At the same time, Maximus stretched out a hand toward the waters remaining between the First Aleran and the shore. He cried out, and a sudden swirl of wind went rushing down the river, spinning and twisting into a miniature waterspout that threw up great, shimmering sheets of water, obscuring the flaming sword and its wielder from easy observation.

"Forward!" Crassus cried. The fire on the blade pulsed and shimmered. "Forward! For Alera!"

As he finished his cry, Crassus unleashed the firecrafting he'd been preparing.

Rage poured through Marcus, more sudden, hotter, and more violent than any he had felt in years. Every other thought was scorched away by the fire of his anger, and he found himself letting out another cry of eagerness to meet the enemy in battle.

The hesitation of the advancing force vanished entirely, as nearly eight hundred throats erupted in a simultaneous bellow of raw hostility. The First Aleran picked up speed, building to a furious charge as they crossed Maximus's windcrafted water screen. Driven by that anger, they thrust themselves into the teeth of the enemy, utterly ignoring the missiles that continued streaking toward them, claiming lives.

The First Aleran took its hits as it emerged from the river, and accepted them as a necessary price to come to grips with their foe. They surged up the earthworks, spearheaded by the First Aleran's Knights Terra. They struck the mixed earth-and-stone defenses with their great hammers, triggering a minor landslide-one that could be climbed, up and over the defensive walls. Marcus, Maximus, and Crassus were the first to set foot on the improvised ramp, advancing up to the makeshift battlements.

There, they met the enemy.

Marcus had been ready to face the Canim again, but the former slaves were another matter entirely. As he gained the wall, a boy of no more than fifteen summers raised a bow, fumbling at an arrow. Marcus had no time to think. His arm lashed out, and the young soldier fell back, blood rushing from his opened throat.

Marcus stared at the boy for a shocked second, a single thundering heartbeat that suddenly stretched, elongated, drawing the rest of the world into a deceptively dreamy languor. The rage still burned in him, but for that instant, it existed outside of himself, a part of the background that was neither more nor less important than the sounds of battle.

The boy's neck was marred by collar scars. Old ones. If he truly had been fifteen years of age, then he must have gained his scars when he was scarcely old enough to walk-and Marcus had few illusions about what sorts of uses a slaver would find for a helpless child.

Arnos had named the "Free Alerans" traitors-but crows, Marcus wasn't sure that he would not have done precisely the same thing had he been in their place. The lot of a slave in the southern portions of the Realm was a dismal one, and the tolerance of every man, Citizen or not, had its limits.

Then there was a furious, lupine roar, and the frozen instant ended. Marcus ducked the swing of a curved Canim sword and found himself facing eight feet and several hundred pounds of furious, steel-armored warrior-caste Cane.

Marcus was a competent swordsman, and he knew that his own earth-crafter's strength gave him significant advantages against most opponents. Against one of the Canim of the warrior caste, though, he had no advantage of strength, and he might well be the Cane's inferior at bladework. He had not become an old soldier, though, by fighting for pride, and as the Cane advanced and swung again, Marcus shed the blow at an oblique angle along his lifted shield, shoved forward, inside his opponent's guard, and drove his gladius into the Cane's knee.

The Cane howled and lurched. Maximus had seen Marcus press in for the ugly little disabling attack, and before the Cane could recover and hew into Marcus, the young Tribune's sword licked out and back in a single motion, and gore erupted from the Cane's throat.

Marcus got his balance again and menaced a foe that was pressing an attack on Maximus's flank, and they drove forward into a half-panicked group of Free Alerans. Marcus was glad that they didn't put up too much of a fight. He slammed one man to the ground with his shield, dealt out a couple of nonlethal cuts with his blade, then the foe was running. Marcus pressed close behind them, down off the fortifications and onto the ground on the far side, and the men of the Prime Cohort pressed in with him.

There, they met a hastily assembled counterattack from the Canim. The wolf-warriors had gathered thirty or forty of their number-shocking, really, given how little time they'd had to prepare, and indicative of considerable military discipline-and they charged the Aleran forces with blood-maddened howls.

Marcus bellowed, "Shield high, blade low!"

"Shield high, blade low!" the cohort roared back, quoting the doctrine that they'd devised as one of the only viable tactics against the immense foe. The Canim hit the line, but their descending weapons were met by a raised curtain of Legion shields, and the soldiers in the front row concentrated on nothing but dishing out disabling blows to the feet, knees, legs, and groins of their attackers.

The Canim had comparatively little experience in fighting a foe so much smaller than their selves, and the low-line attacks had repeatedly proved to be difficult for them to defend against.

Canim smashed at the Legion's shieldwall. One legionare's shield took a blow squarely, rather than at a proper angle for a deflection. Lined with steel or not, the shield splintered under the terrible force of the warrior Canes blade, and the sword that had done it removed the legionare's arm at the shoulder. The man went down, screaming.

Beside Marcus, Crassus caught the blow of an immense cudgel on his shield, and even with his fury-strengthened equipment and fury-assisted strength, he grunted with pain and faltered, his shield arm dropping limply to his side.

Marcus cut across the young officer's front, deflecting the Cane's next blow, rather than attempting to match strength with strength, and thrust up at an angle into the Cane's lower abdomen. The Cane fell back with a howl of pain, and Marcus bellowed two of his veterans into position to shield Crassus.

The press of combat abruptly loosened, relaxing, and Marcus realized that the Prime Cohort, followed closely by the rest of the First Aleran, had cleared the earthworks. Braying Canim horns began to blow, and the enemy moved into a general retreat, falling back from their positions and vanishing into the rain and the dark.

Crassus unstrapped his shield from his left arm, his face pale. Marcus turned and glanced at the young officer's arm. "Shoulder's out of its socket," he said. "Need to get you to a healer, sir."

"Let them have the men who are bleeding, first. I'm not feeling it right now, anyway." He wiped his blade clean on the mantle of a fallen Cane, sheathed it, and looked around soberly. "Have the engineers put the river back on its course and recall them. Deploy the Sixth, Ninth, and Tenth Cohorts to a perimeter. Second through Fifth to erect a palisade. The rest in formation as a reserve."

Marcus saluted. "Sir."

"Wait," Maximus said. He stepped closer to Crassus and lowered his voice. "They're off-balance, Crassus. We need to press the attack, now, while we have the advantage."

"The objective was to take the ford," Crassus said. "We've done it."

"This is an opportunity," Max said. "We've got to press it. We might not get another chance like this to hit them when they aren't ready."

"I know," Crassus said. "It's almost too good to be true."

Marcus glanced up sharply at Crassus, and frowned.

Max scowled at Crassus. "You're giving the Canim too much credit, this time."

"Stop and think about this, Max," Crassus said. "It might hurt, but try to pretend you're a Canim for a minute. When else are you going to get a chance to launch an attack against an Aleran Legion isolated from the other two with it, on open ground, and in the dark, no less?"