within a few yards of the Queen, and hit upon an inspiration. Concentrating intently, he reached forward with a windcrafting and closed it around the vord Queen in a bubble - a simple privacy crafting. Her voice cut off in midscream.
It took her several seconds to realize what Tavi had done to her. He thought he knew what tactic she would use next, and readied himself for it. Not two seconds later, the vord Queen suddenly shot twenty feet up, and her veil and windstream vanished altogether. She whirled, clearly visible in the predawn light, flinging open a small leather bag of fine salt.
But Tavi had anticipated the maneuver, and as the Queen shot up into the air, he did as well, dismissing his windcraftings an instant later. He sailed through the air and the cloud of fine salt on pure momentum, and didn't call back his windstream until he was sure he was past the salt.