Cursor's Fury (Codex Alera #3)(116)

"We're fighting already?" Tavi asked. He shook his head, hoping to slosh some of the sleep from it.

"Make a path!" called a woman's voice, louder than humanly possible, and Lady Antillus's large white horse thundered down the road, forcing legionares to scamper out of its path and other horses to dance nervously in place. She went by within a few feet of Tavi, her harness and coin purse jingling.

"Come on," Foss growled. "Nothing wrong with your arms, sir."

He motioned Tavi to help him, and the two of them wrangled a pair of full-body tubs from the wagon and to the ground. It hurt his leg abominably, sore muscles clenching into burning knots, but Tavi ground his teeth and did his best to ignore it. He and Foss dragged the tubs to the side of the causeway as Lady Antillus hauled her steed to a sliding halt and leapt down from the horse's back with an odd melding of poise and athleticism.

"Water," Foss grunted. Tavi pulled himself back into the wagon and began wrangling the heavy jugs to the end of the wagon. Wind rose to a thunderous roar, and Commander Fantus and Crassus shot down the road not ten feet above the ground, each man bearing an unmoving form over one shoulder. Lady Antillus, Foss, and four other healers met them, taking the wounded men from the Knights Aeris. They stripped the injured of armor with practiced efficiency and got both men into the tub.

Tavi observed from the bed of the wagon and kept his mouth shut. The men's injuries were... odd. Both were smeared with blood, and both thrashed wildly, letting out breathless cries of pain. Long strips of the skin on their legs were simply gone, in bands perhaps an inch wide, as though they'd been lashed with red-hot chains.

Once they were in the tubs, Lady Antillus stepped forward and seized one of the wounded Knight's head. He struggled for a moment more, then eased slowly down into the tub, panting but not screaming, his eyes glazed. She did the same for the second man, then gestured to the healers and settled down to examine the men and confer.

More thundering hoofbeats approached, though this time they were well to the side of the road, away from the danger of spooking a nervous horse or trampling an unlucky legionare. Captain Cyril and the First Spear drew up to the healers. The captain dismounted, followed by Valiar Marcus, and looked around until he spotted Knight Tribune Fantus. "Tribune? Report."

Fantus grimaced at the two young men in the tub, then saluted Cyril. "We were attacked, sir."

"Attacked?" Cyril demanded. "By who?"

"By what," Fantus corrected. "Something up at the edge of that cloud cover. Whatever it was, I didn't get a good look at it." He gestured to Crassus. "He did."

Crassus just stared at the two wounded men, his face entirely bloodless, his expression nauseated. Tavi felt a spike of sympathy for the young man, despite his enmity for Maximus. Crassus had seen his first blood spilled, and he looked too young to be dealing with such a thing, even to Tavi.

"Sir Crassus," Cyril said, his voice purposefully pitched loudly enough to shock the young Knight from his motionless stare.

"Sir?" Crassus said. He saluted a beat late, as if just then remembering protocol.

Cyril glanced at the boy, grimaced, and said in a quieter voice, "What happened up there, son?"

Crassus licked his lips, eyes focused into the distance. "I was point man on the air patrol, sir. Bardis and Adrian, there, were my flankers. I wanted to take advantage of the cover, hide us in the edges where we could still watch the ground ahead. I led them up there."

He shuddered and closed his eyes.

"Go on," Cyril said, his voice quiet and unyielding.